With the pandemic taking up all the media's attention, the horror that is Syria is no longer news. However, the suffering of the Syrian people goes on and is deepening, thanks to America's vicious "no bullets war" of inhumane sanctions. Nine years of a devastating war has reduced Syria to a battle torn remnant of a country, Now the brutal savagery of a modern war has more or less subsided, Syria is unable to rebuild its infra structure due to the inhumane raft of sanctions inflicted by the US.
Sanctions against a country are a war crime, as what they do is kill the civilian population, and it is intentional, as the enforcer of these sanctions is well aware of their result. The people of Syria having come through, what was nothing short of a world war, involving most of the world's major powers fought on their soil, are now seeing their civilian population slowly dying from hunger. They are unable to rebuild their schools, hospitals, homes and workplaces, all due to that one deliberate action of the US, sanctions.
Economic sanctions are a vicious tool of the powerful capitalist countries to try to enforce their will on other nations, and in most cases for control of resources. They are a war against a civilian population, in the full knowledge that young, old and infirm, as well as the health, will slowly suffer and large numbers will, in all probability, not make it.
Just another example of the ruthlessness of the economic capitalist system that controls our lives and devastates the planet, for no other reason than to enrich a pampered, privileged bunch of parasites, what do we, the ordinary people, gain from the suffering of the Syrian people? How much longer will we tolerate this vicious injustice, how much longer will we struggle for a half decent life while watching our fellow humans suffer, all for a pot of gold for the greedy billionaire class. Our silence makes us complicit in the suffering and death of every Syrian child.
The following extract is from an article in Mideast Discourse by Steven Sahiounie
The US sanctions have been unsuccessful in their goal of ‘regime change’ in Damascus, but have been hugely successful in making the Syrian people suffer, even though they have survived 9 years of terrorist attacks, occupations, deaths, injuries, and destruction they continue to suffer from economic-warfare.
A school teacher in Latakia, said, “We thought if we resisted the terrorists, and defeated them, we would rebuild the lost homes, schools, hospitals and farms and start a new post-war-life. Now, the war is over, and we can’t rebuild anything and our life is even worse now that we are in peace-time. Where is our victory over terrorism? Why is America punishing us for defeating the terrorists?”
The latest US sanctions are designed to prevent any reconstruction of infrastructure damaged in the war, which includes homes, shops, businesses, factories, and infrastructures such as schools and hospitals.
US sanctions have exemptions for ‘humanitarian aid’, which include food, supplies, and bank transfers for humanitarian purposes. However, those exemptions are in theory only and have never been applied, as the paperwork and time to secure a waiver from the US government makes the exemption useless.
The Trump administration, US Congress, and many Syrian-American groups have praised the new extreme sanctions against Syria. While the people living today in Syria suffer under the sanctions, those Syrians living inside the US and Europe are prospering and unaffected by the sanctions.
Azhdar Kurtov, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, explained in an interview with RT, “Syria has become an unpleasant ‘splinter’ in American politics in the Middle East. Moreover, this is not only a local defeat; it is evidence of the collapse of, above all, the global ambitions of the United States.
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