Syria marks banking milestone

Syria took a small but significant step towards rejoining the international banking system with the announcement Thursday that the country had completed its first electronic transfer in 14 years with a Western bank.

- NEIL MACFARQUHAR REHAM MOURSHED

The transfer, to a European bank earlier this week, was considered a sign that despite the escalating tensions in the Middle East, a few green shoots were emerging in the effort to foster renewed economic life in Syria after its devastating civil war.

"This step represents gradual progress towards reintegrating the Syrian financial system into global financial channels," Abdulkader Husrieh, the governor of Syria's Central Bank, said in a statement Thursday confirming the transaction.

Reactivation of the Swift system, the acronym for the global network for electronic transfers between banks, was one of the first concrete steps to indicate that Syria was moving beyond an extended period of isolation from the international financial community.

Syrian banks were cut off from the international system through sanctions imposed soon after the ruling Assad regime began its long, brutal crackdown against Syrian pro-democracy demonstrators in 2011, which led to a 13-year civil war. The government of President Bashar Assad of Syria was ousted in December, when rebels took the capital, Damascus.