Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. As Syria tries to recover from a nearly decade-long war,

the U.S. has imposed crippling new sanctions that explicitly target reconstruction.

Under the so-called Caesar Act, the U.S. government will target anyone who does business with

the Syrian government. The measure singles out three sectors

of Syrian society, the military, the gas industry, and reconstruction and government held areas,

the place where most Syrians live. According to the Washington Post, quote,

for Syrians, sanctions on reconstruction and on oil and gas are likely to be felt most

acutely. The Caesar Act will probably limit the government's ability to procure oil further

hurting the already low quality of life. These sanctions have already had a major toll even

before coming into force. Just last week, the Syrian pound hit a record low, plunging to less than a fifth of its value

of one year ago.

And that follows the suffering caused by previous U.S.-led sanctions.

In 2018, a UN report warned that sanctions, quote, have had a devastating impact on the

entire economy and the daily lives of ordinary people, unquote.

The Caesar Act is named after the pseudonym used by a Syrian military officer who leaked more than 50,000 photos documenting deaths and torture inside Syria.

The photo collection contains multiple images of the same victims.

Now, there is no doubt that the Syrian government practices brutal torture and kills prisoners.

But lost in the media coverage of the Caesar photos are some key facts.

For one, according to Human Rights Watch, just under half of the photos capture killings and attacks committed by anti-government militants.

There are over 24,000 of such photos, while there are over 28,000 photos documenting killings, attacks, and torture by the Syrian government.

That suggests the photos captured killings committed

by both sides of a brutal multi-year war

...