The EU continues targeting the Civilian Population of Syria with US-led sanctions while scraping the arms embargo
Franklin Lamb | Beirut
May 28, 2013
Under withering pressure from Washington and the UK, the European Union met this week to decide whether to increase the
pressure on the Syrian public by repealing the March 2011 arms embargo that was intended to prohibit arms shipments to
Syria and whether or not to continue economic sanctions against the Syrian public.
On 5/27/13 it decided to open the flood gate of arms flow into Syria and to keep the civilian targeting economic
sanctions in place.
Lobbying for scrapping the arms embargo, set to expire at midnight on 31 May, had reached nearly historic intensity at
EU HQ in Brussels, London and Washington. Recently, the US State Department demanded that every one of the 27 European
Ambassadors posted in the US appear at the State Department for “consultations to avoid any misunderstandings about what
the White House was expecting at the upcoming EU meeting.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry had been urging the EU to gut the arms embargo so as to expedite weapon shipments to
the rebels. It currently appears that Britain now has the support of France, Italy and Spain, while Germany appears
neutral and Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic are still opposed. "Fine for him to say, but what is
Washington willing to do?" one European foreign minister opposed to lifting the ban put it to BBC correspondent Lyse
Doucet.
This week’s EU meeting, which was postponed three months ago, raised again the obligation of the international community
to respect the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Convention with respect to protecting the civilian population
during armed conflicts and virtually every other international humanitarian law requirement.
For the American administration, designing and applying economic sanctions in order to pressure a population to break
with its government to achieve regime change or any other political objective, as in the case of both Syria and Iran are
fundamentally illegal under US law.
Just as soon as a group of Syrian-Americans and/or Iranian-American file a class action lawsuit in US Federal District
Court ( the Court will have in persona and subject matter jurisdiction and the Plaintiffs will have standing to sue,
given that they are American citizens) and the day after filing when they would no doubt file a Motion petitioning the
Court for an Interim Measure of Protection (injunction) immediately freezing and lifting the US-led sanctions against
the two countries civilian population, pending the final Court (Jury Trial) on the merits, the Obama administration is
going to face serious judicial challenges to its outlawry.
William Hague, the UK Defense Minister, was quite active the past several days supporting the various Syrian militias’
arguments including: “The EU arms embargo must be lifted because the current economic sanctions regime is ineffective.”
Presumably the right honorable gentleman means by “ineffective” that these brutal sanctions have not broken with will of
the populations to settle their own affairs without transparent foreign interference. This is true if by “effective”
Hague means that the US-led sanctions, that target Syria’s civilian population for purely political purposes of regime
change, will cause the people of Syria, who unlike their leaders, are the ones directly affected by the sanctions to
revolt over the lack of medicines and food stuffs plus inflation at the grocery stores.
Mr. Hague surely must be aware that very rarely, if ever at all in history, have civilian targeted sanctions designed to
cause hardships among a nation’s population for purely political purposes actually broken the population such that they
turned against their governments. Both the Syrian and Iranian sanctions have confirmed history’s instruction that the
civilian targeting sanctions imposed from outside tend to have the exact opposite intended effect. This is true
particularly modernly with more available information, and that the populations turn not against their national
governments but rather against those foreign governments viewed as being responsible for these crimes.
The British, French, Turks and the Americans ( the latter, not actually an EU member but then, who would know from its
involvements in EU deliberations?) were the zealots in Brussels advocating amendment of the imposed arms embargo so that
weapons can be sent to “moderate” forces in these countries largely nurtured and sustained “opposition”.
The UK Defense Minister gave his colleagues repeated assurances that weapons would be supplied only “under carefully
controlled circumstances” and with clear commitments from the opposition…We have to be open to every way of
strengthening moderates and saving lives rather than the current trajectory of extremism and murder” have apparently
convinced very few.
Unanimity was needed to repeal the embargo and several countries were opposed. So it was allowed to lapse. One Austrian
official told the BBC that allowing lethal weapons to be sent into a war zone “would turn EU policy on its head.”
Another European diplomat insisted that “It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by
delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first
war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they
pop up where they are needed.”
Oxfam warned before and after the vote of "devastating consequences" if the embargo ends."There are no easy answers when
trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria, but sending more arms and ammunition clearly isn't one of them," the aid agency's
head of arms control, Anna Macdonald told the media this week.
The result of the predicted 5/27/13 European Union meeting prevented the renewal of the arms embargo on Syria, raising
the possibility of a new flow of weapons to various jihadist militias working with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others,
to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Sustaining a personal rebuke of sorts given that the EU did not affirmatively oppose the embargo as he had hoped,
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, told the media after more than 12 hours of stormy talks: “While we have no
immediate plans to send arms to Syria, it gives us the flexibility to respond in the future if the situation continues
to deteriorate and worsen.”
As a claimed safeguard of some kind, according to EU officials, the European Union declared that member states who might
wish to send weapons to Syrian rebels “shall assess the export license applications on a case-by-case basis” in line
with the organization’s rules on exports of military technology and equipment.
Some of the 27 EU countries are now even more concerned that anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons given to “moderate”
militiamen (per Libya?) would end up Lord knows where, in the hands of salafist, jihadist-takiferi militants, including
those from the al-Nusra Front, which has pledged fealty to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The current embargo includes the following:
• Ban on export/import of arms and equipment for internal repression since May 2011
• “Non-lethal military equipment” ( there exists no such thing- all military equipment can become lethal in one
way or another-ed) and technical assistance allowed under certain conditions since Feb 2013
• All Syrian cargo planes banned from EU airports
• EU states obliged to inspect Syria-bound ships or planes suspected of carrying arms
• Assets freeze on 54 groups and 179 people responsible for or involved in repression (many who are not involved
in decision making and have no assets abroad are included-ed)
• Export ban on technical monitoring equipment
In February this year, EU foreign ministers agreed to enable any EU member state to provide non-lethal military
equipment "for the protection of civilians" or for the opposition forces, "which the Union accepts as legitimate representatives of the Syrian people".
Absence of a centralized command structure and massive human rights abuses by jihadist fighters asserting themselves as
legitimate substitutes for the Assad government, are additional reasons for the current alarm.
As is its habit recently, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomatic service, has spoken on both
sides of this critical issue. On the one hand it has cautioned against “any counterproductive move” that could harm the
prospects of the Geneva conference and suggests extending the embargo to allow “more time for reflection”. On the other
suggesting that lifting the arms embargo would only prolong the war.
The practice of targeting a civilian population by outsiders in order to achieve political objectives such as regime
change is fast heading for the dustbin of history given its blatant violation of all norms of international humanitarian
law and common decency reflected in the values of most societies.
This week revealed on which side of history the European Union has chosen to anchor itself on the issue of targeting
civilian populations in a blatant attempt to achieve regime change. It affirmatively voted “to renew all the economic
sanctions already in place against the Syrian government.”
One imagines, as surely the EU is aware, that officials are not suffering much from the economic sanctions, but rather
it is the exactly those the EU claims to want to help, who will continue to suffer rises in the cost of living generally
as well as the sanctions causing shortages of medicines and medical equipment as well as specialized cancer treatments
and other medicines for seriously ill drug-dependant citizens.
ENDS