United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres arrived in Damascus on Saturday for what he called a “visit of solidarity”, becoming the first serving UN chief to set foot in Syria since Ban Ki-moon’s 2009 trip – two years before the outbreak of a civil war that killed over half a million people. Guterres was received at the airport by Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and later met President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the People’s Palace, according to state news agency SANA. He told journalists the UN “stands with Syria at this pivotal moment” and appealed to the international community “to spare no effort to support the people of Syria”.

The visit, according to a spokesman for the secretary-general, is intended to affirm the UN’s commitment to a Syrian-led transition following the December 2024 ouster of Bashar al-Assad by an Islamist-led coalition. Guterres will stress that “the opportunity now is not only to recover from conflict, but also to lay the foundations for a future … more stable, more inclusive and more prosperous for all Syrians”. In Western capitals, the trip is viewed as a diplomatic marker: after nearly 14 years of war, Damascus is slowly re-entering the global fold, with the United States having lifted most sweeping sanctions and President Donald Trump indicating he would remove Syria from the state sponsors of terrorism list. The European Union’s gradual engagement was underscored by French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Damascus weeks earlier, though that trip was marred by a double bombing near his hotel.

Sharaa’s administration – which broke with al-Qaeda in 2016 and took part in last year’s UN General Assembly as the first Syrian president to do so since 1967 – is pushing to rebuild diplomatic ties and an economy shattered by war. Yet the transitional period has been stained by two large-scale episodes of sectarian violence: nearly 1,500 Alawites were killed in coastal regions last year by government-aligned factions, and hundreds of Druze died in the south months later. Guterres expressed alarm at both waves and called for accountability. From the Israeli perspective, the new leadership in Damascus remains a security threat: Israeli forces moved into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights immediately after Assad’s fall, carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military sites, and insist they will maintain a demilitarised “security zone” in the south. Formal talks between the two sides have led to the creation of a coordination mechanism, but Israeli strikes continue, drawing condemnation from the UN and several Western governments.

Rebuilding will demand vast resources: the World Bank estimates reconstruction costs at $216 billion, while the UN says 90 per cent of Syrians live in poverty and 15.6 million require humanitarian aid. Guterres is expected to address the newly formed transitional parliament on Monday and to visit the headquarters of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has monitored the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire since 1974. His itinerary also includes meetings with civil-society groups and women’s organisations. The visit, diplomats in New York note, tests whether the UN can pivot from emergency relief to longer-term recovery support without ignoring unresolved political and security crises – above all the question of Israeli forces in the south and the demands of Syria’s multi-confessional population.