US Exempts Syria Earthquake Aid From Sanctions | Earthquake news

The United States issued a six-month sanctions waiver for all transactions related to providing disaster relief to Syria after earthquakes killed more than 22,000 people in the war-torn country and neighboring Turkey.

US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adimo said after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the exemption on Thursday.

Adimo noted that US sanctions already provide exemptions for humanitarian efforts, and according to Karim Shaar, a Syrian economist and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, the latest exemption will have a “limited positive impact.”

“This makes it easier to send humanitarian funding to Syria,” al-Shaer told Al Jazeera. Now you do not have to prove to OFAC that your transaction is exempt from sanctions. You do the transaction, and then if asked, you need to prove it.”

Simply put, this means that donors and organizations do not need to spend resources and time proving exemption from sanctions before sending aid.

However, it was not clear if it would do much to assuage the concerns of private institutions conducting remittances, which often avoid working with Syria for fear of running afoul of sanctions rules.

The majority of Syria is under the control of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The northwest is divided between de facto territory controlled by Turkey, and an al Qaeda-linked armed group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Northeastern Syria is mostly controlled by Kurdish-led groups backed by the United States.

Monday’s earthquake has displaced hundreds of thousands of people across this political divide.

Himyar Abdel-Moghni, the country’s representative to the United Nations Population Fund, told Al-Jazeera that Syria has 400 shelters that can accommodate more than 50,000 people, which means that hundreds of thousands sleep in the open in the countryside and in the streets.

He appealed for urgent help, especially for vulnerable Syrians, including an estimated 90,000 pregnant women.

The US Agency for International Development announced Thursday that Washington has pledged $85 million in emergency humanitarian aid along with the 160 people and 12 dogs it has sent to Turkey to help with the rescue effort.

The earthquakes displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Syria [Kasim Rammah/Anadolu Agency]
calls on the United States to lift sanctions

Critics of the economic sanctions imposed on Syria demanded that they be lifted after the natural disaster.

“It’s time to put politics aside,” Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the University of Oklahoma, told Al Jazeera. The United States has imposed severe sanctions on Syria. It is impossible to send money to loved ones through banks. The United States controls all of Syria’s oil, and that means the machines can’t work.”

According to Asaad al-Ashi, head of the civil society group Baytna Syria, international sanctions had “little impact” on humanitarian aid, but had “a direct impact on remittances and remittances into the country.”

On Tuesday, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent said that US sanctions are hampering rescue and relief operations, and called on President Joe Biden’s administration to lift them.

The Carter Center, among other research groups, has called on governments to provide the assurances needed to expedite the delivery of aid. The organization said the move was “necessary to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need”.

Delivering aid without dealing with Assad

Damascus also took the opportunity to advocate against sanctions. Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad said on Tuesday that the punitive measures had “made the disaster worse”.

However, experts have long pointed to Assad’s use of the same restrictions his administration accuses the West of imposing by targeting opposition groups and areas under its control. “Assad is doing the same thing with rebel-held areas,” Landis said.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bassam Sabbagh, told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday that aid flows to the entire country must be coordinated with the government and delivered through Syria and not across the Turkish border. Assad and his veto-wielding ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, have long pushed for foreign aid to be delivered through their territory.

Western powers do not yet appear willing to meet this demand or re-engage with Assad.

On Thursday for the first time since the earthquake, a United Nations convoy crossed from Turkey into northwest Syria, delivering much-needed emergency relief.

At a news conference on Monday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price insisted that Washington would continue to provide aid to Syria without dealing with Assad.

“It arrives[ing] Going out to a government that has brutalized its own people for more than ten years to “coordinate aid” would be “ridiculous,” he said.

The US sanctions against the Syrian regime go back to 1979 after it occupied Lebanon and classified it as a “state sponsor of terrorism”. The US government imposed additional sanctions on the Assad government in response to the violent suppression of the civilian population in 2011 during a crackdown on anti-government protests, which then led to the outbreak of the civil war.

According to Al-Shaar, the general exemption does not constitute a change in the policy of dealing with the Assad government. Instead, he said, the United States “feels pressured to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria.”

The European Council also imposed sanctions on Syria in 2011. “Sanctions against Syria aim to avoid impeding humanitarian aid supplies,” the council said in a press release last May, while renewing the measures for an additional year.

In a press conference in Damascus on Tuesday, the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Khaled Habbouti, said EU sanctions were exacerbating the “difficult humanitarian situation” and called on member states to lift them.

“There is no fuel even to send [aid and rescue] Convoys, this is because of the blockade and sanctions.

The European Union has not yet announced a easing of its policy in response to the earthquake.

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