Syria's President Ahmad Al Shara could be stepping into the White House within days, advancing a transformation from a radical guerrilla with a $10 million US bounty on his head to a figure central to the restoration of American influence in the Middle East.
Experts in Syria predict a security deal with Israel and a joint fight against ISIS could move a step closer when Mr Al Shara is received by US President Donald Trump. Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani, who said the visit will take place in early November, said the visit was "certainly historic".
The trip, the first by a modern Syrian leader to Washington, is aimed at bringing Syria into the US-led ISIS coalition, other American officials said. Mr Al Shara turned against ISIS during the middle stages of his career as an insurgent, which ended when he led Hayat Tahrir Al Sham on an 11-day offensive that toppled the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad in December.
Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria, said in Manama on Sunday that, once in Washington, Mr Al Shara would “hopefully” sign up to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Mr Barrack signalled this month that some US operations against ISIS and other extremists in Syria had been conducted in co-operation with Mr Al Shara's government.
However, other issues of concern to Washington have remained unresolved. US-brokered security talks with Israel have yet to produce a deal, and the US regards many foreign fighters in Syria who are allies of the new system as a security threat.
Syria's Druze heartland of Sweida has been largely cut off from the rest of the country since a government offensive in July, and integration talks between the government and a US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia in eastern Syria have been inconclusive.
These struggles could affect a pending vote by the US House of Representatives on legislation that includes the removal of sanctions on Syria, imposed under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019. Washington severed diplomatic ties with Syria over the Assad regime's crackdown on a March 2011 uprising. That developed into a civil war, in which HTS and its predecessors eliminated rival rebel groups and became the only formidable anti-regime formation in the country.
Veteran Syrian politician Bassam Ishak said a formal move to join the anti-ISIS coalition would accelerate an end to the “duality” that exists in Syria, under which the government and Kurdish fighters in the SDF has separately been fighting against the extremists.
The two sides have been engaged in renewed talks in the past several weeks to hand over SDF territory and for the group to join the country's security forces. Mr Ishak, who is based in Washington, is a senior member of the Syrian Democratic Council, a civil organisation supported by the SDF, which has forged links with members of Congress.
Mr Ishak expects Mr Trump to push for “a breakthrough” on the Syria-Israel deal when he meets Mr Al Shara. The Syrian leader is not averse to “creating political and security realities that make lifting the sanctions seem as the logical decision to make”, Mr Ishak said. An ideal outcome would be a package deal that “contributes to the stability of Syria, provides Israel with security guarantees, and serves the interests” of the US and its Arab allies.
The US has not disclosed why the security deal has hit snags. Diplomats in the region, however, said that Israel did not seem to want to limit the freedom of action it enjoys in Syria to be restrained by a formal arrangement, while no such constraints are imposed on Turkey, which has thousands of troops in northern Syria. The former Alawite-dominated regime was in the Iranian and Russian orbit until its toppling ushered in Sunni ascendancy.
Saudi Arabia, together with Turkey, helped convince Mr Trump to embark in May on normalisation with the new order in Damascus, as Israel mounted incursions into Syria. In July, Israel bombed Syrian government forces and allied militia in southern Syria amid violence in the mostly Druze governorate of Sweida, prompting Washington to push further for the security deal.
Waiel Olwan, a researcher at the Jusoor Centre for Studies in Damascus, said Mr Al Shara's presence in Washington will give the government more “leeway” in continuing integration talks with the SDF. Regarding the foreign fighters, Mr Olwan said the state has been “containing” them in the new “disciplined” security forces. “There is high level co-ordination with Washington in this file,” Mr Olwan added.
He said a “final product” has not been reached as far as the US-supervised talks with Israel are concerned. However once a security deal is reached, the government will be in a stronger position to integrate Sweida into the state, he said.
