Egypt looks to build ties with Syria's new leaders

Cairo has communicated a list of expectations to build trust, according to sources

Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara, left, and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.

Egypt is open to establishing ties with the new rulers in Damascus and has communicated its expectations to Syria’s leadership in a step towards building trust, sources told The National.

Cairo sees the replacement of President Bashar Al Assad's regime by rebels with Islamist roots as a seismic change in the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East as the region is ravaged by wars and political upheavals.

“Syria is understandably giving Egypt a lot to worry about. It is an important country that impacts the Arab security order. It cannot be ignored,” said Michael Hanna, a New York-based Middle East expert.

Damascus fell to the rebels led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham in December, ending Syria's more than five decades of Assad family rule. HTS is mainly made up of groups from the extremist organisation Jabhat Al Nusra, which was linked to al Qaeda. It broke those ties with al Qaeda in 2016 after a purge by the group's leader, Syria's newly declared President Ahmad Al Shara, formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani.

Thus, the frosty relations between Syria and Egypt are to be expected. The nation's general-turned-president Abdel Fattah El Sisi led the ousting of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi nearly 12 years ago and has since made zero tolerance for political Islam the defining foundation of his rule.

Egypt is mainly worried about its home-grown extremists and the possibility of reviving the now-suppressed insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and attracting foreign jihadists. But to thaw relations with Damascus, it has presented Syria's new government with a list of demands, according to the sources, who have knowledge of the matter.

President Sheikh Mohamed bids farewell to Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, in Abu Dhabi.

These demands include the handover of extremists wanted in Egypt to face terrorism charges, along with others convicted of terrorist attacks and sentenced to death or life in absentia, they said.

Egypt has expressed alarm through diplomatic channels that wanted Egyptian extremists have been assimilated into Syria's new army, with some given high officer ranks, and that a wanted extremist publicly called for the ousting of President El Sisi's government.

Cairo also wants the new Syrian authorities to guarantee that they will do everything within their powers to prevent hundreds of detained ISIS extremists leaving Syria and try to infiltrate Egypt and reignite an Islamist insurgency that was put down around 2020 after years of bloodshed.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar – two nations that swiftly moved to embrace the new order in Syria – are playing a pivotal diplomatic role in narrowing the gap between Cairo and Damascus, the sources affirmed.

Congratulatory message

In a symbolically significant move, President El Sisi sent a congratulatory message to Mr Al Shara last week after his appointment as president. However, the message – the first public contact between the two leaders – read like a formality. Egypt had earlier recognised the new regime in Syria and allowed the Syrian embassy in Cairo to fly the “revolution flag”.

Underlining the tension between Egypt and the rulers in Damascus, Syria's new Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani did not include Egypt in his first overseas tour in the role. Instead he visited only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan last month. The exclusion of Egypt belies Cairo's regional weight and the history that binds the two nations.

Egypt and Syria merged into the short-lived United Arab Republic in 1958. Fifteen years later, they secretly planned and executed a simultaneous attack against Israel to ignite the 1973 Middle East war, a defining moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara during a meeting in Jeddah this week. AFP

Another reason for Cairo's willingness to build a relationship with Syria's new order is to counter any attempt by other countries to build a long-term influence over Syria while the country is being rebuilt.

“With Al Assad gone, Iran's influence in Syria and Lebanon has been significantly weakened. That fulfils Egypt's long-standing wish to see Iran out of the Arab Middle East,” said one of the sources.

“But engaging the new regime in Syria by Egypt and other Arab powerhouses is pivotal to stop another non-Arab regional power from gaining leverage in Damascus," added the source, alluding to the vast influence Turkey wields in post-Assad Syria.