Syria’s new leaders have few models to follow in their quest to win international recognition. No guidebooks exist on how to run a government for groups operating under terrorist designations—and there is no clear set of rules for foreign governments on how to bring a former al Qaeda affiliate in from the cold. But Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that dislodged Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in early December, and outside governments alike can learn from a cautionary precedent: the Taliban’s 2021 return to power in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban seized Kabul, Afghanistan staggered under the weight of sanctions and other kinds of economic and diplomatic isolation. Other governments failed to act with sufficient speed and boldness to ease the country’s poverty crisis, and they left in place economic punishments that had no moderating effect on the Taliban but pushed Afghans closer to famine. Most countries declined to negotiate with the Taliban in a way that might have promoted women’s rights and other international norms, choosing instead to wait and see whether Afghanistan’s new leaders would do so on their own. That reluctance to engage with the Taliban dealt a blow to the movement’s pragmatic wing, empowering hard-liners during the regime’s precarious first months.

International officials have engaged more deeply with HTS in the past month than they did with the Taliban after the fall of Kabul. HTS encouraged that outreach by foreign officials by demonstrating a political and ideological flexibility that distinguishes the group from the Taliban. Yet unfortunately, outside actors seem poised to repeat many of the same mistakes they made in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover.

During a political transition, every step can change the course of history. Western officials, in particular, seem excited about the prospect of a new Syria, and rightly so. But without actions that allow Syria to rebuild and reinvigorate its economy after years of war, the country could suffer further chaos and instability, which neither the West nor Syrians want. Western governments have a strong interest in learning from their missteps in Afghanistan, because a prolonged crisis in Syria would likely spill over into the rest of the Middle East, undermine Western influence in the region, and force more people to flee the country. Most important, Syrians deserve better.

The United States and its partners should act swiftly to soften the harsh effects of sanctions on Syria as it attempts to recover. They should also establish a clear path toward the removal of these sanctions and diplomatic recognition for HTS in exchange for actions and commitments from Syria’s new leaders. If the West drags its heels, it could push the country toward collapse and squander its short window of opportunity to convince the ex-rebels to pursue the right path.

HISTORY LESSONS

It is impossible to calculate the degree to which external actions affected Afghanistan after the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover. Nobody can disaggregate the effects of international policies from the impact of the Taliban’s awful misrule. But two lessons pertinent to the Syrian case emerge from Afghanistan’s recent history.

The first is that, in the Afghan case, international actors moved too slowly to ease humanitarian suffering, especially the impoverishing effects of their own sanctions, banking restrictions, and other economic policies. The United States, the United Nations, and other entities initially levied sanctions on the Taliban in the 1990s and ramped them up after September 11, 2001. That legacy of restrictions on the Taliban, however, effectively condemned the entire country after the former insurgents captured the government. Ordinary Afghans could see that the Taliban had pushed out the foreign troops that had been deployed to the country since 2001, when U.S.-led forces toppled an earlier Taliban government, and many viewed the economic measures against the Taliban as an act of revenge by defeated invaders. Materially, the sanctions and restrictions contributed to sharp declines in the value of the local currency, the central bank’s loss of access to its reserves, and disruptions to supply chains in the months after the Taliban’s return. By December 2021, UN agencies were describing Afghanistan as the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster.

Only six months after the fall of Kabul, with famine looming, did foreign governments modify their sanctions to a degree that began to approach the scale of the calamity. Washington granted the most sweeping exemptions ever written for U.S. sanctions, and the UN improved Afghanistan’s monetary stability by sending cash shipments for aid operations. These measures helped, but they came too late and were too timid. Private firms and development agencies felt reluctant to do business in a pariah state with a crippled banking sector. Many would-be investors did not know about the U.S. exemptions, and those that did still worried about violating the sanctions and breaking the antiterrorism laws of other countries that had not loosened their rules.

A second lesson should be learned, too, from the West’s failure to give the Taliban adequate clarity about how to gain diplomatic recognition and shake off sanctions. Although foreign actors talked about the need for stability and took some measures to ease the economic crisis, international engagements remained limited by the West’s reluctance to take any steps that might confer legitimacy on Kabul’s new leaders. Western governments made hazy demands about respecting women’s rights and forming an “inclusive” government—a well-intended but vague term now floated by international actors discussing Syria’s future—but did not define the quid pro quo.

The lion’s share of responsibility for Afghanistan’s pariah status falls on the shoulders of the clerics who insisted on regulating the behavior of women and girls in ways that violated international norms and made the Taliban politically toxic. But there were pragmatists within the Taliban, too. These moderates were never able to convince the hard-liners that more tolerant policies would result in significant benefits, in part because the outside world failed to offer clear rewards for instituting better policies. Over and over, pragmatists among the Taliban visited their religious leaders in Kandahar to push against new draconian edicts. But each time, they arrived empty-handed.

The closest thing to an outright offer emerged in June 2023, during a visit UN Special Coordinator Feridun Sinirlioglu made to Afghanistan. During that visit, Taliban officials got the impression that their government could represent Afghanistan at the UN if they allowed girls of all ages to receive an education. But the Taliban wanted a firm proposal, which they never received. After consultations with UN member states, Sinirlioglu’s report to the Security Council laid out an extensive set of demands for the Taliban—but only nebulous promises about the path toward normalization that the regime could win in return.

It is, of course, not guaranteed that a more transactional approach would have persuaded the Taliban’s leadership to change their policies in exchange for recognition and sanctions relief. Some diplomats bridle at the very idea of haggling with the Taliban, saying that the rights of women and girls are nonnegotiable. But such an approach was never properly tested. Without any real prospect of serious concessions from Western states, the Taliban became cynical about ever gaining legitimacy on the world stage.

TEMPERATE WINDS

Like the Taliban, Syria’s new leaders come from a militant Islamist movement. HTS emerged in 2017 after a coalition of several armed groups formed around a jihadist faction called Jabhat al-Nusra. The al-Nusra faction had been created by Ahmed al-Shara, HTS’s current leader, who at the time was a Syrian member of the Islamic State (or ISIS). In 2013, however, Shara cut ties with ISIS and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda before breaking with that group in 2016.

But in crucial ways, HTS does not resemble the Taliban. The Taliban’s leader was born in a mud-walled village, advocates strict religious education, and preaches against the evil influences of the outside world. By contrast, HTS’s leaders, although religiously committed, emerged from modern cities in Syria, often graduated from universities, and want more global connections. The group has long sought to shed its links with the West’s enemies, starting with the terrorist groups that the West reviles. HTS clamped down hard on Hurras al-Din, an al Qaeda affiliate in northwest Syria that was not involved in the 2024 rebellion against Assad. The group suppressed Syrian ISIS members more severely, arresting and sometimes executing them in public, and it vows to continue fighting ISIS in Syria’s east.

Additionally, Syria’s rebels have spent years fending off attacks from two longtime nemeses of the West: Assad and Russia. Their victory saw the downfall of two American foes, whereas the Taliban’s win epitomized American defeat. Although HTS is now undertaking a delicate dance to avoid antagonizing Russia—offering Moscow the opportunity to retain its military bases in Syria—the new authorities in Damascus recently hosted Ukraine’s foreign minister and pledged to strengthen ties with Kyiv. HTS’s relationship with Iran has been much colder, bordering on hostile, as the group asserts that Iran must be held accountable for its many destabilizing actions in Syria. The ex-rebels have also affirmed that they will not threaten Syria’s neighbors—a gesture that seems, in part, intended to give comfort to Israel, the United States’ closest regional ally.

Syria’s new leaders also have a more moderate governance record. When HTS governed Idlib—the province it has controlled since 2017—it did maintain restrictions on some non-Islamic faiths that had been imposed by previous ruling factions, such as silencing church bells. The group also included no women in its leadership or in the local legislature. Yet overall, the rebels have been substantially more tolerant than the Taliban. Morality police patrol Afghanistan, but earlier this year, HTS froze proposed regulations that called for the enforcement of Islamic rules in the malls, restaurants, and cafés of Idlib. Conservative religious elements dominate the Taliban’s leadership, but HTS has disempowered its own most radical sheikhs. The group touts its record of promoting education for girls of all ages, albeit with classes segregated by gender.

Since taking Damascus, Syria’s rebels have adopted a markedly conciliatory tone. HTS has pledged to respect the rights of Christians, Alawites, and other minority groups. It affirmed the right of all sectors of society to engage in peaceful protests. The group has committed to disbanding and merging itself into official government structures. Syria’s new leaders have also recently appointed women to leadership roles, including to head the Department of Women’s Affairs and Syria’s central bank.

HTS’s moderate rhetoric and actions may find a skeptical audience around the world because of the group’s past affiliations and lingering questions about how it will manage to govern a large country. But Syria’s new leaders seem much more eager than the Taliban ever was to curry favor with the West, in part because HTS’s leaders appear to understand that development and reconstruction will require Western support and sanctions relief. Outside powers should gain confidence in Damascus if the new authorities rule with the same openness they have shown in their first weeks in power.

INHERITANCE TAX

But the fact that the Syrian rebels are sending more palatable messages to outside powers does not mean they will find it easier to escape sanctions than the Taliban did. The United Nations, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and other influential states still designate HTS as a terrorist group. Since 2014, the United States has considered HTS a foreign terrorist organization—a designation with harsher implications than the Taliban’s specially designated global terrorist label. The FTO designation makes its targets politically and legally radioactive, in part because the United States outlaws extending any material support to listed groups, including training and advice. Severe penalties can be imposed on both Americans and non-Americans who break the rules, including fines of up to $500,000 and decades in prison. With an FTO-listed group acting as Syria’s new government, virtually all dealings in the country are now fraught with legal risk, hampering aid workers, business owners, and even diplomats from working in the country. Even if HTS disbands, its FTO status will not automatically be revoked; rolling the designation back could take years.

Adding to the restrictions on HTS are the complex sanctions on the state of Syria itself, which the new leaders will inherit. The United States designated Syria a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979 and tightened sanctions in the early years of this century; in the 2010s, as the Syrian government brutally repressed a popular uprising and sank into civil war, the United States, the European Union, and other international entities issued fresh economic restrictions that persist today. These include sanctions on the energy, banking, and telecommunications sectors; restrictions on importing most U.S. goods, as well as goods from other countries with components made in the United States; and rules that forbid non-U.S. businesses from trading with Syrian companies. Many of the restrictions were imposed legislatively, making them especially difficult to lift. The result of these overlapping restrictions is a near-total trade embargo.

Before the December fall of Damascus, sanctions—along with other factors such as the Assad regime’s mismanagement—had contributed to the collapse of the Syrian economy and a humanitarian crisis that left 70 percent of Syria’s population in dire need of food, water, and other essentials. The economic restrictions also hindered aid delivery: humanitarian groups struggled to find banks for payments into Syria, and the extra paperwork required for legal compliance ate up time and resources. Delays in delivering aid sometimes proved deadly. For instance, first responders to the 2023 earthquake that hit Syria as well as Turkey spent weeks waiting for permission to bring in the diggers that they needed to reach survivors under the rubble, because U.S. export controls banned the importation of such tools. 

These kinds of headaches will continue as long as broad economic restrictions remain in place—and many of the sanctions have, in any case, lost relevance because they targeted the now-defunct Assad regime. Without sanctions relief, poverty and hindrances to aid delivery will worsen in Syria because the new government is controlled by a group with a terrorist designation. Already, in the parts of northwest Syria that have been under HTS control for years, fear of prosecution has hindered the supply of basic goods and the provision of aid. Now, these problems may well spread across the entire country.

POVERTY TRAP

Unless it is quickly addressed, the isolation that the world has imposed on HTS and the Syrian state could create a crisis that outstrips Afghanistan’s. The spate of battles that led to Assad’s overthrow displaced about 900,000 Syrians in the final months of 2024. The UN has forecasted that 33 million Syrians will need assistance in the coming year. Even if foreign powers move swiftly on the humanitarian front, foreign aid cannot sustain an entire country: Syria needs not only emergency supplies but also support for the recovery of its economy, which ground to a halt during the war. Economic repair will require both financial and technical support from donors and international institutions. Yet institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund remain blocked by the U.S. state sponsor of terrorism designation that requires Washington, a deciding vote on these institutions’ boards, to oppose such help. Other actors such as the EU also maintain regulations against loans and grants to Syria. Moreover, as long as HTS remains on the U.S. FTO list, any expert who provides advice to the new regime risks breaking U.S. laws.

Economic recovery will also require the swift resumption of private-sector activity and international trade, which contracted by around 80 percent from 2010 to 2022. But many countries prohibit their citizens from doing business with Syria. And as long as Syria’s central bank remains under sanctions, its financial institutions will remain closed to the world. Further complications may arise from the fact that any central bank would have trouble meeting global standards on combating the financing of terrorism if the arbiter of new appointments at the bank is a listed terrorist.

Continued isolation of Syria’s economy risks driving it deeper into the shadows. If Syrians cannot get permission to trade with the world, they may instead rely further on the illicit industries that have been among the country’s few sources of profit in recent years. Assad’s regime relied on producing and exporting captagon, a banned stimulant. International officials will push HTS to curb the drug trade, but Syria’s leaders will struggle to comply unless those appeals are paired with fresh economic opportunities to build sustainable livelihoods.

A deepening economic and humanitarian crisis in Syria could also undermine Western geopolitical interests. The Assad regime, cut off from the rest of the world, depended heavily on Russia and Iran. Syria’s new leaders are trying to distance their country from both these actors; days after Assad’s ouster, an oil tanker full of Iranian crude made a U-turn away from Syria, suggesting that Tehran might stop backing the country’s energy sector. But if Western restrictions on Syria’s economy remain in place, the new leaders of Damascus may have little choice but to ask for help from Western adversaries in order to keep the lights on.

OUT OF A BIND

Western governments want to see Syria remade for the better, reverse the flow of migration, and work to suppress terrorism. Backroom discussions have accelerated in recent weeks between Western and Arab countries about how to engage with Syria’s new leaders. Senior officials from France, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Gulf Arab states, and the UN, among others, have already talked to HTS, and several have embarked on visits to Damascus. In late December, the United States even removed the $10 million bounty on Shara. Direct talks at a senior level would have been unthinkable just a month ago, when many states had a policy of nonengagement with HTS.

There are other signs, however, that the world may make many of the same mistakes in Syria that it did in Afghanistan after 2021. Western capitals have not been willing to commit to a road map for sanctions relief and eventual recognition of the new authorities—one in which specific actions by HTS would be met with specific steps by Western countries. Nor have they taken the measures that are now urgently required to soften the impact of sanctions on Syria’s humanitarian and economic crisis.

European and U.S. officials have, over the past several weeks, floated numerous requirements of HTS, such as demanding that the group take action against transnational militancy, create a more inclusive government, uphold women’s and minority rights, close Russian bases, and hold free and fair elections. But nobody has clarified precisely what the world will offer the ex-rebels in return or how HTS should prioritize the litany of demands. On the contrary, policymakers are kicking the can down the road.

HTS is, of course, responsible for playing its part in a successful transition. Its inclusion of other armed groups in its rebellion—among them groups sanctioned by the UN Security Council for links to al Qaeda and ISIS—could raise red flags, and some observers worry that HTS contains a hard core of extremists who are concealing their true ambitions until the group consolidates power. Some governments have expressed concern about HTS’s recent decision to grant a small number of official roles in the new Syrian military to foreign fighters. Other capitals fear that early outreach could reward the rebels before they have a track record of decent governance. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently warned HTS to avoid the missteps of Taliban leaders, who he said projected a moderate face before the group’s “true colors came out.”

NO TIME TO WAIT

In the absence of decisive action from international actors, Syria is poised to descend further into crisis, as Afghanistan did. To avert this fate, foreign governments must quickly stop sanctions from driving Syria into a deeper economic and humanitarian emergency.

Right away, the United States, the EU, the United Kingdom, and other actors should issue broad exemptions to allow economic and commercial activity, similar to the General License 20 that the U.S. Treasury issued in 2022 for Afghanistan. Such permissions would save lives in the short term, aligning with Western interests in shoring up the region’s stability and reversing the outflow of migrants. The steps could be taken in a matter of days via actions by the U.S. Treasury, the Council of the EU, and the British treasury and would build on existing exemptions for humanitarian aid.

Other actions to relieve pressure on key sectors such as Syria’s energy and banking should also be taken immediately, without imposing conditions. Although the country’s economic growth will lag as long as Syria remains under sanctions, no recovery can begin while the essential activities of key sectors are blocked. Such reforms would not compromise the leverage that sanctions give foreign powers, given the sheer quantity of restrictions on Syria that are currently in place. Enacting such sanctions relief will be time-consuming, since it requires a combination of legislative, regulatory, and other actions untaken by various arms of the U.S. government, the EU, the United Kingdom, and other actors, so Western governments should start the process of unraveling those restrictions now.

In the coming weeks, foreign governments should also coordinate to offer clear, realistic, and time-bound demands for Syria’s new leaders in exchange for further relief from both the terrorism sanctions that affect them directly as well as other economic restrictions imposed on the Assad regime. These negotiations can take place via bilateral talks, as well as engagements in multilateral forums. If foreign governments define realistic benchmarks that Syria’s new leaders can meet to obtain sanctions relief, they could receive concrete concessions from HTS, such as commitments on good governance and guarantees that both the Syrian state and other groups inside the country will not pose a threat abroad. Reaching agreements often requires difficult compromises, but doing so would hold both the ex-rebels and international officials accountable for their parts of the bargain. Governments that worry about trading away their leverage should remember that delisting HTS and providing Syria with sanctions relief now would not stop them from undertaking other punitive actions later if the circumstances require it.

Unfortunately, international actors already appear to be missing their opportunity to set the new Syria up for success. On December 23, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a law that extends the 2019 Caesar Act, which imposed some of the harshest sanctions on Syria, for five years—even though most of the criteria for suspending those sanctions have been satisfied since Assad’s ouster. Lawmakers said it was too early to lift the sanctions. In mid-December, Idaho Senator Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Congress would “watch and see” how HTS governs.

Waiting and watching is a self-defeating strategy and does nothing for desperate Syrians. Nor does it do anything to keep the country from collapsing. Syria now stands at a crossroads: one path offers a chance to rebuild and reengage with the world, and the other leads toward deeper isolation and suffering for the Syrian people. International actors should learn from their failures in Afghanistan and move decisively. They should seize the chance to push HTS to make concessions that would set Syria on a path toward economic recovery and sustainable governance while taking credible steps to address international security concerns. A strong global response can reduce the chances of another Afghanistan-style tragedy.