AILSA CHANG, HOST:
For decades, Western countries, including the U.S., imposed layer after layer of crippling sanctions on Syria to punish its dictatorial regime. That regime fell in December, and the European Union has now suspended some sanctions, and many sanctions, though, are still ongoing, and Syrians say they need them lifted to rebuild their country. NPR's Emily Feng and Jawad Rizkallah report.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Very little of Syria's basic infrastructure works anymore. Its hospitals are nearly empty of equipment. Entire neighborhoods have been obliterated and left unfixed, and most of its power grid is still offline.
IBRAHIM HAMEJU: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: Engineer Ibrahim Hameju (ph) shows us around one of Syria's few remaining power distribution sites.
This transformer is older than me.
HAMEJU: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: But, it - yeah, it's old.
The transformer is corroded...
HAMEJU: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...And cocooned by cinder blocks to shield it from artillery strikes. All this care because it's literally irreplaceable due to U.S. sanctions. Some of those sanctions started in the 1970s. The majority came after the 2000s, however, cutting off banking and most trade to punish Syria's former regime for abetting Islamist extremists and then in response to human rights atrocities during the Civil War. So tight were sanctions on Syria that after 2019, any person found helping Syrians evade U.S. sanctions would also be sanctioned themselves.
TARIK RWANJI: It's just a black market happening, right?
FENG: This is Damascus resident Tarik Rwanji. He owns a supermarket and also teaches high school economics. One of the big topics he teaches is the impact of sanctions.
RWANJI: So when we open the book and we read about sanctions, I tell them, you are living the book right now, you know, 'cause they can see all the sanctions.
FENG: For example, Syria has ample natural resources, like cotton and petroleum. But Rwanji points out it's hard to trade that internationally and for him to even buy foreign goods for his supermarket, because Syria has no foreign exchange reserves after decades of sanctions. He echoes what nearly all Syrians feel, that sanctions punished an old regime they hated, too. But that regime is now gone, and now Rwanji wants sanctions lifted.
RWANJI: Then we can get, you know, our country built again, you know, without the help of the financial support of any country.
FENG: Syria's interim government told NPR it wants to entice some 6 million of its citizens who fled abroad during the Civil War to come back. But to do that, its new electricity minister, Omar Shaqrouq, says they need to prove to them that the country will rebuild their homes and offer basic services, like electricity.
OMAR SHAQROUQ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: He says financing is the biggest obstacle. He can now speak with foreign companies who are interested in building a new power grid for Syria, but they're not allowed to invest. No bank is allowed to process their transactions into Syria.
SHAQROUQ: (Non-English language spoken)
FENG: One of the projects Shaqrouq would like to fix is this thermal plant in Northern Syria. It was built in 1979, at the time, an impressive engineering feat.
SHAQROUQ: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The plant's director, Muhammad al-Muhammad (ph) shows me how sanctions have hampered every part of the hulking plant.
MUHAMMAD AL-MUHAMMAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The huge fan engines that once sucked in oxygen-rich air to feed the furnaces, now they're rusted beyond repair.
AL-MUHAMMAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: The cooling water pumps are also offline. Their mechanical inards have been painstakingly taken apart by engineer Mazen al-Awad in a last-ditch effort to fix them, only to discover he had no more spare parts.
MAZEN AL-AWAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: He says he has not gotten any replacement parts since 2009 because of sanctions. Al-Muhammad, the plant director, spent most of the last three decades bootstrapping workarounds to keep the plant going. But finally, last October, the last turbine stopped working, and the plant creaked to a complete halt.
AL-MUHAMMAD: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: He says he feels utterly depressed. "We feel like we're dying of frustration," he says. He spent his entire career staving off what should have been the plant's preventable closure. European and American lawmakers say Syria's new government first needs to prove it's committed to turning the page on the old regime's practices before they lift sanctions. Syrians argue they need sanctions lifted first to rebuild and thus prove they can change.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Idlib, Syria. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
