‘US sanctions hold up Qatar’s support for Syria’

Qatar is holding off providing Syria’s new government with funds to increase public sector pay due to uncertainty over whether the transfers would breach US sanctions, sources have said. This, reported Reuters, is a setback to efforts to revive the war-stricken Syrian economy.

The delay in Qatar’s plan to help pay for the increase, which Reuters reported in January, underlines the considerable challenges facing Syria’s government as it seeks to stabilise the fractured state and assure foreign powers about the new leadership.

While the previous US administration issued a sanctions exemption on 6 January to allow transactions with Syria’s governing institutions for six months, Qatar does not see this as enough to cover the payments it would need to make via the Central Bank to finance the salary increase, the sources said.

Three of the sources said that Qatar, a wealthy US ally with long-standing ties to groups that helped topple former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad in December, is waiting for clarity over US President Donald Trump’s policy towards Damascus. Syria’s new rulers are Islamists who had links to Al-Qaeda until their leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, cut ties in 2016.

The country’s interim finance minister said last month that pay for many public sector workers would be increased by 400 per cent from February at an estimated monthly cost of 1.65 trillion Syrian pounds ($130 million). He cited regional aid as one source of funding for the increase, which has yet to take effect. Reuters could not determine how much Qatar was planning to contribute.

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Syrian finance ministry spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The US State Department, Treasury and White House also did not reply to Reuters’ questions.

One of the sources said that Qatar was not paying public sector salaries but noted that Doha had sent two shipments of liquefied petroleum gas to help alleviate crippling energy shortages. Boosting the economy is a top priority for Al-Sharaa. The UN says that nine out of 10 Syrians live in poverty.

The new administration has drawn up plans to cut a third of jobs in the sprawling public sector in Syria, which was seen widely under Assad as a way for his administration to secure loyalty through salaries.

The US sanctions exemption, valid until 7 July, allows the transfer of personal remittances through the Central Bank and some energy transactions. Known as a general licence, it marked an effort to ease the flow of humanitarian assistance to Syria, but the action did not lift the sanctions, the US Treasury said at the time.

Al-Sharaa has called repeatedly for the lifting of Western sanctions, imposed to isolate Assad for his brutal crackdown during Syria’s long civil war, which started in 2011, and to generate pressure for a political solution to the conflict. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shaibani said on Tuesday that the government had succeeded in getting some sanctions suspended or eased. Syrian officials insist that the sanctions have ceased to be justified since Assad was toppled.

On Monday, EU countries suspended a range of sanctions against Syria with immediate effect, including restrictions related to energy, banking, transport and reconstruction.

The Trump administration has said little about its Syria policy. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking on 16 February during a trip to Israel, struck a cautious note, saying that while Assad’s fall was promising, it would not be a positive development if Syria replaced one destabilising force with another.

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