In the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, a massive, 7.7-magnitude earthquake rocked the province of Kahramanmaras near the border of Turkey and Syria. As of this writing, the confirmed death toll has surpassed 33,000, and is likely to keep growing in the days and weeks to come.
International humanitarian aid and funds for disaster relief quickly flooded into NATO-member Turkey. But, as a recent CNN article recently pointed out, “While Turkey has received an outpouring of support and aid from dozens of countries, outreach to Syria has been less enthusiastic, raising concerns that victims on one side of the Turkish-Syrian border may be neglected while others are provided for.”
Why the disparate treatment? Well, the aforementioned CNN article provides the official explanation: “The Syrian regime is shunned by most Western countries . . . [it] is ruled by a myriad of disparate groups. Its regime, internationally sidelined and heavily sanctioned due to its brutal suppression of an uprising there that started in 2011, counts Iran and Russia as its closest allies - both global pariahs.”
Is this official narrative true? Well, in part. The Syrian regime is indeed “heavily sanctioned,” but the background is far more complex than the CNN article lets on.
Before we dive deeper into Syria, let us pause for a moment to contemplate what sanctions really are.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR - the hawkish American foreign policy think tank run by a cadre of corporate, government, media, and military/intelligence ghouls), sanctions are “the withdrawal of customary trade and financial relations for foreign- and security-policy purposes. Sanctions may be comprehensive, prohibiting commercial activity with regard to an entire country, like the long-standing [since 1962] U.S. embargo of Cuba, or they may be targeted, blocking transactions by and with particular businesses, groups, or individuals.” Sanctions may also vary in form, and may include “travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargoes, capital restraints, foreign aid reductions, and trade restrictions.” The alleged purpose of sanctions, according to the CFR, is, among other things, “democracy and human rights promotion.”
As the CFR also acknowledges, “[t]he United States uses economic and financial sanctions more than any other country.” According to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. has 38 active sanctions programs as of February 2023, targeting multiple countries, including Afghanistan, the Balkans, Belarus, Burma, the Central African Republic, China, Cuba, the Congo, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
As a result, a quarter of the world’s population is currently under U.S. sanctions. Widely considered a violation of international law, these unilateral sanctions “reduce the economic performance of the targeted state, degrade public health, and cause tens of thousands of deaths per year under the most crushing sanctions regimes” – all in the name of “democracy and human rights promotion” (see here for a good overview of the history of U.S. sanctions regimes and how they are never successful - at least, not in achieving their stated aims).
When imposed by the U.S., sanctions typically make it illegal for “U.S. persons” to invest in, export to, import from, or otherwise trade or supply any services to the target country (see here for OFAC’s description of the Syria Sanctions Program). Secondary sanctions pressure third party non-U.S. persons to stop trading with the target country “by threatening to cut-off the third party’s access to the sanctioning country” (see here). Because the U.S. dollar is the world’s dominant reserve currency (according to the Congressional Research Service, half of all international trade is invoiced in dollars, half of all international loans and debt securities are denominated in dollars, the world’s central banks hold 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in dollars, and dollars are involved in nearly 90% of all foreign exchange transactions), non-U.S. companies often “over-comply” for fear of being cut off from the U.S. financial system.
As a result, even where the U.S. purports to exempt humanitarian aid from its crushing sanctions programs, we still see countless examples of target countries being denied essential goods and services, resulting in empty grocery store shelves in Venezuela, the lack of critical medical equipment in Iranian hospitals, and the inability to procure replacement car parts in Cuba.1
Oh, and over 500,000 children starved to death in Iraq and nearly the same number of human beings died in Yemen (though, in our defense, Yemen is not just us, it is also our best friends the Saudis).
Got to promote that democracy.
So, back to Syria. That CNN article said the sanctions began because of a “brutal uprising in 2011,” so the U.S. imposed sanctions to get rid of the Assad regime so that democracy and human rights could flourish, right?
Not exactly.
U.S. War planners had set their sights on Syria as early as the 1990s. Neocon Warhawk, Iraq War architect, and likely traitor, David Wurmser wrote in 1996 that the U.S. should “expedite the chaotic collapse” of Syria to put an end to “Baathism, a variant of Nasser’s brand of secular-Arab nationalism,” which he likened to “Leninist socialism” and “communism.” According to Wurmser, “The West and its local friends must engage fundamentalism with better associates than Baathists.”
Assad, while undoubtedly a secular dictator, is no Islamist. In March 2011, Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, called Assad a “reformer.” Indeed, Assad cooperated with the U.S. in its War of Terror, torturing people on behalf of the CIA since Ms. Clinton’s husband’s administration in the 1990s. As former CIA agent Robert Baer stated, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria.”
In any case, Assad never attacked America. So why did America attack him?
The fact of the matter is the U.S. never cared about the Syrian people or Assad’s so-called atrocities, many of which were debunked. The reason the U.S. targeted Syria was to undermine Iran, after its illegal invasion of Sunni Iraq in 2003 resulted in the installation of a Shi’ite, Iranian-friendly government in that country.2 As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in 2007:
To undermine Iran, which is predominately Shi’ite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shi’ite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shi’ites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound – and unintended – strategic consequence of the Iraq War is the empowerment of Iran.
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[T]he Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashar al Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to [Shi’a] Hezbollah.
President Obama corroborated Hersh’s reporting in a 2012 interview, in which he stated that the Arab Spring was “now engulfing Syria, and Syria is basically [Iran’s] only true ally in the region. And it is our estimation that [Assad’s] days are numbered. It’s a matter not of if, but when. Now, can we accelerate that? We’re working with the world community to try to do that . . . But they can also accelerate a transition to a peaceful and stable and representative Syrian government. If that happens, that will be a profound loss for Iran.”
As former State Department official, Jamie Rubin, wrote in the summer of 2012, “Cutting Iran’s link to the Mediterranean Sea [via intervention in Syria] is a strategic prize worth the risk.” Neocon psycho Max Boot wrote in the same year, “American intervention [in Syria] would diminish Iran’s influence in the Arab world.”
In short, no one in the U.S. government was concerned with protecting the Syrian people or “democracy and human rights promotion.” They were instead concerned with grand geopolitical strategy and weakening their forever-enemy Iran, which itself has been under U.S. sanctions since the revolution in 1979 that overthrew the secular dictator installed by the CIA in 1953.
To be sure, real anti-regime protests did take place in Syria in 2011. But whatever “moderate rebels” existed at the beginning of the uprising were quickly overrun by extremist Islamist veterans of the U.S. Terror Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Indeed, while President Obama was giving that softball interview in 2012,3 he had secretly approved the most expensive CIA operation in history – Operation Timber-Sycamore – in which the CIA, together with Saudi, Turkish, Qatari, and Jordanian intelligence, spent billions of dollars training and arming the so-called “moderate rebels” with TOW anti-tank missiles, Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and other lethal equipment. Much of this equipment was stolen and sold on the black market, and the rest ended up in the hands of the real Syrian opposition, al Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra (see also this New York Times article titled “Syrian Rebels Tied to Al Qaeda Play Key Role in War, noting that Al Nusra had “some of the best fighters in the insurgency that [the U.S.] aims to support”). As a leaked U.S. State Department cable revealed, “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” and “Saudi Arabia remains a critical support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups.” Nevertheless, the U.S. worked with Saudi Arabia to arm and fund these terrorists – to the tune of billions of dollars – to overthrow a secular, Arab nationalist regime. As another leaked State Department cable revealed, current National Security Advisor to Joe Biden, and then State Department apparatchik, Jake Sullivan, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a February 12, 2012 email, “AQ [al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Foreign Affairs, the bi-monthly military-industrial complex journal published by the aforementioned sickos and freaks at the Council on Foreign Relations published a series of articles attempting to justify U.S. support for al Qaeda affiliates against the secular leader of Syria. These articles were variously titled, “The Good and Bad of Ahrar al-Sham – An al Qaeda-Linked Group Worth Befriending” (January 23, 2014), “Accepting Al Qaeda – The Enemy of the United States’ Enemy” (March 9, 2015), and “The Moderate Face of Al Qaeda – How the Group Has Rebranded Itself” (October 24, 2017). Remember, this was the very same group the U.S. supposedly went to War in the Middle East to defeat after September 11, 2001!
The Civil War that began in 2011 was prolonged by billions of dollars of U.S. and its gulf state allies’ aid in support of the “moderate rebels” and continues to this day. Over 500,000 human beings have been killed with nearly 7 million refugees forced to flee (see here). Over the course of that War, veterans of the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq formed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. watched as it grew in strength, hoping, unlike the previous “moderate rebels” it supported, that it would succeed in toppling Assad.
As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry admitted in leaked audio released by Wikileaks:
[W]e know that this was growing [ISIS], we were watching we saw that Daesh [the Arabic name for ISIS] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened . . .
We thought, however, we could probably imagine that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him . . .
The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus at some point and that’s why Russia came in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Asad.
There you have it. The United States funded and armed the al Qaeda militants that they had previously invaded the Middle East to destroy, and then sat idly by as ISIS grew in hopes that the brutal terrorist group would topple Assad, the secular dictator. All while civilians died horribly by the hundreds of thousands. All because of Iran.
And the whole time, the U.S. was levying brutal sanctions, which persist to this day. U.S. troops currently occupy one-third of Syria. As Dana Stroul, Co-Chair of the Syria Study Group and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Department of Defense testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs:
The reason the Syrian Study Group talked about needing to retain a U.S. military presence in that one-third of Syria . . . was about the broader leverage of that one-third of Syria which is the resource-rich part of Syria which provided us leverage to influence a political outcome in Syria . . . the risks of secondary sanctions and what it means to materially support the Assad regime and his backers now remains a possible and potent form of leverage if we apply it smartly now.
She later stated that the U.S. “owned” Syria, stated that most of Syria is “rubble,” and admitted that the U.S.’s policy in Syria was to “prevent[] reconstruction aid and technical expertise from going back into Syria” (see 1:50-2:16 below).
This, of course, is illegal and unconstitutional – the U.S. Congress never declared War on Syria. And what right does the U.S. have to invade, occupy the “resource-rich part” of that sovereign country, and prevent its reconstruction after a brutal Civil War? This is simply brutal, murderous, and obscene. All to stick it to Iran.
After the earthquake (and, frankly, before), Syria is in desperate need of relief. But because of the sanctions, it cannot get it. As one outlet reported, the fundraising site GoFundMe is refusing to fund the Syrian relief effort because of U.S. sanctions. Syrian Arab Red Crescent director Khaled Hboubati stated that U.S. sanctions exacerbate the “difficult humanitarian situation,” and that “[t]here is no fuel even to send (aid and rescue) conveys, and this is because of the blockade and sanctions.” And Israel recently bombed the Damascus airport for no discernable reason.
As the UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights, Alena Douhan, recently stated after a visit to Syria:
The imposed sanctions have shattered the State’s capability to respond to the needs of the population, particularly the most vulnerable, and 90% of the people now live below the poverty line. Since 2019, prices increased more than 800%, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost due to destruction of industries, loss of the external trade and also to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The crisis is exacerbated by the country’s financial isolation, with the sanctions’ designation of the Central Bank and all public financial institutions, thus completely blocking transactions for imports and exports, including of food, medicine, spare parts, raw materials, and items necessary for the country’s needs and economic recovery, and restraining foreign currency inflows. It is reported that before the US Caesar Act, the Commercial Bank of Syria had around 100 foreign correspondent banks; now it has five. For local importers of goods, in 2010, there were 1,241 letters of credit, while now only 2.
Unilateral sanctions have also prevented the Government from having resources to maintain and improve key infrastructure and for rebuilding and developing projects vital to the population’s needs, especially in remote and rural areas. Almost all interlocutors highlighted shortages of electricity and drinking water due to the destruction of plants and distribution infrastructure and also due to the unavailability of diesel fuel and gas needed for thermic power plants and water pumps.
Power outages are frequent, including in Damascus. Some Governorates distribute electricity for only 2–4 hours daily, while the Government tries to supply hospitals with 10–11 hours daily. The impact of unilateral sanctions prevents the procurement of spare parts for power plants and distribution networks, with foreign companies reluctant to engage with Syrian entities and international payments impossible to make. Daily power production is now 2,100 Megawatts, down from 9,500 Megawatts. It was reported that more electricity could be produced if technicians could reach gas and oil fields, mostly located outside Government-controlled areas.
. . .
Sanctions-induced trade restrictions and foreign businesses’ over-compliance prevent the procurement of equipment and spare parts needed to repair, maintain and develop water supply networks, sometimes resulting in contaminated water; this led to a recent cholera outbreak with more than 20,000 suspected cases. Drinking water reaches many households during only 1 or 2 hours every few days as per capita drinking water supplies have plunged. Currently only 20% of Syria’s agricultural land can be irrigated. I was also informed that the Government, working with international organisations and civil society organisations, is implementing projects to procure diesel stations and pumps for water distribution in certain areas and to respond to the needs of millions of people, but fuel shortages remain a challenge for operating this equipment. Repairing malfunctioning water pumps is a further challenge due to the lack of spare parts and the brain drain of expert technicians.
. . .
Shortages of medical equipment were also cited during my visit to Al Basel Hospital in Homs. With 125 specialised doctors and 850 nurses covering the city’s healthcare needs, it had only two sterilising machines (one did not work as it lacked spare parts), one kidney treatment machine (also not working due to the lack of spare parts) and a few old dialysis machines which are overused in order to treat approximately 275 patients. According to Government data, 118 haemodialysis units, 8 CT scanners and a number of MRI devices are out of service due to the lack of spare parts and updated software. Also affected by shortages are PET-CT scans, endoscopic devices, X-rays, cardiac catheters, incubators, ICU ventilators and oxygen generators. Similar challenges have been cited in in Al-Biruni cancer hospital in rural Damascus and Children hospital in Damascus.
. . .
Syria is facing a serious food crisis. According to the World Food Programme, 12 million Syrians – more than half of the population – are grappling with food insecurity – 51% more than in 2019 – and 2.4 million are severely food insecure.
. . .
The whole population stays in life-threatening conditions with severe shortages of drinking water, water for irrigation, sewage facilities, electricity, fuel for cooking, heating, transportation and agriculture, food (including baby formula), health facilities, medical equipment and medicine, work and education facilities, making the country extremely vulnerable and dependent on humanitarian assistance.
There you have it. All this human suffering because of the U.S.’s feud with Iran.
On February 6, 2023, U.S. State Department spokesman and former CIA ghoul Ned Price told reporters that it would be “ironic, if not counterproductive, for us to [lift sanctions] and reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now.”
Three days later, in an apparent admission that its so-called “humanitarian exemptions” are bullshit, OFAC announced that it would temporarily lift sanctions and“authorize[] for 180 days all transactions related to earthquake relief that would be otherwise prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations.”
This is a needed step, but it is not enough. There is no basis for these murderous and counterproductive sanctions, which serve no end other than to prolong the misery and suffering of the Syrian people. Sanctions are a weapon of War – an economic War waged on the poorest and most vulnerable people who live in some of the poorest countries on Earth. Syria never attacked this country. Nor did any of the other countries on the U.S. sanctions list. To the contrary, the al Qaeda hardliners and bin Ladenites who we funded and armed to the tune of billions of dollars were the ones who supposedly brought down our towers, not Assad. What did he ever do to us? What the hell is going on?
As discussed in previous posts, War is a racket, those who wage War are criminals, and the U.S. is the preeminent financier and beneficiary of the human suffering caused by War. It’s time to end it. End it now. Enough already.
The U.S. embargo on Cuba, which has been in place for over 60 years, is proof by itself that sanctions don’t work (at least not if you believe their stated aims are regime change and democracy promotion). In the case of Cuba, the UN General Assembly recently voted 185 to 2 in favor of a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo on Cuba. It was the 30th time that the UN voted to condemn the U.S.’s ridiculous Cuba policy.
Much of what follows is drawn from Chapter Ten of Scott Horton’s essential book, Enough Already, available here.
In response to interviewer Jeffrey Goldberg’s question, “Is there anything you could do to move [Syrian regime change] faster?” Barrack Obama stated, “Well, nothing that I can tell you, because your classified clearance isn’t good enough.”