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Analysis
Mexican social media influencer, Valeria Marquez, 23, who was brazenly shot to death during a TikTok livestream in the beauty salon where she worked in the city of Zapopan, looks on in this picture obtained from social media.
Last Wednesday afternoon, Valeria Márquez, a 23-year-old Mexican cosmetics and lifestyle influencer with more than 200,000 followers on social media, set up a camera and began livestreaming on TikTok from her beauty salon near Guadalajara, Mexico.
Moments later, as she spoke to her followers while holding a stuffed animal, a man entered the salon.
“Hey Vale?” He asks out of frame, using a casual nickname for Márquez as he apparently offers her a gift. He then shoots her to death, picks up the camera, and switches it off.
Several days later, Maria José Estupiñán, a Colombian model and social media star, was also gunned down in the doorway of her home in the border town of Cúcuta by an apparent stalker.
The killings of the two women, both relatively affluent, young, and with large public profiles, have shaken the two countries, throwing fresh attention on the wider problem in Latin America of femicide – the killing of women or girls because of their gender.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has assigned her top security team to investigate the killing of Márquez, which authorities have already classified as a femicide.
According to a study published late last year, roughly 11 women were murdered every day in femicides in the region in 2023. The most dangerous countries were Honduras, where 7.2 out of every 100,000 women died in femicides, and the Dominican Republic, where the rate was nearly 3. In Colombia, local watchdogs recorded nearly 900 femicides last year, a seven-year high.
As elsewhere in the world, the vast majority of these crimes are committed by men who are known to the victims – current, former, or aspiring romantic partners, as well as male family members.
But addressing the problem, experts say, is a complicated mix of changing laws and shaping minds.
Over the past three decades, countries throughout the region have passed at least some legislation to address violence against women, pushed both by United Nations conventions on violence against women, and activist movements like Ni Una Menos (“Not one woman less”), founded in Argentina a decade ago in response to the murder of a pregnant, 14-year-old girl at the hands of her boyfriend.
Some countries have gone further, developing specific frameworks for the documentation and prosecution of femicide. Mexico and Colombia, in fact, have some of the strictest laws on the books, says Beatriz García Nice, a gender-based violence expert based in Ecuador. But laws aren’t enough.
“It’s not that we lack laws,” she says, “it’s that there is impunity and the lack of enforcement.”
One part of that comes from deeply ingrained social norms, she says.
“We have to change cultural traits so that you’re not teaching kids, especially boys, that women are property, or that their only role in society is to belong to a man.”
Corruption also plays a role in a region where graft and nepotism are rampant in judiciary systems. In Mexico, for example, a study from 2023 showed nearly half of people lack confidence in the judiciary, and close to 90% of people said they didn’t report crimes for that reason.
This fuels reluctance to report gender-based crimes as well – more than 85% of women in Mexico, Honduras, and Ecuador say they don’t report episodes of physical or psychological violence. That matters because femicide, García Nice points out, is only the gruesome end of a long road that begins with other kinds of abuse.
The rise of the influencer economy can make things even worse, especially as legal frameworks addressing online harassment of women are still relatively weak in Latin America.
“Online violence bleeds into offline violence,” says Rangita de Silva de Alwis, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor who is on the UN committee that focuses on eradicating violence against women.
“The impunity that we see in the online world has real world consequences.”
Last week, I had the privilege and pleasure of serving as commencement speaker for graduates of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University, my alma mater. And the venue was the Louisiana Superdome, a little bigger of a house than I’m used to.
It was a great day for me, and I’ll always be grateful to Tulane for the invitation. But it was a sobering experience too. It’s one thing to look out over a crowd of this year’s graduates, young women and men who are well prepared for challenges ahead but who may not yet appreciate just how messed up our world is right now. It’s quite another when you’re looking into the faces of this year’s graduates of your alma mater. The people who now sit where you sat. It makes me more aware of how just much has happened on the road from 1989 to 2025 – how much we couldn’t have imagined.
Here's the speech in full…
It’s great to be back at Tulane.
And I'm honored to be your distinguished alum.
I realize it's possible you've decided to give me this award because you neglected to look into my time here as a student.
I was 15 when I came to Tulane, a kid from the projects outside Boston. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school. This led to an unusually exciting freshman year. I lied about my age, both for drinking purposes (which I had never done before), and also for dating purposes (which I had also never done before).
I missed classes, slept through a final, had a 1.9 GPA my first term. When they put me on probation and threatened to send me home to Boston, I figured I should spend less time at the Boot and more time in my classes.
In the end, I graduated without further public controversy. For me, Tulane was a laboratory of people and personalities, of studies and learning, of theory and of facts on the ground. I have the school of liberal arts to thank that I can tell the difference.
But when I graduated, I realized that no one actually hired political scientists, and so I decided to start a company to persuade people that political science mattered. Thirty years later, I've made a career of it. I’ve made it possible for at least a few political scientists to have jobs doing just that.
I suppose that’s the reason I’m receiving Tulane's distinguished alumni award (and truly, I am honored by it). But at the same time, I am a little bummed out about it, because compared to pretty much all of the parents here, I am failing most dramatically in my broader professional efforts. It's tough to be a political scientist right now. The stuff I work on — helping understand political leaders, governments, the world order — it's all falling apart.
Back when I graduated this was not true. I was class of 1989. That's the year you want to graduate as a political scientist. The Wall came down. We won the cold war. Collective security, free trade, rule of law, democracy. For everybody.
The problem is that we were winners, but we weren't leaders. The leaders were the people that won back in World War II and that created the world order on the ashes of that destroyed world. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, General MacArthur rebuilding Japan. The United Nations. The US-led global order.
Today, we've grown too comfortable as the most powerful country in that world, with the almighty dollar, the only global military, the top global businesses, and the best universities. We are in the most stable part of the world, with generally friendly neighbors (at least until we started fighting with them). Protected by both great oceans.
For generations now we have been the most privileged nation, but our own political system has become the most dysfunctional among rich democracies. Most everyone agrees on this. We even agree on who to blame. It's the “other guys.
So, what are we going to do about it? I use my voice to be speak up about it. We can't fix a problem until we identify it. I get things wrong, but I say what I truly believe in the hopes that helps other people do the same.
Because when we stand up, when law firms stand up, when universities stand up, courage is contagious. We have to show people a way.
Tulane class of 2025, what will you do about it?
First, you already have. You chose the liberal arts, which means, at some point, you made a conscious decision to pursue ideas over income – at least initially. It’s brave. It’s noble. It’s…confusing to your family.
But what you’ve been doing here matters, because while engineers are out there designing drones, you’ve been asking the more important question: who gets to decide where they fly? While business schools are simulating markets, you’ve been asking: who is this economy actually working for? While accountants are balancing the books, you've been asking: why do we pay taxes?
Let’s talk about the world you’re walking into. It’s no 1989, but it’s lively. We’ve got a climate crisis, a technology arms race, and a bunch of hot wars. We’ve got global alliances falling apart, superpowers behaving like exes who keep texting each other at 2AM, and a US domestic political environment that feels like a mad libs game with too many sazeracs.
But I’m not here to depress you. That’s what Twitter’s for.
I'm here to remind you: this is your moment. And no, not in the “you are the future” way that commencement speakers love to say before the parents applaud them. I mean you actually have an edge. You studied complexity. You learned that history doesn’t repeat, but it does plagiarize. You know that “unprecedented” really just means we didn’t study the past closely enough. You know that context is what matters, and that headlines don't tell the story. In a world of polarization, you’ve studied nuance. In a time of information overload, you’ve practiced discernment. In an age obsessed with outcomes, you’ve explored meaning.
Hopefully you have also learned along the way that -- ChatGPT notwithstanding -- hard work does pay off.
So, let me point out that all of those skills I just mentioned don’t just make for good leaders. Those skills make for good people.
Understanding complexity, believing that there is value in the truth, seeking the good in people, and looking beyond the moment right in front of you. Those are skills you need for life.
And you’re in it right now. A lot of ambitious young people set out these markers of achievement for themselves, and of course you’re sitting here on top of a big one. Having achieved one, you push for the next, and so you might think my real adult life begins when I get my first job, when I get out of grad school, when I buy my first home. Don’t do that. Your real adult life is already here. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll have regrets. But you grow from them.
If you stay true to the skills and values that you’ve learned here, if you care about the family and friends that have moved you forward, your life will be rich, whatever path you choose.
So, what should you do with your liberal arts degree? Whatever you want.
Some of you will go into journalism, helping us understand a world spinning faster by the day. Others will work in policy, trying to keep the world from setting itself on fire – literally and metaphorically. Some will become artists, storytellers, teachers, nonprofit leaders, or the only ethics advisor at a tech company full of Stanford dropouts. That job will be important.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy. Your algorithms will try to convince you every day that nuance doesn't matter, and that more stuff and money will make you happy. Fight against that. Stay curious. Stay human. Stay weird, but the good kind of weird – the kind that doesn’t let cynicism turn into detachment.
And please, when you start running things – because trust me that day is sooner than you think – remember what you learned here: that ethics without power doesn't accomplish much, and that power without ethics is what got us here.
I'm counting on you, Tulane graduates. I’m counting on you to be as welcoming to weirdo strangers as you were to me as a 15-year-old freshman.
I’m counting on you to use new technologies, especially AI, that allow for innovation—improving your own capabilities—inconceivable when I graduated.
I’m counting on you to be curious as the world changes around us, to connect more closely with those that are different from you, and to recognize your connections with one another in spite of those differences.
I'm counting on you to be admired not because of your money and privilege but because you act the way others know they should.
I'm counting on you to be inspiring not because of your charisma and personality, but because you set the standard. I'm counting on you to be leaders again. Because if you don't, we're leaving it to the finance majors.
Tulane graduates, I believe in you. My thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you that.
And congratulations to you on this most important day.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks next to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), on the day of a closed House Republican Conference meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 20, 2025.
Republicans have a math problem—and it’s turning into a political one. As the party in full control of government moves to advance its sweeping policy agenda, internal divisions are surfacing over what to prioritize: tax cuts or budget cuts.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump met with House Republicans in an effort to rally them behind the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—a 1,116-page budget package. The bill would boost border security, and make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. Those tax cuts are projected to add over $5 trillion to the national deficit.
This is the problem: How do you give funds to expensive policy priorities, without ballooning the deficit – which many Republicans adamantly oppose?
Enter the budget hawks. The House Freedom Caucus sees the Republican unified government as a rare opportunity to dramatically scale back government spending. But keeping the Trump tax cuts in place while reducing the deficit would require deep budget cuts. And despite efforts to target government “waste,” it's nearly impossible to achieve the scale of savings they want without touching some of the biggest drivers of federal spending: Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and Social Security.
With cuts to defense and Social Security — the largest two expenditure categories — largely off the table because of their near-universal popularity among Republican voters, the Freedom Caucus has zeroed in on Medicaid, which funds medical care for low-income people. Their proposals include stricter work requirements, excluding undocumented immigrants from coverage, and reducing the amount of Medicaid funding that states get from the federal government. These changes could leave millions more Americans without health insurance.
But moderate Republicans are pushing back, warning that such drastic cuts could be politically damaging. Polls show that 75% of Republicans view Medicaid favorably, and the program is more prevalent in red states than blue.
As GOP communications strategist Douglas Heye put it, “They could be biting their own voters,” if the cuts are too steep. Trump seems to understand this political calculus. In Tuesday’s closed-door meeting, he reportedly told Republicans: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.”
Another major sticking point is the cap on state and local tax, AKA SALT, deductions. A group of moderate Republicans from high-tax states has warned they’ll oppose the bill unless the cap is raised—an adjustment that would further reduce the federal revenue needed to offset the growing debt.
But if you’re thinking, surely you don’t need 1,116 pages just for some tax proposals and Medicaid referendums, you’re correct. There are a lot of other policies in this bill worth knowing about:
- It increases the debt limit by $4 trillion.
- It creates MAGA accounts – short for Money Account for Growth and Advancement – which would authorize the Treasury to create tax-preferred savings accounts for children, and give each child $1,000 initial deposit.
- It eliminates most of Biden’s clean energy provisions, like the electric-car tax credit, and strikes the majority of the programs in the $1 trillion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
- It appropriates $500 million to update government agencies with AI technology.
- It eliminates the $200 excise tax on firearm silencers.
All of that extra pork could be on the table as negotiations heat up.
“When you're in this stage of negotiations, it’s not about how much gets added—it’s about what gets cut,” says Heye.
The House is expected to start making final cuts in the early hours of Wednesday —with voting as early as 1 AM— with debate stretching into Thursday. Holdouts are pushing to get the bill to a place they can claim as a victory for their faction -- before ultimately, and inevitably, falling in line. The goal is to send the bill to the Senate before the Memorial Day weekend kicks off.
But the fight is far from over. The Senate will have its own priorities—and its own fractures — to manage. Experts say the chance of a bill, no matter how big or beautiful, is slim before July 4th.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa gestures during the opening of the U.S.-sub-Saharan Africa trade forum to discuss the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), at the NASREC conference center in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 3, 2023.
If recent headlines are anything to go by, you’d think that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington, D.C. this week is an effort to rebut US President Donald Trump’s belief that white South Africans are suffering a genocide.
In reality, that’s way down the priority list.
“The most important thing [for Ramaphosa] is to show that South Africa is interested in a trade relationship with the United States,” said Johann Kotzé, CEO of the South African agricultural advocacy group AgriSA.
With unemployment soaring past 30% and the economy’s growth rate averaging less than 1% over the last decade, economic issues trump the political ones for Ramaphosa as he spends the week in the US capital.
Like so many leaders who visit the White House these days, the former anti-apartheid activist will hope to reach a trade truce with Trump after the White House came down hard on South African exports with his “reciprocal” tariffs, imposing a 30% duty on the country’s products. It’s not the only trade item on the agenda: The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is set to expire in September, and Ramaphosa will be desperate to renew it.
Strike a deal now, or else. Though Trump has temporarily cut the levy on South African products to 10% until July 8, Ramaphosa will seek a longer-lasting reprieve. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that individual country rates – the 30% tariff, in this case – represent a ceiling, but also reiterated last weekend that countries must strike a deal or else face higher levies again.
What about AGOA? And what is it? This trade deal between the United States and sub-Suharan states, originally signed in 2000, is set to expire in September. The treaty grants more than 30 countries in the region tariff-free access to US markets for many of their goods, and South Africa has been the principal beneficiary.
What does the United States get in return? If you ask Trump:Nothing! The pact doesn’t require African countries to lower their trade barriers. Former President Bill Clinton, who first signed the deal, saw it as a way to boost growth and spread democratic ideals in Africa.
The political barriers to a deal. Trump’s return to office has created further challenges for Pretoria, both economically and politically. There have been various diplomatic disputes over a controversial South African program to redistribute unused farmland, in many cases owned by white farmers, leading to the expulsion of the South African ambassador to the United States and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s decisionto skip the G20 foreign ministers’ summit in Johannesburg in February.
The arrow in South Africa’s quiver. The Rainbow Nation still has something to offer Washington, Kotzé notes. It provides Americans with citrus fruits in the winter months, it’s a source of scarce minerals like platinum – which is vital for the auto industry – and 600 US firms operate in South Africa. What’s more, Pretoria holds significant geopolitical importance in Sub-Saharan Africa, acting as a peace broker or peace keeper in major conflicts in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant,” said Kotzé, “but South Africa is strategically well positioned in Africa.”
Tread carefully. When announcing his meeting with Trump, Ramaphosa called for a “reset” in the relationship, an acknowledgement of how the relationship has soured ever since their first beef over South African land use laws in 2018. Unless the South African can sidestep this debate, then it’s more likely that pigs will fly than he escapes Washington with a deal.Israelis hold up photos of dead children in Gaza at demonstration in Tel Aviv, May 7th, 2025.
Tom Zandman, a 36-year-old Jewish Israeli from Jaffa, was once a staunch supporter of Israel’s war in Gaza. But now he says there’s nothing defensible or defensive about it. On a busy street corner during rush hour in Tel Aviv last week, Zandman was one of dozens of Israelis standing on the roadside, all holding photos of children killed in Gaza.
“After October 7th, we were all super high on our sense of self-righteousness,” Zandman told me, holding up a photo of two young girls who were killed. “But as time went on, I realized how historic this was… what we are doing in Gaza will be remembered as one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.”
A car slowed down as it approached the demonstration. The driver honked his horn and rolled down the window. “yamuutuu kuulam!” screamed a woman in the passenger seat at the demonstrators. “Kill them all” in Hebrew.
Most anti-war activism in Israel has focused on demanding a ceasefire deal that would secure the release of the hostages. But an increasing number of Israelis are now taking to the streets to protest against what they view as criminal conduct from the Israeli military in Gaza. These demonstrations are now happening multiple times a week in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Thousands of Israelis marched to the Gaza border on Sunday demanding an end to the war.
As of May 5 2025, 16,278 children and 52,653 people in total have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Critics argue these figures are unreliable as they come from a ministry in a Hamas-led government. But a recent analysis published in The Economist, along with a peer-reviewed article in the medical journal The Lancet, suggests the true death figures in Gaza could be much higher.
“I have a son who was born nine months ago. And I have this sense that he was born with a Gaza-shaped birthmark on his forehead — a mark of Cain,” Zandman said. The mark of Cain, from the Book of Genesis, is a sign God gave Cain to protect him after he killed his brother Abel.
“I have this sense that my son will walk around the world as an Israeli with that thing on his forehead. Germans live in this sense of eternal apology for the Holocaust, it’s going to be the same here,” he said.
The Israeli government has tried to crack down on protests like the one Zandman attended. In late April, Israeli police briefly prohibited Israelis from displaying images of Palestinian children killed in Gaza and using terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" on signs. But following public criticism and pressure from civil society groups, police rescinded the restrictions.
"I thought [the police order] was comically stupid. Trying to ban us has only had the effect of making our voices louder. The fact that they want to stop us from showing what's happening only reinforces the fact that it's happening," said Jed Silver, an American who moved to Israel at the end of last year.
Silver has been joining the demonstrations week after week. “People will come up to us and yell and curse. I think they’re just shocked, and there’s just a lot of unwillingness to accept that this is what their country is doing,” he said.
A woman named Maya Darnell got in between another honking motorist and the demonstrators. She’s an organizer with Standing Together, a grassroots organization that advocates social justice for all in Israel-Palestine.
“I am perpetually shocked that this is still going on. Consistently, we’ve seen that the Israeli public does not support this war or the government,” she said.
A poll from the Israel Democracy Institute in April found that 68% of Israelis believed that bringing home all the hostages was more important than toppling Hamas. Only 25% of those polled believed the latter was more important. But the Israeli government continues to defy popular opinion. On May 4th, Netanyahu’s cabinet approved a new plan to expand the war. It will see the Israeli military occupy the entirety of the Gaza Strip, flatten even larger swaths of it, and force all of Gaza’s residents into small areas in the south.
“We cannot go back to October 7. There are two main objectives before us: the return of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas,” said IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir during a visit to Gaza on Sunday.
Israel has enforced a complete blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza since March 2nd, following the collapse of the last ceasefire agreement. Under the new plan, Israel will renew aid to the strip, but only in designated “sterile zones.” All members of the cabinet voted in favor, except for Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who wished to see all remaining humanitarian aid depots destroyed by Israeli forces.
Shortly after the plan was approved on May 5th, Netanyahu released a video statement saying that the purpose of the operation was not for Israeli forces to launch raids into Gaza and then retreat, but to establish a “sustained presence.” He also said the population would be relocated “for its own protection.”
“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said at a press conference on May 6th.
On May 16, NBC News reported that the Trump administration was developing a plan to force more than one million Gazans into Libya, citing five people with knowledge of the matter. The plan is reportedly under serious enough consideration for it to have been discussed with Libyan leadership. But following publication of the report, a government spokesperson told NBC News, “these reports are untrue.”
Other countries like Indonesia and Jordan have already been accepting very small numbers of Gazans for medical treatment, but have outright rejected their resettlement. No country has agreed to participate in the forced displacement and relocation of large numbers of Gazans.
The intensification of Israel’s campaign in Gaza has also drawn significant ire from world leaders. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has since labelled Israel a genocidal state. German Chancellor Olaf Sholz stated that any resettlement plans involving the expulsion of Gaza's citizens are "unacceptable." And President Donald Trump has acknowledged that “people are starving” in Gaza, as he skipped Israel on his visit to the Middle East.
Zandman fears the damage to Israel’s international reputation could be catastrophic.
“This is what being an Israeli will mean from now on. It’s not about falafel, it’s not about the high-tech industry or Jaffa. Whatever you want to think about Israel, none of that matters now. Being an Israeli is what we did in Gaza. That’s it.”
EU leaders visit Kyiv
For decades, French governments have talked up the value of “Collective European Defense,” an alliance fully invested in Europe’s security outside of NATO. For decades, the point was academic, because Germany and Britain valued the transatlantic relationship too highly to take steps that might discourage US commitment.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it again exposed Europe’s deep dependence on Washington’s commitment to its security. When Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the risks of outsourcing Europe’s defense became unavoidably obvious. France and Germany (along with Poland) have now announced new European defense plans.
But there are two stories making headlines this week that reveal just how complex, time-consuming, and politically fraught these plans will be.
First, the European Commission has proposed that EU members be allowed to borrow against the EU budget to purchase $167 billion worth of weapons to help them quickly counter potential Russian threats.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen then told the European Parliament this week that, to invest in genuine European strategic autonomy, these funds should only be spenton weapons made in EU member states or allied countries like the UK, Norway, and Switzerland. Why buy American when you want to wean yourself off Washington? To be adopted, this plan must win backing from at least 55% of EU members and 65% of the EU’s total population.
Second, France’s Emmanuel Macron, president of the only EU member state with nuclear weapons, said this week that he’s willing to discuss potential plans tostation some of those weapons inside the borders of other EU members.
True to French tradition, Paris would impose three conditions: France would not pay the cost of moving the weapons; redeployments must not be so large as to compromise France’s own nuclear deterrent; and any decision to use these weapons could only be made by the French president.
Both developments illustrate the scale of the political and security decisions that are being undertaken. It’s a good bet we’ll still be writing about the EU debating these questions for years to come.
Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and US President, Donald Trump, meet with the Syrian president Ahmad Al-Sharaa
When US President Donald Trump promised to lift sanctions on Syria this week, the streets of Damascus erupted in celebration.
“It was a huge, huge day for Syrians,” says Ibrahim al-Assil, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., who is from the Syrian capital.
“Many people, my relatives and friends in Damascus, they are saying the same thing: ‘this is the second biggest day in my life after the fall of the regime!’”
For a country battered by more than a decade of war and mass emigration, Trump’s announcement has flung open a window of opportunity that few thought possible as recently as December. That was when current president Ahmed al-Sharaa, a one-time Al-Qaeda member, led a coalition of militias that overthrew the Assad dictatorship.
The reconstruction needs are huge. A recent UN report says Syria’s 14-year civil war cost the country at least $800 billion in lost GDP – the country’s annual output plunged from $67.5 billion in 2011 to just $23.62 billion in 2022. Estimates of the cost to rebuild the country’s infrastructure run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Trump’s move now opens the way for powerful foreign players like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to help foot that bill, without fear of running afoul of US law.
Hold up, those sanctions didn’t vanish just yet. There are numerous restrictions on the books. The president can lift some, but others require Congress. US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already questioned the wisdom of scrapping sanctions before it’s clear al-Sharaa and his allies have fully shed their jihadist pedigree.
Still, Trump’s personal commitment to sanctions relief, and the strong interest of US allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey in seeing it happen, means the measures are likely to come off sooner rather than later.
“There were some very strong dissenting voices within the administration,” says Firas Maksad, head of Eurasia Group’s Middle East practice. “But this was one of those times where the president just went over and above those differences.”
But even if the sanctions are scrapped, al-Sharaa still faces huge challenges if he wants to make good on the promise of Trump’s move.
For starters, he must tamp down long-standing sectarian tensions. Pro-government gunmen have recently clashed with both the Alawites – the Assad family’s own sect – and the Druze minority, which is backed by Israel. Christian and secular Syrians remain wary of a government still run almost entirely by Islamists close to al-Sharaa. At the same time, efforts to forge a new security force out of the country’s dozens of local militias have slowed.
What’s more, al-Sharaa has yet to follow through on a promise to appoint a new legislative council. The composition of that body will tell us a lot about whether he is willing, or able, to carefully balance the country’s various factions, but it will also serve a more basic function, says al-Assil.
“When we talk about investments and reviving the Syrian economy, that requires new laws to govern those investments, and a space to resolve conflicts so that they aren’t resolved through violence.” To date, that space seems to exist only among a small number of power-brokers close to al-Sharaa.
Lastly, Damascus will have to manage competition among the various outside powers jostling for influence in the new Syria.
The most immediate concern is Syria’s old foe Israel, which since December has moved aggressively to wreck Damascus’s military capabilities and establish its own sphere of influence in Southern Syria. The two sides are now speaking via backchannels, though, giving al-Sharaa the change to reach an understanding with the Israelis that gives him more breathing room.
But even among Syria’s friends there will be friction. The two likely giants on the scene, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have in the past clashed over Istanbul’s support for Islamist political groups. Riyadh and Doha have had similar run-ins. Competing visions for Syria among its biggest patrons could prove destabilizing.
Despite this thicket of challenges, al-Assil is cautiously optimistic.
“Syrians want this to work,” he says, “they want to navigate a way to reconcile their differences, and they recognize how important this opportunity is. And that gives me hope.”