US President Donald Trump is hosting Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the White House on Monday in what is a historic visit for the leader of the once-pariah state and one that is set to bring Damascus into a US-led global coalition to fight the Islamic State group.
According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Monday’s visit is “part of the president’s efforts in diplomacy to meet with anyone around the world in the pursuit of peace.”
Monday’s meeting between Trump and Al-Sharaa will not be the first, but it will be the first to the White House by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946.
Trump and al-Sharaa — who once had ties to Al-Qaeda and had a $10 million US bounty on his head —first met in May in Saudi Arabia.
At the time, the US president described al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past, very strong past. Fighter.” It was the first official encounter between the US and Syria since 2000, when former President Bill Clinton met with Hafez Assad, the father of Bashar Assad.
And recently, Trump has said al-Sharaa is “doing a very good job so far” and that a “lot of progress has been made with Syria” since the US eased sanctions.
Al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday ahead of this Monday’s meeting with Trump, according to Syrian state media.
The talks are expected to see Damascus officially join the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group, a move that will allow it to work more closely with US forces, although the new Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast had already been fighting the group.
Al-Sharaa is seeking repeal of sanctions
Before al-Sharaa arrived in the US, the United Nations Security Council voted to lift sanctions on the Syrian president and other government officials in a move that Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, said was a strong sign that Syria is in a new era since the fall of Assad.
Al-Sharaa comes into the meeting with his own priorities. He wants a permanent repeal of sanctions that punished Syria for widespread allegations of human rights abuses by Assad’s government and security forces.
Trump has waived the Caesar Act sanctions, but Congress would need to take action to permanently abolish them. The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, has proposed an unconditional lifting of the sanctions and the other, drafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a hawkish Trump ally, wants to set conditions for a sanctions repeal that would be reviewed every six months.
However, advocates argue that any repeal with conditions would prevent companies from investing in Syria because they would fear potentially being sanctioned.
According to the Syrian Emergency Task Force’s executive director, Mouaz Moustafa, repealing sanctions with conditions is like a “hanging shadow that paralyses any initiatives for our country.”
A stunning rise for Al-Sharaa
Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last December and was named the country’s interim leader in January.
But only two decades ago, he was held in a US-run detention centre in Iraq after joining al-Qaida militants fighting against American forces there.
Few would have predicted that he would go on to become the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946.
Since rebel forces he led ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad last December, al-Sharaa — who cut ties with al-Qaida years earlier — has gone on a largely successful charm offensive to establish new ties with countries that had shunned Assad’s government after its brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 spiralled into a 14-year civil war.