| After more than a decade of war, everything about Syria’s political landscape has changed in the space of 72 hours. Now U.S. sanctions policy must change with it. In 2019, Congress passed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which cuts non-Americans off from the U.S. financial system if they do business with the Syrian regime. Even normal activities, such as building bridges, drilling for oil or distributing humanitarian aid after an earthquake, risk being criminalized by the United States. The law is part of a vast architecture of U.S. sanctions that have smothered the Syrian economy, choking off any possibility of reconstructing the country in the wake of a devastating war. These sanctions were passed with the best of intentions, but they backfired. Ordinary people couldn’t get around them, so their businesses closed down. But warlords and cronies politically connected to President Bashar al-Assad got a lucrative monopoly on just about everything. Even when al-Assad was still in power, there was a strong case for letting the act expire on Dec. 20 as scheduled. That case got even stronger in recent days, when a coalition of Islamist rebels forced al-Assad to flee. Virtually all the seven conditions for lifting the act have now either been met or look likely to be met. Release political prisoners? Check. Permit the safe return of Syrians? Check. End of the repression of the Syrian population by the Assad government, Russia and Iran? Check. It would be ridiculous to keep sanctions meant to punish al-Assad after al-Assad has fled. Unfortunately, it’s not unusual for U.S. sanctions to live on as zombie sanctions long after the conditions they were meant to address have changed. It took five years for Americans to lift sanctions on FARC in Colombia, a delay that jeopardized the fragile peace process there. That could happen in Syria, too. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that swept the country, is currently listed as a terrorist organization, even though it cut ties with Al Qaeda in 2016. According to Jerome Drevon, an International Crisis Group analyst who has interviewed the group’s leader multiple times, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham showed moderation in the city of Idlib, which it has governed for years, allowing Christians to celebrate Easter and Christmas and allowing women to work and attend female-only schools. If the group continues to respect religious minorities, U.S. officials should remove it from the terrorism list so that Syria’s new leaders can establish diplomatic relations with neighbors and begin to rebuild. It won’t be easy to fill the vacuum left by al-Assad. But a newquick slot, brighter chapter in Syria is possible if Americans are willing to let it take shape.
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