PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: For 14 years the authoritarian regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has wage a bloody war against the Syrian people, killing and displacing millions.

As a result, other Arab states and the West had shun Syria, making it a pariah.

But as Ali Rogin tells us relations with the Syrian dictator are beginning to thaw.

And we want to warn you that some of the images of this report may be disturbing.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): In 2011, protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meant a bloody crackdown, which spurred a civil war now in its second decade.

Early on the U.S. led global condemnation of Assad.

In 2013, President Barack Obama and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged him to step down.

BARACK OBAMA, Former U.S. President: We both agree that Assad needs to go.

He needs to transfer power to a transitional body.

That is the only way that we're going to resolve this crisis.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): But the crisis only worsened, Assad repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own citizens.

Obama called that a red line that would prompt a military response, but one never came.

The regime has arrested tortured and forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of women and children.

The civil war has claimed several 100,000 more lives, as rebel groups fought Assad and his Russian backers.

More than 14 million Syrians have fled their homes, roughly half remain internally displaced.

Another five and a half million are refugees and surrounding countries, including Turkey.

Despite all of this Assad is now being welcomed back into the global fold.

He received a warm reception at last year's meeting of the 22-member Arab League hosted by Saudi Arabia, his first invitation back since 2011.

And now President Erdogan once joined the U.S. President calling for Assad to step down, is now calling for a reset.

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Turkish President (through translator): I made my call to Mr. Assad two weeks ago, saying either come to my country, or let's hold this meeting in a third country, God willing, we want to start a new process by overcoming this resentment and discontent.

ALI ROGIN: For more on the ongoing normalization of Bashar al-Assad, I'm joined by Charles Lister.

He directs the Syria Program at the Middle East Institute, which is a nonpartisan Think Tank dedicated to the study of the Middle East.

Charles, thank you so much for being here.

There hasn't been much in Syria that's changed in past few years in terms of territorial control.

So why are all these countries pursuing normalization right now?

CHARLES LISTER, Director, Syria and Counterterrorism, Middle East Institute: Well, the answer lies in your question.

The fact that the Syrian crisis has been frozen militarily for as many years as it has, since around 2019, 2020 is precisely why regional states wanted to try to move on something to make progress on the political front, it's no secret that the U.S. and Europe have been pretty disengaged from the Syria file for a long while.

And our policies are essentially policies of containment from at, you know, at an arm's length.

So the region wanted to take matters into its own hands and give a go to the only other option on the table other than isolation, which was engagement.

Since the region reengaged and since Syria was allowed back into the Arab League, every single symptom of the crisis has rapidly deteriorated.

Everything that the region was concerned about refugees, drugs, terrorism, instability, the humanitarian crisis, it has all worsened.

This was all completely predictable.

Of course, the region gave the regime exactly what it wanted a place at the table from international standing, and it gave it everything before it managed to, you know, coerce the regime into giving something back in return.

And in so doing, it's weakened the credibility and it's weakened the leverage that the whole international community has to try to actually move Syria diplomacy forward one day.

ALI ROGIN: Let's talk about Turkey, specifically as President Erdogan, there seems to be the latest making these overtures to Assad.

Why is that happening now?

CHARLES LISTER: Much the same reason Turkey doesn't see a lot of movement from the international community writ large on Syria.

Of course, Turkey stood by and watched the rest of the region attempt reengagement with the Syrian regime just over a year ago, and also watch that more or less fail, but Turkey sees itself as a major player in the Syrian crisis.

And it is rightly so it's plays host to the biggest population of Syrian refugees.

It continues to de facto occupy large swathes of northern Syria in concert with a variety of different Syrian opposition forces.

So it has real leverage in a way that, frankly, most of the rest of the region didn't have.

And so Turkey is playing around with the idea of trying to utilize that leverage for its own interests, not the interests of Syria and Syrians, I should say, and it's trying to play along with that game, but frankly, Damascus so far and at least isn't playing ball.

ALI ROGIN: Meanwhile, what is the humanitarian situation like in Syria right now?

CHARLES LISTER: I mean, to put it bluntly, the humanitarian crisis in Syria has never been worse than it is today and the humanitarian needs are simply unprecedented and continue to increase.

At the same time, more than half of series entire population is displaced and the displacement crisis persists.

But at the same time, the international community is donating less and less money to deal with that humanitarian crisis.

In fact, as of today, only 6 percent of the needs that the United Nations has assessed need to be met this year, has been funded by the international community 6 percent, there's a 94 percent deficit.

It's absolutely catastrophic in terms of meeting those very basic humanitarian needs, and you know, that has a number of spillover effects, it is already creating more and more displacement.

So the rate of Syrian refugees fleeing towards Europe over the past 12 months has gone up by over 300 percent.

And on top of that, of course, it creates instability.

And these are the conditions that the likes of ISIS, for example, have thrived upon in previous years.

And so there's a great deal of concern about the humanitarian crisis and how it continues to spiral.

ALI ROGIN: Here in the U.S. there are several pieces of legislation meant to hold Assad accountable.

There is the Caesar bill, which is named for whistleblower who photographed bodies of torture victims, and that bill sanctions individuals and institutions who support or work with the regime, it's set to expire next year.

Then there's the Assad Regime Anti Normalization Act, which would extend the Caesar sanctions to 2032 and punish countries seeking normalization, that bill passed overwhelmingly in the House, but it's stalled in the Senate.

What is the state of play there?

CHARLES LISTER: Well, it stalled in the Senate, because the Biden administration intervened and essentially used its influence on the Democratic side, to be able to push it down and to squash any move to push it through the Senate.

So the administration has directly got involved here.

The Biden administration came into office not wanting to have to deal with the Middle East, obviously, October the seventh, and the crisis around Gaza has changed that equation somewhat.

But for a long running long standing crisis, like Syria, which we're now in the 14th year of the Syrian crisis, this is not a kind of problem that the Biden administration wants to get knee deep involved in, if they were to introduce or allow Congress to introduce this much more aggressive anti-normalization legislation, from the administration's perspective, it would force them to get much more involved in the diplomacy around the crisis in terms of justifying much more aggressive sanctions.

It doesn't want to do that.

Congress here in Washington is in a place where Syria is almost one of the only issues that still has a bipartisan consensus.

And that's precisely why I think the administration felt the need to step in in the way that it did to push that -- push that legislation aside, but now we're in this very worrying position where if Caesar isn't past.

There's going to be an enormous vacuum in terms of leverage over Syria policy, and in terms of just simply doing the right thing, given the enormity of the crimes that have been committed by the regime over the past 14 years.

ALI ROGIN: Charles Lister, Director of the Syria Program at the Middle East Institute, thank you so much for joining us.

CHARLES LISTER: Thank you.