On January 27, the European Union took the first step to ease sanctions on Syria, while the process is contingent upon the progress made by the new leadership in Damascus, following the December 8 departure of President Assad.
The first restrictions likely to be eased concern the banking, energy, and transport sectors. They are considered essential to accelerating the war-torn country’s reconstruction, strengthening stability, and normalizing financial relations with the EU, which remains Syria’s biggest international donor.
On January 6, the US issued a six-month sanctions exemption for transactions with governing institutions in Syria to ease the flow of humanitarian assistance.
The US Treasury said the move sought “to help ensure that sanctions do not impede essential services and continuity of governance functions across Syria, including the provision of electricity, energy, water, and sanitation.”
The US and EU placed severe sanctions on Syria to pressure the Syrian people to rise in desperation and overthrow the Assad regime. In the end, that never happened. It was the armed intervention by Turkey, in support of the armed Jihadists in Idlib, HTS, who swept through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus in less than two weeks, and precipitated the fall of Assad, and his escape to Moscow.
Em George in Dahr Safra said, “I used to buy European medicines before the sanctions, but later I could not and my health suffered. I used to have home heating fuel each winter, but after the sanctions prevented importing fuels I was left in the bitter cold each winter.”
Abo Abdo, a factory owner in Aleppo, said “My fabric factory employs over 500 workers. I suffered from sanctions. My work lacked fuel to run the machines, electricity for lighting and machines, and I was prevented from exporting my products abroad.”
In a paper written in 1998 by Richard N. Haass, “Economic Sanctions: Too Much of a Bad Thing”, he exposed the failure of US sanctions aimed at big projects like regime change. Thus, all of the crippling sanctions on Syria and Iran have never produced any results. Haass proves that sanctions can only be effectively used on small projects where pressure is made to bear on a limited behavioral change by the government targeted.
Over the past 15 years, US and EU sanctions have significantly impacted Syria’s economy, society, and political landscape.
Economic Impact
The Syrian pound (SYP) has drastically lost value due to sanctions, inflation, and economic instability. This has severely reduced purchasing power and resulted in currency devaluation.
Sanctions have limited Syria’s ability to export oil and import essential goods, crippling key industries and causing shortages because of trade restrictions.
Foreign investment has dropped sharply due to sanctions, hindering economic recovery and leading to investment decline.
Sanctions on the Syrian banking sector have disrupted international transactions, complicating trade and financial operations. Importers of necessary goods were forced to use risky middlemen in the Arab Gulf to send money for shipments of goods. In some cases, this circuitous route for their payments ended with the money missing, and never delivered by unscrupulous middlemen.
Humanitarian Consequences
Sanctions have led to shortages of basic goods, such as food, medicine, and fuel, worsening living conditions.
Restricted access to medical supplies and equipment has severely damaged the healthcare system, especially during crises like COVID-19, which have led to a nationwide healthcare system collapse.
Elizabeth Hoff, former director of the WHO in Damascus, lamented that most of the medical machines sitting idle in Syrian hospitals were lacking spare parts from European manufacturers who were unwilling to sell the parts to Syrian hospitals, even privately owned hospitals, for fear of running into sanctions penalties from the US or EU. Despite medical products being exempted from sanctions, suppliers would not take the time to apply for the exemption and preferred to refuse the orders.
At one point, chemotherapy drugs were unavailable in Syria, and cancer patients were left to die because of the US and EU sanctions. From 2000 to 2024, under the Assad regime, hospital visits and chemotherapy medicines were offered to patients free of charge.
Poverty
The economic downturn has increased poverty and displacement, with many Syrians struggling to meet basic needs. Although Syria was a socialist dictatorship, there had never been a welfare system to provide for the poorest of the poor. Some food items such as bread, and gasoline had been subsidized by the government, but nothing was free. There had always been Islamic and Christian charities operating, but during the 2011-2024 war period international charities were mainly delivering aid to Idlib and the Kurdish separatists, and did not send aid to the vast majority of Syria which was under the Damascus administration.
The Arab Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent humanitarian aid to Syria after the 7.8 earthquake and are continuing that aid delivered to Damascus.
Because the US and EU did not recognize the Assad regime as legitimate, they refused to supply humanitarian aid to over 75% of Syria, effectively punishing the Syrian people who were victims of a foreign-led intervention in Syria.
Political Impact
Despite the US and EU sanctions, the Assad regime retained power from 2011 to December 8, 2024. Governments are resilient and can find means to circumvent the sanctions, especially when they have powerful allies. Russia and Iran are both strong countries with resources, and they gave support to Assad.
When the US-backed Kurdish separatists took over the Syrian oil fields, Damascus bought oil from Iran, despite the US and EU sanctions banning Syria from importing petroleum products, while the Syria oil resources were in the hands of the US-occupying army and their partners, the Kurds. This lack of access to Syrian domestic petroleum products resulted in a severe lack of electricity, with most Syrian households getting 30 minutes of power, three times daily.
When the European leaders sit and debate their problems with having hosted millions of Syrian refugees, do they stop to realize that their EU sanctions caused the majority of those people to leave for a better life? Imagine not having enough electricity daily to study, cook, run a shop or office, or run an operating room of a hospital. Of course, some Syrians fled for political reasons and ideology. Surveys have shown the majority of the Syrians walking across Europe in the summer of 2015 were economic migrants; people seeking a decent lifestyle which includes having electricity as well as an income.
Long-Term Development
The conflict and sanctions have devastated infrastructure, complicating reconstruction efforts. The water pumping system in Aleppo takes its water supply from the Euphrates River. Because the US and EU sanctions prevented any infrastructure repairs for government-owned facilities, the water system for Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, was delivering completely unfiltered and untreated drinking water. In the hottest months of summer, the Euphrates water level would drop low and the contaminants would be at levels that caused an outbreak of cholera. During this period, there were no immediate battles near the water pumping station, and any US or EU humanitarian team could have safely come and added in the chlorine and repaired the filtering system to have saved hundreds of lives lost to drinking contaminated water. But, no one came. With the sanctions now eased and some lifted, infrastructure repair can begin.
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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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