The Middle East was the source of some rare positive news on Sunday when Qatar and Saudi Arabia announced that they would be paying back the some $15 million that Syria owes to the World Bank.
The payment will help enable the bank to assist in the rebuilding of Syria after nearly 14 years of civil war. The announcement came following the conclusion of a high-level roundtable on Syria at the 2025 spring meeting of the World Bank Group.
The Saudi Press Agency released a joint press statement from the Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments that said that the financial bailout would “unlock Syria’s access to financial support in the near term for the development of critical sectors, as well as technical assistance that will contribute to institutional rebuilding, capacity development, and policy formulation and reform to drive development.”
The new Syrian government—which came to power after the ouster of strongman Bashar Assad, who ruled with an iron fist for 24 years before fleeing the country in December—faces a bevy of problems, including war-ravaged infrastructure, a devalued currency, and widespread poverty.
The nation went from having a currency worth 1/50 of the U.S. dollar to one worth 1/15,000. Just one out of every 10 Syrians is not living in poverty, and only three out of every four is employed.
The new Syrian regime has to decide how it will proceed with relations with the millions of Syrian citizens living outside the country. More than half the Syrian population was displaced during the Syrian civil war, and 5.6 million Syrians have moved abroad, claiming refugee status. There are more than 900,000 Syrians living in Germany, mainly as a result of the war. More than 165,000 Syrians have obtained German citizenship over the past 10 years.
The joint press statement said that Saudi Arabia and Qatar hoped to “support and accelerate the recovery of the Syrian Arab Republic’s economy.”
The U.S. has demanded that if the current Syrian government wants a reprieve from U.S. sanctions it would have to oust forces aligned with Iran from operating in Syria. The U.S. government remains skeptical of the new ruler of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, 42, who was imprisoned by the U.S. from 2006 to 2011 after joining al-Qaida.
In March, there were reports of mass killings of ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, in the country. More than 100 civilians lost their lives, according to the United Nations. The news was chilling for many, given the fact that the previous Syrian regime of Bashar Assad had also slaughtered civilians.
The hope remains that the new leadership of Syria will fully align the country with the U.S., rather than with U.S. adversaries. The Assad regime was a member of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” a term used by Iranian officials that included various terrorist and political groups aligned with Iran in the Middle East.
With the fall of the Assad government, the U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, and the destruction of Hamas in Gaza, that axis is increasingly looking thin.
