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SYRIA NEEDS HELP

SYRIA NEEDS HELP
سوريا تحتاج مساعدة
THE CRISIS
9.3 million people considered food insecure
Devastating forest fires destroy homes and crops
Unequipped to fight COVID-19
80% of Syrians live below the poverty line after 9+ years of war
Currency inflated by 314% since 2011
More than 11 million require humanitarian assistance
Up to 70% of the health workforce has left the country
Syria can not rebuild or recover economically due to unilateral sanctions placed by the U.S. and EU

Washington must end its war against the Syrian people
Bradley Blankenship
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A displaced Syrian child poses for a photograph in a flooded camp near Dayr Ballut, Aleppo province, Syria, December 28, 2018. /Xinhua
Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions, not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The Syrian war is drawing near its end, yet the nation still suffers as a new round of sanctions imposed by the United States sends the Syrian economy into more turmoil than nearly a decade of war. The U.S. claims that these latest sanctions previously penned at the end of 2019 will target those who support "the Assad regime's military efforts", but inevitably the Syrian people have suffered the most in what the Syrian Foreign Ministry accurately called "economic terrorism."

The U.S. must accept its failure in toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, end its war against the Syrian people and respect international law.

The United States has long had an interest in toppling an independent Syria. Even as far back as 1949, the U.S. overthrew Syria's democratic government in a coup, a fact later admitted by former CIA agent Miles Copeland in a BBC interview from 1967.

Clandestine activity against the Arab nation continued through the latter half of the 20th century and finally came to a head during the Bush-Obama years. In 2006, American diplomat William Roebuck outlined the weaknesses of the Syrian government later to be exploited by the Obama administration when the Arab Spring came to Syria in 2011:

"We believe Bashar's weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as a the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists."

After infiltrating and radicalizing what was originally a legitimate movement in the country, the U.S. and its allies plunged the nation into a gruesome war lasting nearly a decade.

Their plan of ousting Assad now failed given the near-full victory of the Syrian Arab Army, the U.S. has shifted its tactics now to demoralize the Syrian people by launching a new round of extraordinarily tough sanctions, the so-called Caesar Act, set to go into effect on June 17.

This new sanction is particularly aggressive in that it not only targets Syrian officials and entities, but also foreign entities doing business with Syria. The anticipated effects of the sanctions have already destroyed the economy with the Syrian pound hitting a record low on the black market on June 6 – trading at under a third of its official value at over 2,300 pounds per U.S. dollar. Before the conflict began in March of 2011, the dollar was worth 47 pounds.

Reports are coming out that runaway inflation has created scarcities of basic necessities – all of this in the midst of a global pandemic that Syria's decimated medical infrastructure, formerly one of the most robust in the Middle East, already cannot withstand. Journalist Asser Khattab said that "Syria's pharmaceutical industry is in crisis, with medicines disappearing, pharmacies closed and factories at risk of shutting down."

At the same time, it's likely that the sanctions will create generalized problems well past the pandemic as more than half of the population faces food insecurity due to the rapidly inflating price of basic foods.