Thankfully, in a few weeks Old Uncle Joe will shuffle off into the sunset and Donald J. Trump will return back to the White House. President Trump is as dynamic and decisive as Joe was bumbling and incoherent. And right now, lifting sanctions against Syria is a necessary step that requires the kind of bold leadership that America and the world so desperately need after four years of Biden’s feeble incompetence.
After thirteen years of bitter civil war, the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad has been overthrown by rebel forces. But this very welcome event is merely the end of the beginning. Now comes the long and difficult task of rebuilding a country that is literally in ruins, as well as confronting the immediate challenges of simple daily survival for the Syrian population.
The United States (as well as the European Union) has for decades imposed various financial and personal sanctions on the Assad gang, such as travel bans on regime insiders. But after the outbreak of civil war, sanctions were ratcheted up severely. The most serious are those that essentially ban all financial transactions with Syria from any banks that have a connection to the U.S. banking system, which basically means almost all banks and financial institutions worldwide. And these sanctions have strangled the Syrian economy by cutting off almost all trade, investment, and other transactions. The even hinder delivery of humanitarian aid.
The original intent of these sanctions was the weaken the Assad regime, and to coerce it to change its behavior, namely ending its barbarous human rights violations and to enter negotiations for a political settlement with the opposition forces in Idlib (and rebel Kurds in Raqqa). And sanctions did eventually succeed in that first objective, weakening the regime until its hollowed-out core finally collapsed this month.
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The Assad family ruled Syria with an iron fist for half a century. Mass repression and torture was routine. But with the breakout of the Arab Spring in 2011, the regime plumbed the depths of inhumanity, slaughtering innocents wholesale with the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and artillery.
So, now with the regime fallen, Assad in his Moscow hideaway, the opposition in Damascus, what purpose do the sanctions serve now? None whatsoever. In fact, they have the perverse effect of undermining our vital national interests in the Middle East. As long as these sanctions remain in effect, Syria will continue in a death spiral of utter economic collapse. In such conditions, the new transitional government will collapse as well. There is a fragile stability at the moment that will not survive unless things begin to improve. And renewed chaos could we be the result if they don’t.
Another obstacle to stability in Syria is the State Department’s designation of the transitional government’s leadership as a terrorist organization. A group called Hayat Tahir al-Sham (THS) is the core of a number of Syrian opposition groups that united to overthrow the Assad regime. The predecessor of HTS was Al-Nusra, an Islamicist outfit affiliated with al-Qaeda. However, alliances in the Middle East are fluid, and seemingly fixed positions can change dramatically. After two bitterly fought wars in 1967 and 1973, the world was stunned in 1978 by Egypt’s abrupt turnabout to make peace with Isreal (a peace that has lasted nearly half a century).
Al-Nusra broke decisively with al-Qaeda in 2016. And the next year HTS was formed by the merger of half a dozen opposition groups. Since then, HTS has led the government of Idlib province in northwest Syria, which managed to stave off Assad’s occupying troops. By almost all reports, HTS has provided reasonably good governance, with more attention to public services and infrastructure and much less corruption than the Asaad regime.
More importantly, HTS has had a fairly decent human rights record. Not perfect, but fairly decent, particularly in comparison with the Assad regime or the standards of the region. There have been no mass arrests or mass torture. Criticism of the government is permitted. The leader of HTS Ahmed Al-Sharaa has promised to respect the rights of religious minorities and human right in general, and so far, he appears to be keeping his word. But as long as State insists that HTS is a terrorist organization, sanctions can’t be lifted and the new Syrian government can’t effectively function.
We have to be realistic. And we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Now, for Hillary and the State Department, perfect would include drag shows in Damascus. Syria is a primarily Muslim country, but all Syrians including Christians are culturally very conservative. But it’s not Afghanistan, and HTS is not the Taliban. It’s also not in Scandinavia, it’s in the Middle East. This new government will be far from ideal by U.S. standards. But it is by far the most likely chance for good that we are going to get in the circumstances.
Our adversaries, such as China and Russia, are already scheming to advance their interests by meddling in Syria. Turmoil in Syria could boil over its borders, threatening regional stability and presenting new risks to our ally Israel. We don’t need boots on the ground. All that’s needed is a directive from President Trump to lift the outdated sanctions and the outdated terrorist designation. And if the new transitional government goes back on its promises or engages in terrorism, sanctions and designations can be slapped back on with the stroke of a presidential pen.
Let’s give Syria and its new government a fighting chance. It’s the right thing to do, and in our own national interests.
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