Syria and sanctions

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Syria.

President Trump meets today with Syria’s interim president during his visit to Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. has long used economic sanctions to punish regimes that violate human rights. That’s why Congress passed the CAESAR Act in 2019—code named for the whistleblower who smuggled out photos from Syria that proved atrocities.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The law targets Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad for his use of chemical warfare, torture, and more. It seeks to hold the regime accountable by targeting anyone who helped support it.

Now with Assad gone, some lawmakers are calling for an end to the sanctions. But others say hold on. Syria’s long history of political and religious violence makes trust a dangerous thing.

WORLD reporter Leo Briceno has the story.

LEO BRICENO: Going back to 2011, American sanctions on Syria block global dollars and products from going in, and Syrian oil from coming out. In 2019, lawmakers added restrictions for anyone doing business with Syria.

That’s forced Syrians to get creative with getting basic necessities, like propane.

Middle East studies professor Michael Provence saw this firsthand back in March. He called me from France.

MICHAEL PROVENCE: And when I came from Lebanon, my taxi driver took propane bottles—big ones, you know like what people use in their houses, which is like a 10 gallon tank probably—and he had those in his trunk in the trunk of the car when we crossed and when we went back to Lebanon a few days later, he took empty tanks.

Provence studies the modern history of the Middle East at the University of California, San Diego. He says that the CAESAR Act makes imports like gas almost impossible to get through normal means.

PROVENCE: It played a big role in strangling the previous government which was a good thing. But now it’s starving people to death.

In December, a hodgepodge of militia groups flooded the capital city of Damascus, bringing Asaad’s reign of terror to an end. But to restore order, Syria badly needs investment to repair its economy, and basic utilities like its power grid. Joshua Landis is the co-director for the center for middle east studies at the University of Oklahoma.

JOSHUA LANDIS: These guys who have taken over the government are from Idlib province. And they’re fighters, they don’t have much expertise. They’re going to need foreign companies to come in and build. They don’t have money. The government is completely bankrupt.

Congressman Cory Mills of Florida went on a two-day fact-finding mission to Damascus last month to see if the new regime would protect religious, political, and social minorities.

Mills told me outside the Capitol that he’s encouraged by what he saw.

CORY MILLS: The ministry of, I think, special tourism and transition is a Christian female with full authorization. You have equal representation from within from the Alawites, the Druze, the Christians, the Muslims.

At the head of that new government is Ahmed al-Sharaa, the rebel leader that led the insurgency against Assad. For lawmakers like Mills, his leadership will be the key factor for decisions about sanctions. Mills met with al-Sharaa and said that interaction went well, but:

MILLS: We can’t forget about his past, obviously …

That “past” is a dark one. Before he was al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president went by another name—al Jolani. University of Oklahoma professor Landis says al Jolani was the war name he carried as a terrorist.

LANDIS: He was al Qaeda in Syria. He was the captain. At the age of 20, he went to Iraq from Syria to fight America in 2003 when America invaded right at the beginning. And he joined Al Aqeda there, and he became a foot soldier. Evidently he was good at setting out roadside bombs.

It wasn’t until he got into hot water with another Islamic extremist group that Al Jolani re-branded himself as a Syrian Freedom fighter. Now he’s making the case that he wants to establish peace. But American lawmakers want to see results first.

Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

TIM BURCHETT: I’m taking a shot. You know? Six months to a year? Get rid of it, and I don’t want to give them.. I don’t want them to be just covering stuff up either. I mean, they’ve got, they have to have some realistic, realistic objectives.

Even with new leadership, life in Syria is still pretty turbulent. Earlier this year, sectarian conflicts between religious groups turned deadly when more than 1,000 people died in mass shootings carried out by Islamic extremists against non-Sunni minorities, including Christians.

The Sunni Muslim government has pledged to combat these kinds of outbursts. But its affiliation with radical groups carrying out the attacks doesn’t sit well with lawmakers who want to see stronger protections in place before removing sanctions.

Congressman Mills says perhaps there’s middle ground.

MILLS: We could not lift the sanctions, just suspend the current sanctions, where if the metric isn’t met and the conditions aren’t met we could flip the switch right back on and go right back into full sanctions and never touch them again.

Mills said he’s working with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a handful of other members in the House of Representatives to draft legislation on such a proposal. He has not said when he expects to unveil it, but he hopes the legislation gives the United States the opportunity to bring more stability to the region.

MILLS: President Trump will go down in history as the guy who not only created the Abraham Accords and expanded it but pushed Russia out of their stronghold for 50-plus years in Syria and created more stabilization in the Middle East that we haven’t seen in decades without putting a single boot on the ground.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

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