Trump Holds Summit at White House with Syrian President Formerly Affiliated with Al-Qaeda

First Syrian President Visits White House Since Nation's Founding
'Caesar Act' Secondary Sanctions Suspended for 180 Days

U.S. President Donald Trump held a summit with Syrian President Ahmed Alshara at the White House.

Last May (local time), U.S. President Donald Trump (right) met and shook hands with Syrian President Ahmed Alshara in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Photo by AP

On the morning of November 10 (local time), President Alshara arrived at the White House and held talks with President Trump for nearly two hours. Neither President Alshara's arrival at the White House nor the meeting itself was made public to the media.

This marks the first time since Syria's founding in 1946 that a Syrian president has visited the White House in Washington, D.C. Notably, President Alshara was once affiliated with the Islamic extremist terrorist group Al-Qaeda and spent several years imprisoned in a U.S. military detention facility in Iraq. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, President Alshara founded the Al-Qaeda-linked group known as the Nusra Front, but in 2016, he severed ties with Al-Qaeda. He then unified four rebel groups in northern Syria to form the Islamist militant organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and in December of last year, played a leading role in overthrowing the Assad regime, which had long ruled Syria with an iron fist.

The fact that President Alshara, with such a background, sat down with President Trump in the U.S. capital is seen as a symbolic indication that Syria, after decades of international sanctions and isolation, is beginning to open up and cooperate with the United States and other Western countries.

To promote the reconstruction of Syria, which has been devastated by years of civil war and international sanctions, the United States announced on this day that it would suspend sanctions imposed under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act (Caesar Act) for 180 days. In a joint statement from the Departments of Treasury, State, and Commerce, the Trump administration declared, "By suspending the enforcement of certain sanctions under the Caesar Act, we are signaling our ongoing commitment to easing sanctions on Syria."

The Caesar Act, which took effect in 2019, is named after the code name of a military photographer who exposed massacres and torture of civilians by the Assad regime. The core of the act is that the United States imposes secondary sanctions on third-country companies or individuals who conduct transactions with the Syrian government, military, or financial institutions.

Previously, during his visit to Saudi Arabia last May, President Trump met with President Alshara alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Afterward, President Trump promised to lift sanctions on Syria. Since then, the United States has gradually eased economic and diplomatic sanctions by repealing the 2004 executive order that froze the assets of certain individuals in Syria and banned the export of certain goods, as well as by removing the HTS, formed by President Alshara, from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.