1. Who is responsible for the economic sanctions on Syria?
The U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, the 27-nation European Union and the 22-nation Arab League support a complex network of sanctions on Syria. These are directed at the Government of Syria but greatly harm civilians.
2. Which sanctions are being imposed on Syria?
The sanctions on Syria are described by experts as some of the “most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed”. They include a labyrinth of legal injunctions – even more complex and more severe than those previously applied to Sudan.
Sanctions include a de facto prohibition on transactions denominated in U.S. dollars. This acts as a dampener on many aspects of the economy and forces much trade to proceed via the black market or through expensive intermediaries in Lebanon, Turkey or elsewhere. U.S. sanctions on Syria also prohibit the export to Syria of any product with more than 10 per cent U.S. content. This includes a huge number of medicines and medical equipment.
Such complicated legal injunctions have, according to UN sanctions expert Idriss Jazairy, “created so much doubt and uncertainty on how to comply with all possible measures that banks, exporters, transportation companies and insurance companies have voluntarily refused to conduct business in Syria… international private companies are unwilling to jump the hurdles necessary to ensure they can transact with Syria without being accused of inadvertently violating the restrictive measures.”
Sanctions also limit trade in ‘dual-use’ products that can have both civilian and military applications. For example: pipes, water pumps and many kinds of essential construction equipment; nitrous oxide (used for anaesthetics in hospitals); agricultural fertiliser and pesticides; certain drilling tools; chlorine products used for water purification and sanitation; computers and IT equipment; and power generators.
Sanctions on Syria became even harsher in 2020, when the U.S. implemented the so-called ‘Caesar Act,’ which permits the sanctioning of any person, anywhere, even individual employees of foreign companies, who may be working to rebuild Syria after ten years of war.
3. What is the purpose of economic sanctions on Syria?
Officially, the aim of sanctions is to compel the Syrian regime to change its behaviour. Joel Rayburn, U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, has said: “There will be no end to them until the Syrian regime and its allies accede to a political solution” to the conflict.
However, sanctions have not removed President Assad, nor have they resulted in any meaningful political concessions by his administration. Contrary to their stated intentions, sanctions contribute to a worsening of the humanitarian crisis. They are among the biggest causes of suffering for the Syrian people.
In December 2020, Ambassador Jeffrey James, the outgoing U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement, strongly implied that the purpose of sanctions is to destroy the Syrian economy: “We’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad… You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy.”
4. Are economic sanctions on Syria supported by the United Nations?
The UN Security Council has not authorised any sanctions against Syria. In August 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, a group of UN experts warned that sanctions are “bringing suffering and death” in Syria. They argued that the sanctions “should be lifted – or at a minimum eased – so people can get basics like soap and disinfectants to stay healthy, and so that hospitals can get ventilators and other equipment to keep people alive... Sanctions that were imposed in the name of delivering human rights are in fact killing people and depriving them of fundamental rights, including the rights to health, to food and to life itself.” In December 2020, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Unilateral Coercive Measures again urged the U.S. to lift the economic sanctions on Syria.
5. Do economic sanctions on Syria include ‘humanitarian exemptions’?
In theory, the sanctions on Syria include exemptions to protect civilians from negative humanitarian repercussions. In practice, they impede access to fuel, food and medicine for millions of Syrians.
When applying for licences to conduct their operations, civil society groups and aid workers are faced with many layers of bureaucracy. The process is so complicated, and the penalties for inadvertently violating the sanctions are so severe, that many NGOs, banks, and companies are reluctant even to try. As a result, according to one UN report, importing essential medical supplies into Syria has become “immensely difficult, nearly impossible.”
Even if these humanitarian exemptions were robust and easily obtained, the sanctions would still have a devastating humanitarian impact. Sanctions make it difficult to repair and maintain roads, trucks, power plants and hospitals. They make it harder to keep electricity running in hospitals and water plants, to keep vaccines cold, or to buy the gasoline for the trucks that distribute food. They make food and medicines much more expensive to buy for everyone. In those conditions, it matters little whether it is technically permitted to bring food and medicine into Syria.
In 2018, UN sanctions expert Idriss Jazairy concluded: “Despite the efforts to implement ‘smart’ sanctions with humanitarian exemptions, the application of current sanction regimes have contributed to the suffering of the Syrian people,” and lead to a “worsening of the humanitarian situation, contrary to their stated intentions.”
6. Are sanctions a viable non-violent alternative to war?
Sanctions are merely warfare of another kind – economic warfare. Sanctions kill, just as surely as bombs do. But while bombs can be aimed at military targets, under sanctions regimes, nearly everyone suffers.
In Syria, the effects have been devastating: millions of people out of work; skyrocketing prices and poverty; a crippled healthcare system; and hunger and death for many of the most vulnerable. It is time for the undeclared economic war being waged against the Syrian people by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and their allies to come to an end.