“Humanitarian Sanctions” Are Killing Syrians, While New Sanctions Threaten to Crash the Russian Economy: They Must Be Overturned

As the Biden administration is recklessly expanding the sanctions regime—something that has become a routine response from Anglo-American officials to any government they accuse of violating the “rules-based order”—Helga Zepp LaRouche issued a call to end this practice, beginning with lifting the “Caesar Sanctions” against Syria. Her call, intended to alert the world to the deliberate mass murder imposed on the Syrian people through the Caesar Sanctions, coincided with the White House announcing new sanctions against Russia.

Passed in June 2020, the “Caesar Act” derives its name from a mysterious figure who claimed to have been the photographer employed by the Syrian Ministry of Defense to take photographs of victims killed in the civil war. He delivered more than 58,000 photographs to the Syrian National Movement (SNM), partly funded by Qatar, to oppose the Assad government. The SNM then turned the photos over to Human Rights Watch (HRW) that, in turn, in 2015 produced an 86-page report featuring more than 28,000 photos.

Yet, out of the 28,000 photos of more than 6,000 individuals, fewer than 30 were identified as civilians who were arrested by authorities. Nearly half of those pictured were Syrian soldiers killed by terrorists during the civil war; many others turned out to be civilians who were victims of terrorist attacks, including car bombs and assassinations; and others were foreign jihadis killed in battle by the government forces. All of this is hardly proof of the “mass genocide” of civilians conducted by the government!

The real intent of the “Caesar Sanctions" was stated by James Jeffrey, who served as the Special Representative for Syrian Engagement in the Trump administration. Jeffrey described his job as making “Syria a quagmire for Russia.” The former Ambassador to Iraq appointed by Obama stated that the purpose of the Caesar Sanctions is to “make it clear to anyone who wants to rebuild Assad’s Syria that this cannot happen without Caesar Sanctions,” as they will become a “target” of sanctions.

As sanctions have become a weapon of choice by regime changers, as part of a broad strategy of hybrid warfare, it is essential that the intent behind them be exposed. It is the height of evil hypocrisy to proclaim, as Secretary of State Blinken did, that the sanctions against Syria represent a “humanitarian effort” to protect the Syrian people.

As the Biden administration is recklessly expanding the sanctions regime—something that has become a routine response from Anglo-American officials to any government they accuse of violating the “rules-based order”—Helga Zepp LaRouche issued a call to end this practice, beginning with lifting the “Caesar Sanctions” against Syria. Zepp LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, released a statement on April 15, labelling it as an “Urgent Call to Stop the Genocide in Syria and Yemen: The Moral Collapse of the Western System Cries Out for a New Paradigm”. Her call, intended to alert the world to the deliberate mass murder imposed on the Syrian people through the Caesar Sanctions, coincided with the White House announcing new sanctions against Russia, the most damaging of which is an assault against Russia’s ability to issue ruble-denominated debt. The stated purpose of this measure is to trigger massive capital flight and wreak havoc on the Russian economy.

By prohibiting American companies and financial institutions from purchasing Russian public debt offerings as of June 14, 2021, a senior administration official admitted that the intent of this latest attack is to destroy the Russian economy: “This is the main market that funds the Russian government… Removing U.S. investors as buyers in this market can create a broader chilling effect that raises Russia’s borrowing costs, along with capital flight and a weaker currency. And all of these forces have a material impact on Russia’s growth and inflation outcomes.”

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Biden justified the measures that included the expulsion of ten diplomats and other sanctions by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” purportedly posed by Russia. Besides, his Executive Order also threatens to impose additional measures in the future: “We are prepared, going forward, to impose substantial and lasting costs” on Russia if they do not behave as they are told.

The new sanctions against Russia are a response to the allegations of Russian hacks against the networking software company, SolarWinds, and Russia’s “interference” in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. As is so often the case in such allegations, no hard evidence has been produced to back these charges, which come from anonymous sources in the intelligence community, producing the same type of false narratives which have been exposed as blatant lies presented in the “Russiagate” case against Presidents Trump and Putin.

Schiller Institute Intervention

In her statement, Zepp LaRouche points to an intervention by Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari, who has alerted the world to the acute humanitarian emergency that has been deliberately imposed upon Syria in the aftermath of nine years of war through murderous “sanctions” measures imposed by the U.S. Department of State and irresponsibly supported by a number of other governments, most emphatically the British. Since the actions are acting to increase the poverty and death rates of Syrians, Cardinal Zenari urgently calls for an end to them, arguing that we need to pursue a pathway of Peace through Development, reversing the moral indifference which increasingly threatens to unleash this scale of calamity throughout the planet.

In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast discussion on April 14, Zepp-LaRouche demanded that the world come to the aid of the Syrian people. As Cardinal Zenari has stated, more than 90% of Syrians are below the level of extreme poverty, and many are in danger of losing their lives due to famine. The last decade of war, the unjust sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic have created an absolutely intolerable condition of suffering for the Syrian people.

Yemen confronts similar horrors, as the agonizing reality of hunger in the country is powerfully conveyed in the documentary “Hunger Ward,” referred to by David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, who saw children dying before his very eyes in the hospital, while he was unable to help.

There is nothing “humanitarian”, Zepp-LaRouche stated, in starving children and shutting down hospitals and medical care on the mere basis of fraudulent narratives cooked up by British and American regime-change advocates, in and out of government. “This must stop and the Caesar Sanctions must be lifted. And all the members of the U.S. Congress who do not lift these sanctions make themselves complicit in every death that occurs in the region.”

U.S. and European Sanctions on Syria. The Carter Center Report

Zepp-LaRouche continued: “This has reached the point where either the world wakes up and we start to remedy this, or we will not survive, because of our own moral failure as a human species. I call on you: Work with the Schiller Institute. Work with its Committee on the Coincidence of Opposites, which is working to get aid programs and reconstruction. I appeal to you: Get in contact with the Schiller Institute and respond to the call by Cardinal Zenari.”

What Are the Caesar Sanctions?

Having failed in efforts at regime change in Syria, which were launched by the Obama-Biden administration through their support of “moderate rebels” who conducted a bloody civil war in the country, Trump’s Secretary of State Pompeo mobilized international support for regime change through economic strangulation. To do this, a bill was tabled in the Congress, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which imposed sanctions on Syria.

Passed in June 2020, the bill was called the “Caesar Act”, deriving its name from a mysterious figure who claimed to have been the photographer employed by the Syrian Ministry of Defense to take photographs of victims killed in the civil war. Described as a “defector”, he delivered more than 58,000 photographs to the Syrian National Movement (SNM), partly funded by Qatar, to oppose the Assad government. The SNM then turned the photos over to Human Rights Watch (HRW) that, in turn, in 2015 produced an 86-page report featuring more than 28,000 photos. The report—titled “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities”—was used to push the sanctions through the Congress.

In a detailed exposure of the fraud behind this report, the investigative journalist Max Blumenthal from the GrayZone outlines how the usual cast of characters from the human rights mafia were involved in using this falsified report for the purpose of regime change. “Caesar” was brought before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a private session in April 2014, followed by a public session in August of that year, to present the “evidence” of Syrian government murders. According to HRW, their investigators “meticulously verified dozens of stories” of civilians they claimed to have been tortured and murdered by Syrian government officials.

Yet, out of the 28,000 photos of more than 6,000 individuals, fewer than 30 were identified as civilians who were arrested by authorities. Nearly half of those pictured were Syrian soldiers killed by terrorists during the civil war; many others turned out to be civilians who were victims of terrorist attacks, including car bombs and assassinations; and others were foreign jihadis killed in battle by the government forces. All of this is hardly proof of the “mass genocide” of civilians conducted by the government!

Among those identified by Blumenthal who worked with “Caesar” to push the sanctions bill through were former U.S. government officials, including David Crane, a former DIA operative with a military-intelligence background. As of now, Crane leads the Syrian Accountability Project. Another was Mouaz Moustafa, Director of the Syria Emergency Task Force, funded by the U.S. Department of State. Moustafa, who sat next to Caesar during his Congressional testimony, escorted Sen. John McCain on his “fact-finding” trip to Syria, during which he was photographed next to gun-toting jihadists and members of the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army. Another official to offer testimony was Frederic Hof, of the pro-regime-change Atlantic Council’s Rafic Hariri Center. Hof called for more funds to go to anti-Assad groups in Syria.

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Stephen Rapp, a former Obama official who served as ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, presented the Caesar file as an exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Now serving as a visiting fellow at the Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, Rapp oversees a project that claims to be pursuing “justice and accountability in Syria.”

Two British attorneys were identified by Blumenthal as having been involved in authenticating the photos. One is Sir Geoffrey Nice, the former lead prosecutor in the case against former Yugoslav President Milosevic; Sir Geoffrey is identified as an “adviser” to Qatar. The other, also on the Qatari payroll, is Desmond De Silva. This is not surprising, as British individuals serve on the boards of many “human rights” groups, some funded directly by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in promoting False Flag events. One of these groups is the White Helmets, which fraudulently claimed the Syrian use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. Such charges have been used to defend support for “moderate rebels” during the civil war as well as justify the murderous sanctions as a “humanitarian” response to the Assad government.

The real intent of the “Caesar Sanctions" was stated by James Jeffrey, who served as the Special Representative for Syrian Engagement in the Trump administration. Jeffrey described his job as making “Syria a quagmire for Russia.” A former Ambassador to Iraq appointed by Obama, he stated that the purpose of the Caesar Sanctions is to “make it clear to anyone who wants to rebuild Assad’s Syria that this cannot happen without Caesar Sanctions,” as they will become a “target” of sanctions. He admitted in a recent PBS interview that the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which controls much of Idlib Province, serves as a “U.S. asset.”

As sanctions have become a weapon of choice by regime changers, as part of a broad strategy of hybrid warfare, it is essential that the intent behind them be exposed. It is the height of evil hypocrisy to proclaim, as Secretary of State Blinken did, that the sanctions against Syria represent a “humanitarian effort” to protect the Syrian people. A policy of deliberate genocide was defined at the Nuremberg Tribunals at the end of World War II as a crime against humanity. If the cry “Never Again” is to retain any meaning, the Caesar Sanctions against Syria must be immediately lifted.