Wide-ranging international sanctions made it a crime to work with Syria's former government. But should it be a crime to work with the new one?

That's a question aid organizations, civil society groups and Syrian ex-pats have been asking since a coalition of rebel groups toppled the authoritarian Assad regime last month.

Syria has long been one of the most sanctioned countries in the world because of the Assad family, which headed the government there for 54 years.

But after ousting the regime in early December, Syrian rebels assembled a caretaker government, and that government inherited all of the sanctions placed on the previous Syrian government.

Those sanctions prevent Syria from making deals to import wheat or fuel, the caretaker government's new finance minister told Reuters news agency this week.

Syria's new foreign minister also brought up the sanctions while visiting Qatar last week. "We reiterate our calls for the US to lift these sanctions, which have now become against the Syrian people," Foreign Minister Asaad Shaibani said.

If sanctions are not lifted, both politicians said, the country faces catastrophe.

Experts tend to agree. "Syria is in deep economic peril and the transition risks being thrown off course if that collapse — a trajectory exacerbated by Western sanctions — continues," confirmed Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR).

Afghanistan, after the Taliban took power in 2021, provides an example of what not to do, experts from Crisis Group think tank, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine last week.

"Outside actors seem poised to........

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