Syria's Assad may come in from the cold to attend climate conference - analysis

Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad was invited to attend a climate conference, according to various reports in the region. Ahram Online in Egypt said that “Abdul-Hakim Naimi, the Chargé d'Affairs of the UAE's Embassy in Damascus, handed the invitation to the Syrian president during their meeting on Sunday, Syrian state news agency (SANA) reported.” The meeting will take place in late November and early December 2023. 

The UAE is hosting the United Nations climate summit (COP28) in Dubai. Assad has already received outreach from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE in recent months and Syria is being invited to return to the Arab League with conditions. As such, the invitation to COP28 is not unique in terms of the overall regional trend towards a new diplomatic era in which Syria is seen as part of the region. However, for some Western countries, the presence of Assad or Syrian regime officials could be new.  

Al-Arabiya noted that the invitation could possibly place “him in the same venue as Western leaders who have opposed and sanctioned him for years. The invitation was extended by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Syrian state news agency SANA reported after the UAE embassy in Damascus tweeted the same.”

The report noted that “thousands of world leaders, diplomats and dignitaries are expected to attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in December.” 

It is not clear if Syria will attend or if any other countries will express any concerns about Syria attending.

Did climate change spark the Syrian Civil War?

Attending a climate conference can make sense for Syria’s regime because some experts have blamed climate change for the regime’s crackdown and the war that resulted in 2011.

Over the last decade, it has become a common theme in some sectors to claim that the Syrian civil war was driven by climate change. DW had an article in 2021 that claimed that “researchers agree that climate change alone cannot be blamed for the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011.”

This shows that the Assad regime massacring thousands of people, and bombing its own cities and driving millions into displaced persons camps was not only caused by climate change, it was also people and human action behind the guns and bombs that also caused the war.

However, experts have argued that environmental changes may have helped “fan the flames” of the conflict, according to a piece at INSS in May 2021. In addition, it is believed that drought helped collapse Syria’s agricultural system and this fueled the war.  

It has never been fully explained how climate change forced Syria’s regime to have a one-party one-family dictatorship or how Syria’s climate forced Syria to deny basic human rights to people or how it got Syria’s regime to deny citizenship and rights to the Kurdish minority.

It is not likely that the Syrian regime attending a climate event will lead to any answers about how climate change fueled the conflict or if anything has been done since then to address this issue in Syria or most of the countries in the wider region. It does appear that climate disasters, such as the low water levels of the Tigris River or other ecological disasters are not being fully addressed, and considering Syria will require billions of dollars to rebuild, it’s not clear how climate issues will be at the forefront.

Obviously, the invitation to Assad is merely symbolic, there’s not much likelihood that Syria will be focusing on climate issues while the country is divided and still in conflict.