Sanctions against 12 Syrian institutions, including the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior, have been removed.
The UK has removed sanctions against 12 Syrian government agencies, including the Defence and the Interior Ministry and the General Information Bureau.
Thursday’s move comes four months after an armed group of Hayat Taharil al-Sham (HTS), who expelled President Bashar al-Assad after more than 13 years of war, led the opposition group.
Entities removed from the sanctions list will no longer be subject to asset freezes. A notice posted to London by the UK Financial Sanctions Bureau’s Implementation Bureau.
The fact that those targets of sanctions are either “involved in the suppression of Syrian civilians” or “received or benefit from the Syrian regime” by al-Assad, did not explain the abolition.
In March, the UK government frozen the assets of the Syrian Central Bank and 23 other entities, including the banks and oil companies. However, it emphasizes the existence of sanctions on members of the al-Assad regime.
The new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to convince the Western capital that international sanctions should be lifted.
Speaking at a television event with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani said earlier this year:
Some countries, including the United States, say they will wait for new authorities to gain power and secure human rights before lifting sanctions.
Last week, officials from visiting countries called on Syrian authorities to begin the economic recovery process without waiting for Western sanctions to be lifted.
“Waiting for sanctions to be lifted is nowhere to go,” Abdallah al-Dhardal, regional head of Arab countries for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told AFP News in an interview in Damascus.
It took decades to recover
The UNDP report in February estimated that at current growth rates Syria would need more than 50 years to return to pre-war economic levels, calling for large investments to accelerate the process.
According to a UN survey, nine out of 10 Syrians live in poverty, a quarter of them are unemployed, and Syrian GDP “shrinked to less than half its value” in 2011, when the war began in 2011.
Syria’s Human Development Index score is a factor in life expectancy, education and standard of living, and has dropped to its worst level since it was first included in the index in 1990.
The UNDP Report estimates Syria’s “lost GDP” during the war between 2011 and 2024 is approximately $800 million.
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