Saudi Arabia must not bring Syria’s Assad in from the cold

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said the quiet part out loud when it comes to his country’s attitude towards Syria. Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud told the Munich Security Conference that the ‘maximalist goals’ of the past in confronting Assad’s regime were no longer tenable:

[We are] going to have to go through a dialogue with the government in Damascus at some point, in a way that achieves at least the most important of the objectives especially as regards the humanitarian angle, the return of refugees, etc.

Yet for all these warm words about helping those afflicted by the devastating earthquake in Syria, normalising relations with the Assad regime – giving it what it wants in terms of sanctions relief, funnelling more international cash into its corrupt Ponzi scheme of an economy – will not help Syrians most affected by the earthquake. Those hurt and dispossessed by this disaster are disproportionately in the country’s north, areas outside of Assad’s control. And even if the regime did control those refugee-filled regions, such as Idlib, it has never shown any desire to help and house these people: only to kill them.