Syria Divided

By Islam Farag, from Cairo / Egypt

The outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011 was a major cause of tension in relations between the Gulf states and Syria, which was then under the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, saw in the revolution a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overthrow the Syrian regime, which was a prominent ally of Iran, which the Gulf capitals viewed as an existential threat.

Volatile Shift

Initially, Riyadh condemned the Syrian government’s handling of the anti-government protests. However, with the opposition unable to achieve any significant change in the regime’s structure over two years of protest and rebellion, the kingdom armed the rebels.

With the armed rebels failing to overthrow the Syrian regime, tensions between Riyadh and Damascus eased, and Saudi Arabia’s rhetoric toward Syria shifted in 2018, when it expressed its willingness to work with Russia to reach a political solution to the Syrian war. Matters further developed in 2023, when the two countries decided to reopen their embassies, after which the Syrian president visited the Kingdom.

Similarly, relations between the UAE and Syria have evolved since 2011, from a break with the regime and cautious support for the opposition, to the reopening of the UAE embassy in Damascus in 2018. These relations culminated in full normalization, followed by Assad’s visit to Abu Dhabi in 2022.

As for Kuwait, it withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in 2012 and asked the Syrian ambassador to leave the country, in compliance with a Gulf Cooperation Council decision. Kuwait has long maintained its position of refusing Damascus’s return to the Arab League, before changing its position in 2023.

However, Qatar’s approach was different and consistent from 2011 until the fall of the Syrian regime in 2024. It recognized the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and granted it the Syrian embassy building in Doha, while maintaining its support for rebel groups.

Unlike Doha, Bahrain was the only Gulf state to acknowledge that its relationship with Damascus had not changed due to the revolution. In 2019, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, told the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that his country’s relations with the Assad regime had not been severed since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution.

Accelerated steps

With Ahmad al-Sharaa assuming the presidency of Syria during the transitional period, a new chapter in relations between the Gulf states and Damascus began. Its most prominent feature was the accelerated steps toward rapprochement on the political and economic levels, a rare form of rapprochement that had not been common for decades between the two sides.

Damascus and Gulf capitals witnessed an exchange of visits by high-ranking officials, during which Sharaa sought to allay Gulf states’ concerns about the new regime. The Gulf states sought to provide him with the political support he needed, in addition to the economic support.

The Gulf states also took the initiative to provide urgent relief and humanitarian aid, giving the new political regime a chance to catch its breath regarding the country’s pressing problems.

This sudden warming of relations with a regime that should have aroused all sorts of apprehension can only be explained by the fact that the intersection of strategic interests was a more pressing and compelling motivation than any other consideration, whether personal or ideological.

The Gulf states found that security imperatives compelled them to adopt a state of political openness with the nascent regime, in the hope that cooperation would be a tool for achieving stability.

Pragmatic Rapprochement

From the perspective of the Gulf Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, supporting the Sharaa government represents a practical step toward distancing Syria from the axis of regional conflict and returning it to the Arab sphere of influence. This approach intersects with other regional issues, such as Yemen and Lebanon, where the Gulf states believe in the importance of political investment in the new Syrian regime, which would reduce Iran’s influence in Lebanon and facilitate the reaching of calming understandings with Tehran in Yemen.

These trends were very clear in the Gulf. Even the UAE, which appeared not to support the new government, opened its doors to Sharia, like other countries in the region.

The Syrian government itself has demonstrated unprecedented pragmatism and openness toward the Gulf states, recognizing the political influence it enjoys with the West and the United States, which could help it gain international legitimacy and overcome numerous obstacles. Its reliance on the Gulf has already succeeded in easing many of the restrictions and sanctions imposed on the new government. At the same time, Damascus realizes that the regime’s survival cannot be achieved without significant economic and developmental achievements, which can only be achieved with Gulf money ready to be invested in devastated Syria.

Fragile situation

However, Gulf states’ support for Syria’s reconstruction still awaits stabilization. These countries are holding off on launching major investments in Syria until the region’s wars have settled. They are waiting for the Israeli escalation in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria to end, and for the trajectory of Iran’s nuclear program to become clearer. Most importantly, they are waiting for the new Syrian regime to demonstrate a genuine ability to address the internal situation in a manner that guarantees Syria’s territorial integrity. This issue is highly questionable given the Syrian regime’s inability to contain demands and concerns of the country’s minorities.

Over the course of a few months, the country witnessed significant security tensions between the new regime’s General Security Forces, a Sunni force, and the Alawites in the coastal region and the Druze in Sweida. The recent tensions served as a pretext for an Israeli escalation on Syrian territory.

These ongoing confrontations and divisions between factions are raising Gulf concerns about Syria’s future, with the prospects for optimistic scenarios declining as the central government fails to impose full control over the entire country.

The recent events in Sweida, and the accompanying Israeli military intervention, have revealed the fragility of the situation. They have also powerfully exposed the willingness of some regional powers to forcefully redraw the geographic landscape in Syria.

Ambiguous Strategy

This context has raised several questions about the limits and capabilities of the Gulf role in containing this chaos, and the extent of its ability to formulate a clear and coherent strategy for dealing with the transitional phase in Syria, enabling it to navigate this dangerous juncture with the least possible losses on the horizon and avoiding any threat to its very existence as a unified state.

One could objectively question the existence of such a strategy, especially since the position toward Damascus has never been unified across the Gulf capitals since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, as we have previously demonstrated. Moreover, the shift to the current state of support for the authority of Ahmed al-Sharaa was not the result of a genuine belief in his reform project, but rather a response to a new international climate driven by American-Turkish understandings that granted al-Sharaa a de facto legitimacy that imposed itself.

In reality, we still see a discrepancy in the Gulf position regarding this support, although the region’s capitals are cautious in announcing it, so as not to leave a vacuum that countries such as Iran, Russia, Israel, or even Turkey could exploit to expand their influence at the Gulf’s expense.

From this standpoint, these countries were keen to clearly and quickly condemn the Israeli intervention against the central authority in Damascus, despite their conviction that the Syrian regime needs to evolve its domestic policies from a logic of confrontation to one of containment in dealing with minorities. These countries believe that the regime also needs to cleanse itself of comrades-in-arms with ideologies that obstruct this process. This poses a major dilemma for the regime in Damascus, especially since it has not yet been able to form a genuine popular support base nor a cohesive, national army that can replace the militias that helped al-Sharaa reach the People’s Palace.

Preemptive Warning

From our conversations with a number of Gulf sources, we have confirmed the existence of a division among Gulf countries regarding the importance of preserving Syria as a unified state for Gulf interests. While some countries view this as paramount to enabling Damascus to fulfill its desired roles, others believe that partition will inevitably occur given the continued exclusionary mentality pursued by the Syrian regime. However, they are only seeking to delay this scenario or minimize the chaos and resulting costs. In the best of circumstances, they are seeking to buy time to engineer the partition into a federal or confederal form that ensures a minimum level of Gulf interests.

What the Gulf states fear most in their declared rejection of any separatist tendencies is that the experience will become a precedent that will tempt other parties and open the door to broader regional interventions.

According to one source we spoke to, the Gulf states face a complex equation that requires them to support stability without falling into the trap of fully embracing an untested regime, while at the same time preventing further chaos or division.

No one has expressed this complex situation more clearly than former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, who played a significant role in shaping the Gulf position in general and Qatar in particular, in supporting the Syrian revolution from its first outbreak.

Two weeks ago, in a tweet on his official account on X, he warned of the consequences of recent developments in the region. He stated that these could take various forms, including plans to partition certain countries — Syria among them — or to impose new realities that would burden the region for years to come.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council countries will be the first to be harmed by all these consequences, and therefore they must agree on a single, clear vision regarding these developments and consequences”, he added.