UN SC decision breaks Syrian leadership free from inherited shackles

The UN Security Council voted to remove the Jabhat Al Nusra and Hayat Tahrir Al Sham groups from its sanctions list, signaling a major shift in how the international community engages with Syria’s leadership.

The decision was reached on February 27 and effectively lifted an assets freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo imposed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These measures had previously bound member states to restrict the groups’ financing and movements.

The sanctions dated back to May 2014, when the Security Council designated Al Nusra Front—then an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria—at the height of the country’s civil war. Al Nusra formally severed ties with Al Qaeda in 2016 and later rebranded, merging into Hayat Tahrir in 2017.

The UN had continued to treat Hayat Tahrir as a successor entity, keeping it under the same sanctions regime initially designed to combat Al Qaeda and later ISIS, as Syria’s conflict drew in regional and global powers.

The move follows the delisting in November of Syria’s President Ahmad Al Shara and Interior Minister Anas Khattab, both also previously subject to UN sanctions.

The US administration has advocated for removing the now-dissolved Hayat Tahrir from the sanctions list, arguing that Syria’s new authorities needed room to govern and attract reconstruction funds. At the same time, China initially objected, reflecting broader divisions among Security Council members over the pace of normalizing ties.

Maya Ungar, a UN analyst at the International Crisis Group, told The National outlet that Beijing’s hesitation was “less about Hayat Tahrir itself and more about influence.”

The delisting, she said, provided China with an “opportunity for leverage over the Syrian government to influence their policies on counterterrorism, and particularly their relationship with ETIM, a group of Uyghur militants close to the Syrian government and who China considers a direct national security threat.”

Ungar added that the removal of Hayat Tahrir from UN sanctions “wasn’t necessary for recognition of Shara’s government, but it bolsters the legitimacy of his step away from jihad, especially important as the US and others increasingly rely on his government as a partner in counterterrorism.”

She said the delisting will also open up further space for a broader conversation about the future of the UN’s role in Syria at the Security Council.

By Nazrin Sadigova