Years-old sanctions on the Bashar Assad regime are receiving new scrutiny amid efforts to speed delivery of humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands of Syrians injured or displaced by this month’s devastating earthquake.
But the debate in Washington, and in the Syrian diaspora community more broadly, on how best to serve the interests of the Syrian people after 12 years of disastrous civil war is highly fraught with differing views over whether it is possible to relax sanctions without financially and politically benefiting Assad.
The rebel-held northwestern part of Syria was hardest hit by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake on the Turkish-Syrian border on Feb. 6. Nearly 6,000 Syrians are estimated to have died in the quake, according to the United Nations, and tens of thousands more have been injured or displaced. Those numbers are on top of the estimated 4.1 million people in northwestern Syria who already relied on humanitarian assistance before the earthquake.
