On Friday, Syria’s central bank announced that a shipment of local currency had arrived from Russia, where the Syrian lira has been printed for years.
The move follows a phone call between Syria’s de facto president Ahmad al-Sharaa and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and may provide a clue about the future relations between the countries.
While the fall of Assad was welcomed and even celebrated by many western states, they remain largely hesitant when it comes to lifting sanctions that were meant to weaken the ousted president’s grip on power.
Syria’s economy, battered by years of war, was further weakened by these sanctions, which make it nearly impossible for investment and serious reconstruction efforts.
I have almost zero knowledge about Syria, historical, political, or otherwise, so please take this as the genuine question it is:
While HTC (I assume this is the current government?) is obviously not perfect, are they not still a clear improvement over Assad? I guess it’s possible that the new government would treat people similarly, but just has different “enemies”, which would explain why the new government freed people imprisoned by the Assad regime.
HTS is short for Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, or the Levant Liberation Front, and it’s the main and leading faction of the multi-faction offensive that took down Assad in December, and they constitute the core of the new transition government. Also while they’re not perfect, and it’s very unclear how they’re going to run things going forward, they’re absolutely a massive improvement over Assad. Assad was running a reign of terror that’s reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany.