The US has temporarily eased its sanctions on Syria in an effort to speed up aid deliveries to the country’s north-west, where almost no humanitarian assistance has arrived despite the deaths of thousands in this week’s earthquake.
The tremor that has killed nearly 23,000 people there and in neighboring Turkey added to the devastation suffered in Syria’s north, which was already badly damaged by the civil war and is now mostly under opposition control, with Bashar al-Assad’s government present only in some areas.
The US Treasury late on Thursday announced a 180-day exemption to its sanctions on Syria for “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts”. But analysts say the demands of the Assad government and the effects of the war are the main factors complicating aid deliveries into the already tense north-west, and the US move is more about reassuring banks and other institutions that they will not be punished for rendering assistance.
“I don’t think that this license will suddenly open the floodgates and allow for unhindered humanitarian access and delivery in Syria,” said Delaney Simon, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group’s US program. “There are just too many other access issues. But I hope that the license will ease the concerns of financial providers, the private sector and other actors, to show them that sanctions won’t be a risk for them to engage in Syria.”
Syria has been under US sanctions since 1979, when Washington designated it a state sponsor of terrorism. The White House tightened the restrictions further amid the Iraq war in 2004 and repeatedly once civil war broke out in 2011, which led to a collapse in relations between Syria’s government and the west.
One of the most forceful salvoes came in 2019, when Congress approved what became known as the Caesar sanctions, named for the pseudonym adopted by a Syrian military photographer who smuggled out photos documenting extensive torture in Assad’s prisons. The legislation aims to penalize the Syrian president’s backers in finance and politics abroad who have helped him stay in power ever since the first uprisings.
In announcing the license that grants a temporary reprieve for the regime, the deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, said: “I want to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people. While US sanctions programs already contain robust exemptions for humanitarian efforts, today Treasury is issuing a blanket general license to authorize earthquake relief efforts so that those providing assistance can focus on what’s needed most: saving lives and rebuilding.”
In Turkey, which has suffered the brunt of the deaths from the tremor, local rescuers working in earthquake-ravaged towns and cities have been joined by volunteers from around the world and bolstered by international aid shipments. But in Syria, where the United Nations serves as a lifeline for 4.1 million people in the north-west, only two of its aid convoys have made it through the sole border crossing with Turkey since the tremor occurred – one of which was organized before the disaster.
Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria program, blamed the Assad government and its demand that it control all earthquake aid deliveries into the country for worsening the situation in the north-west.
“That appears to have virtually crippled the United Nations’ willingness, not ability, but willingness to essentially act forthright and in a bold way, and just provide earthquake recovery anyway, across the border,” he said.
But since Damascus, along with allies like China and Russia, are eager to cast western sanctions as worsening the humanitarian situation, Washington’s exemption has its uses, Lister said.
“Sanctions is a complete side point, virtually irrelevant in terms of the flow of humanitarian assistance,” he said. “A lot of the complaints that we’re hearing around sanctions at the moment are just so, kind of, hypocritical, especially when they’re coming from supporters of the regime or from the Russians.”
