Rehabilitation And Confidence Tricks: al-Sharaa, Trump And Sanctions

Contrary to the propaganda of moral upstarts, terrorism pays. It proves rewarding. It establishes states and reconstitutes others. It encourages change, for ill or otherwise. The stance taken, righteously pitiful, on not negotiating with those who practise it, is as faulty as battling gravity. The case of Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is a brilliant example of this. While seen as a new broom that did away with the government of President Bashar al-Assad in such stunning fashion, al-Sharaa’s bristles remain blood speckled.

The scene says it all: a meeting lasting 37 minutes in Riyadh with a US President holding hands in communal machismo with a bearded Jihadi warrior who once had a $10 million bounty on his head. Present was the delighted Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joining by telephone.

It proved most rewarding for al-Sharaa, who has become a salesman for the new Syria, scrubbing up for appearances. His main message: remove crushing sanctions barring access to investment and finance. It also proved rewarding for the efforts made by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in convincing the Trump administration that a new approach towards Damascus was warranted. “The sanctions,” reflected Trump, “were brutal and crippling and served as an important, really, an important function nevertheless at the time, but now it’s their time to shine.” But lifting sanctions would offer Syria “a chance at greatness”. This signalled a striking volte face from the stance taken in December 2024, when Trump expressed the view that Syria was “a mess”, not a friend of the United States and not deserving of any intervention from Washington.

In remarks made by Trump to journalists keeping him company, the US President expressed admiration for the strongman, the brute, the resilient survivor. “Tough guy, very strong past.” And what a past, one marked by links to al-Qaeda via the affiliate Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that were only severed in 2017. HTS’s predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, was commanded by al-Sharaa, then known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. In January 2017, HTS was born as a collective of Salafi jihadists comprising Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki, Liwa al-Haq, Jaysh al-Sunna and Jabhat Ansar al-Din.

Even at present, a shadow lingers over al-Sharaa’s interim government. In March, over 100 people were butchered in the coastal city of Banias. These atrocities were directed against the Alawite minority and instigated by militias affiliated with the new regime, ostensibly as part of a response to attacks in Latakia and Tartous from armed groups affiliated with the deposed Assad regime. According to Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard, “the authorities failed to intervene to stop the killings. Once again, Syrian civilians have found themselves bearing the heaviest cost as parties to the conflict seek to settle scores.”

The announcement by Trump on lifting US sanctions sent officials scurrying. While the plan to bring Syria out of the cold had been on the books for some months, the timing, as with all things with the US president, was fickle. Presidential waivers on sanctions do, after all, only go so far and the more technically minded will have to pour over the details of repeal.

The Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a dose of clarification some 24 hours after the announcement. “If we make enough progress, we’d like to see the law repealed, because you’re going to struggle to find people to [invest] in a country when [at any point] in six months, sanctions could come back. We’re not there yet. That’s premature.”

Progress is in the works, with Rubio meeting his Syrian counterpart, Foreign Minister Asad Hassan al-Shaibani in Antalya on May 15. In comments from State Department spokesman, Tammy Bruce, the Secretary “welcomed the Syrian government’s calls for peace with Israel, efforts to end Iran’s influence in Syria, commitment to ascertaining the fate of US citizens missing or killed in Syria, and elimination of all chemical weapons.”

In answers to a press gathering, Rubio revealed how much of a success al-Sharaa has been in wooing Washington. “We have governing authorities there now who have expressed, not openly and repeatedly, that they do – that this is a nationalistic movement designed to building their country in a pluralistic society in which all the different elements of Syrian society are able to live together.” There had also been an interest in normalising ties with Israel and “driving out foreign fighters and terrorists and others that would destabilize the country and are enemies of this transitional authority.”

While no mention is made of al-Sharaa’s own colourful, bloodied past, the previous ruler, Assad, comes in for scathing mention. His rule was “brutal”, one characterised by gassing and murdering “his own people”. It was Assad who sowed the seeds that would allow foreign fighters to take root in Syria’s soil. How curious that HTS would have attracted those very same fighters.

Things have come full circle. The Assad dynasts, who kept a watchful eye on fundamentalist Islamists, are gone. The Islamists, with their various backers, Turkey and Saudi Arabia being most prominent, are now nominally in charge. The rest is a confidence trick that might, given al-Sharaa’s recent performance, just work.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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