Arab States Race Turkey for Influence in New Syria
Saudi Arabia overlooks leadership’s jihadist past to send humanitarian assistance
By Benoit Faucon and Summer Said The Wall Street Journal January 10, 2025
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 Syria, delivering food, shelter and medical supplies. The kingdom has also offered to train and equip Syria’s civilian police and replace sanctioned Iranian oil supplies to help ease Damascus’s energy crisis, proposals that are still under discussion.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that led the assault that toppled the Assad regime, was formed as an offshoot of al Qaeda, which has sought to bring down the Saudi ruling family and began attacking the kingdom directly in 2003. HTS said it has shed its links to jihadists.
Many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, fear the resurgence of Islamist groups such as al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State in the Middle East. They have sought to prevent the spread of political Islam in the region since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 resulted in the ouster of longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. That void was filled in some cases by Islamist groups, including by a Muslim Brotherhood faction in Egypt, which was subsequently ousted in a military coup. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have since pumped billions of dollars into Egypt to support the general-turned-president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was an anti-American jihadist in Iraq. He disavowed extremism years ago and has pledged to respect Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity as his group seeks international recognition—as well as funds to rebuild the country, restart the economy and resettle millions of refugees.
Syria’s new foreign minister chose Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad last week, before beating a path to other Arab states, including Qatar, the U.A.E. and Jordan.
Still, Turkey has existing links with HTS and other groups that opposed Assad, giving Ankara a head start with Syria’s new government over its longstanding rival Saudi Arabia. Days after Assad fled Syria, Turkey sent officials and businessmen to Damascus, expressing interest in helping rebuild the country’s energy sector, according to statements by the new Syrian administration and the Turkish Energy Ministry.
Turkey is now in a stronger position to put pressure on Kurdish militias it opposes in Syria, and has an expanded platform to project power in the region.
Riyadh, which lost out to Tehran in the race to exert influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, is seeking to use aid in part as a way to counter Ankara’s moves in Syria, said analysts. The kingdom’s rivalry with Turkey reaches back into the Ottoman empire and into recent history during the struggle for influence in the Middle East in the fallout from the Arab Spring.
Saudi Arabia’s “goal is to counterbalance Turkey’s significant role in the new Syria,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. He added that Riyadh also wants to ensure that Syria doesn’t descend again into violence and social upheaval, which would threaten regional stability.
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Qatar long supported groups opposed to Assad and chose not to join Saudi Arabia and other Arab states when they normalized relations with Syria in 2023. Doha is in advanced talks with the country’s new government to provide energy and financial assistance, Middle Eastern officials said.
Qatar Airways, the Gulf state’s national airline, on Tuesday became the first international carrier to resume commercial flights to Damascus, after a 13-year hiatus. Jordan, despite its own economic troubles, is offering to supply electricity to Syria and is in talks to expand ties with the new government there.
The Gulf Cooperation Council, a Saudi-dominated bloc of hydrocarbon-rich countries in the Persian Gulf, intends to offer technical assistance to rebuild state institutions and help rehabilitate roads, electricity, schools, hospitals and homes in Syria, Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, a GCC official in charge of political affairs, wrote in a leading newspaper, Arab News.
But not all Arab states are rushing to embrace the HTS-led government. The U.A.E. welcomed the Syrian delegation this week, but didn’t publicly offer any economic aid.
The new rulers’ Islamist roots and past links to extremist groups “are quite worrying,” Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati government, said at an Abu Dhabi conference in mid-December. If radical elements among the factions end up dominating, “this will all lead us to another crisis in the region,” he said.
Western powers are also wary about the direction that Syria’s new Islamist leaders could eventually take and are holding back on lifting sanctions on the country or removing the terrorist designation from its leadership.
Still, this week, the Biden administration said it was easing restrictions on humanitarian aid for Syria for six months. The U.S. lifted the $10 million bounty on HTS’s Sharaa after he pledged not to be a threat to the U.S. and its allies.
Most U.S. sanctions on Syria remain in place. The United Nations and others have said there are no immediate plans to remove sanctions on Sharaa and HTS, and added that any such decisions would depend on how democratic and inclusive the new regime turns out to be.
Stephen Kalin contributed to this article.
Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 10, 2025, print edition as 'Arab States Send Aid in Bid For Influence in New Syria'.