The United Kingdom has removed its sanctions on 12 Syrian government entities, including the Ministries of Defence and Interior and the General Intelligence Directorate.

The move on Thursday was made four months after the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group led opposition groups in ousting President Bashar al-Assad following more than 13 years of war.

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The entities removed from the sanctions list will no longer be subject to asset freezes, read the notice posted by the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation in London.

Those targeted by the sanctions were “involved in repressing the civilian population in Syria” or had been “involved in supporting or benefitting from the Syrian regime” of al-Assad, according to the notice, which did not give an explanation for the delisting.

In March, the British government unfroze the assets of the Central Bank of Syria and 23 other entities, including banks and oil companies. However, it has stressed that sanctions on members of the al-Assad regime would remain in place.

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The new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to persuade Western capitals that crippling international sanctions should be lifted.

Speaking at a televised event with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said at the beginning of this year: “We inherited a lot of problems from the Assad regime, … but removing economic sanctions is key for the stability of Syria.”

Some countries, including the United States, have said they will wait to see how the new authorities exercise their power and ensure human rights before lifting sanctions, opting instead for targeted and temporary exemptions.

Last week, a visiting United Nations official called on Syria’s authorities to begin the process of economic recovery without waiting for Western sanctions to be lifted.

“Waiting for sanctions to be lifted leads nowhere,” Abdallah Al Dardari, the regional chief for Arab states at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told the AFP news agency in an interview in Damascus.

Decades needed to recover

A February UNDP report estimated that at current growth rates, Syria would need more than 50 years to return to the economic level it had before the war, and it called for massive investment to accelerate the process.

The UN study said nine out of 10 Syrians now live in poverty, one-quarter are jobless and Syria’s GDP “has shrunk to less than half of its value” in 2011, the year the war began.

Syria’s Human Development Index score, which factors in life expectancy, education and standard of living, has fallen to its worst level since it was first included in the index in 1990, meaning the war erased decades of development.

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The UNDP report estimated Syria’s “lost GDP” during the 2011-2024 war to be about $800bn.