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The decision last week by the US to lift the Caesar Act sanctions imposed on Syria is, without exaggeration, one of the most consequential and constructive shifts in international policy toward the country since the civil war began in 2011.

For years, the sanctions were framed as a tool of pressure meant to induce political change. In reality, they were a blunt instrument that deepened human suffering, froze economic life and locked Syria into a cycle of paralysis.

Their removal signals a long-overdue recognition that rebuilding societies requires engagement, not permanent isolation. The move should be welcomed, not only as a humanitarian necessity but as a strategic recalibration rooted in realism.

Syria endured more than a decade of conflict, displacement and economic collapse. The Caesar sanctions did not exist in a vacuum; they compounded the war’s damage by suffocating the very mechanisms needed for recovery. By lifting them, Washington has opened a door that had been shut: the door to normalization of economic life, gradual reconstruction and political responsibility.

For ordinary Syrians, this decision is profoundly meaningful. Sanctions did not punish abstract power structures, they punished normal daily life. They restricted imports of essential goods, discouraged investment in hospitals and infrastructure, and crippled the currency.

Lifting them creates immediate space for economic relief, for humanitarian organizations to operate at scale, and for the stabilization of basic services to begin. It offers Syrians the........

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