CAIRO: The Arab League approved of imposing strong economic sanctions against Syria on Sunday, due to its continued violence against anti-government demonstrators and its failure to accommodate Arab League monitors. The sanctions, which are the strongest ever handed down by the league toward a member state, include a travel ban for senior Syrian officials to Arab League nations and a freeze on government assets. Specifically. the sanctions seek to halt commerce with the Central Bank of Syria and limit investment in the beleaguered nation. 19 of 22 member states voted in favor of the sanctions against the al-Assad regime in an emergency meeting held in Cairo. Turkey was in attendance at Sunday's meeting and pledged to also implement the Arab League's sanctions against Syria. Lebanon and Iraq abstained from the vote. Iraq's abstention from Sunday's vote is critical for the Syrian regime and its potential to cling to power. “The key economic player is not Egypt or Saudi Arabia, it's Iraq. They have denied these sanctions. The revenue from Iraq accounts for 25 percent of Syria's total export revenue,” stated Abdul Omar, a spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), in an interview with Bikyamasr.com. It is possible that the moral and ideological ramifications of the Arab League's decision to sanction Syria will be more influential than the sanctions themselves. Government propaganda has dubbed Western sanctions as “foreign interference” or “conspiracies” in an effort to maintain popularity despite increasingly poor economic conditions in Syria. “Now it is no longer the West interfering, it is the Middle East itself,” asserted Omar. By showing solidarity against the Syrian regime, the Arab League has reopened door for the possibility of a United Nations resolution condemning the violence used against the Syrian people. “The key here is that by making this stance, the West can go back to the UN and say that the Arab League nations are standing against the regime. China and Russia can't say no,” concluded the SOHR spokesman. BM
