Arab states race Turkey for influence in new Syria
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are jockeying for influence with Syria’s Islamist government, hoping to gain an advantage on rivals in the strategically positioned country despite misgivings about the jihadist past of its new leaders.
The kingdom, along with Jordan and Qatar, is rushing humanitarian aid and energy assistance to Syria’s war-weary population. The Arab states are betting that doing so could advance both narrow and strategic goals—from cutting the flow of drugs and radical fighters across Syria’s borders, to countering the influence of competitors such as Turkey and Iran.
“Governments in the region are worried by the new rulers’ Islamist pedigree but also that their popularity could have a contagious effect among their own population," said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert and professor at University Lyon 2 in France. “They also want to have a seat in the new Syria." How the country’s political contours take shape after the rapid and unexpected fall of the Assad regime has wide-ranging ramifications for the region.
In more than a decade of conflict, foreign actors—including former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers, Iran and Russia—supported different factions to further their often competing agendas, turning Syria into a theater for proxy wars. The Arab League suspended Syria from its ranks after the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, but Saudi Arabia had led a push to renew ties in recent years.
In the post-Assad vacuum, new Arab entrants are offering to help rebuild and to alleviate the country’s food and energy shortages, moves that analysts say are motivated by more than altruism. In recent days, Saudi Arabia opened a humanitarian air bridge to
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