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bashar al assad
UN Human Rights Expert Urges US to Lift Sanctions That 'May Exacerbate the Already Dire Humanitarian Situation in Syria'
After nearly a decade of war, the special rapporteur noted, Syrians are living with "extensively damaged houses, medical units, schools, and other facilities."
Dec 28, 2020
A United Nations human rights expert on Tuesday called for the removal of unilateral U.S. sanctions targeting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning that despite claims by the Trump administration and congressional leaders that the measures aren't intended to harm the people of war-torn Syria, they may do just that.
"The sanctions violate the human rights of the Syrian people, whose country has been destroyed by almost 10 years of ongoing conflict," said Alena Douhan, U.N. special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. "The conflict and violence have already had a dire impact on the ability of the Syrian people to realize their fundamental rights, having extensively damaged houses, medical units, schools, and other facilities."
\u201cUN #HumanRights expert @AlenaDouhan urges the #UnitedStates to remove unilateral sanctions which may inhibit rebuilding of #Syria\u2019s civilian infrastructure destroyed by almost a decade of conflict\n\nhttps://t.co/6DfFCWd6Qd\u201d— UN News (@UN News) 1609254000
Douhan's statement follows a new round of sanctions that the outgoing U.S. administration announced last week--just over a year after President Donald Trump signed into law annual defense spending legislation that included the bipartisan Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, named for a Syrian defector who smuggled out of his country tens of thousands of photos revealing torture by the Assad government.
When the law took effect in June 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "The Treasury Department and State Department are releasing 39 designations under the Caesar Act and Executive Order 13894 as the beginning of what will be a sustained campaign of economic and political pressure to deny the Assad regime revenue and support it uses to wage war and commit mass atrocities against the Syrian people."
Last week, while announcing the latest sanctions, the secretary acknowledged the recent one-year anniversary of the president signing the Caesar Act and said that "the United States will also continue to pressure the Assad regime and its enablers to prevent them from amassing the resources to perpetuate their atrocities."
Douhan, meanwhile, expressed alarm about the potential consequences of wide-ranging U.S. sanctions--which could target any foreigner helping the Assad government, even with rebuilding infrastructure--especially given the country's ongoing forcible displacement crisis (pdf) and bread lines "so long that children have to skip school to wait in them," which is "perhaps the most visible and painful manifestation of Syria's economic meltdown," as the Washington Postreported Saturday.
In a Sunday tweet noting the bread crisis, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, condemned U.S. sanctions on Syria as "collective punishment."
\u201cUS sanctions on Syria is collective punishment\u201d— Medea Benjamin (@Medea Benjamin) 1609124347
Douhan said Tuesday that "I am concerned that sanctions imposed under the Caesar Act may exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in Syria, especially in the course of [the] Covid-19 pandemic, and put the Syrian people at even greater risk of human rights violations."
"When it announced the first sanctions under the Caesar Act in June 2020, the United States said it did not intend for them to harm the Syrian population," she continued. "Yet enforcement of the act may worsen the existing humanitarian crisis, depriving the Syrian people of the chance to rebuild their basic infrastructure."
Concerns remain about the Assad government's rebuilding efforts. As Human Rights Watch's World Report 2020--which detailed human rights violations by the Syrian-Russian military alliance, non-state armed groups, Turkey and Turkish-backed forces, and U.S.-backed forces and the U.S.-led coalition--explained:
The Syrian government enforced a legal and policy framework that enables it to co-opt millions of dollars of international funding earmarked for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. The government restricted humanitarian organizations' access to communities that needed or allegedly received aid, selectively approved aid projects to punish civilians in anti-government held areas, and required that humanitarian groups partner with security-vetted local actors. Based on past incidents, there is a continuing risk that aid be siphoned through the abusive state apparatus to punish civilian populations it perceived as opponents and reward those it perceived as loyal.
Rather than focusing on the various abuses by all parties involved in the Syrian civil war that followed the 2011 Arab Spring protests, Douhan emphasized the extensive humanitarian need across the nation--where millions still depend on international assistance--and that the Caesar Act raises concerns under international law.
"What particularly alarms me is the way the Caesar Act runs roughshod over human rights, including the Syrian people's rights to housing, health, and an adequate standard of living and development," she said. "The U.S. government must not put obstacles in the way of rebuilding of hospitals because lack of medical care threatens the entire population's very right to life."
"Impeding access to supplies needed to repair infrastructure damaged by the conflict," Douhan said, "will have a negative impact on human rights of the Syrian people and may preserve the trauma of the decade-long conflict."
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Trump Confession He Was Ready to Assassinate Assad Condemned as 'Disgusting Display' of 'Imperial Hubris'
"If he had indeed murdered Assad, then the Middle East, and the fate of U.S. soldiers in the region, would have exploded into even more violence and chaos," said one anti-war advocate.
Sep 16, 2020
In an apparent admission about a previous lie that alarmed anti-war advocates, President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday television appearance that he wanted to assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad--contradicting his past denial of the desire, which was first revealed in journalist Bob Woodward's 2018 book Fear.
Woodward reported that not long after Assad used chemical weapons on Syrian civilians in April 2017, Trump told then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis: "Let's fucking kill him! Let's go in. Let's kill the fucking lot of them." After hanging up with the president, Mattis--who announced his resignation the following year--told a senior aide that "we're not going to do any of that. We're going to be much more measured."
Trump initially responded in September 2018 by denying the reporting. However, during a Tuesday "Fox & Friends" interview in which Trump took aim at Woodward's new book, Rage, the president said he wanted to order Assad's assassination but Mattis opposed it, then complained about his former Pentagon chief.
"I would have rather taken him out. I had him all set. Mattis didn't want to do it," Trump said Tuesday before quickly noting that earlier this year he ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, which a top United Nations expert has deemed a violation of internatinal law.
\u201c"I would have rather taken him out" -- Trump says he wanted to assassinate Bashar al-Assad, but Mattis stopped him\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1600171511
Critics of Trump responded to the interview by not only pointing to it as yet another example of the president's seemingly endless dishonesty but also condemning his desire to issue an "illegal" and "reckless" order for the United States military to kill the Syrian leader--arguing that human rights abuses by Assad's government, however brutal, do not give Trump the authority to have him assassinated.
"How ironic that at the very time Trump is trying to position himself as someone making peace in the Middle East, he tells Fox News that he wanted to murder Syrian President Assad but was stopped by his then-Secretary of Defense Mattis," Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams Wednesday.
Benjamin said that "it's ridiculous to say that Mattis stopped him," considering Trump is commander-in-chief. "Such a murder would have been an egregious violation of international law," she added. "But more importantly, this call to murder Assad, the leader of a sovereign nation, is a disgusting display of Trump's imperial hubris."
"It's bad enough that Trump ordered a drone attack to kill Iran's top general, Soleimani, which brought us to the brink of war with Iran. If he had indeed murdered Assad, then the Middle East, and the fate of U.S. soldiers in the region, would have exploded into even more violence and chaos," Benjamin said. "Let's hope the American people realize how dangerous Trump is to our national security and vote him out in November, before he takes us into the next war."
Stephen Miles, executive director of the group Win Without War, wrote in a series of tweets that while Mattis is no ally of peace advocates and "Assad is a murderous war criminal who belongs in the Hague," Trump trying to "assassinate the leader of a foreign country, whom we are not at war with, with no legal authorization is wrong."
\u201cTo be clear, one can think that Bashar al-Assad is a murderous war criminal who belongs in the Hague, as I do, and also think that for the US President to try and assassinate the leader of a foreign country, whom we are not at war with, with no legal authorization is wrong.\u201d— Stephen Miles (@Stephen Miles) 1600185696
Ben Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities--a group that supports having "a strong, dynamic military" but also promotes "prioritizing restraint, diplomacy, and free trade to ensure U.S. security"--pointed out that Trump's confession about Assad contrasts with his claims that he is working to end endless U.S. wars.
"Assassinating Assad is a good idea if you want to make Syria an even bigger humanitarian nightmare, get regime forces to attack Americans, and like doing illegal things," added Friedman, who is also an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.
\u201cTrump, now claiming to be ending endless wars, here complains that Mattis was not sufficiently pro-war and opposed the reckless idea of assassinating Assad.\u201d— Ben Friedman (@Ben Friedman) 1600175798
\u201cAssassinating Assad is a good idea if you want to make Syria an even bigger humanitarian nightmare, get regime forces to attack Americans, and like doing illegal things.\u201d— Ben Friedman (@Ben Friedman) 1600175798
CBS News reported the Syrian Foreign Ministry responded to the interview in a statement Wednesday, calling Trump's comments confirmation "that the U.S. administration is a rogue and outlaw state, and is pursuing the same methods of terrorist organizations, with murder and assassination, without taking into account any legal, humanitarian, or moral controls or rules in order to achieve its interests in the region."
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Top Syrian Official Says US Has 'Absolutely No Right' to Occupy or Plunder Nation's Oil Fields
"He's talking about stealing it," Bouthaina Shaaban said of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has kept troops in Syria to guard that country's oil fields.
Dec 25, 2019
Citing U.S. President Donald Trump's openly stated plan to maintain a troop presence in Syria with the sole purpose of plundering the country's oil reserves, a top Syrian government official said America has "absolutely no right" to the nation's natural resources and warned of "popular opposition and operations" against foreign occupiers.
"It is our oil," Bouthaina Shaaban, a political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told NBC News in an interview Tuesday.
"He's talking about stealing it," Shaaban said of Trump. "Our land should be totally and completely liberated from foreign occupiers, whether they are terrorists, or the Turks, or the Americans."
In early October, Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, paving the way for a deadly Turkish assault on Kurdish forces in the region. Later that same month, Trump announced that a contingent of U.S. troops would remain in Syria to "secure the oil"--a plan critics decried as a flagrant violation of international law and a war crime.
"The oil is, you know, so valuable," Trump said at the time. "It can help us, because we should be able to take some also. And what I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly...and spread out the wealth."
\u201cPresident Trump openly admits U.S. in Syria to steal its oil.\n\nFULL REPORT: https://t.co/jM809aV9IK\u201d— Status Coup News (@Status Coup News) 1572284758
As Common Dreams reported last month, Pentagon officials have asserted the authority to shoot any Syrian government official who attempts to retake control of their nation's natural resources.
"Everyone in the region knows where American forces are," Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman said in a November press briefing. "We're very clear with anyone in the region in working to deconflict where our forces are. If anyone--we work to ensure that... no one approaches or has--shows hostile intent to our forces, and if they do, our commanders maintain the right of self-defense."
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