Received in Abu Dhabi on Friday March 18, the Syrian president was making his first visit to an Arab country since 2011. An initiative criticized by American diplomacy, while the Emirates seem to be increasingly turning to Moscow and Beijing.
“Syria is a pillar of Arab security. Stability in Syria is a good thing for everyone”headlines the Emirati daily Al-Bayan the day after the surprise visit of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, yesterday Friday March 18.
The two strong men of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed (nicknamed MBZ) and Mohamed bin Rashid – at the head of Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively – gave him an ostensibly warm welcome, extolling the “fraternal relations” between the Emirates and Syria, as well as the prospects “of cooperation between the two brotherly peoples”.
Emirati officials told their counterpart of “their sincere wishes for peace, security, stability and prosperity” in Syria, also reports Gulf News, an English-language daily from Dubai, without a word for the war crimes of the Damascus regime, nor for the destruction, the millions of refugees and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that it has caused for eleven years.
The trip, however, comes three days after the anniversary date of March 15, 2011, the start of the repression against the Syrian revolution.
“Solidarity between dictators”
“Assad in the Emirates is solidarity between dictators”comments Kristyan Benedict of Amnesty International, quoted by Middle East Eye, which adds:
The Emirates, one of the leading countries in the region, has been at the forefront of efforts to rehabilitate the government in Damascus. The Emirati Foreign Minister had already made the trip to Syria last November.
US diplomacy “disappointed and troubled”
“This is Bashar Al-Assad’s first visit to an Arab country since the start of the Syrian people’s uprising in 2011”underlines for its part the Qatari site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. Indeed, the Syrian dictator had since then been received only in Moscow and Tehran, his two protectors.
This new step by the Emirates to bring the Syrian regime out of its international isolation has been strongly
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Philippe Mischkowsky