DAMASCUS, Syria — As they mark the first anniversary this week of toppling Bashar al-Assad's regime, Syrians are also celebrating another likely milestone. The U.S. is on the verge of removing economic sanctions on Syria, in a move many believe will help give the devastated country a new start.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to repeal sanctions related to the Caesar Act, passed in 2019 as more evidence emerged of killings and torture by the Assad regime.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it a "pivotal moment" that would restore opportunities denied to the Syrian people for years. The U.S. Senate is expected to approve the repeal of the sweeping sanctions next week.
Their removal would pave the way for billions of dollars in spending on infrastructure and humanitarian needs, hampered partly by other countries' adherence to U.S. financial sanctions. But it is also expected to be a major boost to local business.
"After the removal of these sanctions, we will be able to deal with Visa and Mastercard," the payment method preferred by most tourists, says Yasser Homsi, owner of Sham Services, a Syrian travel company.
Now he has registered his company in the United Kingdom but still has to send money from the U.K. to Syria via a third country because financial transfers to Syrian accounts have been banned.
Jubilant Syrians mark a year since Assad's ouster
The anniversary Monday of Assad's ouster by opposition fighters was preceded by days of celebration beforehand with fireworks and drivers waving flags and honking horns in celebration late into the night.
At the main mosque in the Midan district of Damascus Monday, worshippers filed out from dawn prayers shortly after the moment celebrated as the exact time Assad lifted off from Damascus under Russian protection on Dec. 8, 2024. He and his wife Asma remain in exile in Russia.
Worshipers chanted "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great") and women ululated in traditional celebration, spilling out into the crowded streets. The metal fence around the mosque was covered with hundreds of photographs of Syrians killed during Assad's crackdown on the uprising in 2011 and 2012. Most were young men but there were also children's photos among the dead.
Neighborhood resident Lutifa Muyadin strolled past examining the images.
"Every day since the criminal regime is gone, we have joy and freedom," she says, giving thanks to God and credit to those who gave their lives to toppling Assad.
She adds a thank you to the United States for moving to lift the sanctions. "Trump stood with us," she says. "We thank him and the administration and all the people who love us."
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a one-time al-Qaida fighter who has renounced the militant group's ideology, said in a nationwide address that he would work hard to fulfill his country's promise.
"The people granted us their trust after years of oppression and injustice," he said in the speech. "So let our motto be 'honesty,' and our pledge be construction."
Syrian-American activist Mouaz Moustafa, founder of the Syria Emergency Task Force, had been walking the streets enjoying the celebrations. He played a video he recorded of a restaurant cleaner dancing with a squeegee mop while other workers clapped.
"The pure joy that everyone sees here is just an expression of how much evil they lived under," he says, comparing Assad's overthrow to the fall of the Berlin Wall. "It's really, really rare that good defeats evil."
Although some are more afraid than before, many have more freedom
Assad, threatened by revolt against his regime's widespread repression, killing and corruption, called in the help of Iran and Russia to put down uprisings in a civil war that lasted 13 years. The United Nations says at least half a million people were killed. Hundreds of thousands are missing — many of them believed buried in mass graves still being discovered in the countryside.
At one grave site found just a few miles from Damascus, more than 20 indentations of sunken sand mark individual mass graves where Moustafa, the activist, says about 20,000 bodies are believed to be buried. As the bodies decompose the earth and sand has sunk around them.
Although the majority of Syrians now have far more freedom than under the Assad regime, some are now more afraid than they were before.
President Sharaa's new security forces include former militants who have been implicated in revenge killings on Alawite and Druze minorities. A June suicide bombing at a church claimed by a militant Sunni Muslim group has also left many Christians in fear.
In many places there is a new sense of possibilities. In Damascus, new electric taxis roam the streets in a country which up until a year ago could not import new cars. The company importing them from China, 77 Auto, has a Damascus showroom filled with gleaming electric vehicles and is installing charging stations around the city.
Lifting sanctions would mean that they will be able to activate the vehicles' software using Syrian registrations rather than creating registrations in China or the U.K., says Afraa Sharif, the company's chief executive officer.
She says the dealership's parent company completed an electric car factory two years ago with the approval of the former regime but the authorities never allowed them to open it.
Sharif holds up a single U.S. dollar, explaining that to be found with one under the former regime would likely land her in prison.
"We did not dare even to use the dollar symbol in accounting," she says.
Despite Syria's widespread poverty, even those struggling economically retain a sense of optimism.
Bilal Falaha works in a second-hand clothing shop and earns about $5 a day but says he is hopeful about Syria's future.
His family's home was destroyed in the war and, at 40, he has never had enough money to be able to get married and raise a family.
"Things will get better but people have to work hand in hand with the state," he says.
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