Lifting sanctions on Syria won’t help earthquake victims

 

 Wa'el Alzayat:

 'Following the devastating series of earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, the Syrian régime has re-energized its calls for lifting sanctions leveled against it. Syrian government spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told Sky News that if the United States and the European Union lift sanctions, then “the Syrian people will be able to take care of their country.” A number of well-meaning civil society and religious groups have also made similar pleas.

 The U.S. State Department has thus far rightly dismissed such calls. But as the full scope of the destruction and human suffering comes into focus, expect these calls to intensify. Here’s why the United States should hold its ground.



 The U.S. government has imposed a number of sanctions against the Syrian régime going back to 1979 because of its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and its occupation of Lebanon. Following President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters demanding change in 2011, the U.S. government imposed additional targeted sanctions to deprive the régime of the resources it needs to continue its violence against civilians. This included blocking property of régime officials and prohibiting the importation by the United States of Syrian oil.

 In 2019, Congress passed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, named after a Syrian military defector who exposed widespread abuse and killings in Assad’s jails. The act placed further sanctions on Syrian government industries and foreign entities that provided financial or material support to the régime.

 The motivation behind these sanctions, especially those post-2011, is straightforward: to limit Assad’s ability to finance his military and militias who have been implicated in some of the worst atrocities of this century. As his main international backers, the governments of Iran and Russia have tried hard to shift the blame for Syria’s economic woes from Assad’s role in destroying the country to the sanctions. While sanctions have certainly contributed to stunting government expenditures and the Syrian lira’s depreciation, they have had no significant bearing on the delivery of humanitarian assistance.



 In fact, since the start of the conflict, the main conduit for humanitarian assistance into Syria, the United Nations, has primarily worked in régime-held areas. Despite documented corruption within the U.N. procurement process and Syrian régime influence over where aid is delivered in Syria, the United States remains the leading donor, providing nearly $16 billion throughout Syria and the region. Most of this assistance is actually spent in régime-controlled areas, because the régime prohibits most of this aid from ever reaching opposition-held communities.

 During my time at the State Department, the régime was besieging up to 18 opposition-held towns, where it denied them access to food or medicine. U.N. and Red Cross convoys were regularly turned back, and those that were allowed to pass through were stripped of medical and other lifesaving content. Over the course of the conflict, Russia has managed to hold the Security Council hostage by forcing it to agree to a single border crossing from Turkey into northern Syria to deliver humanitarian aid into opposition-held communities. It is these same communities that now lie under rubble and desperately need international assistance.

 According to Syrian rescue organization the White Helmets, there has been no communication from the United Nations, and only one U.N. aid convoy has been sent to the affected areas since the earthquakes struck. They report that hundreds of families are still trapped under collapsed buildings with cold temperatures closing the window for survival.



 Rather than misplaced calls to lift sanctions on a régime that displaced millions of people now affected by the earthquake, what is needed is immediate and direct outreach and assistance to Syrians in the northwestern corner of the country, as well as a surge of specialized teams and lifesaving aid across all available border crossings from Turkey.

 Assad and his régime cannot possibly be relied upon to help the very people they have been trying to exterminate for more than a decade. Only the good people of the world can.'

Between a dictator and a failed UN, post-earthquake Syria resembles its revolution: isolated and abandoned

 

  Muhammad Hussein:

 'Only four days after the quakes did six truckloads of aid finally enter the north-western province of Idlib, with even that consisting of the usual – although still much-needed – products like blankets, clothes and food items rather than those necessary for directly assisting victims of the earthquake and able to assist in the lifting of rubble.

 Even more importantly, there have been no rescue groups, organisations, or teams from other nations to help the affected victims in north-west and northern Syria, leaving the local population to deal with operations on their own.

 One local in north-west Syria, Saleh Androun, said: "We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between the régime's militias, and Turkiye's own emergency, and internal political rivalry which makes it even harder to pass aid through."

 Another local activist, Abbas, said that if a more developed country like Turkiye is "in need for all hands on deck and all the international help that is offered…what will be the case for the people of Idlib and northern liberated Syria which is now running its revolution onto the twelfth year?"

 Despite the people of Idlib being more used to disaster management and responsiveness than most due to their experiences, he said, "we are [still] in need of resources like finance, aid and specialists in the disaster management field, as well as heavy equipment to cut through the metal and dig through the rubble. Medical personnel and medical aid are crucial at a time like this."



 It is only the White Helmets, otherwise officially known as Syrian Civil Defence, that is using its experience in rescue operations gained throughout the ongoing war to lead the earthquake rescue operations, as well as locally-based NGOs and charities such as Molham Team which are providing relief and aid to victims and their families.

 Meanwhile, a number of friendly states like Russia, Pakistan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran, and China have offered to assist areas under Syrian régime control, but that aid is being provided to opposition-held areas. That reality has given birth to a myriad of misinformation by the Assad régime and its supporters, giving them ample material to justify an international normalisation of ties with Damascus.

 The widespread and usual explanation behind the lack of aid to opposition-held territories is that Western sanctions are preventing the Syrian government from receiving international aid and distributing it to these areas. That is easily debunked by the fact that aid is not officially subject to sanctions, seen in the international aid so far provided to régime-controlled territories by the aforementioned countries.

 Even more essentially, there is a real and widespread lack of trust in the Assad régime's ability – or willingness – to properly and equally distribute aid to all areas, with many warning that it will not be sent to opposition-held areas. That was the case over the past decade of conflict in the country, which is a primary reason separate cross-border aid corridors were established, and is unlikely to be different this time.

 As Androun told me, "everyone has already seen where UNHCR aid goes, only to Assad's army", referring to the régime's rampant corruption in diverting international aid and its siphoning off of funds.

 Moreover, the régime continued to bomb the north-western civilian areas a day after the earthquake struck, giving no consideration for the catastrophe and loss of life. How can such a player be trusted as the arbiter of international assistance and aid?

 Already, social media users are reporting of the régime and its forces' refusal to allow aid to flow north to the opposition-held areas, with one Twitter user stating that "an experimental attempt to bring 50 blankets from northern Hama to the countryside of Idlib was prevented by the Syrian army."



 Another user reported how the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) – the supposedly impartial charity directly under the influence of the régime – dropped off a significant amount of food, water and blankets in a government-held area, "only for the régime to load it up into trucks and take it away after a photo-op. Residents later received 4 eggs and a loaf of bread per family."

 Still other footage and clips show SARC purportedly stealing the aid and refusing to distribute it, with other pictures and screenshots apparently showing items diverted from aid now being sold in shops.

 "I have seen with my own eyes during the liberation of parts of Idlib the régime soldiers had stockpiled UN aid as their military stocks," Abbas told me. "Imagine sacks of rice with UN logo, for the displaced, being used for their [Syrian] military. So I do not trust Damascus to be truthful in delivering any aid" to opposition-held areas.

 He stressed his stance that sanctions against the Assad régime must be kept in place. "For these sanctions are put on the régime and criminal individuals who had betrayed our country. These sanctions had no direct economical [impact on] the people of Syria. Lifting sanctions means these criminals' aggression against people will intensify."

 Citing the continued régime attacks against the northern territories, one of which reportedly took place yesterday, he said: "If there is an ounce of humanitarian feeling, they would cease these attacks while its people are dealing with natural disaster." Abbas was not surprised at Damascus and its supporters' calls for lifting the sanctions, saying it "tries to utilise every opportunity to make an excuse to lift" them.



 One of the clearest solutions many are now urging for, and which would hardly need any significant brainstorming to enact, is the reopening of the other border crossings previously used for transporting aid into opposition-held Syria before vetoes by UN Security Council member Russia shut them down a few years ago. This, however, only took place three days after the tragedy that struck the region.

 Ineptitude by the UN is, to many, a key factor in this crisis, and it is unclear whether that is intentional or not. As Ammar al-Samo, a White Helmets member and volunteer, told Middle East Monitor: "The UN response to Syria was delayed and not only insufficient, but there was no response. It seems that the UN is trying to delay aid and to work under bureaucracy, and to put pressure on the international community to deliver aid to the Syrian régime." He clarified that "We don't know if that was the intent, but that is the message."

 Al-Samo emphasised that the Syrian people and his group blames the UN "for not providing any support to the Syrian people. We are left alone under these circumstances, as if we are in the Middle Ages."

 While "taking the Syrian people hostage", he said, the Assad régime is making use of the ongoing situation by "exploiting the global sympathy and solidarity to manage the aid, to skip towards normalisation, to bypass justice and accountability."

 Citing the government's blatant use of a picture showing rescue operations in northwest Syria to display a false narrative of its own response, al-Samo stated that its "intent is clear: to use this catastrophe to get political benefit."

 Four days after the earthquake struck Turkiye and Syria, only one of them has received the attention it so needed. The other is left isolated, neglected and abandoned – much like its 12-year-long revolution – by its dictator and his régime on one side and by the international community presided over by the UN on the other side.

 Northwest Syria, the thousands of human lives affected there, and the many buried under rubble in a new humanitarian crisis, require a coordinated response and rescue teams just like Turkiye is getting. The fact that it is not is testament to an inept and devalued United Nations, continued corruption by the Assad régime, and perhaps simply a world that no longer cares.

 "I keep running my finger down the list of countries that has sent help and rescue workers to Turkiye, checking and rechecking if there is a country that will be willing to come towards us, at least after helping Turkiye," Abbas lamented.'

Extracts from My House and Damascus by Diana Darke

 

 'Where to look first? The sheer beauty of the old stones, their soft hues of golden limestone, the deep pinkish red of the local marble, the fierce contrast with the harsh black volcanic basalt that ran in alternating bands round the courtyard walls. It took me by surprise. The elaborate stone patterns continued in the courtyard floor, gently polished by the wear of centuries.'
[p5]



 'A ray of hope appeared. Weirdly, unexpectedly, something changed in Damascus. By late afternoon on Friday, 13 April [2012], the entire mood of the city had lifted. In the morning the news had carried footage from the régime's TV station claiming there had been an explosion at the ruling Ba'ath Party Headquarters, but when we went to look there was nothing to be seen. Sound bombs became a common scare tactic, or bombs without a detonator, like the one the régime sent through the walls of the Sydnaya Monastery to frighten the nuns. When nothing exploded this time in Damascus or Aleppo, we all hoped there might be a sea change. Where were all these armed groups, the jihadis and al-Qaeda elements the media loved to talk about? At that stage my friends dismissed their existence in any serious numbers. This had been true, back in April 2012.

But it was just a pause, tragically brief, and the opportunity was squandered. The régime broke off from its killing spree, looked up to take stock of the world's reaction, realised there was no unified voice, and continued in its single-minded aim - to crush the opposition. It was on the way to self-destruction. Addicted to power, oblivious to all pleas to change course, in denial about the size and nature of the problem, it would almost certainly have to reach its own personal rock-bottom, like all addicts, before things could improve.'
[pp11-13]

 ' "Death is easier than a Syrian prison,said activists who survived it. "Inside prison you wish for death a million times." '
[p16]

 'Before giving Quneitra back in a UN-brokered disengagement agreement in 1974, the Israelis razed the place to the ground. Since then it has been kept exactly as it was. Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president Bashar and creator of the Assad régime and Syria as it is today, took the decision not to rebuild Quneitra, as an example of what the Israelis were capable of. How ironic that towns all across Syria would, in the course of the uprising against him and his régime, be similarly flattened, this time by his own armed forces.'
[p17]

‘Homs was 30 per cent Christian, though most of them were not just in this quarter, but fully integrated throughout the districts of the city. In the revolution, during the famous fight for Baba Amr where the Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin was killed, Christians fought alongside Muslims, Tariq later told me, united in their struggle against the régime. In the souk, both Christians and Muslims owned shops side by side and had done for centuries. This social cohesion is the main reason why Homs, Syria’s third city, rose up as one against the régime early on, unlike Damascus and Aleppo.’
[p114]

 'After two and a half centuries of Mamluk rule, internal order collapsed. When the Ottomans defeated them in 1516, the populations of Syria (and Egypt) welcomed their new Turkish masters. Will a similar point be reached eventually in the current revolution, when the weary protagonists fighting a seemingly endless war of attrition against each other have finally had enough and submit to a new rule of law imposed from the outside? Or is there any chance they could find an internal solution - for Syrians by Syrians?'
[p203]



 'Maybe Bashar has no strategy except a misguided attempt to return to the corrupt old Syria his father created, so that the régime will have to disintegrate internally, dragging the country down with it, and Bashar will end up being slaughtered in the sewer Gadhafi-style, before conditions are right for a total change. No one knows how long any of that will take, while thousands more lose their lives and millions flee as refugees to avoid a similar fate.'
[p204]



 'Today, elders from the Sunni Muslim community of Homs hold meetings to discuss how to deal with the pregnancies that resulted from the rape of 1,200 girls by Alawi shabiha thugs after the district of Baba Amr fell.'
[p207]

 'The bottom line was that the régime had brought the trouble on itself through its zulm, its "oppression" of the people. Abu Ashraf was eloquent on the subject: Kul muwatin ya'raf Maher yaksur al-balad, wa Makhlouf yastaghil al-balad: "Every citizen knows that Maher [al-Assad, Bashar's brother] is breaking the country, and [Rami] Makhlouf [Bashar's cousin] is exploiting the country.'
[p219]



 'I stepped into the coutyard with its riot of colour - the wisteria, the bougainvillea, the myrtle, the lemon tree, the vine ascending to the roof terrace - it was always magnificent.'
[p220]



 'At any one time, 80 per cent of Assad's army is confined to barracks. Without its army, this régime would be finished, and they know it. Most of them - at least 70 per cent - are Sunni conscripts, and they are not allowed out because the régime knows most of them would not return. So their commanding officers - who are mainly Alawis - keep them locked up in their military camps, with no mobile phones, no land lines, no access to anything other than the Syrian state TV Channels. So lots of them still believe the régime mantra that they are fighting armed terrorist gangs who threaten the security of the Syrian nation.'
[pp229-230]



 ‘Marwan told me how he no longer carries a medical kit with bandages in his car. “If they stop you and find medical kit and bandages in your car,” he said, “they will accuse you of helping demonstrators and arrest you. We have to be very careful.” Most shocking of all was what he went on to tell me about the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC). He had applied for and got a job as project manager, after many stages of testing and interviews. When he started work, he was horrified to discover his work colleagues were useless, all of them at their desks purely on the strength of their connections – wasta again. He was even more horrified when he was put in charge of a project that turned out to be selling blod and organs to unnamed third parties. He complained to his boss, saying he could not sign papers agreeing to this. “But you must,” said his boss, “You are the only one here who knows how to run these projects. None of the others know anything.” Marwan refused, and quit, though his boss continued to phone him for weeks after, offering him more money and bribes.’
[pp251-252]



 ‘Drastic action is needed in Syria. It was needed three years ago when only Turkey had the appetite, calling for international intervention to create a no-fly zone and safe haven on Syrian soil along the border. But the West, bruised by failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, had no interest in involvement. Let them kill each other; it’s so far away and nothing to do with us.’
[p259]

'It Can't Get Any Worse.' The Agony of Syria's Earthquake

 

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'Syrians wanted to be known for their contributions to civilization, as they were in ancient times. Syria is part of the Fertile Crescent where agriculture began, where the first cities were built, where the first states developed. The first alphabet, Ugaritic, originated in Syria. The country produced Roman emperors and, under the Umayyad dynasty, became the first center of a new "Islamic world." When Syrians achieved their independence from France in the mid-20th century, they hoped their modern accomplishments would echo the old. As a diverse, cultured, hardworking people who valued education, and who tended to excel in business when abroad, they had good reason to hope this would be the case.

 But like so many post-colonial states lacking strong institutions, modern Syria soon fell into a cycle of military coups and counter-coups, ending with the Baathist dictatorship that has tortured and plundered the country and its people since 1963—and under the Assad family since 1970, first Hafez al-Assad and, starting in 2000, his son Bashar. In 2011, Syrians rose up in revolution against the Assad régime, and would have liked then to be recognized for their revolution's successes. For years, they resisted the régime's most extreme oppression and, even under the bombs, managed to build hundreds of democratic local councils. They also managed to avoid falling into sectarian civil war, despite the provocations. Sunni and Alawi villages didn't attack each other. The sectarian massacres had to be organized from on high, first by Assad, then by ISIS, the régime's dark protégé.

 But the Assad régime was rescued by Russian and Iranian imperialists, and by the West's appeasement of these imperialists. The democratic Syrian revolution was defeated by force of arms. Worse, it was "orphaned," to use Yassin al-Haj Saleh's term. Beyond Syria, it was ignored or misrepresented, particularly in the West, by the Kremlin's leftist and rightist useful idiots and a wider public prepared to believe the worst of a mainly Arab and mainly Muslim people.

 So now Syrians have become known internationally not for their history, nor their revolution, but for the extremity of their suffering. Their pains under dictatorship were bad enough—culminating initially in the 1982 Hama massacre when at least 20,000 were murdered under Hafez al-Assad, but then multiplied after 2011 when the full force of local, regional and international counterrevolution was deployed against them.



 From the start, pro-régime thugs smashed limbs and crushed skulls. Their mantra was: "Assad, or we burn the country." Tens of thousands of unarmed young protesters were rounded up and then slowly tortured to death in the régime's gulag. When this didn't suppress people's urge for freedom, the régime launched military assaults on civilian neighborhoods, and organized a campaign of mass rape against communities deemed disloyal. Throughout the summer of 2012, the régime organized a series of sectarian massacres, in Houla, al-Qubeir, Tremseh and elsewhere, in which the throats of Sunni women and children were slit. This accompanied a steady military escalation, as the régime gradually worked out that the so-called international community would let it get away with any type of murder, from mortars and barrel bombs to grad and scud missiles. Then chlorine gas, then sarin gas, up to and beyond the atrocity of August 2013 when 1,500 people were choked and convulsed to death in just a few hours in the Damascus suburbs. Next came the starvation sieges, often perpetrated by Iran-backed militias. By now, the régime and its allies had understood that they couldn't make the people kneel, so they decided to remove them instead. The scorched-earth strategy meant the bombing of bakeries, schools and hospitals, the burning of crops and the shooting of livestock. Millions were driven from their homes.

 "It can't get any worse," Syrians used to say. And then it got worse, again and again, until the phrase became a sad joke. ISIS imposed its reign of terror over a third of the country. The international war against ISIS, led by the United States, destroyed the jihadist state as well as the cities it had occupied, but left Assad—the root cause of ISIS in Syria—alone. Russia's direct military intervention added cluster bombs, thermite and "bunker busters" to the list of weaponry used against Syrian civilians. Russian aerial bombardment and Iranian-backed infantry recaptured liberated cities for Assad, most notably Aleppo, or what was left of it.

 Syria was divided into sections, each occupied by a different foreign power. The country became a battlefield for regional wars, between Turkey and the PKK, between Israel and Iran. By now, more than half of the population was forcibly displaced. Within Syria, they lived in tented camps that flooded and froze in the winter. Abroad, they drowned on boats crossing the Mediterranean, or suffocated in the backs of trucks entering Europe, and became the target of racist demagogues from Turkey to the United States.



 The situation kept on getting worse. Even as the Assad régime earned billions from the illegal production and export of the amphetamine Captagon and other narcotics, the economy in régime-held areas collapsed so dramatically that hospitals and schools were closed for lack of electricity. Over 90 percent of Syrians now live below the poverty line, ravaged by diseases such as Covid-19 and cholera.

 Could it get any worse? Yes, it could. This winter, a blizzard hit the north, where millions of Syrians had been displaced. The people in tents froze in the snow and mud. And then came the earthquake, which made those in tents seem like the lucky ones.

 In Turkey, the destruction is much greater than it might have been as a result of corruption—for years construction companies have bribed their way out of obeying the building regulations necessary in an earthquake zone. In northern Syria, building regulations were an irrelevant luxury in the first place, when the priority was to house the huge numbers of displaced as quickly as possible. Years of Assad and Russian bombing—which continued even in the hours after Monday's colossal earthquake—had in any case weakened the foundations of thousands of buildings.

 The earth shook at four in the morning when people were asleep in bed. Entire towns have been erased, entire families wiped out. As I write, thousands of Syrians are dying of their wounds, and of hypothermia, crushed in the rubble. They are dying not only because of a natural disaster but also because of the unnatural indifference of an ill-named "international community" that has appeased Assad, Russia and Iran for far too long. The whole world suffers from this appeasement. Had Russia and Iran not been appeased in Syria, they wouldn't have been in a position to rain death on Ukrainians today. But none suffer so much as Syrians.

 Assad and Russia close crossings through which aid might be delivered to the liberated areas. For years, the régime has diverted international aid to its loyalists, and even to its military. Foreign states, even those that now send military aid to Ukraine, continue to bow to Russian dictates in Syria. So while Turkey is today welcoming rescue teams from dozens of countries, the liberated areas of Syria are not. Syrians, as usual, are on their own. Which means that almost all of those in the rubble will die.



 Is this, at last, the lowest point? Can we now at last say that the situation can't get any worse? No Syrian would dare say so. Still, we must try to find whatever hope we can.

 I am reminded of the chapter of the Quran called "The Earthquake," part of which reads (in Tarif Khalidi's translation):

 That Day, mankind will come out in scattered throngs,

 To be shown their rights and wrongs.

 Whoso has done an atom's worth of good shall see it;

 Whoso has done an atom's worth of evil shall see it.

 There is a sense that this string of catastrophes is a test of some sort. Religious people will readily believe that earthly torments are a test of faith, with reward or punishment stored up in the life to come. I'm not a religious person, but I do think the revolution and war have tested Syrians and non-Syrians alike. Some have been prompted by the events to ever higher standards of morality, while others have given way to their most sadistic impulses. Some have tended to cooperation with their neighbors, while others have worshipped authoritarian leaders and ideologies. Syrians like Razan Zeitouneh, Omar Aziz and Raed Fares (all of them murdered since 2011) provide the world with models, if the world wants to look. And there are very many Syrian survivors spread around the globe for whom freedom, dignity and social justice have become as necessary as bread and water. Other groups that have suffered disproportionately, such as African Americans or European Jews, have had a disproportionate creative cultural impact on the world. Free Syrians will too. In this respect, their suffering is their strength.

 But none of that justifies their suffering, or excuses the crimes committed against them. No rationalization justifies the horror experienced by a single torture victim or a single child crushed in the ruins of his makeshift home. God help the suffering Syrian people.'