The American law known as "Caesar's Law" comes into effect today, Wednesday, to put the Syrian economy in front of a new cycle of pressure, an economy that was already devastated by the war that has been going on for 9 years.
The US Congress, with its two chambers - the Sheikhs and Representatives - passed the law on December 11, 2019, with the aim of punishing the Syrian regime and its president, Bashar al-Assad, for war crimes he committed against civilians.
While the Syrian regime has already been subject to American and European sanctions for years, it has remained limited and has not affected external entities and countries associated with the regime, but Caesar's law provided for sanctions against individuals, entities, and even countries that support the Assad regime.
Caesar's Law
The law gives the US president the right to impose sanctions on foreign people if they provide financial or technical support to the regime, or contract it, or with the Syrian government or any of the official institutions or entities controlled by the government.
The law includes every person who sells or provides knowledgeable goods, services, technologies, information, or great support, or any other support that greatly facilitates the maintenance or expansion of the local government’s production of natural gas, oil, and petroleum products, and includes any person who sells or provides parts Spare parts for Syrian government aircraft or their allies and associated entities, as well as for all goods related to operating the aircraft for military purposes.
It also includes any person who provides important building or engineering services to the Syrian government, and the law also applies to governments, especially for the Russian and Iranian governments, for their support of the Assad regime.
The law enforcement comes at a time when the Syrian regime is preparing to launch the reconstruction process, at least in the areas it has been able to control, which has expanded in recent months with Russian-Iranian support.
Observers believe that the law will make the reconstruction process an extremely difficult if not impossible issue, as the law will force companies to distance themselves from entering into Syrian projects in order to avoid American sanctions.
Caesar's law is attributed to a Syrian military named "Caesar", who was working as a forensic cameraman and defected from the regime in 2013, and he had thousands of photos documenting the Syrian regime's crimes and extensive torture and killings of prisoners at the hands of the regime's organs.
Half a trillion dollars
For 9 years, the Syrian economy was largely destroyed. Before applying the law, international and domestic institutions estimate the losses of the Syrian economy at half a trillion dollars.
A study prepared by the "Syrian Center for Research Studies" (non-governmental) published late May last, estimated that the losses of the Syrian economy from the start of the war in 2011 until the beginning of 2020 amounted to about 530 billion dollars, which is equivalent to 9.7 times the country's GDP in 2010.
According to the estimates of the study, the rate of damage to infrastructure as a result of the battles in the country exceeded 40%, and the infrastructure losses included more than a quarter of houses, half of the electricity networks, half of schools, hospitals, and service facilities, as well as a sharp decline in crude oil production from 400 thousand barrels per day in 2010 To less than 30 thousand barrels per day now, according to estimates by BP.
Over a period of 9 years, the country's public debt has risen to exceed 200% of GDP, while the unemployment rate is close to 50%, up from 15% in 2010, and 85% of the Syrian people live below the poverty line.
The collapse of the lira
For the first time, the sanctions include the Central Bank of Syria, as the law permits monitoring of the bank's business in the area of money laundering. The law gives the authority to the US Treasury Secretary, within a period of 90 days from the entry into force of the law, to determine whether there are reasonable reasons leading to considering that the Syrian Central is a financial institution with a primary interest in money laundering, and if this is proven, it will return to the Treasury Secretary - in coordination with Relevant federal bodies - imposing punitive measures stipulated in Caesar's law.
The Syrian pound has already collapsed even before the law went into effect, and it is vulnerable after its application to further collapse.
Since the war started in 2011, the Syrian pound has gone through a long journey of decline, from a price of about 50 pounds to the dollar at the outbreak of the war, to exceed the dollar exchange rate threshold of 3500 pounds at the beginning of this June.