Gulf States' Competing Interests Could Disrupt Syria's Political Transition

(Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images)

Abu Mohammed al-Golani (C), the head of Syria's leading insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, speaks during a press conference near Syria's northern Bab al Hawa border crossing with Turkey late on March 12, 2024.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will approach Syria's post-war political transition with caution and pragmatism, but over time Abu Dhabi will likely more aggressively seek to offset Turkish and Qatari influence, fueling Syrian factionalism and possibly presaging a new round of violence and intra-Gulf Arab tensions. The recent rapid collapse of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria caught the Gulf Arab states off guard after they had taken significant steps toward diplomatic normalization with his government. None of the major Gulf Arab powers — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — had a role in Assad's sudden overthrow; instead, these countries were relegated to bystander status as Turkish-backed rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, rapidly led the campaign to oust Assad. Since then, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have remained cautious in their statements about post-Assad Syria. Unlike the United States and Turkey, which both said they have made direct contact with HTS leadership, Gulf Arab states have been more reluctant to embrace the rebellion. On Dec. 9, Saudi Arabia said it supported Syrians broadly and favored the country's territorial integrity. The United Arab Emirates' chief diplomat, Anwar Gargash, emphasized his country's concerns about militancy emerging in the wake of Assad's overthrow. Meanwhile, on Dec. 15, Qatar said it would finally reopen its embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus after closing it during the initial stages of Syria's civil war in 2011.

In the early years of Syria's civil war, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar backed different rebel factions as they sought to overthrow the Assad government due to its deep ties to Iran. But compared with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were more open to backing Islamist-linked factions, both those part of the Free Syrian Army and those independent of it. In 2017, the Saudis pulled back their support for rebel groups as the Russian-led intervention to support Assad's government turned the military tide. The United Arab Emirates also scaled back its efforts to overthrow Assad after the emergence of the Islamic State in 2014-15, for fear of creating a security vacuum in Syria that the jihadists could fill. Meanwhile, Qatar, alongside Turkey, continued to provide humanitarian aid to rebels in Idlib province until the eve of the HTS offensive. The Saudis and Emiratis backed Syria's readmittance to the Arab League in 2023.
Saudi Arabia reopened its embassy in Damascus in September 2024, just two months before Assad's downfall, as the kingdom joined the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in normalizing ties with the Syrian regime they once opposed. These Gulf Arab states had concluded that Assad had won the civil war and that their influence, particularly against Turkey and Iran, could be preserved in Syria through direct ties with Assad's government rather than maintaining his isolation. Qatar, on political and ideological grounds, refused to diplomatically reengage with Assad's regime in Syria without a political reconciliation process, something also demanded by Western sanctions, including a U.S. law that remains in place and effectively isolates the post-Assad transitional government economically.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will likely initially adopt a wait-and-see approach to Syria's post-Assad transition phase, leaving relations with the current HTS leadership minimal while refraining from lobbying for the group in international forums. Both Abu Dhabi and Riyadh prefer overall stability in Syria, and — wary of examples like Yemen, Libya and Sudan, where foreign interference helped lead to civil wars that at times strengthened their rivals — are likely to be cautious about how they influence the Syrian political transition process. As a result, both Gulf states will initially test diplomatic channels, potentially leveraging intermediaries like Qatar or Turkey, to assess HTS's willingness to moderate its policies, distance itself from its extremist origins and move into an inclusive way of governance where factions allied to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, like some FSA factions, are represented. They will also press HTS to take steps to end the Captagon trade, which has become a major source of drug addiction in the Gulf and largely originated in Assad-held territory in Syria. Neither the United Arab Emirates nor Saudi Arabia is likely to lobby the West to lift sanctions on HTS in the near term, and will focus their aid and support to limited humanitarian lifelines in Syria rather than full-scale reconstruction. Finally, the Emiratis and the Saudis will likely deepen security and intelligence coordination with Jordan to prevent regional spillover, as Jordan is the main country that separates Syria from Saudi Arabia and has seen violence caused by drug smuggling and arms trafficking coming from Syria.

Both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are afraid of the Islamic State reemerging as a regional force capable of striking their countries. This has become a particularly pronounced concern since 2019-20, which saw the two Gulf Arab states begin adapting their regional policies to be less confrontational toward Iran and its proxies, in order to mitigate additional threats to their national security during their delicate economic transformations away from oil.
In 2016, HTS formed as a splinter group from al Qaeda's Syrian branch over strategic disagreements, with HTS preferring to focus on a jihadist war in Syria and al Qaeda favoring a transnational campaign. Ideologically, HTS continues to favor a Salafist political model for Syria, which implies suppressed political and social rights for non-Sunnis, women and non-Arabs.

But as the transitional process unfolds over the next year, the United Arab Emirates will likely eventually back anti-Islamist forces to prevent the emergence of a unified Islamist-ruled Syria, which could destabilize the transition process. Saudi Arabia is likely to back any Syrian state that weakens Iranian influence and the drug trade, meaning Riyadh has less incentive to meddle in Syrian politics in a way that might produce a new power vacuum. However, the United Arab Emirates, wary of Islamist ideological proliferation and its potential to destabilize regional allies, will likely seek to keep the Syrian central government weak overall but strong enough to maintain relative stability and prevent the spread of Islamism. In doing so, Abu Dhabi will likely continue leveraging financial investments in Syrian media, political campaigns and influence operations to shape public opinion against Islamist factions. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates will likely back religious and ethnic minorities, such as Alawites, Christians and Druze, to provide a counterweight to Islamist narratives, ensuring these groups remain resilient and politically active. The Emiratis may also fund reconstruction projects in the areas of Syria with large populations of these minorities, in order to further entrench its influence in the country while undermining the appeal of Islamist movements. But these dynamics could perpetuate Syria's divisions, as external interference often prevents the emergence of cohesive governance.

In Yemen, Libya and Sudan, the United Arab Emirates has backed proxies and political parties that are overtly anti-Islamist as part of its region-wide campaign against both the Muslim Brotherhood as a transnational organization and political Islam as an ideological force.
The Emiratis see the emergence of an Islamist state anywhere in the region as a potential security threat to their country, which has its own history of Islamist dissent, particularly during the Arab Spring.

The United Arab Emirates' anti-Islamist push will clash with Turkey and Qatar's aim to strengthen both HTS and their own Islamist-leaning factions in Syria, fueling factionalism and raising the likelihood of a resurgence in violence in the war-torn country. Although HTS is not a direct Turkish proxy, Ankara has made it clear it prefers its governance model and finds the group a pragmatic partner in overthrowing Assad. Meanwhile, Qatar has an overall regional strategy of supporting Islamist movements, particularly when they appear to be representative of popular demand. This suggests both countries will likely continue to support HTS as the leader of Syria's rebel factions. Turkey has already offered to take a role in training the security forces of the new Syrian government, an offer that will likely benefit HTS as the premier rebel faction and the lead organizer of the post-Assad Syrian military. Meanwhile, Qatar's swift reopening of its embassy in Damascus after the fall of Assad suggests that Doha is prepared to expand both diplomatic ties and aid programs to HTS-controlled territory in Syria in the near term. Turkey's security backing and Qatar's economic backing will attempt to strengthen HTS and other friendly rebel factions to stabilize the political transition process against attempts by the United Arab Emirates to steer Syrian politics away from Islam. If HTS and the transitional government start taking more hard-line stances on former Assad regime elements and religious minorities, the United Arab Emirates could step in to back these alienated groups, which could eventually become independent militant forces. This is particularly likely in places where there are large numbers of former regime elements and religious minorities, like Latakia, the former homeland of the Assad family. HTS governance missteps like arbitrary arrests of influential minority figures or tortures carried out by the provisional government would further raise the risk of pushback and violence.

Mostly because the cases of Egypt and Tunisia proved to be cautionary tales, both Qatar and Turkey have stepped away from their post-Arab Spring strategy of bringing the region under their influence through political Islam; however, their political systems remain favorable to supporting Islamist movements in nearby countries.
Tens of thousands of Syrian soldiers laid down their arms rather than fight against the advancing rebels during Assad's collapse. The transitional government has nominally given these soldiers amnesty, but that status could rapidly change, as acts of individual vigilantism have already been reported against former regime officials and leaders. Such a dynamic could eventually push these soldiers into an underground anti-government insurgency, especially if abetted by external powers.

Turko-Qatari competition with the United Arab Emirates in Syria will create diplomatic and economic friction, but it will not lead to another blockade like that against Qatar from 2017 to 2021. Saudi Arabia is less concerned about the potential emergence of an Islamist Syria as long as the government does not back transnational terrorism. This means the United Arab Emirates is likely to take the lead on trying to push back against Islamist influence in Syria in the medium term. Beyond attempting to destabilize the political transition process in Syria that favors Islamists, the United Arab Emirates might also use its investments in Turkey and its transport and commercial ties with Qatar to try to pressure Ankara and Doha away from supporting Islamists in Syria. Additionally, the Emiratis may deploy informal boycotts, divestments and online influence campaigns as they try to alter Turkey and Qatar's policies in Syria. But another blockade is unlikely, given that Qatar survived the 2017-2021 blockade with its policies intact and would likely do so again. Instead, the United Arab Emirates will focus more on seizing opportunities to destabilize Syria's political transition and further fractionalize the country to arrest the development of an Islamist state.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates blockaded Qatar to convince it to abandon its support for political Islam and its use of its media empire to promote Islamist parties. Even after the blockade ended in 2021, Turkish and Qatari planes found it difficult to gain landing rights in the United Arab Emirates, as Abu Dhabi insisted on informal boycotts to continue to pressure these governments. After the end of the blockade, the United Arab Emirates also made major investments in Turkey as a means of developing economic leverage over its government.