In need of solutions to the growing security threats emanating from Syria, Arab states normalized relations with the Syrian regime in May 2023, marked most significantly by Syria’s reinstatement to the Arab League. They hoped that restored diplomatic ties with Bashar al-Assad’s regime after a decade of political isolation could incentivize its cooperation on key regional concerns. The conditions, or “asks,” of normalization hinged on three key issues: curbing the narcotics trade, countering Iranian entrenchment and creating conditions for safe, voluntary and dignified refugee returns. A year after Arab normalization with the Syrian regime, the process can be broadly assessed as a failure.
Across the board, Damascus has made no serious effort to address the concerns of Arab states, which have only become more urgent after 7th October. Over the past year, cross-border drug smuggling increased almost three-fold in the first smuggling season after normalization, with weapons smuggling becoming more problematic. As the war in Gaza intensified, Iran activated its proxy networks in Syria to provide another frontline against western allies and interests in the region. Although the regime enacted performative measures to signal its “reforms” to the international community, no serious steps were implemented to create a safe environment, with the UN declaring that Syria remains unsafe for returns in February 2024.
Regional Normalization
In the build-up to the regime’s readmission to the Arab League in May 2023, Arab states held several regional fora either directly with the regime or in relation to it, with multilateral and bilateral meetings taking place. On 1st May 2023, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Syria met for the first Amman Consultative Meeting (ACM), with Syria agreeing to cooperate with Jordan and Iraq to form joint political and security committees to identify sources of drug production, smuggling operations and the networks that manage them. This effectively served as the forerunner to Syria’s readmission to the Arab League later that month, in which the actor primarily responsible for the Captagon trade was offered a quid pro quo—partial normalization in return for progress made on narcotics smuggling.
Assad regards normalization as the culmination—and extension—of his purportedly all-out victory in Syria. Although at least one-third of Syrian territory remains outside the regime’s control and the risk of escalation is a constant possibility, Damascus—and its current and/or former backers—remain convinced it has defeated any threats to its grip on power.
Moreso than Assad himself, Russia and Iran have emerged the winners of a shifting regional order materializing in the void left particularly by the West’s desire to disengage from Syria and deprioritize the region. By convincing regional countries that Assad has won the war in Syria and there is no option but to directly engage him, Moscow and Tehran have solidified their ability to shape wider regional outcomes far beyond Syria to serve their strategic interests.
Current State of Play
To date, there have been few, if any, signs of tangible progress from regional normalization efforts with Syria.
Smuggling networks responsible for trafficking narcotics and arms across the Syrian-Jordanian border are still as active as ever, with data collected by ETANA indicating that smuggling rates have in fact increased almost three-fold since normalization.
Meanwhile, Iran’s entrenchment in Syria remains largely unchallenged. Since 7th October, Assad has positioned himself implicitly and explicitly in direct alignment with Iran and the Axis of Resistance. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has consistently utilized Syrian territory and airspace for its operations in the region, as well as a forward arsenal for Syrian/Iranian- made weaponry.
Refugee returns—one of the most intractable topics related to the future of Syria—appears as unresolved as ever. The UN confirms that Syria remains unsafe for return due to the lack of rule of law and security conditions. The overwhelming majority of refugees are unwilling to even consider going home despite the many, and mounting, pressures they face in host countries like Lebanon or Turkey.
The ‘Three Asks’
Cross-Border Smuggling
Countering the narcotics flowing from Syria to Jordan and the Arab Gulf states was the most immediate and critical ask of the regime from Arab normalization. By any quantitative metric, the regime has failed to curb the cross-border trade since the Arab League summit last year and the beginning of the Amman Consultative Meeting process. Despite regime promises, drug smuggling from Syria has only become more militarized and increasingly sophisticated, with smugglers taking up arms and employing new tactics to move product (primarily Captagon, crystal meth or hashish) across the border.
In addition to employing new strategies, smuggling groups are undertaking their highest-ever rate of illicit border crossings. In March 2024, for example, ETANA found that smugglers had made 282 attempted cross-border operations into Jordan since October 2023—an almost threefold increase compared to the same period the previous year.
While cross-border smuggling rates grow, the regime has continued a policy of launching theatrical raids and arrests meant to give the appearance of genuine counter-smuggling efforts. Many of these raids have focused on Daraa, despite the fact most smuggling takes place in neighboring Suwayda. Aside from the theatrics of Damascus’ counternarcotics strategies, the regime’s continued support to narcotics networks is visible in its abject failure to cooperate with neighboring states through the Amman Consultative process.
Iranian Entrenchment & Post 7th October Alignment
Iran’s entrenchment in Syria is now a well-established fact of the conflict, most vividly demonstrated in the recent months of Iranian-Israeli spill-over hostilities in Syria. This can be considered a secondary—but perhaps more strategically significant—demand of normalizing Arab states. Iran’s influence and presence in Syria is insidious and fluid. While the numbers and locations of Iranian-backed proxies in Syria fluctuate, it is the ease with which the IRGC can mobilize and move these fighters into and through Syrian territory that represents Tehran’s hold on Syria.
The situation since 7th October reveals what the Syrian-Iranian partnership looks like when it is activated. It is not so much that Iranian entrenchment has increased since 7th October, but rather that Iran has put into action the operational foothold it has gained in Syria over the last decade. Iran has repeatedly used Syrian territory and/or airspace to proliferate militia proxies on the ground to target western interests or assets in the region. Viewed regionally, Assad has effectively taken the side of Iran and the Axis of Resistance—a stance reiterated by Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.
This staunch alliance between Damascus and Tehran is a dangerous trend for states hoping to avoid an escalation between Iran, Hezbollah and Israel in the wake of October 7th. An upsurge in Iranian-backed militia activity in Syria in October 2023, including cross-border rocket launches, prompted retaliatory airstrikes and artillery attacks by Israel. By late 2023, Israel escalated its response and launched a series of unprompted, targeted airstrikes against high-level Iranian assets inside Syria. The most notable of these saw a strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, which killed several senior Iranian commanders.
In direct retaliation for the consulate attack, the IRGC targeted Israel from Iran for the first time on 13th April with a massive barrage of up to 300 attack drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The regime offered Iran unfettered access to its airspace and allowed Iranian projectiles to pass unimpeded en route to Israel. As such, the Syrian regime allowed Iranian missiles to cross into Jordanian airspace, putting civilians there at risk in case of misfire, falling debris or interception.
Refugee Returns
Beyond addressing security concerns, Arab states have urged the Syrian regime to fulfil its obligations under UN Resolution 2254 to facilitate the conditions for the safe and voluntary return of refugees. The Syrian crisis, now in its 13th year, has created millions of refugees in the immediate region. Host countries increasingly consider them a burden. According to data collected by UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), Turkey alone hosts an estimated 3.2 million displaced Syrians, followed by more than 789,842 in Lebanon, 653,292 in Jordan, 270,479 in Iraq and 150,465 in Egypt. The real numbers are estimated to be much higher. For the overwhelming majority of these, a safe return to Syria is not possible.
The lack of security sector reform outlined by UNSC Resolution 2254 remains one of the most important reasons for the lack of returns in recent years. Recent polling by UNHCR on the return intentions of refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey found that just 1.1% of those surveyed expressed intent to return to Syria in the next 12 months. In addition, the Turkey-based Syrian Association for Citizens’ Dignity NGO similarly found through surveys that 93% of Syrians are not actively preparing to return in the short to medium term.
In lieu of enacting real reforms, the regime has introduced superficial steps designed to broadcast signs of positive behavioral change to regional or international states. These include prisoner amnesties, abolition of military field courts, promises of security sector reform and changes in humanitarian operations. The latest prisoner amnesty, passed in mid-November (through Decree 36/2023), had limited effect: no historic political detainees were released; rather, most of those released were charged for minor crimes and misdemeanors well outside the purview of Syria’s post-2011 counter-terrorism law (Law 19/2012). By failing to disclose the fate of more than 100,000 disappeared or missing detainees held since 2011, the regime is not meaningfully responding to demands from Syrian victims/survivors’ groups or regional/western states regarding transitional justice and a modicum of “good governance.”
Through Decree 32/2023, Assad abolished the use of military field courts, originally established in 1968 and used to litigate crackdowns under Hafez al-Assad after the late 1970s. Although some have taken this as a meaningfully symbolic step given the courts’ historic role as the extermination arm of the detention system—used to sentence and execute “enemies of the state” en masse—the regime has other extraordinary, non-civilian courts at its disposal to litigate historic alleged crimes perpetrated between 2011 and the present day. The counter-terrorism court had already become the primary tool for this purpose long before Decree 32. Meaningful steps that could be taken, but have not been, would be the revocation of Law 19/2012—the law that formed the counter-terrorism court and outlined dozens of “crimes against the state”—and abolition of all extraordinary courts.
The regime’s memory is long and consistently punitive. The counter-terrorism court is still used to litigate historic, post-2011 “crimes against the state” through prison sentences, death sentences, asset freezes and property expropriations. Wanted lists are prodigiously maintained and updated. Some 4,000 individuals from Daraa and Quneitra were added (and in many cases, re-added) to wanted lists in spring 2024, indicating the pervasive risk of detention faced by Syrians inside and outside the country. Just because one’s name has been cleared in the past does not protect an individual from future targeting, while the families or friends of wanted individuals are also at risk of detention and a range of other security risks (including property seizures and removal of civil and political rights).
Assad also put forth a nominal plan late last year to reform the security apparatus and, specifically, combine Air Force Intelligence and Military Intelligence under one military-security agency. As the two security agencies responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses of the conflict and other destabilizing activities in Syria and the immediate neighborhood, reform of Air Force Intelligence and Military Intelligence is long overdue. But beyond broadcasting this intention, Assad’s “reforms” to date have merely included personnel reshuffles between different agencies or provincial branches. Furthermore, the practical feasibility of undertaking such proposed reforms is likely impossible given the byzantine nature of each of intelligence branch, much less the entire system.
Over the past year, the Syrian regime has made multiple adjustments to the preferred exchange rate provided to the UN in Damascus, reducing the margin of difference with the still depreciating unofficial rate. This has been a long-sought after change from the UN’s donors to curb the regime’s financial gains due to the discrepancy between rates. However, progress on this one front is still belied by the overall problematic operational landscape for the UN in regime-held Syria as related to access restrictions and procurement from sanctioned suppliers or known human rights abusers. With the need for humanitarian assistance in Syria as urgent as ever, any current and potential donors must impose strict oversight mechanisms and conditionalities to mitigate ongoing violations of the humanitarian sector’s “do-no-harm” principles in Syria.
Returns necessitate processing by the security apparatus, with those directly or even loosely suspected or accused of crimes against the state (such as membership of an armed group or attending anti-regime protests) facing the most brutal forms of torture and executions. Human rights groups have repeatedly documented how returning individuals or groups marked for repression by the apparatus are picked out from the small numbers of returnees going back and processed through this system.
More Syrians are still actively trying to flee or leave regime-held Syria than those returning. By contrast, Syria’s headlong economic collapse, security instability and systemic protection issues (such as enforced military conscription and detention) are encouraging continued displacements. With displacement and emigration intentions rising among populations in regime areas, IDPs and in situ populations who were never displaced during the conflict are now being forced to consider life outside Syria. As just one example, Daraa witnessed three-times more outward displacement and emigration than (permanent) returns of refugees and IDPs, with an estimated 17,000 people leaving the province throughout 2023. Across the south, most families are considering ways to leave the country, often by selling real estate properties to secure the thousands of dollars needed to pay smugglers to move them clandestinely to Lebanon or Turkey.
The regime has not altered its abusive security practices or human rights violations; any release of early recovery and/or reconstruction funds into the current conflict environment would violate “do no harm” policies. Even the most well-intentioned aims to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of Syrians inside the country cannot ignore the very real protection concerns created by ongoing regime violations. A recent reminder, bi-lateral emergency relief sent to regime areas by Arab states after the February 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake saw aid diversion practices familiar from the height of anti-opposition “starve or kneel” military campaigns between 2016 and 2019.
Regime Intransigence
One year since Arab normalization, Assad has confirmed his intransigence towards any political solution requiring reform or compromise. Rather than taking serious steps towards reform or behavioral change, the Syrian regime, at best, has instead worked towards low-stakes, performative changes that can placate observers desperate for indicators of success.
The ramifications of normalization with the regime have extended far beyond Syria by emboldening Iran and Russia to pursue their expansionist and destabilizing agendas in the region and beyond. Arab normalization should serve as a warning that concessions to the Syrian regime, Iran and Russia do not solve geopolitical problems, but rather only perpetuate them.
