Syrian foreign minister’s visit to Cairo: A ‘calculated’ Egyptian move toward Damascus

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad arrived in Cairo on Saturday to meet with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry — the first Syrian visit to Egypt at such a senior diplomatic level in over a decade.

Cairo joined the Arab League nations’ 2011 boycott in protest against the brutal suppression of demonstrations by the administration of Bashar al-Assad, which later developed into a civil war with multiple regional and international backers.

But amid the humanitarian crisis that ensued following the February earthquake, Egypt, along with other league member states, sought to pursue greater diplomatic openness with Syria — though the move was opposed by other members. Regardless, Shoukry made his own trip to Damascus in late February, where he met Assad to offer Egypt’s support during the crisis.

Now, with other Arab capitals also making overtures toward Damascus and Syria and securing a presidential level invitation to the Arab League summit scheduled for May in Riyadh for the first time in a decade, Mekdad’s visit to Cairo is part of a “calculated” and “bilateral” move that Cairo has been long wanting to make, two Egyptian government sources told Mada Masr.

Cairo is “considering leveling up its charge d'affaires in Damascus to ambassador,” said one of the government sources, though they added that “it will take some time.”

Various regional television channels have also aired reports of an upcoming Egyptian-Syrian summit during Ramadan or after Eid al-Fitr, an event that both sources said would be “possible” but would require a lot of arrangements.

Egypt has wished to reconnect with Syria “for years,” according to the two sources, given an officially held view in support of Assad’s actions to “preserve the unity of Syrian soil” and suppress Islamist activity, as an official source has previously told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. Egypt’s administration also worries, said the two sources, that an isolated Syria might fall “under the control of non-Arab regional parties.”

Mekdad's visit to Cairo represents a “qualitative leap” in the Egyptian-Syrian rapprochement, both sources said, crowning developments over the two years on multiple tracks, most notably trade and security coordination, especially with regard to militant groups such as the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front.

Cairo’s room for maneuver also rests on the attitude of other actors on the political map. For administrations in both Egypt and Jordan, said both government sources, a different space for dealing with Damascus has been opened by the United States’ approval in principle of the plan for natural gas, likely of Israeli origin and purchased by Egypt, to be piped via infrastructure spanning Jordan and Syria to the energy-deprived Lebanon.

And while Saudi Arabia did not welcome a full-scale Arab League rapprochement with the Assad regime in February, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud stated later in the same month that the time had come to consider a new way to deal with the situation in Syria.

Saudi Arabia then reopened consulates in Riyadh and Damascus, a move that a regional diplomatic source told Mada Masr at the time was “based on a Russian proposal” discussed between Riyadh and Washington, “which continues not to welcome any major steps toward Syria but is less sharp today in its rejection of some moves.”

Progress in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Damascus also depends on Saudi-US arrangements on the matter, said the regional source, as well as the progress of Saudi-Iranian talks, “as Saudi Arabia does not isolate Syria from the complex Syrian-Iranian relationship.”

Writing by Ahmed Bakr.