DAMASCUS, Syria — As Syrians mark the first anniversary of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime, they are also celebrating a likely turning point abroad: the U.S. is on the verge of removing sweeping economic sanctions that have hampered reconstruction and business.
On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal sanctions tied to the 2019 Caesar Act, passed amid mounting evidence of killings and torture under Assad. The Syrian Foreign Ministry called the move a “pivotal moment” that would restore opportunities long denied to the Syrian people. The Senate is expected to approve the repeal next week.
Officials and business owners say lifting the sanctions would clear obstacles to billions of dollars in infrastructure and humanitarian spending and would make routine commerce far easier. “After the removal of these sanctions, we will be able to deal with Visa and Mastercard,” said Yasser Homsi, owner of Sham Services, a Syrian travel company. Homsi has registered his business in the United Kingdom but still must route funds through third countries because direct transfers to Syrian accounts have been banned.
The U.S. action comes as Syrians across the country celebrated the anniversary of Assad’s ouster by opposition fighters. Festivities in Damascus, Homs and other cities included fireworks, flags and late-night honking. At the main mosque in Damascus’s Midan district, worshippers filed out of dawn prayers shortly after the moment many marked as the exact time Assad left Damascus under Russian protection on Dec. 8, 2024. Assad and his wife Asma remain in exile in Russia.
Crowds chanted “Allahu akbar!” and women ululated in celebration. A metal fence surrounding the mosque was covered with hundreds of photographs of Syrians killed during Assad’s crackdown on the 2011–12 uprising — mostly young men, but also children. Lutifa Muyadin, a neighborhood resident, paused to examine the images. “Every day since the criminal regime is gone, we have joy and freedom,” she said, adding thanks to the United States for moving to lift sanctions. “Trump stood with us. We thank him and the administration and all the people who love us.”
Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa — once an al-Qaida fighter who has renounced the group’s ideology — addressed the nation, promising to honor the trust placed in the interim government. “So let our motto be ‘honesty,’ and our pledge be construction,” he said.
Syrian-American activist Mouaz Moustafa, founder of the Syria Emergency Task Force, walked among celebrants and shared a video of a restaurant cleaner dancing with a mop as colleagues clapped. He called the joy on the streets an outpouring after years of repression: “The pure joy that everyone sees here is just an expression of how much evil they lived under,” he said, likening Assad’s fall to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “It’s really, really rare that good defeats evil.”
The mood is hopeful in many quarters, but the country also faces grim legacies and new security worries. United Nations tallies estimate at least half a million people were killed in the 13-year civil war that followed Assad’s crackdown. Hundreds of thousands remain missing; mass graves continue to be discovered in the countryside. At one site near Damascus, activists say more than 20,000 bodies may lie in multiple sunken graves.
Many Syrians now enjoy far more freedom than under Assad, yet some feel more vulnerable. New security forces include former militants who have been implicated in revenge attacks on Alawite and Druze minorities. A June suicide bombing at a church, claimed by a militant Sunni group, has heightened fears among Christian communities.
Even amid poverty and destruction, signs of economic life are appearing. In Damascus, electric taxis now ply the streets — a development that would have been nearly impossible under the old regime because new car imports were banned. 77 Auto, a company importing electric vehicles from China, has a Damascus showroom and is installing charging stations. Afraa Sharif, the company’s CEO, said lifting sanctions would allow them to activate vehicle software with Syrian registrations rather than creating registrations in China or the U.K.
Sharif also pointed to the small but symbolic shifts since Assad’s fall: she held up a single U.S. dollar and explained that under the former regime, even using the dollar symbol in accounting could land someone in prison. “We did not dare even to use the dollar symbol in accounting,” she said.
At street level, modest optimism persists. Bilal Falaha, who works in a second-hand clothing shop and makes about $5 a day, said he hopes for improvement despite personal losses: his family home was destroyed in the war, and at 40 he has not had the means to marry and raise a family. “Things will get better but people have to work hand in hand with the state,” he said.
For many Syrians, the possible lifting of U.S. sanctions and a year without Assad are intertwined signs of a new chapter — one that promises economic reopening and a chance to rebuild, even as the nation reckons with wartime wounds and lingering insecurity.
