I did a long-form interview with RÆSON Magazine, a Danish magazine about politics in Denmark and the world. The piece was published in Danish and is behind a paywall. However, I received permission from the interview to share the English transcript exclusively for my Coffee in the Desert readers.
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Jesse Marks: Syria's future is uncertain, but there is reason for cautious optimism
Interview by August Østergaard Nilsson
RÆSON: Donald Trump has just returned from his trip to the Middle East, where on Tuesday, he announced that he intends to lift sanctions on Syria to give the country “a chance at greatness.” Why is Trump choosing to lift sanctions on Syria?
MARKS: I think it's a culmination of a number of things: First and foremost, the collapse of Assad in theory was the objective of the sanctions – at least the Ceasar Sanctions. Furthermore, there's also this realization that in the post-Assad period in Syria the sanctions have de facto punished the Syrians themselves who participated in the overthrow of the Syrian government.
So, there was a misalignment of what sanctions were meant to do and the impact that they were having. I was in Syria earlier this year and it was disheartening to see how many people blamed sanctions as a primary impediment to preventing them from going to their homes and rebuilding their lives.
When you look at the iceberg, we see the decision to lift sanctions at the top, but when you look under the surface there has been a large, coordinated effort between NGOs, civil society, humanitarian organizations, Syrian diaspora, private sector actors, and countries in the region –
some of the GCC states, Jordan, Turkey, and some EU partners – who have been putting pressure on the US to lift sanctions in order to jumpstart the process of recovery.
RÆSON: How will the lifting of sanctions play out practically?
MARKS: Sanctions are a complex issue: The U.S. has roughly 70 years of sanctions on Syria: unravelling that onion with its many layers is a complex situation. It's not just that Trump says, “I'm lifting sanctions on Syria” and suddenly sanctions on Syria are lifted – Trump has the ability to lift some sanctions on Syria, but some of the sanctions, like Caesar Sanctions, are Congress’ jurisdiction.
What President Trump’s statement to lift sanctions does is initiate a long process of identifying which sanctions get lifted, when, where, and how. The president has the authority to lift some sanctions unilaterally; OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control, red.) at the Department of Treasury has the ability to lift some sanctions, and then Congress is required to lift others.
Trump also has presidential authority to suspend Caesar sanctions on Syria for up to 180 days. He could choose to do that right away which would have immediate positive impacts.
RÆSON: For the past decade, the Syrian people have been dependent on development aid from USAID. This has been cut in the large-scale downsizing of the agency led by Elon Musk. Can the lifting of sanctions make up for the lack of funding from USAID?
MARKS: Earlier this year the Trump-administration terminated U.S. foreign aid for Syria that helped keep Syrians alive and provided a level of humanitarian support for millions suffering in the conflict: As a result of that loss of support, Syria was left with a humanitarian emergency without any more pillars of support. Then, E.U. funding cuts which followed amplified this loss.
Within a week, NGOs had no more money to provide food and water for displacement camps in the Northwest and Northeast. Hospitals closed down. And, in the worst cases, people lost all access to services. That had a direct effect on Syrian refugees' decisions to remain in the camp: A surge of people left the camps to go back to their areas of origin – places which were ultimately destroyed or mined.
In that situation, sanction relief was the only viable lifeline left: allowing for economic activity to return to the country, allowing for private sector investment, relaxing the banking restrictions so that people can access cash, people can receive reparations from diaspora abroad, and aid agencies can receive foreign donations.
Basically, you have to build an infrastructure for organizations to survive and continue to provide aid outside of USAID funding – and to some extent outside of EU funding, because EU funding is also decreasing.
What Trump is doing now is utilizing sanctions relief as a new form of aid. While this is indeed a welcome step, this approach is problematic because the humanitarian aid that was there initially is what provided people their basic survival – medical access, food, water, camps, shelter – and sanctions will take time to ultimately be able to solve the liquidity issue in the country. Thus sanctions is a medium term solution. Aid agencies need funding now.
RÆSON: Will it be enough to just lift sanctions?
MARKS: It really depends on how quickly sanctions are lifted and in what way. It is difficult because there are still concerns among many in the EU, the US, and the UN over the legitimacy of the caretaker government: There are still concerns over the influence of HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the militant organization previously led by Syria’s caretaker president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, red.) in the government. All of these concerns do not dissipate just because President Trump says, “we're lifting sanctions”.
The reality is that it is going to take time. And in the near term, humanitarian assistance and support is not necessarily being delivered at scale: A number of NGOs have closed their doors or laid off most of their staff because their funding either dried up or was terminated. The remaining NGOs are providing assistance and doing their best, but it's at a very marginal fraction of what it was.
The one way that we may see some early impacts is if Trump chooses to suspend the Ceasar sanctions on Syria which he has presidential authority to do for up to 180 days. If we see that implemented in say the next week, then we can finally get to work untangling 75 years of sanctions, providing Trump does not reverse course. In practice, it means having a robust conversation among U.S. officials, lawyers, NGOs, and financial institutions about a large range of issues including building trust with U.S. banks, reforming Syria’s financial system so more robust transparent anticorruption safeguards are in place, and ultimately doing the hard work of recreating Syria’s image as a major risk to a hopeful future.
RÆSON: How do you think the lifting of sanctions will affect the Syrian diaspora in Europe? Will they be able to go back?
MARKS: There's been some discussions around a potential “go-and-see-process” for Syrians who have refugee status. This essentially means that they will be able to go to Syria, check on their land, check on their housing, and then come back to Europe without losing their refugee status. I think those programs are important because it acknowledges and respects the fact that many Syrians in Europe may not be able to permanently go back right now – but it does give people, who think they may be able to, the freedom to go and check on conditions in Syria.
I underscore that that right has to be protected because when we (Refugees International, red.) were in refugee camps in Northwest Syria we met people who had come back to Syria, went to go check on their land, and ultimately found that their homes were fully destroyed, that their land was mined, or that there were no services available – the prospect of return was not viable. So, they ended up in displacement camps in the Northwest.
What would be required for their recovery is demining, setting up services etc. which are all limited by sanctions. So, it's a very difficult spiral.
RÆSON: You said that the aim of the sanctions was basically to topple the Assad regime, but if we're looking at the new caretaker president, Ahmed al-Sharra, he was until very recently on the US terror list and had a $10 million bounty over his head. He has also been a part of Al-Qaeda and has led Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Why is the US lifting sanctions on a country that has an – until recently – “terrorist” leader as president?
MARKS: I think countries are trying to reconcile that within themselves currently. I think this is a question that's unfolding and there are varying camps across multiple governments who are having this debate internally.
When you talk to Syrians, many are hesitant or cautiously optimistic. There are a lot of people who are watching and waiting to see what happens and they are benchmarking the perceived reform of Sharaa based on some of these decisions: Is he going to rule like Assad? Is he going to rule like in Idlib (city in Northeastern Syria controlled by the HTS since 2017, red.)? Or is he going to create a cohesive Syria that is inclusive for all Syrian minorities? is he going to have the motivation to assert greater command and control over the militias that he formerly fought with?
All of these are going to be benchmarks. The question of his past is certainly present in people’s hesitations, and that's what really draws much of the concern. But I think most people are looking to the present and the future to determine his legitimacy: Can we day by day verify that this guy is making the right decisions and is moving Syria on the right path?
RÆSON: Are there any indicators of what the answer to these questions might be?
MARKS: For example, Sharra has appointed Raed al-Saleh as Minister of Disaster Management and Emergency Response. He was the founder and former president of the White Helmets (humanitarian organization, red.), and for many, that was a good move. This is someone who
is trusted, has strong ties to the West and is a point of access for people who may have concerns with the government, but are looking for pillars in the caretaker government that they can trust and engage with.
There's a lot of indicators in which people are acknowledging the President’s past, and as bitter a taste in their mouths as that may be, they're looking at what's happening day to day because they see the potential for a better future for Syria under the current status quo than what they had before December 7th 2024.
RÆSON: Do you see the lifting of sanctions as being merely for the sake of the Syrian civilian population or is it also to be seen within a context of the broader American Middle East strategy? In other words, does the US win or lose strategically by lifting the sanctions and normalizing its relations with Syria?
MARKS: You can see it through two different lenses: Trump has a robust relationship with Israel and Trump has a robust relationship with the GCC. And sometimes these relationships are compartmentalized, because pursuing one often means constraining the other.
What Trump did in the GCC, he will most likely perceive as a victory for the US. And through that, we'll see normalization with Syria and the potential lifting of sanctions. The potential full lifting of sanctions on Syria will be perceived as a net win for the U.S. But that's going to be really linked to if the new caretaker government is persistent in terms of the steps that they're supposed to take.
But lifting US sanctions was not necessarily for the US – It was for Syrians first, then for the countries neighbouring Syria, then the GCC and the EU who wanted to invest and move on from the last 15 years to rebuild and find ways to allow people to return.
RÆSON: You mention the schism between America’s alignment with the GCC and its alignment with Israel. Israel has launched a bombing campaign over most of Syria while America is striving towards normalization. How do you explain that?
MARKS: I don't think the Israelis are fully aligned with the rest of the region when it comes to where they want the future of Syria to go. I think they can be brought on board, certainly. I just think the political environment right now for the Israelis is quite constrained.
But they're certainly not buying any goodwill based on the foreign policy they've been pushing inside of Syria: It tends to be counterintuitive to what I would presume their interest to be, which is kind of a stable border. And at some point, with Trump offering normalization, it doesn't seem that the ongoing Israeli foreign policy is receptive to that.
However, I do think there is a point in time where the Israelis can come to an agreement with the US on what their approach to Syria will be. But I think that's going to be influenced heavily by what happens in Gaza, Lebanon, and other parts of the region.
RÆSON: How does the lifting of sanctions play into the more geostrategic rivalry of the great powers right now?
MARKS: It's really unclear to me how Syria fits within this whole strategic competition paradigm: China lost its privileged position in Syria because they vehemently backed the Assad government – this is going to create some levels of constraint for their involvement. And Trump's ongoing engagements with Russia show that he's willing to coordinate with them and to find ways to work through some difficult issues both in Ukraine and in Syria where Russia still has some level of interest in maintaining its bases.
A clear win for the trump administration has been to dismantle the Iranian influence in the country and then de-link that from Iranian hegemony over the reconstruction process: That's where the US has the potential to turn normalization into a geostrategic win.
RÆSON: It seems that al-Sharaa has managed to effectively court the West with both his attire and his statements. For example, he has started wearing Western suits and refers to Israel as “the Israeli state.” Although this has allegedly helped to get some of the sanctions lifted, could it also create a backlash among his own supporters?
MARKS: That's what everyone is watching: This is one of the measures of whether he, as a president, has the ability to control the factions that were previously under his purview who maintain long-term spoilers to peace in Syria. There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered that everyone from China to Russia to the US to the UN are all deliberating, such as the presence of foreign fighters and the potential of an ISIS resurgence.
Sharaa is in a difficult position because this is a revolutionary government, and the idea of a vanguard still exists because you still have pro-Assad militias which still aim to threaten the legitimacy of the existing government. The, you also have all of these Syrian fighters who have been fighting Assad from Northwest Syria who helped recapture Damascus, basically being told, “either join the Ministry of Defence or lay down your guns and go live in peace to your Alawi, Christian, Kurdish neighbours.”
The concept of demographic engineering and the legacy of the last 15 years is still prominent in many parts of Syria. People are still finding mass graves and, in some cases, they still blame their neighbour – none of that went away. It's just been largely masked by a hope that Assad being overthrown, creates the conditions for a national movement to move beyond the last 15 years where people have been exhausted.
RÆSON: Looking at al-Sharah's own past in Al-Qaeda, a lot of Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities, be it Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Christians or Armenians seem sceptical about his ability to actually unite such a diverse country. Do you think that they're right in being that sceptical?
MARKS: It's natural if you belong to a community that was harmed or mistreated during a period of 15 years of brutal civil war that you would be dismissive or on guard. For example, the Druze won't give up their weapons because they don't trust that a military that is formed of militias who previously participated in acts of violence against them would now protect them. This is the tension that exists with integrating a country like Syria.
I do think it's possible with rigorous command and control in the military alongside an effective process to demobilize, disarm, and reintegrate fighters into civilian life. Through that you can eventually build trust – but that takes time.
The level of mistrust among communities was deep, and that creates this very natural, understandable sentiment of mistrust of the new caretaker government.
The way the state can earn the respect of the people is by building an inclusive political process by which they build an inclusive government that people can trust and participate in. That's really going to be the measure of success for the new government.
RÆSON: Does Ahmed al-Sharah have actual control over his country right now? Or are there still strongholds of different militant groups as there has been during the civil war?
MARKS: This whole concept of building power in post-conflict Syria is a game of managing: It is managing competing interests, competing ethnicities, competing religions, competing identities, competing visions of life, expectations and class. It also includes competing visions of those both inside the state and the diaspora abroad.
There are so many grievances going back under the last five decades of Assad rule. Sharaa is having to manage all of that. So, to assume that there would be total control in six months, to me, is unfair.
And that's not that I'm giving him a pass by any means: They did take back Damascus – great – but HTS was a terrorist organization for a reason. There is legitimate mistrust that persists with minorities.
We do, however, see evidence that pathways are emerging. The big one to watch is the SDF: The SDF is the single largest military inside of Syria – well-trained, well-armed, connected to the U.S – and between Mazloum Abdi (leader of the SDF, red.) and Shara, you do see engagement. Is it easy? No. Is it rocky? Yes. Are there huge, massive gaps in expectation of what it's going to look like for a reintegration? Absolutely. But they're talking. That in itself was a massive development
You have an agreement between PKK and Turkey and Turkey has an interest in having a larger foothold in Syria. The external component of new actors coming in who previously played roles in funding and facilitating aspects of the war adds more complexity to the environment, but they're talking and at the end of the day that's the starting point of any form of mediation of any form of peace or pathway to integration.
Many of the concerns are still there – those are not going away. We've seen periods of violence against minorities in the country, and there are still a lot of questions regarding what happens to the remaining armed groups.
But considering where they've come in six months is really astounding. I'm not giving that to Sharaa, I'm not giving that to the government, I'm giving that to the Syrian people because they have willingly chosen to celebrate the collapse of the Assad government and they are buying into a political project that they want to see.
RÆSON: HTS has ruled Idlib since 2017. Is it possible to use Idlib as sort of a prism into what awaits Syria under al-Shara's rule?
MARKS: It's one thing to govern three to five million people and then to inherit responsibility of 21 million people which includes a large swath of armed groups: The model of governance in Idlib was this dynamic process of balancing NGOs, civil society, state, military, but also competing fractions north of Idlib, so they have experience – those muscles are not new.
They have shown a level of maturity in how they’ve governed in Idlib: There was a functional government knowing how to set up institutions etc. Now they're learning to understand sanctions and all these things in play. It’s a learning process but they're trying to figure out how to engage with NGOs and the UN, which is complicated for a new government – but the conversations do happen, and the more they engage and learn, the better they understand those systems, the more they can actually work with UN and aid agencies to deploy aid, and have a more cohesive humanitarian or civil service response until they get to a point where they can have a more vibrant civil service. Until then, there will continue to be a major reliance on civil society.
RÆSON: It seems – as your saying – that what characterized their governance in Idlib was a great deal of effectiveness. But what also characterized their ruling in Idlib was a relatively strict Islamic doctrine. Do you think that it's the same form of rule that now is emerging throughout Syria today?
MARKS: I am not an Islamic studies or political Islam expert, but what I can get into is that there is a very robust and dynamic conversation happening inside and outside of the country over what the future constitution of the country should look like, and what the constitution of the government should look like.
What is the structure of the new government? What is it driven by? Is it an Islamic state? Is it a secular society? Those conversations are dynamic and they're happening now.
Sharra is governing over a country that is still very heavily armed with a kaleidoscope of views of how Syria should look. So, there is a security dilemma in that different groups potentially can use violence. No one that I’ve engaged with wants to see a return to that – so there is a strong incentive to participate in the new government structure.
RÆSON: From your analytical perspective, are you hopeful when it comes to the prospect of a democratic future for Syria?
MARKS: I see a pathway and I share the cautious optimism of many Syrians who I work with and engage with: They see a pathway to a more inclusive Syrian state, which is indigenously representative of its people – a state in which people have participation, can engage and have a voice in shaping the government.
If you want to learn more about this topic or would like research and advisory support for your company or institution, please reach me at jesse.marks@rihlaadvisory.com or visit us at Rihla Research & Advisory.