At a time when the divisions between red and blue appear to be full-spectrum, House Democrats and Republicans managed to come together on an issue which they all can agree on, sanctioning Syria. Despite the devastating earthquake that has killed upwards of 50,000 people in Turkiye and Syria, Washington has decided to continue persecuting Syrian civilians under the guise of protecting them.

US lawmakers approved house resolution 132, which urges the White House to uphold its hardline sanctions against Damascus, by a vote of 414-2. Interestingly, the only two that voted against the resolution were Republican house members, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, with not a single Democrat casting their vote to help save Syria from sanctions that have contributed to causing a humanitarian crisis, according to UN experts.

The US military, with the help of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), currently occupies a third of Syrian territory against international law. In order to intervene militarily in a foreign country the US is supposed to consult congress first for approval, yet this never happened and instead, they have managed to uphold their illegal occupation of Syrian lands under the guise of fighting Daesh. At the current time, the US government withholds over ninety percent of Syria’s natural resources and its most fertile agricultural lands. In late February, 34 tankers filled with stolen Syrian oil were reportedly transferred over the border to Iraq by the US, at a time when the Syrian State lacks the energy required to maintain electricity at hospitals. 

The United Nations has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the US’ Caesar Act sanctions and how they have contributed to the current humanitarian catastrophe inside the war-torn nation. However, not a single member of US congress from the Democratic Party has bothered to utter a word about these sanctions, despite the fact that they were first imposed by former US President Donald Trump. Trump’s sanctions were designed to above all prevent reconstruction in war-torn Syria, yet, even during the Trump administration, when Democratic Party politicians would criticize the Republican Presidents' every move, no criticism was uttered. The self-described progressives of the Democratic Party, including the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, proclaim to take an anti-war position but fail abysmally on the question of sanctions.

For days after the devastating earthquake that took place in southern Turkiye and northern Syria, Western media pretended - for the most part - that US sanctions did not prevent humanitarian aid from reaching those in need. Articles were published, most prominently one in the Washington Post, arguing that the sanctions would not prevent aid from reaching victims of the earthquake and that it was instead the fault of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Yet, days later, the US government all but admitted that the sanctions do prevent aid transfer, temporarily providing exemptions to them for 180 days in order to allow the flow of aid. Damascus officially appealed to the EU for help, despite the great animosity between the two sides, with the West still continuing to shun suffering Syrians. The biggest providers of humanitarian aid to those suffering the results of the earthquake in government-held Syrian territory have been the UAE, Algeria, Iran, and Russia.

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At this time, Syria’s government is beginning to regain the recognition of regional governments, with the UAE having already normalized relations. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also visited Oman recently to attend high-level meetings. Egypt and Jordan have both sent representatives to Damascus in the past months, with Algiers and Abu Dhabi ignoring the possible complications with sanctions in order to provide the help that Syria needs to deal with the aftermath of the horrifying earthquakes. There is additionally some talk of an initiative from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to normalize ties. 

Despite many Arab governments realizing that now is not the time to attack the Syrian government and is perhaps an opportunity to move forward, the US and its Western allies are refusing to budge. In 1999, former UN official Denis Halliday claimed that between 1 million and 1.5 million Iraqis had died due to the economic sanctions that the US government had placed upon Baghdad, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Other estimates recorded the deaths of 500,000 children, due to the sanctions, which deceased US official Madeleine Albright had said was “worth it” when questioned on the issue. 

In the case of the sanctions against Iraq, the US argued that these sanctions were necessary and defended the humanitarian catastrophe they caused, whilst the Western media largely ignored the devastation of the sadistic sanctions. Now in the case of Syria, although they are receiving some help from allies that manage to keep the nation from collapsing, the spread of unnecessary treatable diseases and lack of food, humanitarian aid, clean water, electricity, and needed medical care, all make Syria’s condition a living hell. On the one hand, even if the sanctions are meant to target Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad solely, it is an impossible task and will always end up targeting the people of the afflicted country. On the other hand, it is not correct for a foreign nation to determine who rules a country that has nothing to do with them.

In addition to the vote on US sanctions policy, a bi-partisan effort to end US military involvement inside Syria was recently quashed by pro-war hawks in Washington’s congress. Although the resolution, sponsored by Republican representative Matt Gaetz and supported by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, did manage to receive 47 republican votes and 56 from Democrats, it was ultimately a failure. The effort was designed to force congressional oversight on the continuation of US military operations inside Syria. What this vote did was show that the US congress was willing to back the government's illegal occupation of Syrian territory and military involvement in a conflict that they themselves were never even consulted on. In both the Republican and Democratic parties, there are wings that espouse anti-war beliefs, however, the popular demand for an end to the US involvement in Syria didn’t seem to be enough to make the majority of congress budge.

Ultimately, US sanctions and military intervention are proving to be a losing strategy regionally. Washington no longer maintains its dominant role as the regional hegemon and is hanging onto a strategy which can be characterized as being led by sadism. There are no actual long-term benefits to the measures against Syria for the United States itself, only temporary band-aids to be placed upon wounds inflicted upon US regional standing. The question will now be, going forward, will Washington recognize where it is going wrong and swallow its pride in order to maintain somewhat of a leading role regionally, or will it simply fall with its ego and go down swinging?