Arabs Divided over Syrian-Turkish Normalization and its Conditions

The United Arab Emirates – through senior officials - is seeking to join Russia in sponsoring the normalization of relations between Syria and Türkiye. The United States and Arab countries, meanwhile, are seeking to halt the normalization efforts, or at least, place conditions before they can be complete, signaling Arab division over the issue.

Asharq Al-Awsat learned that Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mikdad will meet with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in the presence of Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Wednesday. Efforts are underway to arrange for UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed’s participation at the meeting.

The meeting will pave the way for a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The UAE has offered to host the summit. Should Moscow host the summit, then the UAE will send a high-level delegation to attend. Assad had visited the UAE in mid-2022 where he met with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.

The potential summit was discussed between Assad and Sheikh Abdullah in Damascus on Wednesday. This was the Emirati official’s second visit to the Syrian capital since November 2021.

Assad described ties between Syria and the UAE as “historic”, adding that it was “natural that they return to the depth that they enjoyed for several decades, in service of their countries and peoples,” reported Syria’s state news agency SANA.

The UAE FM stressed that his country “supports stability in Syria and its sovereignty over all its territories.” He underscored the UAE’s “commitment to and keenness on supporting efforts to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis that would restore security and stability and Syria’s unity.”

Roadmap

Asharq Al-Awsat also learned that Cavusoglu is planning on visiting Washington on January 16 and 17 to brief American officials on the progress in normalizing ties with Damascus and his meeting with Mikdad.

He will also brief them on the “roadmap” that Russia is sponsoring on the security, military, economic and political levels and in line with the agreement reached between Russia, Syria and Türkiye’s defense ministers and intelligence chiefs in recent weeks. The roadmap also covers arrangements in northeastern Syria where US troops are deployed in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against ISIS.

A western diplomat told Asharq Al-Awsat that a senior American official will visit Ankara in the coming hours as part of efforts to mediate between Türkiye and the Kurds in northeastern Syria.

Ankara has been demanding that Moscow and Washington commit to the implementation of the military agreements they signed in late 2019 and that call for the withdrawal of the backbone of the SDF, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), 30 kilometers deep from Syria’s northern border with Türkiye. The withdrawal also includes the regions of Manbij and Tal Rifaat and demands the removal of heavy weapons from the buffer zone.

The SDF has said that it has fulfilled its commitments and that it will not pull out the Asayish police force and dismantle the local councils. Türkiye is insisting on the dismantling of all Kurdish civilian and military institutions in the area.

The American mediation is aiming to reach middle ground between Ankara and the Kurds to avert a new Turkish incursion in Syria before the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections set for mid-2023.

Erdogan is banking on Moscow and Washington’s need for him due to the Russian war on Ukraine. Erdogan has shown more openness towards meeting Assad to agree on arrangements against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and YPG in northeastern Syria and form safe zones for the return of Syrian refugees from Türkiye, which has taken in some 4 million of them.

Another diplomat has said that Ankara was “uneasy” with the leaks that came out from Damascus in wake of the meeting between the Russia, Syrian and Turkish defense ministers in Moscow that allegedly included an agreement for Türkiye to withdraw from northern Syria.

Another diplomat revealed, however, that Damascus and Ankara view the PKK as a common threat and they will work against any separatist agenda because it would pose an existential danger to both countries. Syria and Türkiye also agreed to work on reopening the Aleppo-Latakia highway.

Western coordination

Sheikh Abdullah’s visit to Damascus took place in wake of American official statements that expressed opposition to normalization with Assad. The statements were issued in wake of the Syrian-Turkish meetings.

A diplomat revealed that the US State Department was the only party among western countries to release a statement to voice opposition to the normalization. It is working with Paris, Berlin and London to issue a clear joint position that rejects normalization.

Contacts are underway to hold a meeting between representatives of the US, France, Germany and Britain with United Nations envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, in Geneva on January 23 ahead of his visit to Damascus to meet Mikdad.

The meeting will aim to underscore the stance on normalization and support offering funding to electricity and early recovery projects, in line with the relevant UN Security Council resolution that will be up for extension on January 10. Here, the UAE has offered to contribute in financing economic and electricity projects in Syria within the margin allowed by US sanctions and the Ceasar Act.

Jordan was notably the first party to open higher levels of communication with Damascus. It backed the signing of a truce that covered southern Syria and the deal on easing the escalation between Russia and the US in mid-2018. Amman is now leading Arab efforts to reach a “joint Arab position that sets the Arab conditions in exchange for the normalization, for which a price will be extracted.”

A western official said Jordan has noted that the smuggling of Captagon, weapons and ammunition across its border from Syria increased after normalization efforts kicked off. Moreover, Iran’s presence in southern Syria, near the Jordanian border, has not decreased. ISIS has also increased its activity there.

Demands are therefore being made to coordinate efforts to pressure Damascus to offer political and geopolitical steps in the coming phase.

Meanwhile, an Arab source revealed that a Palestinian Hamas delegation, including the movement’s leader in the Gaza Strip Khalil al-Hayya and leading member Osama Abou Hamdan, will visit Damascus next week. This will mark the first such visit since the Hamas leadership quit Damascus a decade ago.

The same officials were part of a Palestinian delegation that had met Assad in October. Sources said Hayya and Abou Hamdan’s visit aims to discuss Hamas’ return to Syria and arrange for visits by more leading members to Damascus in the future.

People are buying water by the truckload in Beirut as the state supply faces its worst shortages in years, with the leaky public sector struggling after record-low rainfall and local wells running dry.

"State water used to come every other day, now it's every three days," said Rima al-Sabaa, 50, rinsing dishes carefully in Burj al-Baranjeh, in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Even when the state water is flowing, she noted, very little trickles into her family's holding tank.

Once that runs out, they have to buy trucked-in water -- pumped from private springs and wells -- but it costs more than $5 for 1,000 litres and lasts just a few days, and its brackishness makes everything rust.

In some areas, the price can be twice as high.

Like many Lebanese people, Sabaa, who works assisting the elderly, relies on bottled water for drinking. But in a country grappling with a yearslong economic crisis and still reeling from a recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, the costs add up.

"Where am I supposed to get the money from?" she asked, AFP reported.

Water shortages have long been the norm for much of Lebanon, which acknowledges only around half the population "has regular and sufficient access to public water services".

Surface storage options such as dams are inadequate, according to the country's national water strategy, while half the state supply is considered "non-revenue water" -- lost to leakage and illegal connections.

This year, low rainfall has made matters even worse.

Mohamad Kanj from the meteorological department told AFP that rainfall for 2024-2025 "is the worst in the 80 years" on record in Lebanon.

Climate change is set to exacerbate the county's water stress, according to the national strategy, while a World Bank statement this year said "climate change may halve (Lebanon's) dry-season water by 2040".
Energy and Water Minister Joseph Saddi said last week that "the situation is very difficult".

The shortages are felt unevenly across greater Beirut, where tanks clutter rooftops, water trucks clog roads and most people on the ramshackle state grid lack meters.

Last month, the government launched a campaign encouraging water conservation, showing dried or depleted springs and lakes around the country.

North of the capital, levels were low in parts of the Dbayeh pumping station that should have been gushing with water.

"I've been here for 33 years and this is the worst crisis we've had for the amount of water we're receiving and can pump" to Beirut, said the station's Zouhair Azzi.

Antoine Zoghbi from the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Establishment said water rationing in Beirut usually started in October or November, after summer and before the winter rainy season.

But this year it has started months early "because we lack 50 percent of the amount of water" required at some springs, he told AFP last month.

Rationing began at some wells in June, he said, to reduce the risk of overuse and seawater intrusion.

Zoghbi emphasised the need for additional storage, including dams.

In January, the World Bank approved more than $250 million in funding to improve water services for greater Beirut and its surroundings.

In 2020, it cancelled a loan for a dam south of the capital after environmentalists said it could destroy a biodiversity-rich valley.

Wells
In south Beirut, pensioner Abu Ali Nasreddine, 66, said he had not received state water for many months.

"Where they're sending it, nobody knows," he said, lamenting that the cost of trucked-in water had also risen.

His building used to get water from a local well but it dried up, he added, checking his rooftop tank.

Bilal Salhab, 45, who delivers water on a small, rusted truck, said demand had soared, with families placing orders multiple times a week.

"The water crisis is very bad," he said, adding he was struggling to fill his truck because wells had dried up or become salty.

In some areas of greater Beirut, wells have long supplemented or even supplanted the state network.

But many have become depleted or degraded, wrecking pipes and leaving residents with salty, discoloured water.

Nadim Farajalla, chief sustainability officer at the Lebanese American University, said Beirut had ballooned in size and population since the start of the 1975-1990 civil war but water infrastructure had failed to keep up.

Many people drilled wells illegally, including at depths that tap into Lebanon's strategic groundwater reserves, he said, adding that "nobody really knows how many wells there are".

"Coastal aquifers are suffering from seawater intrusion, because we are pumping much more than what's being recharged," Farajalla told AFP.

As the current shortages bite, rationing and awareness campaigns should have begun earlier, he said, because "we all knew that the surface snow cover and rainfall" were far below average.

Arabs Divided over Syrian-Turkish Normalization and its Conditions