Afrasianet - The United States continues to tirelessly say that it is the guardian of the world when it comes to democracy and human rights. It is clear that she lied time after time .

America claims that it is always quick to provide assistance to various countries of the world during disasters, regardless of their identity or affiliation.

But what happened to the earthquake disaster that struck Turkey and Syria?

While many countries have tried to provide assistance to Syria, fear of U.S. sanctions has also led them to refrain from providing any aid under ridiculous and logical justifications.

US President Joe Biden said at the time, "Deeply saddened by the loss of life and destruction caused by the earthquake, I directed my team to continue to closely monitor the situation in coordination with Turkey and provide any assistance required. He did not mention Syria, of course.

This is in line with the direction of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who also announces full support for Turkey, saying in his tweet: "Our full solidarity with our ally Turkey after the terrible earthquake, I am in contact with President Erdogan and the foreign minister, and NATO allies are mobilizing support now."

According to the sources, the number of countries that provided assistance to Turkey reached 62 teams from 50 countries, and this assistance strongly affected the assistance of the afflicted compared to the earthquake that struck Syria, but America has become a serious obstacle in the way of humanitarian aid. The recent earthquake has shown that the West's claims about human rights in support of the Syrian people are a lie.

America, which has tried to overthrow the Syrian government with the help of Europe and its allies in the region in the past decade, is not ready to retreat from its anti-human positions even after this devastating earthquake in this country.

US President Joe Biden, in a phone call with the Turkish president, announced his country's readiness to help the victims of the earthquake, but did not take any position on the earthquake in Syria, and did not even express formal sympathy.

Even the State Department spokesman, in order to cover up his country's politicization of the earthquake in Syria, claimed: "We cannot communicate with the government in Syria. In return, we are helping this country through NGOs that are present in Syria."

In such a desperate situation as the earthquake has created in Syrian cities, the effects of America's harsh sanctions are once again visible. Because a large part of the destroyed buildings in Syria were due to the damage caused to these buildings during the civil war, and if they had

been rebuilt with foreign investment and support, the earthquake would not have caused many casualties and damage in Syria.

The effects of the war have forced civilians to live in damaged or semi-destroyed buildings, and the condition of these buildings is that they collapse even with a low-intensity earthquake, so how is it with a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, therefore, part of the suffering of the Syrian people after the earthquake, is due to the effects of the sanctions imposed by America and the West on this country.

The Caesar Act, approved by the US Congress in December 2019, imposed sanctions on governments, companies and individuals who directly or indirectly provide financial and military assistance to the Syrian government, or work in the fields of oil, natural gas, military aircraft, and construction in that country. U.S. forces stationed at several bases in northern Syria openly steal oil and ship it abroad.

In addition to exerting pressure on key sectors of the Syrian economy, the Caesar Act also targets foreign investment and the country's central bank. Because of these sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, there are now no airlines or international NGOs willing to enter Syria and help the earthquake victims, because they fear the repercussions of U.S. sanctions. The United States has also shown no reaction to show that foreign aid can flow into Syria, at least for a certain period of time until the end of the relief and rescuing people trapped under the rubble.

Only Iran and Russia announced their willingness to send humanitarian aid and aid workers to Syria, and teams from Russia and Iran went to that country to help the victims of the earthquake.

The UN said at the time that more people were in need of humanitarian assistance than ever before, with 70% of the Syrian people in need of assistance. According to UN estimates, the situation in Syria is extremely complex and needs urgent assistance.

Due to the depth of the disaster caused by the earthquake, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the United Nations, its agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to help deal with the repercussions of this devastating earthquake.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad held a meeting with representatives of UN agencies and offices in Syria and non-governmental organizations, and said harsh US sanctions would increase the repercussions of the earthquake disaster. At the same time, the Middle East Council of Churches demanded the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria and the entry of aid into that country.

In the past 12 years, terrorists have reduced many areas of this country to rubble, which is why the Syrian government has faced a capital crisis to rebuild the damage caused by the war. In the current situation, it does not have enough force alone to help earthquake victims.

If there were no sanctions, the Syrian government would have been able to earn income from foreign exchange through commercial interactions and the sale of its oil resources, as was the case before the crisis, and would have been able to solve the problems caused by the war. But the United States ignored this issue, instead stealing millions of dollars from the sale of Syrian oil, money for the Syrian government and people that should have been spent on that country.

Many of Syria's healthcare infrastructure was destroyed during the crisis and in need of repair and reconstruction, but due to lack of capital and foreign support due to sanctions, the matter remains unresolved. Now, with the earthquake, the situation is much worse than before, and extensive global assistance is needed to solve some of these problems.

Many airlines refuse to enter Syrian airports due to fears of US and European sanctions, and several countries have demanded that Syrian airlines transport aid by civilian aircraft, and part of this aid was supposed to be sent to Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia.

The war that the West has so far started has left more than 300,000 dead and tens of thousands wounded, and this genocide is worthless to the Washington authorities. Now that Syria has faced this natural disaster, if thousands of people are added to that number, it will have no significance for the United States.

In addition to all the sanctions it has imposed on Syria, the United States sponsors the anti-Syrian lobby, whose members are pushing for a new caliphate to terrorism , more sanctions and more starvation.

On August 21, 2023, a journalist wrote an article in the Washington Post in which he exposed the American falsehood and lies in dealing with the earthquake disaster in Syria.

It broke into the lobbying front meeting that terminated the 2023 Life-Saving General License on Syria, and is now pushing to extend Washington's economic war for another 8 years.

Behind closed doors, the former State Department official leading the workshop revealed the group's ultimate goal: to divide Syria and create a de facto caliphate for the renamed al-Qaeda branch.

On July 30, I registered under a pseudonym to join a workshop organized by the Syrian American Council (SAC), the leading voice of the lobby aimed at starving and destabilizing Syria to bow to Western demands. The workshop tasked SAC members with advocating for the latest Syrian regime change bill, HR 3202, during those visits.

During the seminar, I was able to witness the influence of the anti-Syrian lobby and understand the cynical tactics it uses to perpetuate Syria's population with poverty and famine.

More recently, the lobby succeeded in ending the exemption from life-saving sanctions known as General License 23 (GL 23), which allowed humanitarian aid into Syria in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last February. The lobby succeeded in ending GL 23

by pushing a lie repeated endlessly by the workshop leaders: "Sanctions only affect the Syrian government, not the people."

In fact, sanctions have inflicted incalculable damage on the Syrian people, as noted by the UN Special Rapporteur on sanctions, Alina Dohan, in an interview with The Grayzone in 2021. Quoting Madani earlier that day, Dohan explained that "the impact of unilateral sanctions on the Syrian population could be largely equivalent to the impact of the conflict itself."

But for some, this is still not enough. Chief among them was the man who led the workshop, Wael al-Zayat, a Syrian-American State Department veteran who recently wrote an editorial titled "Don't Lift Sanctions on Syria to Help Earthquake Victims."

Of course, the United States of America adopts the ideas of this lobby, just as it adopted the ideas of the Iraqis who lied about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.

In general, these actions do not seem strange to the American orientations in its dealings with countries, as the American policy allows everything to confirm hegemony and steal the resources of peoples and then continue to deceive by saying that America, an oasis of freedom and democracy, is the defender of human rights.

Isn't it worth re-reading and researching to find out what America has done and is doing against the peoples and the crimes it commits, even with those who were its allies and tried one day to get out of their dependence on it ?..