Among the powerful images following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was the sight of thousands of political detainees streaming out of Syria’s prisons—a sign of hope and simultaneous grief for the thousands who never emerged. Days later, as Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, arrived at the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus, a woman yelled out to him: “You’re just coming now? It’s too late!” Her anger should not just be seen as an indictment of the past decade of global inaction—it’s a warning.
While quick to impose punitive measures, the international community too often drags its feet when opportunities for positive change arise. At precisely the moment when the world should be rushing to support Syrians, decisive action is lacking.
Among the powerful images following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was the sight of thousands of political detainees streaming out of Syria’s prisons—a sign of hope and simultaneous grief for the thousands who never emerged. Days later, as Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, arrived at the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus, a woman yelled out to him: “You’re just coming now? It’s too late!” Her anger should not just be seen as an indictment of the past decade of global inaction—it’s a warning.
While quick to impose punitive measures, the international community too often drags its feet when opportunities for positive change arise. At precisely the moment when the world should be rushing to support Syrians, decisive action is lacking.
It is a false choice to hinge all U.S. engagement with Syria on political recognition of the new authorities, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda affiliate. For years, concerns about the Assad regime’s corruption, interference, and violence stifled foreign investment and development programs. With its fall, new opportunities have emerged to support the Syrian people directly—with or without a recognized government—while providing clear benchmarks for the transitional government to unlock wider integration.
There is now a window of opportunity for recovery. There is a clear moral imperative to alleviate human suffering. Maintaining the status quo of economic isolation punishes Syrians for a government they did not choose and that no longer exists. Millions of Syrians have resorted to extremes to survive the country’s economic collapse, such as pulling children out of school to beg or work, sending daughters into child marriage, and selling off assets such as livestock and land.
Scaling up humanitarian aid is critical. (Last year, donors provided only one-third of the required humanitarian aid for Syria—the lowest level in a decade.) But emergency aid is only ever a Band-Aid solution; it cannot cover the gaping wound of an economy in ruins, shattered by war and suffocated by blanket sanctions. Already, the war cost Syria 85 percent of the value of its GDP and the equivalent of 35 years of development. Today, 90 percent of Syrians live in poverty. Soon, some of the 5.5 million Syrian refugees abroad could return prematurely to devastated homes, gaps in infrastructure, and overstretched public services, creating the risk of repeated internal displacements.
This is a recipe for tension and renewed violence—and will leave Syria stuck in a perpetual state of crisis. There is strategic value in the United States taking every opportunity to mitigate the risk of Syria veering toward state collapse and a security vacuum in a country with a lingering risk of a resurgence of the Islamic State or other armed groups.
Instead, in its hesitation, the United States risks undermining the very stability it seeks. Over the last 14 years, world leaders have voiced their solidarity with the people of Syria. How long will Syrians now have to wait for economic relief?
There are three steps that the Trump administration should prioritize to lay the groundwork for an economic road map for Syria and to catalyze global action.
First, the United States should provide legal clarity and sanctions relief. Syrians need immediate access to more humanitarian aid, commercial activity, and imports to begin recovery. In a welcome first step, the Biden administration released a new license this month, enabling transactions with the transition government, including payments of civil servant salaries. However, its scope is limited. The license fails to lift sanctions or authorize broad commercial activities, private investment, and technical assistance to financial institutions. Its six-month duration risks being too short to give real confidence and produce lasting change. And perhaps most importantly, it sidesteps the fundamental question of HTS’s terrorist designation.
Syria is caught in a web of contradictory legal restrictions. It seems to inherit all U.S. sanctions placed on the Assad regime (first imposed with Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979 and later intensified after the civil war erupted in 2011). At the same time, it has been saddled with the confusion over whether the terrorist designation of HTS applies to the entire transitional government. While U.S. leaders herald the fall of the Assad regime, the Biden administration quietly affirmed this month that key Assad-era restrictions remain in place.
The United States should make clear that these are new authorities in power, representing a range of groups and not synonymous with HTS or the previous regime. The United States should also reconsider its foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation of HTS. FTO designations are not an appropriate tool for groups that govern large populations, as the designation creates criminal liability risks for aid workers, businesses, traders, and others if they provide material support to the group.
Proponents of the designation argue that it should remain in place as leverage. However, there are other tools—from travel bans to sanctions on individual leaders to arms embargoes—that can be used without inflicting such harm on the civilian population.
U.S. sanctions relief and a broader license for engagement could give oxygen to Syria’s struggling economy and enable postwar reconstruction in a country where most sectors are in ruins, from agriculture to electricity. If U.S. sanctions were designed to paralyze the Syrian government, then their continuation should be well understood as jeopardizing the success of the transitional authorities during such a precarious moment.
Second, the United States should support the end of the 14-year suspension of World Bank programs in Syria, restoring basic services for Syrians, including health, water, and school systems.
The United States should leverage its influence as the World Bank’s largest shareholder to press for an urgent “basic needs” package to Syria. Reviving the country’s World Bank programs would be a powerful opportunity for the group to deliver on its new mission and operating model, which it recently reformed to shift from a government-only approach to institutionalize the role of nongovernmental actors in order to be more agile in fragile and conflict settings. In the absence of a recognized government or strong state capacity, these civil society partners are the only option to quickly restore services.
A critical first step is paying salaries for essential civil servants, such as doctors and teachers, to scale up services, which is allowed under the new U.S. exemption. This approach has been successfully modeled in places such as Yemen and Afghanistan, where basic public services were preserved by channeling funding independently to the workers. More than half of Syria’s governorates lack enough health workers, while some doctors can’t even afford the cost of traveling to work. The World Bank should help fund salaries alongside large-scale programs to support livelihoods and restore health, water, and sanitation services. Nearly 40 percent of the country’s primary and secondary health facilities are partially or entirely nonoperational. Restoring Syria’s health system is not just a practical necessity; it’s a moral one after a war defined by deliberate attacks on hospitals.
Lastly, the United States should develop a pathway for reintegrating Syria’s financial institutions into the global system. The large-scale financial transactions required for major development programs, foreign investment, and commercial activity at scale will be slowed and challenged if Syrian banks are not connected to the global economy, forcing organizations to use workarounds such as cash and the hawala system. The benefits of any sanctions relief will also be difficult to realize without a functional central bank and finance ministry that can manage the economy.
International financial institutions should work with Syria to quickly undertake independent assessments of the Syrian financial system and define clear, necessary reforms. The United States can set standards, similar to those outlined for Afghanistan, requiring Syria’s financial institutions to be free from political influence, led by technocrats, and equipped with strong safeguards to prevent corruption or the financing of terrorism (a concern that could have as large a chilling effect as sanctions).
If the Syrian authorities meet initial policy benchmarks, demonstrating the political will for adherence with international banking standards, then the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank could offer direct technical assistance to rebuild Syria’s capacity to deliver on these reforms. The international community has a vested interest in seeing a shift toward formal financial channels, regulation, and oversight.
All of these steps have a wider benefit of serving as confidence-building measures ahead of the thornier questions around the security and political recognition of a future Syrian government. If progress is made, the United States should call for a ministerial meeting on Syria during the World Bank-IMF meetings in April to galvanize wider postwar economic support across the international community.
Syria may not be facing famine or all-out war. But at a time when the world is on fire, we cannot afford to squander the opportunity for one of the largest catastrophes of the 21st century to end.
The post It’s Now or Never for U.S. Engagement in Syria appeared first on Foreign Policy.
