The Canadian Foreign ministry said on Thursday that it plans to ease some financial sanctions on Syria and send a non-resident ambassador to Damascus, despite the horrific massacres of Alawites and Christians perpetrated by the new Syrian government and its allies last weekend.
“Canada can play a meaningful role in enabling Syrians to build an inclusive country that respects all of its citizens. We also can help prevent Syria from falling into chaos and instability,” said Canada’s special envoy for Syria, Omar Alghabra.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said sanctions would be relaxed for six months to “support democratization, stabilization, and the delivery of aid” during a “period of transition” for Syria.
“These sanctions had been used as a tool against the Assad regime and easing them will help to enable the stable and sustainable delivery of aid, support local redevelopment efforts, and contribute to a swift recovery for Syria,” said a statement from Joly and Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen.
The sanctions-easing plan involves issuing six-month permits for Canadians to conduct business transactions in Syria that were banned under sanctions, and transmit funds through the Syrian Central Bank and a few other financial institutions.
“This funding will support experienced humanitarian partners to deliver life-saving assistance, including food, protection services, water, sanitation and hygiene services, and health services. This brings Canada’s total humanitarian assistance to the Syria crisis this year to more than $100 million,” said Joly and Hussen.
In addition to easing sanctions, the Canadian government announced it would provide $58 million in additional funding for humanitarian assistance to reach the $100 million figure cited by the foreign and international development ministers.
The Canadian Foreign Ministry further announced that Stephanie McCollum, currently Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon, will serve double duty as the non-resident ambassador to Syria.
Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was overthrown in December in a swift campaign by an alliance of insurgent and jihadi groups. The most powerful of these groups was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria before it changed its name, broke away from the infamous global terrorist organization, and remodeled itself as a Syrian nationalist insurgent force.
HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani also reinvented himself, trading his guerrilla garb for a business suit and returning to his birth name of Ahmed al-Sharaa to become the “interim president” of post-Assad Syria. Sharaa put a high priority on convincing the world he was a kinder and more inclusive sort of Islamic supremacist, because he wants Western nations to lift the crippling sanctions they imposed against the brutal Assad regime.
Sharaa’s reinvention campaign hit a major snag last weekend, when an attack against HTS and allied forces by putative “Assad loyalists” spiraled into a horrifying massacre of Alawite and Christian civilians. Alawites, the sect of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs, have feared persecution ever since Assad’s fall in December.
Assad sometimes courted support from Syrian Christians as well, so they had similar fears of being hunted down by the Islamist junta that now rules in Damascus. Humanitarian groups say Christians have received threatening messages from jihadist forces that they will soon be purged like the Alawites.
Sharaa claimed the mass killings were perpetrated by foreign fighters seeking an “opportunity for revenge” and were not condoned by his government.
“We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us,” he said on Monday. “Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all.”
Despite Sharaa’s promises, Alawites continued to be targeted throughout the week by HTS and allied jihadi forces, including a slaughter of 132 civilians reported by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Tuesday.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families, including women, children and individuals hors de combat (incapable of fighting), were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” said a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office, casting blame on both Assad loyalists and Sharaa’s forces for the killings.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis,” the U.N. said.
Canada is placing some very heavy bets on Sharaa’s sincerity, and his ability to restrain elements of his extremist coalition. Foreign Minister Joly and Minister of International Development Hussen acknowledged this reality by denouncing the sectarian violence.
“We utterly condemn these atrocities and call on the interim authorities to take all necessary measures to end the violence. Civilians must be protected, the dignity and human rights of all religious and ethnic groups must be upheld, and perpetrators must be held accountable,” they said.
“Canada reaffirms its commitment to support a peaceful and inclusive Syrian-led political transition that reflects the country’s ethnic and religious diversity. We call on all parties to prioritise the work toward de-escalation and national reconciliation and prevent the country from descending into fragmentation and violence,” they declared.
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