Log in
A potted history of US allied sanctions against Syria
Support for Iran, Hezbollah, Palestinian Resistance characterised as Hamas. The following analysis is taken from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) paper on Syrian sanctions. CFR is at the top of the influence pyramid as regards US regime foreign policy.
Syria gives the Lebanese militia Hezbollah political, diplomatic, and organizational aid, according to the State Department. Iranian arms bound for Hezbollah regularly pass through Syria, experts say. Syria, which effectively occupied and controlled neighboring Lebanon from 1990 to 2005, also let Hezbollah operate in Lebanon and attack Israel, often ratcheting up regional tensions.
Syria has also provided training, weapons, safe haven, and logistical support to both leftist and Islamist Palestinian hard-liners. Syria allows several regional terrorist organizations—such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command—to have external headquarters in Damascus, according to the State Department. The Syrian government contends that these headquarters are for political and informational mobility only and that these groups “represent legitimate resistance activity as distinguished from terrorism”
Leftist can be translated as communist, the West’s bete noir which then included Soviet Union, now Russia.
From 1980 until 1998, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which sought an independent Kurdish state, used Syria as a headquarters and base of operations against neighboring Turkey.
The same Kurdish separatist groups now weaponised by the US Coalition against the Syrian government - occupying the north-east, sponsored by the US and Israel, stealing resources, ethnically cleansing the region of Arab Syrians and pillaging wheat and other crops while imprinting Kurdish culture on the area including education.
Syria further alienates itself from US neocolonialist policy by supporting the Iranian Revolution. The revolution overthrew the CIA imposed Shah of Iran who had been CIA-assisted to topple the government of Mohammed Mosaddeq, a hardline nationalist who had campaigned against British oil companies in Iran, threatening to nationalise Iranian resources.
March - August 2004
Syria is labelled “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and the economy of the United States”. by President Bush – Severe sanctions were imposed on Syria on the pretext that Damascus was ‘supporting terrorism’ which included the biggest perceived threat to Israel in the region, Palestinian armed resistance and Hezbollah.
In reality the sanctions were punishment for Syria’s opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy and to attempt to bring Assad to the table to discuss weakening his alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.
“First Gulf War – Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein was recognised by Hafez Al Assad as a collaborator with the US in the devastating and protracted war with Iran, using chemical weapons approved by the US, and as an opportunistic backer of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Hafez Al Assad supported the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, in line with International Law, in the First Gulf War but both Syria and Iran later opposed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq even though it would effectively rid them of a mutual enemy, Saddam Hussein.”
The focus on Iraq is significant. The US occupation is not confronting armies of “foreign fighters” but a popular uprising with widespread support. Desperate to stem the opposition, Washington is seeking assistance, willing or coerced, wherever it can be obtained. The US message to Damascus is that it should cut off any sources of aid to the Iraqi resistance and use its political influence to bolster the illegal US-led occupation. WSWS
As further justification, Bush cited longstanding US demands, made largely on Israel’s behalf, that Syria pull out of the Lebanon and crack down on Palestinian “terrorist” organisations based in Damascus. Syria pulled out of Lebanon in 2005 after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri which was conveniently blamed on Syria and Hezbollah but is believed to have been engineered by Israeli intelligence, Mossad.
Bush insisted that Syria has “one of the most advanced Arab state chemical weapons capabilities” and “continues to develop an offensive biological weapons capability”. Not a shred of evidence has been provided to back these claims, which Syria has consistently denied. However this “chemical weapon” narrative has underpinned the Washington-London-Gulf State-Israeli-EU regime change intervention that has been ongoing since 2011. Of course, parallels to the WMD faux justification for the invasion of Iraq must be drawn.
Those sanctions did not include any restriction on future investments by US energy companies.
Preceded in 2003 by the pre-planned invasion of Iraq on “war on terror” pretext and Israel launched the first missile attack on Syria for thirty years. President Bush immediately condoned the attack.
A memo from Blair to Bush discussed creating a ‘post-cold-war world order’. These memos were revealed by the Chilcot report into the WMD hoax that manufactured consent for the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Blair mentions Syria, Libya and Iran in the context of ‘anti-terrorism’ and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). These countries should be given a ‘choice’:
“co-operate on WMD or face isolation and in time, worse.”
2011 onwards, the doubling down of sanctions pressure
From May 2011 the EU, US and UK adopted successive sanctions against Syria in line with their interventionist policy using terrorist groups as proxies to overthrow the Syrian government. Early on, embargoes were placed on the oil sector, freezing the assets of individuals and the Syrian state. Before 2011 oil represented 20% of Syrian GDP. Export and import were targeted and shut down from the US including the medical sector which has always been denied by the US alliance.
November 2011, the Arab League joined the US alliance of economic warfare, freezing Syrian government financial assets, ending financial exchanges with the Central Bank of Syria and the ban on flights between the countries of the Arab League, cessation of investment in Syria by Arab League states (opposed by Lebanon and Yemen). Turkey also announced the freezing of Syrian state financial assets.
Canada, Australia and Switzerland have also contributed to the economic pressure on Syria. Canada prohibited all imports of goods from Syria and the export of “luxury goods” to Syria - cracked down on financial services related to Syria and banned any investment in the country.
In February 2012 the EU imposed sanctions on the energy sector, the supply of arms (while supplying arms to Al Qaeda), the financial sectors and mining sectors. 120 Syrian officials and institutions had financial assets frozen by the EU and travel to the EU was prohibited. Other sectors adversely affected were law enforcement, telecommunications.
The alleged chemical weapon use by the Syrian government has also been exploited to increase the savagery of economic sanctions (despite vetoes from China and Russia) culminating in the Trump administration-led Caeser act which ostensibly targets named individuals with connections to the Syrian leadership. All sanctions deployed by the US coalition as a precursor or accompaniment for war unilaterally target the populations of prey nations disguised by the flimsy fig leaf of prosecuting individuals that the US has deemed criminal without independent trial or investigation.
Sanctions kill slowly and painfully, silently. The impact of mortars blasting holes in the roads, homes and tearing limbs from bodies, murdering and maiming are preferable because at least the Syrian people had a life to defend, to sacrifice for. Now, they are being starved of food and hope, left in a mire of poverty, hunger, darkness, cold and abandoned to their fate by a world no longer interested in Syria because the media has switched off and pivoted towards Ukraine or Covid.
