POLITICAL CONDITIONS
Officially, Syria is a republic. In reality,
however, it is an authoritarian regime that exhibits only the forms of
a democratic system. Although citizens ostensibly vote for the
President and members of Parliament, they do not have the right to
change their government. The late President Hafiz Al-Asad was confirmed
by unopposed referenda five times. His son, Bashar Al-Asad, also was
confirmed by an unopposed referendum in July 2000. The President and
his senior aides, particularly those in the military and security
services, ultimately make most basic decisions in political and
economic life, with a very limited degree of public accountability.
Political opposition to the President is not tolerated. Syria has been
under a state of emergency since 1963. Syrian governments have
justified martial law by the state of war, which continues to exist
with Israel and by continuing threats posed by terrorist groups.
The Asad regime (little has changed since Bashar
Al-Asad succeeded his father) has held power longer than any other
Syrian government since independence; its survival is due partly to a
strong desire for stability and the regime's success in giving groups
such as religious minorities and peasant farmers a stake in society.
The expansion of the government bureaucracy has also created a large
class loyal to the regime. The President's continuing strength is due
also to the army's continued loyalty and the effectiveness of Syria's
large internal security apparatus. The leadership of both is comprised
largely of members of Asad's own Alawi sect. The several main branches
of the security services operate independently of each other and
outside of the legal system. Each continues to be responsible for human
rights violations.
All three branches of government are guided by the
views of the Ba'ath Party, whose primacy in state institutions is
assured by the constitution. The Ba'ath platform is proclaimed
succinctly in the party's slogan: "Unity, freedom, and socialism." The
party has traditionally been considered both socialist, advocating
state ownership of the means of industrial production and the
redistribution of agricultural land, and revolutionary, dedicated to
carrying a socialist revolution to every part of the Arab world.
Founded by Michel 'Aflaq, a Syrian Christian and Salah al-Din Al-Bitar,
a Syrian Sunni, the Ba'ath Party embraces secularism and has attracted
supporters of all faiths in many Arab countries, especially Iraq,
Jordan, and Lebanon. Since August 1990, however, the party has tended
to de-emphasize socialism and to stress both pan-Arab unity and the
need for gradual reform of the Syrian economy.
Nine smaller political parties are permitted to
exist and, along with the Ba'ath Party, make up the National
Progressive Front (NPF), a grouping of parties that represents the sole
framework of legal political party participation for citizens. While
created ostensibly to give the appearance of a multi-party system, the
NPF is dominated by the Ba'ath Party and does not change the
essentially one-party character of the political system. Non-Ba'ath
parties included in the NPF represent small political groupings of a
few hundred members each and conform strictly to Ba'ath Party and
government policies. There were reports in 2005, in the wake of the
June Ba'ath Party Congress, that the government was considering
legislation to permit the formation of new political parties and the
legalization of parties previously banned. These changes have not taken
place. In addition, some 15 small independent parties outside the NPF
operate without government sanction.
The Ba'ath Party dominates the parliament, which
is known as the People's Council. With members elected every 4 years,
the Council has no independent authority. The executive branch retains
ultimate control over the legislative process, although
parliamentarians may criticize policies and modify draft laws;
according to the constitution and its bylaws, a group of 10
parliamentarians can propose legislation. During 2001, two independent
members of parliament, Ma'mun al-Humsy and Riad Seif, who had advocated
political reforms, were stripped of their parliamentary immunity and
tried and convicted of charges of "attempting to illegally change the
constitution." Seif was released from prison in early 2006, but remains
under strict surveillance by the security services. The government has
allowed independent non-NPF candidates to run for a limited allotment
of seats in the 250-member People's Council. Following the April 22-23,
2007 parliamentary elections, the NPF strengthened its hold on
parliament, with the number of non-NPF deputies shrinking from 83 to
80, ensuring a permanent absolute majority for the Ba'ath
Party-dominated NPF.
There was a surge of interest in political reform
after Bashar al-Asad assumed power in 2000. Human rights activists and
other civil society advocates, as well as some parliamentarians, became
more outspoken during a period referred to as "Damascus Spring" (July
2000-February 2001). Asad also made a series of appointments of
reform-minded advisors to formal and less formal positions, and
included a number of similarly oriented individuals in his cabinet. The
2001 arrest and long-term detention of the two reformist
parliamentarians and the apparent marginalizing of some of the
reformist advisors in the past five years, indicate that the pace of
any political reform in Syria is likely to be much slower than the
short-lived Damascus Spring promised. A crackdown on civil society in
2005, in the wake of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, and again in the
late winter and spring of 2006, reinforced the perception that any
steps toward political form were likely to be halting and piecemeal at
best.
ECONOMY
Syria is a middle-income, developing country with
an economy based on agriculture, oil, industry, and tourism. However,
Syria's economy faces serious challenges and impediments to growth,
including: a large and poorly performing public sector; declining rates
of oil production; widening non-oil deficit; wide scale corruption;
weak financial and capital markets; and high rates of unemployment tied
to a high population growth rate. In addition, Syria currently is the
subject of U.S. economic sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act,
which prohibits the export and re-export of most U.S. products to
Syria.
As a result of an inefficient and corrupt
centrally planned economy, Syria has low rates of investment, and low
levels of industrial and agricultural productivity. Its GDP growth rate
was approximately 2.9% in 2005, according to IMF statistics. The two
main pillars of the Syrian economy have been agriculture and oil.
Agriculture, for instance, accounts for 25% of GDP and employs 42% of
the total labor force. The government hopes to attract new investment
in the tourism, natural gas, and service sectors to diversify its
economy and reduce its dependence on oil and agriculture. The
government has begun to institute economic reforms aimed at
liberalizing most markets, but reform thus far has been slow and ad
hoc. For ideological reasons, privatization of government enterprises
is explicitly rejected. Therefore major sectors of the economy
including refining, ports operation, air transportation, power
generation, and water distribution, remain firmly controlled by the
government.
The Bashar al-Asad government started its reform
efforts by changing the regulatory environment in the financial sector.
In 2001, Syria legalized private banking and the sector, while still
nascent, has been growing quickly in the last four years. Controls on
foreign exchange continue to be one of the biggest impediments to the
growth of the banking sector, although Syria has taken gradual steps to
loosen those controls. In 2003, the government canceled a law that
criminalized private sector use of foreign currencies, and in 2005 it
issued legislation that allows licensed private banks to sell specific
amounts of foreign currency to Syrian citizens under certain
circumstances and to the private sector to finance imports. Syria's
exchange rate is fixed, and the government maintains two official rates
-- one rate on which the budget and the value of imports, customs, and
other official transactions are based, and a second set by the Central
Bank on a daily basis that covers all other financial transactions.
There is, however, still an active black market for foreign currency.
Given the policies adopted from the 1960s through
the late 1980s, which included nationalization of companies and private
assets, Syria failed to join an increasingly interconnected global
economy. Syria withdrew from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) in 1951 because of Israel's accession. It is not a member of the
World Trade Organization (WTO), although it submitted a request to
begin the accession process in 2001. Syria is developing regional free
trade agreements. As of January 1, 2005, the Greater Arab Free Trade
Agreement (GAFTA) came into effect and customs duties were eliminated
between Syria and all other members of GAFTA. In addition, Syria has
signed a free trade agreement with Turkey, which came into force in
January 2007, and initialed an Association Agreement with the EU, which
has yet to be signed. Although Syria claims a recent boom in non-oil
exports, its trade numbers are notoriously inaccurate and out-of-date.
Syria's main exports include crude oil, refined products, raw cotton,
clothing, fruits, and grains. The bulk of Syrian imports are raw
materials essential for industry, vehicles, agricultural equipment, and
heavy machinery. Earnings from oil exports as well as remittances from
Syrian workers are the government's most important sources of foreign
exchange.
Syria has produced heavy-grade oil from fields
located in the northeast since the late 1960s. In the early 1980s,
light-grade, low-sulphur oil was discovered near Dayr al-Zur in eastern
Syria. Syria's rate of oil production has been decreasing steadily,
from a peak close to 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 1995 down to
approximately 425,000 bpd in 2005. Experts generally agree that Syria
will become a net importer of petroleum not later than 2012. Syria
exported roughly 200,000 bpd in 2005, and oil still accounts for a
majority of the country's export income. Syria also produces 22 million
cubic meters of gas per day, with estimated reserves around 8.5
trillion cubic feet. While the government has begun to work with
international energy companies in the hopes of eventually becoming a
gas exporter, all gas currently produced is consumed domestically.
Some basic commodities, such as diesel, continue
to be heavily subsidized, and social services are provided for nominal
charges. The subsidies are becoming harder to sustain as the gap
between consumption and production continues to increase. Syria has a
population of approximately 19 million people, and Syrian Government
figures place the population growth rate at 2.45%, with 75% of the
population under the age of 35 and more than 40% under the age of 15.
Approximately 200,000 people enter the labor market every year.
According to Syrian Government statistics, the unemployment rate is
7.5%, however, more accurate independent sources place it closer to
20%. Government and public sector employees constitute over one quarter
of the total labor force and are paid very low salaries and wages.
Government officials acknowledge that the economy is not growing at a
pace sufficient to create enough new jobs annually to match population
growth. The UNDP announced in 2005 that 30% of the Syrian population
lives in poverty and 11.4% live below the subsistence level.
Syria has made progress in easing its heavy
foreign debt burden through bilateral rescheduling deals with its key
creditors in Europe, most importantly Russia, Germany, and France.
Syria has also settled its debt with Iran and the World Bank. In
December 2004, Syria and Poland reached an agreement by which Syria
would pay $27 million out of the total $261.7 million debt. In January
2005, Russia forgave 80% of Syria's $13 billion long-outstanding debt,
and later that year Syria reached an agreement with Slovakia, and the
Czech Republic to settle debt estimated at $1.6 billion. Again Syria
was forgiven the bulk of its debt, in exchange for a one time payment
of $150 million.
U.S.-SYRIAN
RELATIONS
U.S.-Syrian relations, severed in 1967, were
resumed in June 1974, following the achievement of the Syrian-Israeli
disengagement agreement. In 1990-91, Syria cooperated with the United
States as a member of the multinational coalition of forces in the Gulf
War. The U.S. and Syria also consulted closely on the Taif Accord,
ending the civil war in Lebanon. In 1991, President Asad made a
historic decision to accept then President Bush's invitation to attend
a Middle East peace conference and to engage in subsequent bilateral
negotiations with Israel. Syria's efforts to secure the release of
Western hostages held in Lebanon and its lifting of restrictions on
travel by Syrian Jews helped to further improve relations between Syria
and the United States. There were several presidential summits; the
last one occurred when then-President Clinton met the late President
Hafiz al-Asad in Geneva in March 2000. In the aftermath of September 11th
the Syrian Government began limited cooperation with U.S. in the war
against terror.
Syria has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors
of terrorism since the list's inception in 1979. Because of its
continuing support and safe haven for terrorist organizations, Syria is
subject to legislatively mandated penalties, including export sanctions
and ineligibility to receive most forms of U.S. aid or to purchase U.S.
military equipment. In 1986, the U.S. withdrew its ambassador and
imposed additional administrative sanctions on Syria in response to
evidence of direct Syrian involvement in an attempt to blow up an
Israeli airplane. A U.S. ambassador returned to Damascus in 1987,
partially in response to positive Syrian actions against terrorism such
as expelling the Abu Nidal Organization from Syria and helping free an
American hostage earlier that year.
However, relations since the February 2005
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri have
considerably deteriorated. Issues of U.S. concern include the Syrian
Government's failure to prevent Syria from becoming a major transit
point for foreign fighters entering Iraq, its refusal to deport from
Syria former Saddam regime elements who are supporting the insurgency
in Iraq, its ongoing interference in Lebanese affairs, its protection
of the leadership of Palestinian rejectionist groups in Damascus, its
deplorable human rights record, and its pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction. In May 2004, the Bush administration, pursuant to the
provisions of the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty
Restoration Act, imposed sanctions on Syria which banned nearly all
exports to Syria except food and medicine. In February 2005, in the
wake of the Hariri assassination, the U.S. recalled its Ambassador to
Washington.
On September 12, 2006 the U.S. Embassy was
attacked by four armed assailants with guns, grenades and a car bomb
(which failed to detonate). Syrian Security Forces successfully
countered the attack, killing all four attackers. Two other Syrians
killed during the attack were a government security guard and a
passerby. The Syrian Government publicly stated that terrorists had
carried out the attack. The U.S. Government has not received an
official Syrian Government assessment of the motives or organization
behind the attack, but security was upgraded at U.S. facilities. Both
the Syrian ambassador to the U.S., Imad Mushtapha, and President Bashar
Asad, however, blamed U.S. foreign policy in the region as contributing
to the incident.
Principal U.S. Officials
Ambassador--vacant
Charge d'Affaires--Michael Corbin
Acting Deputy Chief of Mission--William Roebuck
Head of the Economic/Political Section--Todd Holmstrom
Head of the Consular Section--Patricia Fietz
Management Counselor--John Finnegan
Public Affairs Officer--Chris Eccel
Defense Attaché--Col. Norman Larson
GOVERNMENT
The Syrian constitution vests the Arab Ba'ath
Socialist Party with leadership functions in the state and society and
provides broad powers to the president. The president, approved by
referendum for a 7-year term, is also Secretary General of the Ba'ath
Party and leader of the National Progressive Front, which is a
coalition of 10 political parties authorized by the regime. The
president has the right to appoint ministers, to declare war and states
of emergency, to issue laws (which, except in the case of emergency,
require ratification by the People's Council), to declare amnesty, to
amend the constitution, and to appoint civil servants and military
personnel. The Emergency Law, which effectively suspends most
constitutional protections for Syrians, has been in effect since 1963.
The National Progressive Front also acts as a
forum in which economic policies are debated and the country's
political orientation is determined. However, because of Ba'ath Party
dominance, the National Progressive Front has traditionally exercised
little independent power.
The Syrian constitution of 1973 requires that the
president be Muslim but does not make Islam the state religion. Islamic
jurisprudence, however, is required to be a main source of legislation.
The judicial system in Syria is an amalgam of Ottoman, French, and
Islamic laws, with three levels of courts: courts of first instance,
courts of appeals, and the constitutional court, the highest tribunal.
In addition, religious courts handle questions of personal and family
law.
The Ba'ath Party emphasizes socialism and secular
Arabism. Although Ba'ath Party doctrine seeks to build pan-Arab rather
than ethnic identity, ethnic, religious, and regional allegiances
remain important in Syria.
Members of President Asad's own minority sect, the
Alawis, hold most of the important military and security positions,
while Sunnis (in 2006) controlled ten of 14 positions on the powerful
Ba'ath Party Regional Command. In recent years there has been a gradual
decline in the party's preeminence. The party also is heavily
influenced by the security services and the military, the latter of
which consumes a large share of Syria's economic resources.
Syria is divided administratively into 14
provinces, one of which is Damascus. A governor for each province is
appointed by the President. The governor is assisted by an elected
provincial council.
Principal Government Officials
President--Bashar Al-Asad
Vice President--Farouk al-Shar'a
Vice President--Najah al-Attar
Prime Minister--Muhammad Naji al-Utri
Minister of Foreign Affairs--Walid al-Mouallem
Ambassador to the United States--Ambassador Imad Moustapha
Ambassador to the United Nations--Ambassador Dr. Bashar al-Ja'fari
NATIONAL
SECURITY
President Bashar Al-Asad is commander in chief of
the Syrian armed forces, comprised of some 400,000 troops upon
mobilization. The military is a conscripted force; males serve 24
months in the military upon reaching the age of 18. Some 17,000 Syrian
soldiers formerly deployed in Lebanon have been withdrawn to Syria in
response to UNSCR 1559, which was passed in the fall of 2004. Demands
that Syria comply with 1559 intensified after the February 2005
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Syria's military remains one of the largest in the
region, although the breakup of the Soviet Union--long the principal
source of training, material, and credit for the Syrian forces--slowed
Syria's ability to acquire modern military equipment. Syria received
significant financial aid from Gulf Arab states in the 1990s as a
result of its participation in the first Gulf War, with a sizable
portion of these funds earmarked for military spending. Besides
sustaining its conventional forces, Syria seeks to develop its weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) capability.
HISTORY
Archaeologists have demonstrated that Syria was
the center of one of the most ancient civilizations on earth. Around
the excavated city of Ebla in northern Syria, discovered in 1975, a
great Semitic empire spread from the Red Sea north to Turkey and east
to Mesopotamia from 2500 to 2400 B.C. The city of Ebla alone during
that time had a population estimated at 260,000. Scholars believe the
language of Ebla to be the oldest Semitic language.
Syria was occupied successively by Canaanites,
Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans, Nabataeans, Byzantines, and, in part, Crusaders before
finally coming under the control of the Ottoman Turks. Syria is
significant in the history of Christianity; Paul was converted on the
road to Damascus and established the first organized Christian Church
at Antioch in ancient Syria, from which he left on many of his
missionary journeys.
Damascus, settled about 2500 B.C., is one of the
oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It came under Muslim
rule in A.D. 636. Immediately thereafter, the city's power and prestige
reached its peak, and it became the capital of the Omayyad Empire,
which extended from Spain to India from A.D. 661 to A.D. 750, when the
Abbasid caliphate was established at Baghdad, Iraq.
Damascus became a provincial capital of the
Mameluke Empire around 1260. It was largely destroyed in 1400 by
Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, who removed many of its craftsmen to
Samarkand. Rebuilt, it continued to serve as a capital until 1516. In
1517, it fell under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans remained for the next
400 years, except for a brief occupation by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt from
1832 to 1840.
French Occupation
In 1920, an independent Arab Kingdom of Syria was established under
King Faysal of the Hashemite family, who later became King of Iraq.
However, his rule over Syria ended after only a few months, following
the clash between his Syrian Arab forces and regular French forces at
the battle of Maysalun. French troops occupied Syria later that year
after the League of Nations put Syria under French mandate. With the
fall of France in 1940, Syria came under the control of the Vichy
Government until the British and Free French occupied the country in
July 1941. Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalist groups forced
the French to evacuate their troops in April 1946, leaving the country
in the hands of a republican government that had been formed during the
mandate.
Independence to 1970
Although rapid economic development followed the declaration of
independence of April 17, 1946, Syrian politics from independence
through the late 1960s were marked by upheaval. A series of military
coups, begun in 1949, undermined civilian rule and led to army colonel
Adib Shishakli's seizure of power in 1951. After the overthrow of
President Shishakli in a 1954 coup, continued political maneuvering
supported by competing factions in the military eventually brought Arab
nationalist and socialist elements to power.
Syria's political instability during the years
after the 1954 coup, the parallelism of Syrian and Egyptian policies,
and the appeal of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's leadership in
the wake of the 1956 Suez crisis created support in Syria for union
with Egypt. On February 1, 1958, the two countries merged to create the
United Arab Republic, and all Syrian political parties ceased overt
activities.
The union was not a success, however. Following a
military coup on September 28, 1961, Syria seceded, reestablishing
itself as the Syrian Arab Republic. Instability characterized the next
18 months, with various coups culminating on March 8, 1963, in the
installation by leftist Syrian Army officers of the National Council of
the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), a group of military and civilian
officials who assumed control of all executive and legislative
authority. The takeover was engineered by members of the Arab Socialist
Resurrection Party (Ba'ath Party), which had been active in Syria and
other Arab countries since the late 1940s. The new cabinet was
dominated by Ba'ath members.
The Ba'ath takeover in Syria followed a Ba'ath
coup in Iraq the previous month. The new Syrian Government explored the
possibility of federation with Egypt and Ba'ath--controlled Iraq. An
agreement was concluded in Cairo on April 17, 1963, for a referendum on
unity to be held in September 1963. However, serious disagreements
among the parties soon developed, and the tripartite federation failed
to materialize. Thereafter, the Ba'ath regimes in Syria and Iraq began
to work for bilateral unity. These plans foundered in November 1963,
when the Ba'ath regime in Iraq was overthrown. In May 1964, President
Amin Hafiz of the NCRC promulgated a provisional constitution providing
for a National Council of the Revolution (NCR), an appointed
legislature composed of representatives of mass organizations--labor,
peasant, and professional unions--a presidential council, in which
executive power was vested, and a cabinet. On February 23, 1966, a
group of army officers carried out a successful, intra-party coup,
imprisoned President Hafiz, dissolved the cabinet and the NCR,
abrogated the provisional constitution, and designated a regionalist,
civilian Ba'ath government. The coup leaders described it as a
"rectification" of Ba'ath Party principles. The defeat of the Syrians
and Egyptians in the June 1967 war with Israel weakened the radical
socialist regime established by the 1966 coup. Conflict developed
between a moderate military wing and a more extremist civilian wing of
the Ba'ath Party. The 1970 retreat of Syrian forces sent to aid the PLO
during the "Black September" hostilities with Jordan reflected this
political disagreement within the ruling Ba'ath leadership. On November
13, 1970, Minister of Defense Hafiz al-Asad affected a bloodless
military coup, ousting the civilian party leadership and assuming the
role of prime minister.
1970 to 2000
Upon assuming power, Hafiz al-Asad moved quickly to create an
organizational infrastructure for his government and to consolidate
control. The Provisional Regional Command of Asad's Arab Ba'ath
Socialist Party nominated a 173-member legislature, the People's
Council, in which the Ba'ath Party took 87 seats. The remaining seats
were divided among "popular organizations" and other minor parties. In
March 1971, the party held its regional congress and elected a new
21-member Regional Command headed by Asad. In the same month, a
national referendum was held to confirm Asad as President for a 7-year
term. In March 1972, to broaden the base of his government, Asad formed
the National Progressive Front, a coalition of parties led by the
Ba'ath Party, and elections were held to establish local councils in
each of Syria's 14 governorates. In March 1973, a new Syrian
constitution went into effect followed shortly thereafter by
parliamentary elections for the People's Council, the first such
elections since 1962.
The authoritarian regime was not without its
critics, though most were quickly dealt with. A serious challenge arose
in the late 1970s, however, from fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, who
reject the basic values of the secular Ba'ath program and object to
rule by the Alawis, whom they consider heretical. From 1976 until its
suppression in 1982, the archconservative Muslim Brotherhood led an
armed insurgency against the regime. In response to an attempted
uprising by the brotherhood in February 1982, the government crushed
the fundamentalist opposition centered in the city of Hama, leveling
parts of the city with artillery fire and causing many thousands of
dead and wounded. Since then, public manifestations of anti-regime
activity have been very limited.
Syria's 1990 participation in the U.S.-led
multinational coalition aligned against Saddam Hussein marked a
dramatic watershed in Syria's relations both with other Arab states and
with the West. Syria participated in the multilateral Middle East Peace
Conference in Madrid in October 1991, and during the 1990s engaged in
direct, face-to-face negotiations with Israel. These negotiations
failed, and there have been no further Syrian-Israeli talks since
President Hafiz Al-Asad's meeting with then President Bill Clinton in
Geneva in March 2000.
Hafiz Al-Asad died on June 10, 2000, after 30
years in power. Immediately following Al-Asad's death, the Parliament
amended the constitution, reducing the mandatory minimum age of the
President from 40 to 34 years old, which allowed his son, Bashar
Al-Asad legally to be eligible for nomination by the ruling Ba'ath
party. On July 10, 2000, Bashar Al-Asad was elected President by
referendum in which he ran unopposed, garnering 97.29% of the vote,
according to Syrian Government statistics. He was inaugurated into
office on July 17, 2000 for a 7-year term.
2000 to 2007
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 the Syrian
Government began limited cooperation with United States in the global
war against terrorism. However, Syria opposed the Iraq war in March
2003, and bilateral relations with the United States swiftly
deteriorated. In December 2003, President Bush signed into law the
Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003,
which provided for the imposition of a series of sanctions against
Syria if Syria did not end its support for Palestinian terrorist
groups, end its military and security interference in Lebanon, cease
its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, and meet its obligations
under United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding the
stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq. In May 2004, the President
determined that Syria had not met these conditions and implemented
sanctions that prohibit the export to Syria of U.S. products except for
food and medicine, and the taking off from or landing in the United
States of Syrian Government-owned aircraft. At the same time, the U.S.
Department of the Treasury announced its intention to order U.S.
financial institutions to sever correspondent accounts with the
Commercial Bank of Syria based on money-laundering concerns, pursuant
to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. Acting under the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the President also authorized
the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of
State, to freeze assets belonging to certain Syrian individuals and
entities.
Tensions between Syria and the United States
intensified from late 2004 to 2007, primarily over issues relating to
Iraq and Lebanon. The U.S. Government recalled its Ambassador to Syria
in February 2005, after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister
Hariri. Sensing its international isolation, the Syrians shored up
their relations with Iran and radical Palestinians groups based in
Damascus, and cracked down on any signs of internal dissent. There has
been little movement on political reform, with more public focus on
limited economic liberalizations. The Syrian Government has provided
some cooperation to the UN Independent International Investigation
Commission, headed by Serge Brammertz, which is investigating the
killing of Hariri. Since the 34-day conflict in Lebanon in July and
August 2006, evidence of Syrian compliance with its obligations under
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 not to rearm the Lebanese group
Hezbollah is unpersuasive. On April 17, 2007, the United Nations
Security Council welcomed the Secretary General's intention to evaluate
the situation along the entire Syria-Lebanon border and invited the
Secretary General to dispatch an independent mission to fully assess
the monitoring of the border, and to report back on its findings and
recommendations.
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