The massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake that erupted in south Türkiye close to the Syrian border on February 6, local time, razed buildings in many places to the ground and made itself felt across Asia, Europe and Africa, leaving more than 33,000 people dead in Türkiye and Syria so far. Syria’s economy and its people’s livelihood are already hard enough after long years of war and US unilateral sanctions, and the recent quake has added fuel to the flame by making humanitarian activities extremely difficult.
The Syrian government is obviously unable to handle such a grave disaster either in terms of emergency supplies, rescue capability, or medical resources, not to mention the fact that the US sanctions have crippled its rescue and relief abilities and obstructed the entry of aid supplies and equipment coming from other countries.
Ironically, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had tweeted on February 9 that his country is providing humanitarian assistance to help Syrian earthquake victims, claiming “we are their leading humanitarian donor since the start of the war – the US has provided more than US$15 billion to the Syrian people in Syrian and the region.” He specifically mentioned, “these funds go to the Syrian people, not the regime.” Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Hua Chunying exposed the hypocrisy of American, or Western, politicians by tweeting “why are they struggling? You’ve been bombing, sanctioning, and stealing from them, and now you praise yourself for your charity?”
Under the pressure of international public discourse, the US government, always posing as a “lecturer on human rights”, finally announced on February 9 that it would relax the sanctions against Syria for 180 days, but the relaxation is exclusive to deals and needs related with disaster rescue and relief.
Syrian state news agency SANA reported on February 11 that President Bashar Hafez al-Assad and his wife had visited the quake-hit areas two days in a row. In an interview, he slashed the West for putting politics over humanity, saying that “humanitarian is non-existent for the West”.
The coercive economic measures imposed by the US and Europe have kept worsening the situation and obstructed rescue efforts in Syria. The US government claimed to allow humanitarian aid to enter Syria, but that’s not true. Western countries make no humanitarian considerations; all they see is the political situation. Their deeds contradicted their words, said Special Advisor to the Syrian president Bouthaina Shaaban.
Besides, the EU hasn’t provided any aid to Syria to cope with the earthquake either. Syrians living in Europe have tried to remit money into the country but couldn’t because of the restrictions imposed by Europe and the US.
To make things worse, in addition to the illegal sanctions, the US is still occupying the northern and eastern parts of Syria and stealing its resources like oil, natural gas and wheat. Shaaban said every day tens of tanks and trucks are leaving the Syrian territory for America’s military base in northern Iraq. When ambulances don’t have fuel to transport the injured, the US is secretly transporting Syria’s natural gas and oil to a third country. So that’s their definition of “humanitarian”?
The West is politicizing everything, including humanitarian aid. Clearly, Washington’s partial and temporary freezing of its unilateral and coercive sanctions against the Syrian people is just lip service to put up a false humanitarian image. Let’s wait and see if and how its alleged relaxing of sanctions will help the ongoing relief efforts there.
Editor's note: Originally published on china.chinadaily.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
