Even as the United States plans its military withdrawal from Syria, it has taken a step towards increasing political and economic pressure on the regime of Bashar Al Assad.
The US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill late on Tuesday night that will allow the White House to sanction foreign persons and entities that engage with the Assad regime or its supporters.
The legislation also requires the Treasury Department to decide within 180 days whether “reasonable grounds exist for concluding that the Central Bank of Syria is a financial institution of primary money laundering concern”.
The bill HR 31, officially called the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, was introduced by Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House, Eliott Engel. The bill was named after Cesar, the pseudonym for a photographer with the Syrian military police who documented those killed by the regime in prisons and detention centres for death certificates before defecting to the West in 2013 with a trove of 53,275 images showing the scale of the Assad regime’s brutality.
HR 31 gives US President Donald Trump the green light to go after foreign entities and persons that engage in prohibited business with, provide support for or carry out a significant transaction with the Assad regime or senior political figures. The bill also targets companies that work with foreign military contractors, mercenaries or paramilitary organisations “knowingly operating in a military capacity inside Syria for or on behalf of the Government of Syria, the Government of the Russian Federation, or the Government of Iran”.
The National
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