UN Chief Lands in Damascus, First Visit in 17 Years

Guterres meets a Syrian president the UN itself once sanctioned

By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost

Antonio Guterres stepped off a plane in Damascus this week, the first UN secretary-general to set foot in Syria in 17 years. He is due to meet President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a man the UN Security Council had under sanctions until last year.

That detail alone tells you how fast the ground has shifted. Al-Sharaa's rise from sanctioned figure to head of state, and now diplomatic host to the UN's top official, marks a formal turn in how the world body treats Syria's new leadership.

Al Jazeera, which reported the visit, gave few details on the agenda beyond confirming the meeting. What Guterres and al-Sharaa discuss, and what if anything is announced afterward, has not yet been reported.

For a country that spent more than a decade as a diplomatic pariah under the previous government, a sitting UN chief walking through the capital is itself the story. The reconstruction bills, the refugees still abroad, the sanctions regimes still partly in place — those fights continue regardless of who shakes whose hand this week. But protocol matters in this business, and Damascus just got some it hasn't seen in nearly two decades.

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— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.

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