NO ONE enjoys Arab League meetings. Morocco was scheduled to host a summit in 2016 but decided not to bother, calling the event a waste of time. Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, procured a doctor’s note to skip last year’s gathering in Algeria. Heads of state are sometimes spotted falling asleep while their colleagues drone on.

No one enjoys them—except Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, who will no doubt relish his next Arab summit. Syria has been suspended from the league since 2011, when Mr Assad began a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests that soon plunged the country into civil war. On May 7th, however, the body agreed to readmit Syria and said it would invite Mr Assad to an upcoming summit in Saudi Arabia scheduled for May 19th.

An invitation from a talking shop of dictators may seem hollow. Arab League summits are pointless gabfests; attending one is arguably more punishment than reward. For Mr Assad, though, it is the culmination of a long effort to end his Arab isolation—and, he may hope, another step towards acceptance in the West.

His regime has so far done nothing to merit a renewed embrace: no concessions towards political reform or accountability for war crimes, nor any effort to bring home Syria’s 6m refugees, most of them in neighbouring countries. He rules a kleptocracy that floods the Gulf with illicit drugs and maintains close ties with Iran, an arch-rival to some Arab states. Yet the region is embracing him nonetheless. Even the bloodiest dictator, it seems, can find a road to diplomatic redemption—if he simply causes enough problems for others.

That is one lesson from his return to the world stage. Another is that the autocrats and warlords who court Russian support are likely to end up disappointed. Mr Assad needs the Arab world—and the wealthy Gulf states in particular—because Russia cannot rebuild his ruined country.

Better still, for him, would be a rapprochement with the West, which has placed his regime under sanctions meant to deter reconstruction. That seems unlikely to happen. But it raises an unsavoury question, one that has echoes from Venezuela to Zimbabwe: if a regime is here to stay and sanctions do not compel it to change, should they be maintained despite their toll on civilians?

Mr Assad was never entirely a pariah in his own region. Algeria declined to cut ties with his regime. Egypt briefly did, under its short-lived democratic government, but restored them soon after a military coup in 2013. Still, the past decade was a lonely one. When Mr Assad arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for an official visit last year, it was his first trip to an Arab country in 11 years.

The UAE was among the first to break his isolation when it reopened its embassy in Damascus in 2018 and urged allies to do the same. The massive earthquakes that struck Syria (and Turkey) in February gave a larger jolt to Syria’s diplomatic standing. Many Arab leaders had wanted to reach out to Mr Assad; the disaster gave them an excuse, as they called to offer well-wishes and coordinate aid.

There are several reasons why they sought normalisation. One is a broader spirit of détente. The Saudis struck a deal in March with Iran to restore diplomatic ties and reopen embassies. After years of proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, both sides were keen to lower tensions and shore up their positions at home. Turkey and Egypt, mired in mutual economic crises, are trying to end a decade of animosity that started with Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s coup. Gulf states ended their embargo of Qatar, their tiny, wayward neighbour on the Arabian peninsula, which accomplished little beyond annoying their allies. Old foes across the region are keen to pretend they are friends.

With Syria, however, they want something more substantive. Its neighbours hope to rid themselves of millions of Syrian refugees. The 2m or so in Lebanon, with a population of just 5m, are seen as a burden, and a scapegoat for the country’s economic collapse. In Turkey, where Syrians received a somewhat warmer welcome, the mood has also turned hostile. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition candidate in the upcoming election on May 14th, vows to send Syrians packing within two years if elected.

Some also wager that closer ties with Mr Assad could peel him away from Iran. After relying for years on Iranian military support, his country is now a base for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hizbullah and other armed groups linked to Iran. Their presence is unsettling for countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which see Iran as a menace.

No one should be too hopeful. Some in the sprawling Syrian diaspora have built decent lives in their adopted countries, while others are consigned to squalor, living in tents and surviving on handouts. Almost none of them, however, wish to return permanently to a country where their homes were destroyed, their lands confiscated, their livelihoods ruined. They are unlikely to go back—at least not by choice—unless the regime makes both political reforms and progress on reconstruction.

As for Iran, it is hard to imagine Mr Assad booting out the forces that kept him in power. When Ebrahim Raisi, the arch-conservative Iranian president, visited Damascus this month, he was treated to a musical number that extolled Iran’s victories across the region. Many Syrians doubt that their president, his own capital ringed by Iranian militias, would even have the power to push them out.

The regime, in other words, is not offering much. It acted triumphant in weeks of negotiations before Syria was readmitted to the Arab League, demanding help with reconstruction and other incentives: “as if we were signing our surrender,” says an Arab diplomat.

Still, it may offer a few goodwill gestures. Syria has become the world’s leading producer of Captagon, an amphetamine that is a popular recreational drug in the Gulf (and elsewhere). Authorities in the UAE seized almost 36m tablets of the stuff in 2020, hidden inside a shipment of electric cables. The following year Saudi customs officials found 20m pills in a cargo of grapefruits. Jordan says it intercepted 17m pills in the first four months of 2022, up from 15m in all of 2021 and just 1.4m in 2020. Border guards have been killed in shootouts with armed smugglers.

For every high-profile bust, many shipments go undetected. The scale of the Captagon trade is often exaggerated. The British government put its value at $57bn, a patently absurd figure, larger than the GDP of Jordan or the combined annual revenue of Mexico’s drug cartels. The real figure is probably an order of magnitude smaller—but still large enough to make it Syria’s top export.

On May 8th Syrian media reported that Marai al-Ramthan, a prominent drug smuggler, was killed in an air strike in the south of the country. Activists say the bombing may have been carried out by the Jordanian air force. If that is a gesture to Jordan, however, it is a small one. Syria’s main Captagon factories are in the Qalamoun mountains, near the border with Lebanon, not in the south. Giving up Mr Ramthan would seem like Mr Assad sacrificing a pawn to keep his knights.

The past 12 years have been good for the small clique of drug dealers and war profiteers around the president. For everyone else in Syria, they have been miserable. The Syrian pound, stable at around 50 to the dollar before the war, now trades at 8,700. Official statistics are unreliable, but annual inflation is probably above 100%. Syria exports just $1bn worth of licit goods a year, down from $11bn before the war. The government can provide only a few hours of electricity per day.

Mr Assad owes his survival partly to Russia, which in 2015 sent thousands of troops and dozens of warplanes to back his regime. What it helped destroy, though, it has done little to help rebuild. In 2019 and 2020, with much fanfare, Russian officials announced projects worth billions of dollars for Syria: a modernised electricity network, a grain hub at the port of Tartous, a cross-country railway. Years after it made those promises the country is still plagued by frequent blackouts and wheat shortages; its trains sit idle.

Lately Russia has stopped making even empty promises. Bogged down in Ukraine, mired under its own sanctions, it has little to offer. Vladimir Putin has secured his own narrow interests in Syria: a naval base at Tartous, on the Mediterranean, and some phosphate-mining concerns, among other things. Those interests do not extend to providing homes and jobs for impoverished Syrians.

Other aspiring presidents-for-life might take heed. The Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit that fought in Syria, also has a presence in Sudan, where it oversees a gold-mining operation. It works closely with Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), a warlord whose paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are now fighting the Sudanese army for control of the country. Russia has been happy to send men and munitions to support his fighters; it is unlikely to kick in much for reconstruction.

If Syria is to be rebuilt, the money will have to come from elsewhere. Western governments, understandably, are loth to foot the bill. The Gulf states might be more willing—if it wins them either political influence or economic returns.

Officially, America opposes this: it wants Mr Assad to remain a pariah. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, called his Jordanian counterpart on May 4th and reiterated that America would not recognise the regime and “does not support others normalising”. The European Union has also maintained a tough line against Mr Assad, even though some countries in central and southern Europe would prefer to restore ties (in the hope of getting rid of their Syrian-refugee populations).

In private, though, Arab diplomats say the Americans gave them a “yellow light” to reach out to the Assad regime. Try it, they were told—but make sure you get something out of it.

The Captagon crisis illustrates why this is a fraught endeavour. Western officials make a straightforward argument: since Mr Assad created the problem, restoring ties with his regime would reward him for flooding the region with drugs. Arab leaders acknowledge the diagnosis is correct but argue the prescription is not. If Mr Assad is using drugs as leverage, they say, the only way to stop him is to work with him. They risk endless blackmail. Perhaps Mr Assad will stem the flow. But he can just as easily turn it back on when he wants further concessions.

At the same time, though, Western policy is fanciful. America wants Mr Assad to abide by UN Security Council resolution 2254, which calls for a ceasefire, a new constitution and free elections in Syria. A less odious Syrian government would probably not want the country to be a narco-state. Unsurprisingly, though, Mr Assad has shown no interest in such reforms, which would amount to fundamental change in what has been a hereditary dictatorship since 1971.

He was never supposed to inherit the throne: the job was meant for his brother Bassel, until he died in a car wreck in 1994. But the accidental president has proved adept at creating problems and offering himself as the solution. He released jihadists from Syrian jails, then cast the civil war as a fight against terrorism; he burned the country and now wants others to pay. Arab states are probably too optimistic about what their outreach can achieve—but shunning him has already failed.■