WASHINGTON — A month after the rebel offensive that toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the United States announced a 6-month waiver to ease the delivery of humanitarian aid to the heavily sanctioned country.
The Biden administration stopped short of lifting the sweeping sanctions imposed during the civil war to punish the Assad regime, a decision that is expected to fall to President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office later this month.
The measure unveiled Monday, known as a general license, authorizes certain transactions with the new Syrian government for six months. It’s meant to reassure aid organizations and banks wary of transferring money into Syria that humanitarian activities, including the provision of water, electricity and energy, won’t violate US sanctions on the country.
The top American diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, told Al-Monitor in a Dec. 20 phone briefing that the Biden administration will “continue to refine [its] approach” to sanctions as the situation unfolds.
“We want to do what we can to help Syrians recover economically from the years of war and mismanagement,” Leaf said.
Syria’s economy has been shattered by nearly 14 years of civil war and more than half a century of ironfisted Assad family rule. The vast majority of people across the country live in poverty, with three in every four people requiring aid to survive, according to the United Nations. The cost of reconstruction is estimated at $400 billion.
The administration issued the carveout after hearing from aid organizations who warned that the preexisting sanctions would complicate the humanitarian response and eventual rebuilding of Syria. On Friday, a group of Syrian Americans met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington to call for the lifting of sanctions as well as the reopening of the US Embassy in Damascus, as a signal of the American commitment to the war-battered country.
During a visit to Doha on Sunday, Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani urged the United States to lift sanctions he said “constitute a barrier and an obstacle to the rapid recovery and development of the Syrian people.”
The outgoing Biden administration has also resisted removing the terrorist blacklisting of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that spearheaded the lightning-fast offensive to oust Assad and is now overseeing the country’s political transition.
Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to any member of a US-designated foreign terrorist organization. Aid workers in Syria say they are proceeding with caution, unsure of whether they would run afoul of the law for routine interactions such as paying road tolls, utility bills or local taxes to the HTS-affiliated government in Damascus.
HTS traces its origins to al-Qaeda but publicly broke ties with the group in 2016. During a visit to Syria last month, US officials informed HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa that they were dropping the $10 million bounty on his head after he agreed to prevent terrorist groups in Syria from posing a threat to the United States or the region.
The Biden administration remains wary of promises made by Sharaa, who is seeking international recognition for his fledgling government and claims to have moderated his views. In recent weeks, the HTS leader has hosted in Damascus a flurry of US, European and Middle Eastern diplomats who have conditioned future economic support on a peaceful transition that protects the rights of Syria’s women and minorities.
“Europe will support” Syria in its transition, “but Europe will not finance new Islamist structures,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters after her meetings in Syria last week.
This is a developing story and has been updated.