Syria Support Movement solidarity with the Syrian people
from the News Desk of The Cradle, December 12, 2024
Two members of the US Congress are urging the White House to ease “some sanctions” on Syria to help its economy in the wake of the takeover of the country by extremist armed groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
According to the letter reviewed by Reuters, Republican Representative Joe Wilson, who chairs the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, and Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle, who chairs the Free Syria Caucus, say that Washington needs to “suspend” part of a wide range of economic sanctions implemented under the Caesar Act to “build goodwill” with the extremists in power.
“A deliberate and phased approach is required to unwind sanctions and export controls against Syria,” the letter by Wilson and Boyle reportedly says, adding that the gesture could “incentivize the transitional government’s compliance with international norms.”
Sources within HTS told Reuters on Tuesday that the UN-designated terrorist organization is “in touch” with officials in Washington to lift parts of the Caesar Act sanctions. “All of the obstacles facing the Syrian people and their future should be removed,” the British outlet cites its sources as saying.
In 2019, Washington enacted the Syria-specific Caesar Act, granting the US authority to impose sanctions on anyone – regardless of nationality – who conducts business with Syria, participates in infrastructure and energy projects, provides support to the Syrian government, or supplies goods or services to the Syrian military.
Three years later, Washington passed the Captagon Act targeting Damascus to allegedly combat the illicit trade of a drug popularized by foreign-backed extremists. In 2023, US lawmakers debated a third major sanctions package for Syria, called the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act,” it aimed to punish any state that sought to normalize ties with Damascus.
“With more than half of the vital infrastructure either completely destroyed or severely damaged, the imposition of unilateral sanctions on key economic sectors, including oil, gas, electricity, trade, construction, and engineering, have quashed national income and undermine efforts towards economic recovery and reconstruction,” UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights, Alena Douhan, said in a report published in November 2022.
The economic crisis in Syria has been made worse by the years-long occupation of the country’s largest oil and wheat-producing fields in the northeast by the US army and its Kurdish proxies.
Soon after former ISIS and Al-Qaeda factions took control of Damascus – backed by hundreds of foreign extremists – officials in Washington and London started reviewing ways to lift the terrorist designation of HTS and its leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who has recently started going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
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