The United States on Monday eased some restrictions on Syria’s transitional government to allow the entry of humanitarian aid after Islamist insurgents ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad last month.
The U.S. Treasury Department has issued a six-month blanket license authorizing certain transactions with the Syrian government, including certain energy sales and ancillary transactions.
The move does not lift sanctions against the nation that has been battered by more than a decade of war, but indicates a limited show of American support for the new transitional government.
The blanket authorization underscores the United States’ commitment to ensuring that its sanctions “do not impede activities aimed at meeting basic human needs, including the provision of public services or humanitarian assistance,” a statement from the Treasury Department.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said his agency “will continue to support humanitarian assistance and responsible governance in Syria.”
Since Assad’s ouster, representatives of the country’s new de facto authorities have declared that the new Syria would be inclusive and open to the world.
The United States has gradually lifted some sanctions since Assad left Syria for protection in Russia. The Biden administration decided in December to abandon the $10 million bounty it had offered for the capture of a Syrian rebel leader whose forces led to Assad’s ouster last month.
The announcement followed a meeting in Damascus between the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS; Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once allied with Al-Qaeda; and the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, who led the first U.S. diplomatic delegation to Syria since Assad’s ouster. The United States and the United Nations have long designated HTS as a terrorist organization.
HTS led a lightning insurgency that toppled Assad on December 8 and ended his family’s decades-long rule. From 2011 until Assad’s fall, Syria’s uprising and civil war killed an estimated 500,000 people.
Much of the world has ended diplomatic ties with Assad over his crackdown on protesters and sanctioned him and his Russian and Iranian associates.
Most of the sanctions imposed by the West targeted Assad and his associates for their brutal crackdown on protesters and their manufacturing of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon, which is believed to have generated billions of dollars from smuggling packets of small white pills across Syria’s porous borders.
With Assad out, Syria’s new authorities are hoping the international community will pump money into the country to rebuild its dilapidated infrastructure and make its economy viable again.
Syria’s infrastructure has been battered, with widespread power cuts across the country and around 90% of its population living in poverty. About half the population will not know where their next meal will come from due to rising inflation.
Pressure to lift sanctions has grown in recent years as humanitarian agencies continue to scale back programs due to donor fatigue and the massive 2023 earthquake that shook Syria and Turkey. The quake killed more than 59,000 people and destroyed critical infrastructure that could not be repaired due to sanctions and excessive compliance, despite the United States announcing some humanitarian exemptions.
Qutaiba Idlbi, a researcher at the Atlantic Council who leads the work on Syria, said before the blanket issuance of the license:
“There is general agreement among regional and international governments that we must avoid plunging Syria back into chaos.”
“The only way forward is to engage in a positive way,” he said.
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