Qusay al-Dahhak

Qusay Abdul Jabbar al-Dahhak (Arabic: قصي عبد الجبار الضحاك) is a Syrian politician and diplomat who has held the position of Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations since December 2023.^[1]

He has held several administrative and governmental positions since the beginning of his career in 2001, where he worked as third secretary at the Syrian Embassy in the People's Republic of China from 2004 to 2009 and a diplomat in the Permanent Delegation of Syria to the United Nations in New York from 2012 to 2016.

He was an advisor and director of the Department of International Organizations and Conferences at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2018.^[2][3] Then he was an advisor to the Permanent Delegation from 2018 to 2022, where he was Deputy Head of the Syrian Permanent Delegation to the United Nations. Between 2022 and 2023, he was again a director of the Department of International Organizations and Conferences at the ministry. In December 2023 he was promoted to the position of Permanent Representative, succeeding Bassam al-Sabbagh, and was sworn in by President Bashar al-Assad.^[4][5]

After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, he said that although the opposition offensives took him by surprise, he and his team in New York intend continue to represent the interests of the Syrian people and are waiting for the creation of a new government. They are in contact with the Foreign Ministry in Damascus and will operate under the new authority. He also said that he hopes Syrians will be able to build a new state built on freedom, equality, democracy, and rule of law, and opposed the Israeli airstrikes against Syria.^[6][7]

He is the son of Syrian biology professor and career diplomat Abdul Jabbar al Dahhak [de; ar] who served as the Minister of Oil and Ambassador of Syria to Algeria. Abdul Jabbar later worked as a professor in the Biology Faculty of the University of Damascus before passing away in 2020.^[8]