DAMASCUS — One year after Assad’s fall, Syrians across the country are testing whether a battered nation can turn the page as foreign sanctions ease, refugees trickle home, and a new Islamist-rooted president promises a “strong, just nation” from the ruins of war, Dec. 9, 2025.
The reset is bold but fragile, built atop a decimated economy, deep sectarian grievances, and a security apparatus that analysts warn could yet swap one form of authoritarianism for another.
Sanctions thaw, but scars of Assad’s fall run deep.
For more than a decade, broad U.S. and European measures isolated Syria’s economy, tightening from 2011 onward into oil embargoes, banking bans, and, later, the sweeping Caesar Act sanctions targeting Bashar al-Assad’s war machine.
That architecture is now being dismantled. According to the U.S. Treasury’s updated Syria sanctions notice, a June 30 executive order removed most U.S. restrictions on trade with Syria effective July 1 while keeping penalties on Assad, alleged human rights abusers, Captagon traffickers, and extremist groups.
In May, European Union foreign ministers agreed to lift their own economic embargo in an effort to boost reconstruction, a step first reported in detail by Al Jazeera. Together, those decisions reopened trade channels essentially closed since 2011, even as targeted measures remain in place against Assad-era figures.
Syria’s central bank governor, AbdulKader Husrieh, told Reuters last week that the economy is growing faster than the World Bank’s 1 percent forecast for 2025, citing the return of roughly 1.5 million refugees and plans to relaunch the currency while lopping two zeros off the Syrian pound. He called the repeal of many U.S. measures “a miracle,” even as lawyers warn that compliance risks and residual sanctions still complicate investment.
In Washington, Congress is moving to fold a full repeal of remaining Caesar Act provisions into the annual defense bill, tying future relief to certifications that Damascus is fighting ISIS, avoiding unprovoked attacks on neighbors, and respecting minority rights. Supporters say that would convert a blunt instrument into leverage over Syria’s new rulers; critics fear it could again make ordinary Syrians collateral damage if relations sour.
Refugees return to a shattered homeland after Assad’s fall.
As front lines quieted and sanctions eased, people and money began to move. The U.N. refugee agency says about 1.2 million Syrian refugees and 1.9 million internally displaced people have gone home since Assad was toppled, roughly 3.1 million returns tied to the first year after Assad’s fall. A recent UNHCR briefing, however, warned that 16.5 million people still need aid across Syria.
In Europe, new guidance issued this month says most opponents of Assad and draft evaders “are no longer at risk of persecution,” signalling that some Syrians who once had solid asylum claims may now be expected to consider going back. Aid groups say that shift, combined with easing sanctions, is already nudging more families to explore return programs, even as they weigh the risks of property disputes, vetting by security services, and limited jobs.
UNHCR’s recent appeal on “historic” Syrian returns underscores the tension: the agency’s $1.5 billion 2025 plan is just one-third funded, and a Reuters analysis suggests that donor fatigue could slow the pace of returns next year despite improved security. “Without sustained support, people will go back to ruins,” one aid official warned in Geneva.
Justice, security, and the unfinished business of Assad’s fall
President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham commander who led the lightning offensive that seized Damascus and sent Assad fleeing to Russia in December 2024, has reoriented Syria’s alliances away from Tehran and Moscow toward the United States, Gulf states, and Turkey. He has promised a “historic break” from what he calls a dark chapter of Assad rule, vowing to build an inclusive order rooted in Islamic and democratic principles.
The reality is more complicated. A detailed Guardian investigation this week chronicled cycles of retaliatory violence, particularly against Alawite and Druze communities, and a patchwork of courts and militias that leaves many Syrians unsure where absolute authority lies. Human rights groups say the transition has so far relied more on symbolic trials and public reenactments of massacres than on a comprehensive accountability plan.
Photo essays from Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs show streets packed with fireworks and flags to celebrate the anniversary of Assad’s fall, even as ruined apartment blocks loom over the crowds and former regime prisons like Sednaya stand as haunted ruins or museums. From exile in Moscow, Assad now lives under tight Russian supervision and remains wanted by Syria’s new authorities, who have repeatedly demanded his handover for trial.
From siege to opening: a long arc toward Assad’s fall
For many Syrians, the promise and peril of this reset cannot be separated from the long road to Assad’s fall. A 2021 Reuters timeline of the conflict traced how peaceful protests in 2011 spiraled into a multi-sided war, drawing in Iran, Russia, the United States, and regional powers, killing hundreds of thousands and hollowing out the state.
By the end of 2015, UNHCR’s Global Trends report recorded 4.9 million Syrian refugees, 6.6 million internally displaced, and about 11.7 million people uprooted in total — a snapshot of a displacement crisis that still shapes the region.
Sanctions deepened the pain. In 2019, a Reuters report on the Syrian pound described the currency plunging to record lows as tighter Western sanctions and war damage eroded the central bank’s reserves, driving up food and fuel prices. A 2020 Carter Center study detailed how U.S. and EU sanctions escalated in stages after 2011, often hindering medical imports and banking channels even when exemptions existed on paper.
Those years of war, economic siege, and mass flight shape expectations now: relief as shelves refill and the power stays on longer, fear that new rulers might entrench their own security state, and quiet resignation among millions who may never return. Whether this bold but fragile reset after Assad’s fall becomes a genuine recovery will hinge on whether Syria’s new authorities can deliver security, jobs, and justice without reviving the abuses that first drove people into the streets in 2011.
