
Saudi Arabia has invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to the upcoming Arab League summit in the oil-rich kingdom, the Syrian president's office said on Wednesday. The news comes as Damascus continues to slowly return to the Arab fold, following a 12-year-period of political isolation.
Assad received the invitation days after the Arab League restored Syria's membership into the organization during a meeting in Cairo on Sunday. Syria's membership was suspended for brutally cracking down on mass protests against Assad in 2011. Since then, the uprising turned into a vicious civil war that killed nearly a half million people and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.