Christian Solidarity International (CSI) welcomes President Trump’s long-overdue decision to lift the crippling broad economic sector sanctions on Syria, announced yesterday at an international forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They were first imposed by President Obama in 2011 to hasten the overthrow of Syria’s dictatorship under Bashar al-Assad.
The sanctions have been, as a Christian leader from Syria commented to CSI as recently as last month, “weapons of mass destruction.” In pushing millions of Syrians into hunger, illness and destitution, they killed, maimed, and dehumanized civilians of all religious communities and ethnicities just as surely as bombs and bullets throughout the country’s 14-year sectarian war, which pitted jihadist-led opposition forces, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, against those of the secular Assad regime.
For this reason, and at the request of Syrian Christian leaders, CSI has been advocating since 2016 for the U.S. and its allies to remove their broad economic sector sanctions on Syria.
Six months into its rule, however, Syria’s new, jihadist-led government has already been implicated in mass atrocities against religious minorities. In particular, targeted killings resulted in the massacre of thousands of Alawites on March 6-10, more recently followed by attacks against the Druze. Christians are also increasingly threatened and discriminated against in the “new Syria.”
To this day, Syria’s new President Ahmed al-Sharaa and many of his lieutenants are still under individual sanctions imposed by the United States and the United Nations Security Council, because they are leaders of an al Qaeda-linked group.
These individual sanctions against terrorist-designated leaders should not be removed until the perpetrators of the massacres of Alawites and Druzes in Latakia, Tartus, Hama, Homs, Rif Dimashq, and Suwayda governorates are brought to justice, and the United States can ensure firm guarantees for fundamental human rights and religious freedom.
Following the massacre of Alawites in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to “stand with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.” Vice President JD Vance said, “We do not want to see another Christian community erased from the face of the earth… There are a lot of things we can do diplomatically and economically to protect some of those groups.” And during his campaign, President Trump pledged, “When I am President, I will protect persecuted Christians.”
Now is the time to fulfill these pledges.
Dr. John Eibner
President
Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
