Johannesburg - China is leading the growing international calls for the US government to immediately lift its unilateral sanctions against Syria as they are disrupting global relief efforts in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake.
The earthquake also shook neighbouring Turkiye. All in all more than 15 000 people lost their lives and the number is certain to rise. Humanitarian aid to Turkiye is relatively smooth. Turkiye is a key NATO member and its military is the second largest in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that is currently involved in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
The tragedy that concerns China and many governments and humanitarian organisations around the world is the plight of ordinary Syrians. Damascus has been locked in a civil war for almost twelve years. The US, which supports various Arab rebels fighting to overthrow the government of President Bashar Al-Assad, has imposed unilateral sanctions that are frustrating efforts to transport aid to Syria due to restrictions imposed under the US sanctions.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning appealed to the US to lift the penalties against Syria and “unlock the doors for humanitarian aid”.
Mao elaborated: “The devastating earthquakes – on top of years of war and turmoil – have left Syria in a terrible humanitarian crisis. The frequent (US) military strikes and harsh economic sanctions have caused huge civilian casualties and taken away the means to the subsistence of the Syrians.”
Mao minced no words as she launched a scathing attack on Washington, claiming the US forces were also stealing Syria’s energy resources “at a staggering rate”. “As we speak,” Mao said, “the US troops continue to occupy Syria’s principal oil-producing regions. They have plundered more than 80% of Syria’s oil production and smuggled and burned Syria’s grain stock. All this has made Syria’s humanitarian crisis even worse.”
The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator, El-Mostafa Benlamlih, described the situation in Syria as “a crisis on top of a crisis”. In a veiled appeal to the US, Benlanlih said: “Whatever we can do, we have to do it together, driven by humanitarian needs. We just hope that the political considerations will get out of the way and let us do our job.”
By Wednesday, the Syrian Health Ministry recorded at least 1, 263 deaths – a figure disputed by the White Helmets. The White Helmets are a Western-funded fighters to topple the Syrian government. The group, supported by the US army on the ground, is fully in charge as it operates in some parts of Syria where the government has long lost control. The White Helmets have put the death toll in Syria at 1,900.
Meanwhile in Turkiye, AFAD, the country’s disaster management agency has put the number of fatalities by Wednesday at 12, 391. The death toll in both neighbouring countries that are sworn enemies has surpassed 15, 500 and rising, as scores of people continue to be rescued from under the debris of collapsed buildings and heaps of rubble.
Damascus has repeatedly denounced the US military activities on its soil but to no avail. An estimated 1000 US soldiers continue to operate in Kurdish-controlled areas in the country’s oil-rich northeast, and also in Syria’s southern border area where they operate in close cooperation with Arab rebel factions that they sponsor.
Other notable humanitarian groups calling for Washington to show a bit of heart and empathy, and suspend its blockade of Syria include the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and also the US-based Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. They claim the US sanctions have only made their job more difficult. SARC President Khaled Hboubati said: “The evacuation process and rescue operations are restricted due to obstacles resulting from the severe sanctions. We have shortages in heavy machines and equipment needed to lift the rubble.”
Pleas for the Biden administration to at least lift the sanctions against Syria have fallen on deaf ears. The State Department has claimed that from Washington’s standpoint, the Syrian government has “brutalized” its citizens over the last dozen years of war against jihadist groups fighting to topple the Assad regime. Lifting the sanctions to allow for smooth humanitarian aid efforts would therefore, in Washington’s eyes, be “counter-productive”.
On the face of Washington’s negative response to global appeals to temporarily suspend its sanctions regime against Damascus, this reveals an ugly side, nay, cantankerous foreign policy. America’s much-flaunted care for humanity has been exposed as a fallacy in the wake of the earthquake in Turkiye and Syria.
Is Washington truly oblivious to the human tragedy that is currently unfolding in Syria where innocent men, women and children need to be rescued under thousands of collapsed buildings? Where is Washington’s heart, if they have any? In times of any natural disaster anywhere in the world – geopolitics aside – methinks it is the divine intervention calling on adversaries to take leave from their hostility and for humanity’s sake, show the entire universe that we are all human and created the same. In my book hatred solves nothing.
It instead it compounds the lingering animosity that divides the human race. As the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world”, the time is now for the US to mobilize the international community around the need to coordinate relief efforts to both Syria and Turkiye. But then again, they won’t.
Irrespective of how powerful the US is, as the world’s only remaining superpower since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community should blatantly disregard America’s unilateral sanctions in Syria and rush to the aid of fellow human beings. After all, the US sanctions are not even the UN sanctions against Syria.
That America’s penchant to impose unilateral sanctions against its geopolitical enemies “binds” the rest of the UN member-states is mind-boggling. China and Russia should at once take this abuse of power by the US to the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly for debate.
It is time to see which and how many countries particularly in the global north are cronies of the US as it continues to undermine the UN’s authority and multilateralism. I’ve previously argued that the US and the EU are a major threat to world peace. Their “rules-based world order” is a ploy to undermine the UN and the majority of its member-states.
Soon, and very soon if not careful, the UN would be moribund. For far too long this world body has been undermined. This is a recipe for WWIII. We don’t need it. But if history can be allowed to repeat itself, well, a third World War could be on cards. Hitler’s Germany wanted its hegemony to prevail over the world. And then, boom! That caused WWII from 1939-1945.
Typically, the human race appears to have learned no lesson from history. This allows history to repeat itself. The US under President Joe Biden is behaving like a global bully, just as Hitler did. The failure to allow a free and safe passage for international aid organisations to do their work of saving lives in Syria would be an indictment on all the UN-affiliated countries that are looking the other way as the US blatantly abuses its power.
There are too many examples of a possible cause of WWIII. And the examples are growing fast. The Syrian situation is one such example. The Venezuelan and Cuban, more than 60 years economic embargo is another. The complex war in Ukraine and its underlying causal factors, is the latest example.
I’ve not elaborated on the dangerously frosty US-Iran relations or the Korean Peninsula’s constant face-offs. And then, how can I leave out one of the longest human tragedies in contemporary history which is the State of Palestine’s brutalization by Israel? The world, dominated by the dictates of the US foreign policy, could choose to be unaware - or powerless - to halt the subjugation of the Palestine people. But the truth is, one day the Palestinian people, too, shall be free. Ask the South Africans.
History is littered with valuable life lessons that humans refuse to appreciate. One of those is particularly foretelling: The peacocks of today are the feather-dusters of tomorrow. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. I rest my case.