If there were any two exhibits to show why the regime of permanent warfare and accompanying sanctions must be brought to an end, they are Syria and Yemen. UN officials, humanitarian and economic experts have been warning that both countries are on the edge of utter disasters due to the wars and sanctions against both countries. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has repeatedly insisted that all sanctions against nations must be immediately lifted, because under the current pandemic conditions they lead to genocide.
In Syria, Joseph Daher, who teaches at Lausanne University in Switzerland and is a part-time affiliate professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, where he works on the Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria Project, told Carnegie’s Diwan blog yesterday that the Caesar Act and general sanctions “could—and probably will—contribute to intensifying socioeconomic problems in Syria. They could lead to the deepening impoverishment of some sections of the population and represent a further obstacle to economic recovery.”
Daher doesn’t deviate from the official narrative that Assad and “his cronies” are mostly responsible for the collapse of the Syrian economy, but he does acknowledge that sanctions are worsening economic conditions in the country. He notes that sanctions targeting any entity working on supporting the production or import of oil and gas in Syria “will create even greater shortages of these resources and increase their price. This will have dire consequences for ordinary Syrians as well as increase production costs for manufacturing and agriculture, both highly dependent on oil and gas. The deepening of broad and general sanctions through the Caesar Act will, therefore, significantly affect the recovery of both sectors, which have already been targeted by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.”
