Syria, With Blood on Its Hands, Will Rejoin the Arab League After a 12-Year Absence

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who murdered tens of thousands of his own people in poison gas attacks, executions, and targeted bombings, apparently didn’t cross any red lines for the Arab League. The group voted to readmit Syria after a 12-year imposed absence due to the brutality of the Syrian civil war.

Up to half a million civilians have died since March 2011, when the civil war began, including 30,000 children. In the intervening years, Russian troops have added to the civilian carnage and Iranian Revolutionary Guards have also contributed to the slaughter.

But the Arab brotherhood has a stronger stomach for these matters than most of us in the West. The group isn’t even making it a condition that Assad step down. They still have to figure out how to put lipstick on this pig and present the reunification with Syria in the most positive light.

NPR:

There is still no Arab consensus on normalization with Damascus. Several governments did not attend the meeting. Among the most notable absentees was Qatar, which continues to back opposition groups against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, and continues to resist normalization with Damascus.

The decision for Syria to return also includes a commitment to ongoing dialogue with Arab governments to gradually reach a political solution to the conflict, in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254. The Arab League in the decision also set up a communications committee consisting of Saudi Arabia and Syria’s neighbors Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq to follow up on developments.

In addition to commitments to a gradual resolution to the conflict, the decision also welcomed the Syrian government’s willingness to cooperate with Arab countries to resolve “humanitarian, security, and political” crises that affected Syria and the region due to the conflict — namely refugees, “the threat of terrorism and drug smuggling.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Samer Shoukry said that only an Arab-led “political solution without foreign dictates” can end the civil war. “The different stages of the Syrian crisis proved that it has no military solution and that there is no victor nor defeated in this conflict,” he added.

That’s not true at all. The winner — and still champion — is Bashar al-Assad. The losers are the Syrian people who are stuck with this murderous Russian toady until he’s physically displaced or dies.

But Syria is prostrate — a failed state that can’t feed itself or shelter its population. Half of Syria’s 23 million people have fled, including the educated and the creative. There’s no one left to rebuild, even if Syria received the money to do so.

Syria is located in a highly strategic region — the Levant — which is the gateway to the Middle East and is the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. The Arab League isn’t going to just abandon the region.

The Feb. 6 earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria was a catalyst for further normalization across the Arab world, including regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran reestablishing ties in Beijing, which had backed opposing sides in the conflict.

Jordan last week hosted regional talks that included envoys from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria. They agreed on a framework, dubbed the “Jordanian initiative,” that would slowly bring Damascus back into the Arab fold. Amman’s top diplomat said the meeting was the “beginning of an Arab-led political path” for a solution to the crisis.

Tyrants of the world take note: if Bashar al-Assad can do his worst to his own people and still end up being accepted back in the fold of nations, the question becomes how murderous and savage a leader can get before he’s banished to the outer darkness.