Alwaght- Following onset of the Syrian crisis when many Arab countries of the Persian Gulf region offered support for the opponents of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including the terrorists groups and the Syria opposition groups, the Sultanate of Oman expressed its stance against any use of force to remove the Syrian government, insisting that a peaceful solution must be found to the crisis. Just unlike members of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, or (P) GCC for short, Muscat kept its embassy in Syria open and working to date. At the same time, the necessity to find a political settlement for the devastating Syrian struggle was emphasized when the Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi met with his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem. The mediation of Oman in the Syrian crisis was raised when the Syrian FM paid a visit to Oman. In early August 2015, the Arab newspapers alleged that a tripartite meeting was held between the Syrian, Saudi, and Iranian FMs in Muscat. They also claimed that the Iranian officials during Syrian FM visit to Tehran persuaded him to seek finding a way out of the current crisis using help of Oman.
It appears that Oman that also has a record of fighting the rebel groups at home (Dhofar Rebellion in the 1970s), shares with Syria an understanding of the need to confront the terrorist groups and protect the country’s independence and sovereignty, and so has managed to win the trust of the Syrians for leading efforts to seek an end to the crisis.
Moreover, ISIS terrorist group's actions in Iraq and Syria have endangered the security of Oman like other Arab countries, making Muscat convinced to host delegations from the two sides of the Syrian crisis in the recent weeks. Despite talks and meetings held between the regional and international powers on Syria’s conflict, the differences remain standing about the fate of President Assad and the future of the Syrian government.
Moscow, for example, that has now more seriously stepped in the Syrian battlefield insists on stay of the Syrian president in any transition process and believes that it is the Syrians who must decide on choosing their future government and not the foreign sides. On the opposite side, however, Washington has said that it will tolerate President Assad only for a short time during any transitional period. Furthermore, Germany as the key destination of the Syrian refugees has said that it will not approve of the Syrian president taking part in the transition process even for a short time. These differences over Syria lay bare the fact that the crisis in Syria is very intricate, something making it so difficult for the mediators to take their mediatory role. Therefore, Oman is no exception despite having an array of mediatory experiences in the Iranian nuclear program as well as the Yemeni peace dialogue.
The Syrian army has recently made remarkable breakthroughs against the terrorist groups, particularly in the Aleppo outskirts. Additionally, the Russian air force’s fighter jets have conducted high-accuracy airstrikes at the positions and shelters of the takfiri terrorist groups. At the same time, the diplomatic moves to end the over-five-year-long Syrian crisis have seen a meaningful increase. For example, the Omani FM visited Damascus and also the Syrian president visited Russia and met with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. All these developments and moves have built up the diplomacy and put Saudi Arabia and Egypt in weak position in Syria case. On the other side, more countries in the world became interested in taking diplomatic way to end the crisis, something putting strains on Saudi Arabia and other supporters of the armed groups in Syria.
The attacks by the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir against Iran, use of severe rhetoric against Tehran and Lebanon's Hezbollah as key backers of the Syrian government, eliminating the name of ISIS from the Saudi media following anti-terror Russian intervention in Syria and using such terms as moderate opposition to address the armed groups fighting Damascus all indicate that Al Saud and its allies have stuck in quagmire of Syria, as at the same time the kingdom has failed to reach its overbearing goals in Yemen after more than 18 months of the devastating anti-Yemeni war.
Oman's political moves are important because following spark of the crisis in Syria and start of domestic fight with terrorism, some regional states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey severed diplomatic ties with Damascus in a bid to paint the government of President Assad as illegitimate. The anti-Assad efforts went so far that Saudi Arabia and the UAE officially asked the Arab League to stop inviting the Syrian government to take part in the organization’s official meetings. Despite an active role played by the countries of the PGCC to push to the sidelines the Syrian government and people, Oman as a unavoidable player in the Persian Gulf region has officially invited the Syrian FM to visit Muscat, and showed no concerns about the news of the invitation going public.
The Omani FM made a surprise visit to Syria on October 26, 2015, in which he met Syria's President Assad in an attempt to open a new page in the mediatory efforts by Oman to settle the regional and international crises. The visit was significant because it was first travel of an Arab FM to Syria since 2011. At the same time, it took place following Russian intervention in Syria that came at the behest of Damascus, and it came in a time when Syria was getting ready for presidential and parliamentary elections.
Despite the fact that Muscat is an ally of Washington in the Persian Gulf region, it has adopted a policy different from that of other Arab countries towards the region’s hot cases like the Syrian conflict. It has close relations with Iran as the leading supporter of the Syrian president. A successful legacy of Oman’s mediation in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 has pushed Muscat to seek such a specific role in settling the regional issues through the diplomacy of mediation. Keeping balance in relations with the Syrian government on the one hand and the Western-Arab camp on the other hand are the blatant features of the Omani diplomatic mediation. This record of Muscat adds to chances of success of its mediation in the Syrian conflict more than any mediatory efforts ever.
On the other side, visit of bin Alawi to Syria was a heavy blow to the anti-Syrian policies of the PGCC, a hardly efficient regional organization that is under full domination of Saudi Arabia. Its members, excluding Oman, from the very beginning, have cut off ties with Syria, though there have been news about recent moves by some Arab countries to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus. Bin Alawi’s emphasis on unity and stability of Syria and pledging any effort to help to find peaceful and political settlement to the Syrian crisis have added to anger of the Saudi regime’s officials, particularly the inexperienced FM al-Jubeir.
All in all, it must be noted that Oman’s performance concerning the Syrian war to a large extent derives from Muscat's strategy to keep security and stability at home and peaceful coexistence in the region. Oman sees negotiations as the crucial way to steer clear of struggles and solve problems in the Persian Gulf countries. Oman well believes that any crisis in any of the region’s countries could very fast spread to other countries.
Due to this rational policy, Oman in the recent decades has played role of a diplomatic mediator for final solutions to important regional crises.
