When Musan Nahas, an industrialist known to be close to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, was spotted in Paris recently, it caused a minor scandal. Nahas, who holds various senior positions in Syrian industry, was taking part in the fourth Arab-French Economic Summit on March 15. As the Syrian government-run national news agency would later boast, the summit took place under the patronage of the French President and while there, Nahas posed for pictures with senior French executives. Outraged Syrian anti-government activists noticed. How did Nahas even get into the country, they demanded. Wasn’t Syria sanctioned by the European Union? More worryingly, they wondered if this might be yet another sign that the world was preparing to re-establish commercial relations with Syria, a country that has been diplomatically isolated for over a decade because of war crimes committed by its authoritarian government.
Over the weeks since Nahas’ jaunt to Paris, that concern — that Syria was reestablishing international trade ties — has only grown. In early May, Syria was allowed back into regional cooperation body, the Arab League. It had been suspended from the body for more than a decade. Last week, on the sidelines of the Arab-China Business Conference in Riyadh, the heads of the Saudi and Syrian chambers of commerce agreed to resume bilateral trade. Iraqi officials have also previously expressed enthusiasm about doing the same. And this was not just happening in the Middle East. In February, shortly after a devastating earthquake in Syria and Turkey, the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation signed an agreement on closer cooperation with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization well-known for its ties to the Assad government. The Italian deal is thought to be the first time of its kind in Europe since the Syrian civil war started in 2011.
However, as experts have pointed out, it’s hard to know how realistic all the talk of more cooperation is. For instance, the Paris incident with Assad-friendly businessman Nahas was far from what it seemed. The Syria Report, an economic news platform, investigated and came to the conclusion that it was not Syria sneaking back into the EU’s good books.
Nahas is not on the list of over 320 Syrian individuals sanctioned by the EU, journalists said. They also discovered that a lot of these kinds of activities with trade federations are just automatically granted presidential patronage. “Nahas’ participation in this summit looks more like a (diplomatic?) blunder on the part of the French than any devious attempt to normalize with the Syrian regime,” Syria Report researcher Benjamin Feve wrote on Twitter.
Other recent announcements about increased trade and investment in Syria require similar scrutiny, experts told DW. Despite Syria’s readmission to the Arab League, there are still reasons that countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as nearby states like Jordan and Iraq, are unlikely to see private investment into Syria positively, Zaki Mehchy, an associate fellow at the UK-based think tank Chatham House, told DW. Firstly, wide-ranging, international sanctions on Syria are a problem because they also apply to any third-party that deals with Syria. And if a new US law, the Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023, is passed by the American government, sanctions will become even tougher. Secondly, the business environment in Syria is not that attractive, Mehchy said, referring to the fact that there’s still much instability and corruption there. “The third factor is that all of the quick win investments — for example, in oil or gas — have already been taken up by the Russians and Iranians,” he argued. Russia and Iran are longtime supporters of the Assad government.
This article was provided by Deutsche Welle