What happens way over in the Arab world almost always has an impact here in tangible ways, whether it’s Syrian refugees amassing at the border or setting up residence in St. Louis, or Saudi Arabia teaming with Russia to make global oil prices skyrocket. A lot of readers might have ignored last week’s Arab League summit, but it’s exactly in that arena where the region’s future course is being set. The summit was particularly noteworthy, and not in a good way, for the way the Arab world’s most notorious human rights abusers welcomed fellow abuser Syria back into the fold.
The summit offered no heady commitments to improve human rights. Instead, leaders kissed and forgave mass-murdering Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, deliberately ignoring the blood on his hands.
That’s because the most prominent Arab leaders in the room have their own egregious abuses to hide. Having Assad in the room provided a useful contrast for other Arab dictators to show the world how they’re really not so bad after all. Saudi Arabia is particularly desperate to exploit that contrast, still having failed to fully account for the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi. His death sentence was for the crime of publicly criticizing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
