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 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…
