Syria’s New President Still Has to Convince the US He’s a Statesman
Ahmed Al-Sharaa needs Washington to lift sanctions against his country if he has any hope of leading an economic recovery.
Illustration: Carlo Giambarresi for Bloomberg
In Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria (Little, Brown 2019), Sam Dagher shows how dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s refusal to engage with Syria’s pro-democracy movement — and willingness to use brute force to keep power — devastated the country and destabilized the Middle East. In this Next Chapter, Dagher examines the challenges facing the post-Assad government and its new leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
When a delegation of Syrian Americans met with President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus earlier this year, he said the onus was on them to help remove crippling US sanctions on Syria. The Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act, which sanctions anyone dealing with the Syrian government (excluding humanitarian aid), was passed in 2019 and meant to sunset five years later. But Syrian-American groups had lobbied to extend it through 2029 — succeeding just days before Sharaa’s rebel forces toppled the Bashar Al-Assad regime.