After back-to-back earthquakes devastated areas surrounding the Turkish-Syrian border and took the lives of tens of thousands, the Biden administration temporarily lifted sanctions placed on the Syrian government in order to expedite international aid. This response has sparked renewed debate about the ethics and efficacy of the US-led sanctions on Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian administration in Syria. Progressive groups in the United States and the Assad government itself have called for a permanent end to the sanctions in the wake of the earthquake, while liberals and conservatives alike warn against further capitulation to the Assad administration.

The sanctions placed on the Syrian government were legislated by the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, passed in 2019 by the Trump administration. The act was billed as an effort to hold the Assad government accountable for war crimes committed in the civil war that has engulfed the country since 2011, a conflict that was inflamed by US-led foreign intervention. The United States had long eyed the overthrow of the Iran- and Russia-aligned Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, whose father Hafez’s internal coup of the Ba’ath party saw the country’s political life cohere around an authoritarian cult of personality. Still reeling from the invasion of Iraq, the United States saw civil unrest in Syria during the Arab Spring as an opportunity to influence regime change. Foreign intervention in Syria caused the unrest to spiral into a seemingly never-ending, ongoing civil war that has been a battleground of international tensions between Russia, Iran, and the United States.

Still embroiled in conflict and now effectively cut off from the global economy, the Syrian economy immediately collapsed after the sanctions were passed in 2019. Contrary to the Caesar Act’s purported aims, Syrian civilians rather than the Assad government have borne the brunt of the sanctions’ fallout, with government-connected firms raking in profits through contracts with foreign relief agencies that allow them to siphon off aid.