Congress Sanctions a Syrian Government That No Longer Exists
The Caesar Act was meant to punish Bashar Assad’s government. It’s now a serious obstacle to Syria’s reconstruction.
If a government falls in the world, but Congress isn't around to hear it, did it really fall? Apparently not. The military budget signed into law by President Joe Biden on Monday includes a five-year renewal of the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, an economic sanctions package designed to lead to the overthrow of Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, which already happened weeks ago.
The Caesar Act is not just a case of Congress passing redundant zombie legislation. It's also an example of economic sanctions, sold as a way to protect human rights from a dictatorship, instead causing suffering and instability. Although the architects of the law presented it as a way to punish Assad and his cronies personally, the sanctions were explicitly designed to keep Syria in ruins as long as Assad was in power.
The fact that the legislative cycle moves slower than events on the ground has led to some very telling admissions. Pro-revolution supporters who argued for sanctions on Assad's government are now in the position of arguing against sanctions on the new government.
The Syrian American Council, which claimed in 2020 that the Caesar Act would "minimize the impact on Syrian civilians by applying highly targeted sanctions," is now lobbying against the law. "We were in constant discussions with the opposition in Syria to extend the act," council president Farouk Bilal told The New Arab earlier this week. "After the regime's fall, we sought to halt its extension but failed due to the lack of time."
The Caesar Act was named for a Syrian police defector code-named "Caesar," who smuggled out tens of thousands of photos showing people tortured to death by Assad's government from 2011 to 2013, at the beginning of the Syrian civil war. In 2014, Caesar testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee disguised in a blue hoodie, and Congress passed sanctions on Syria in his name as part of the 2019 military budget.
The U.S. government insisted in public that the sanctions would only punish Assad and his cronies. James Jeffrey, who served as special representative for Syria engagement during the first Trump administration, told Arab media in 2020 that "the sanctions are carefully selected and packaged to target regime figures and not the average person." He groaned that anyone who said otherwise was choosing to "believe Assad over the international community."
Joel Rayburn, one of Jeffrey's deputies, told Congress a few months later that reports of food shortages caused by sanctions were a "propaganda campaign" by the Syrian government.
But in addition to imposing visa bans and asset freezes on high-level Syrian officials, the text of the Caesar Act clearly states that it is designed "to deter foreign persons from entering into contracts related to reconstruction" of areas controlled by the Syrian government. Nestled inside the law's list of sanctions targets, alongside pro-Assad mercenaries and arms dealers, is anyone who "provides significant construction or engineering services to the Government of Syria." In other words, the sanctions would punish Assad by preventing the people under his rule from putting their lives back together.
As another former Trump administration official, Andrew Tabler, wrote in a 2023 essay: "All investors are placed on the horns of a dilemma—if they invest in Syrian reconstruction under al-Assad, they risk being cut off from trade and transactions with not only the United States but global financial institutions as well."
The Biden administration continued the same policy, which was "to oppose the reconstruction of Syria until there is irreversible progress toward a political solution," in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Caesar Act was one of many U.S. economic sanctions on Syria. The United States also banned investment in Syrian oil and imposed a near-total embargo on American exports to Syria in 2011. Even the language-learning platform Duolingo wasn't allowed to sell virtual English lessons to Syrians.
The conflict was more or less frozen in 2020 with a Russian-Turkish ceasefire. While the economy slowly came back to life in pockets of Syria under rebel control, the majority of the country under central government control suffered from blackouts and bread lines. Satellite imagery shows that electricity use in 2024 was 10 times higher than in 2018 in non-Kurdish rebel-held areas—Kurds fared slightly worse because of an ongoing Turkish military campaign against them—and 50 percent lower than in 2018 in government territory.
But the results weren't exactly a shining success for U.S. foreign policy. In late November 2024, rebels based in Idlib Province launched a sudden uprising. They quickly overran exhausted and hungry government loyalists in the rest of the country. Within a week and a half, the rebels managed to chase Assad out of his palace in Damascus. The leader of this rebel coalition is Ahmad al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the former leader of Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate.
Rayburn himself fumed on social media that Golani was "delusional" and wanted to install "himself as another dictator in Assad's place."
Until Washington decides otherwise, the new Syrian government has inherited all of the sanctions of the old one. The Caesar Act, for example, bars reconstruction of areas controlled by "the Government of Syria"—not Assad's government specifically—where "civilians have been subject to forced displacement." The president can suspend the sanctions by certifying to Congress that Syria has met certain human rights conditions.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R–S.C.) was a co-sponsor of the Caesar Act and one of the biggest boosters of expanding the sanctions. After Syria suffered from a massive earthquake in February 2023, the Biden administration issued limited sanctions waivers to allow for relief efforts. Wilson said that he was "deeply saddened" by the measures that "will do nothing to help the earthquake relief and will only endanger Syrian civilians by enriching the regime."
In a letter to the Biden administration earlier this month, however, Wilson sang a different tune: "The administration should issue waivers and general licenses to suspend sanctions statutes and executive orders connected to reconstruction, economic development, foreign investment, and other critical economic activities….Such temporary waivers and licenses at this critical time could build good will for the United States in Syria and help sideline terrorist groups by facilitating economic and financial access for ordinary Syrians." It turns out that the sanctions Wilson helped design didn't distinguish between the government and civilians, after all.
