More than five years after the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act entered into force, the effects of one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching sanctions regimes in modern history continue to surface. What began as a US law designed to punish the former Syrian government gradually transformed into a suffocating web that penetrated every aspect of daily life for millions of Syrians, producing a parallel economy built on scarcity, speculation, and smuggling.
While recent efforts to repeal the law have finally succeeded, opening a narrow window for Syria’s initial recovery, none of those who once engineered, promoted, or enforced Caesar – or those who today oppose its repeal or even its suspension – appear willing to confront the real cost of these sanctions: widespread poverty, hunger, and the systematic erosion of Syria’s economic and social capacities.
Contrary to the image promoted by some political and media circles, “Caesar” was neither symbolic nor limited in scope. It functioned as the legal framework for expanding US sanctions to encompass any entity engaging economically with the Syrian state or its institutions. Its reach extended beyond Syria to neighboring countries, banks, transport and insurance companies, and even humanitarian organizations attempting to deliver aid. In this sense, sanctions were transformed from a political pressure tool into a comprehensive system that disrupted supply chains and reshaped the economy around a logic of survival by access; access to capital, protection, and proximity to financial power.
What remains strikingly absent from this file is any systematic local or international effort to document the full scale of economic and social losses caused by sanctions imposed on Syria, whether before or after Caesar. What little exists includes a 2013 study by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, which estimated that sanctions accounted for roughly 27% of Syria’s total economic losses by the end of 2012- about USD 6.8 billion- and had pushed nearly 877,000 people into poverty. Fourteen years into the crisis, and more than five years under Caesar, the question remains: how much deeper has the damage gone?
One million families under sanctions pressure
Caesar was not the sole driver of Syria’s economic collapse. Internal failures and regional dynamics also played roles. Yet the law proved decisive. Before 2020, indicators such as poverty rates, food security, exchange rates, and inflation moved within relatively stable limits. After Caesar took effect, all of them deteriorated at unprecedented speed.
Living conditions offer the clearest measure of sanctions’ impact, especially given the insistence by their architects that they target political systems rather than people. After Washington tightened restrictions on Syria and obstructed its trade with neighboring states, even before Caesar formally took effect, the Syrian pound began to collapse in successive waves. Inflation rose from about 13.4% in 2019 to 118.8% in 2021, before easing slightly to roughly 73% in 2023.
As incomes fell and purchasing power eroded, poverty expanded sharply across households. Food insecurity became widespread. Many families were forced, under the pressure of deprivation, to reduce food consumption, lower quality, and many sent their children to sleep hungry. These are not anecdotal claims, but outcomes documented in official and UN data.
According to the periodic Food Security Survey conducted by the Planning Authority and the Central Bureau of Statistics in cooperation with the World Food Program, the share of food-secure households fell from 35.8% in 2019 to just 9.4% in 2023. In effect, nearly one million families lost food security after Caesar’s implementation. By the end of 2023, more than 3.6 million families faced either food insecurity or experienced moderate to severe food deprivation.
UN estimates mirror these findings. Syrians in need of assistance rose from about 11.7 million in 2019 to nearly 16.7 million in 2024. This increase of almost 5 million people occurred within five years, or about one million per year, during the period of Caesar’s enforcement.
Children were among the hardest hit. Preliminary national health surveys show acute malnutrition among children rose from 1.7% in 2019 to 4.8% in 2023. One in four children under five now suffers from stunting, with long-term effects on physical and cognitive development. One in three women of reproductive age suffers from anemia. Child labor also increased. The proportion of children aged five to seventeen engaged in work rose from 6.4% in 2020 to 8.2% in 2023, meaning that at least 80,000 additional children entered the labor market during this period.
Faced with these conditions, most families adopted severe coping strategies. These included switching to cheaper and lower-quality food, reducing meals, borrowing, home gardening, prioritizing children over adults, and, in extreme cases, begging. Some families sold remaining assets simply to secure food, according to the latest food security survey.
Crippling economic capacity
At the macroeconomic level, Caesar sharply constrained Syria’s economic capacity. Gross domestic product fell from around USD 22.6 billion in 2019 to approximately USD 21.4 billion in 2024, based on recent World Bank estimates. Yet, the more significant loss lies not in this visible contraction, but in foregone growth: What could have been achieved in the absence of sanctions?
Electricity production illustrates this clearly. Data from the Ministry of Electricity show an annual production shortfall of about 5.9 billion kilowatt-hours between 2019 and 2022. Valued conservatively at one US dollar per kilowatt-hour, this represents nearly USD 5 billion in lost output in 2022 alone.
Foreign trade was among the first sectors to suffer. Official estimates from the period before 2024 indicate that import costs rose by 25% to 40% due to higher insurance premiums, transport fees, sanction-evasion costs, and monopolistic practices. With imports reaching roughly USD 4 billion annually in recent years, Syria paid hundreds of millions of dollars each year in added costs simply to sustain basic trade flows.
Food trade further illustrates the imbalance. The price of imported food rose from €606 per ton in 2021 to €719 in 2023, after peaking at €776 in 2022. At the same time, export prices fell from €421 per ton in 2021 to €371 in 2023, after €386 in 2022. Whether driven by weaker coverage or worsening terms of trade, the outcome was a direct blow to household food security nationwide.
What about death?
If the Caesar Act was designed under the pretext of protecting Syrian civilians, its real effect punished those same civilians economically and undermined essential services. This raises a difficult question: did the law contribute, directly or indirectly, to Syrian deaths?
The answer is not straightforward. No comprehensive field studies track direct or indirect causes of death since the law took effect in 2020. Yet mortality indicators rose during the same period in which military confrontations declined. If we determine whether cancer deaths resulted from difficulties in securing European-sourced medicines, or whether sudden cardiac deaths were linked to prolonged economic and psychological stress, one conclusion is unavoidable: the law inflicted severe and sustained harm on ordinary Syrians.
Today, with Caesar repealed, the need for a new approach is urgent. Sanctions were never merely temporary pressure tools; they functioned as long-term policies that left deep economic and social scars. Any serious discussion of recovery must begin with a national effort to document losses, rebuild trust with international partners, and free the economic activity from the shadow economy and patronage networks that flourished under sanctions and systemic corruption.
This article was produced by the Syria Desk ofAl Akhbar.
rss in pravda_news @news.abolish.capital
Five years of coercion: What did Caesar do to Syrians?
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/23/five-years-of-coercion-what-did-caesar-do-to-syrians/More than five years after the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act entered into force, the effects of one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching sanctions regimes in modern history continue to surface. What began as a US law designed to punish the former Syrian government gradually transformed into a suffocating web that penetrated every aspect of daily life for millions of Syrians, producing a parallel economy built on scarcity, speculation, and smuggling.
While recent efforts to repeal the law have finally succeeded, opening a narrow window for Syria’s initial recovery, none of those who once engineered, promoted, or enforced Caesar – or those who today oppose its repeal or even its suspension – appear willing to confront the real cost of these sanctions: widespread poverty, hunger, and the systematic erosion of Syria’s economic and social capacities.
Contrary to the image promoted by some political and media circles, “Caesar” was neither symbolic nor limited in scope. It functioned as the legal framework for expanding US sanctions to encompass any entity engaging economically with the Syrian state or its institutions. Its reach extended beyond Syria to neighboring countries, banks, transport and insurance companies, and even humanitarian organizations attempting to deliver aid. In this sense, sanctions were transformed from a political pressure tool into a comprehensive system that disrupted supply chains and reshaped the economy around a logic of survival by access; access to capital, protection, and proximity to financial power.
What remains strikingly absent from this file is any systematic local or international effort to document the full scale of economic and social losses caused by sanctions imposed on Syria, whether before or after Caesar. What little exists includes a 2013 study by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, which estimated that sanctions accounted for roughly 27% of Syria’s total economic losses by the end of 2012- about USD 6.8 billion- and had pushed nearly 877,000 people into poverty. Fourteen years into the crisis, and more than five years under Caesar, the question remains: how much deeper has the damage gone?
One million families under sanctions pressure
Caesar was not the sole driver of Syria’s economic collapse. Internal failures and regional dynamics also played roles. Yet the law proved decisive. Before 2020, indicators such as poverty rates, food security, exchange rates, and inflation moved within relatively stable limits. After Caesar took effect, all of them deteriorated at unprecedented speed.
Living conditions offer the clearest measure of sanctions’ impact, especially given the insistence by their architects that they target political systems rather than people. After Washington tightened restrictions on Syria and obstructed its trade with neighboring states, even before Caesar formally took effect, the Syrian pound began to collapse in successive waves. Inflation rose from about 13.4% in 2019 to 118.8% in 2021, before easing slightly to roughly 73% in 2023.
As incomes fell and purchasing power eroded, poverty expanded sharply across households. Food insecurity became widespread. Many families were forced, under the pressure of deprivation, to reduce food consumption, lower quality, and many sent their children to sleep hungry. These are not anecdotal claims, but outcomes documented in official and UN data.
According to the periodic Food Security Survey conducted by the Planning Authority and the Central Bureau of Statistics in cooperation with the World Food Program, the share of food-secure households fell from 35.8% in 2019 to just 9.4% in 2023. In effect, nearly one million families lost food security after Caesar’s implementation. By the end of 2023, more than 3.6 million families faced either food insecurity or experienced moderate to severe food deprivation.
UN estimates mirror these findings. Syrians in need of assistance rose from about 11.7 million in 2019 to nearly 16.7 million in 2024. This increase of almost 5 million people occurred within five years, or about one million per year, during the period of Caesar’s enforcement.
Children were among the hardest hit. Preliminary national health surveys show acute malnutrition among children rose from 1.7% in 2019 to 4.8% in 2023. One in four children under five now suffers from stunting, with long-term effects on physical and cognitive development. One in three women of reproductive age suffers from anemia. Child labor also increased. The proportion of children aged five to seventeen engaged in work rose from 6.4% in 2020 to 8.2% in 2023, meaning that at least 80,000 additional children entered the labor market during this period.
Faced with these conditions, most families adopted severe coping strategies. These included switching to cheaper and lower-quality food, reducing meals, borrowing, home gardening, prioritizing children over adults, and, in extreme cases, begging. Some families sold remaining assets simply to secure food, according to the latest food security survey.
Crippling economic capacity
At the macroeconomic level, Caesar sharply constrained Syria’s economic capacity. Gross domestic product fell from around USD 22.6 billion in 2019 to approximately USD 21.4 billion in 2024, based on recent World Bank estimates. Yet, the more significant loss lies not in this visible contraction, but in foregone growth: What could have been achieved in the absence of sanctions?
Electricity production illustrates this clearly. Data from the Ministry of Electricity show an annual production shortfall of about 5.9 billion kilowatt-hours between 2019 and 2022. Valued conservatively at one US dollar per kilowatt-hour, this represents nearly USD 5 billion in lost output in 2022 alone.
Foreign trade was among the first sectors to suffer. Official estimates from the period before 2024 indicate that import costs rose by 25% to 40% due to higher insurance premiums, transport fees, sanction-evasion costs, and monopolistic practices. With imports reaching roughly USD 4 billion annually in recent years, Syria paid hundreds of millions of dollars each year in added costs simply to sustain basic trade flows.
Food trade further illustrates the imbalance. The price of imported food rose from €606 per ton in 2021 to €719 in 2023, after peaking at €776 in 2022. At the same time, export prices fell from €421 per ton in 2021 to €371 in 2023, after €386 in 2022. Whether driven by weaker coverage or worsening terms of trade, the outcome was a direct blow to household food security nationwide.
What about death?
If the Caesar Act was designed under the pretext of protecting Syrian civilians, its real effect punished those same civilians economically and undermined essential services. This raises a difficult question: did the law contribute, directly or indirectly, to Syrian deaths?
The answer is not straightforward. No comprehensive field studies track direct or indirect causes of death since the law took effect in 2020. Yet mortality indicators rose during the same period in which military confrontations declined. If we determine whether cancer deaths resulted from difficulties in securing European-sourced medicines, or whether sudden cardiac deaths were linked to prolonged economic and psychological stress, one conclusion is unavoidable: the law inflicted severe and sustained harm on ordinary Syrians.
Today, with Caesar repealed, the need for a new approach is urgent. Sanctions were never merely temporary pressure tools; they functioned as long-term policies that left deep economic and social scars. Any serious discussion of recovery must begin with a national effort to document losses, rebuild trust with international partners, and free the economic activity from the shadow economy and patronage networks that flourished under sanctions and systemic corruption.
This article was produced by the Syria Desk of Al Akhbar.
The post Five years of coercion: What did Caesar do to Syrians? appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.