Read on Twitter
If the goal is to actually gain access to European financial markets to finance your weapons imports then it makes sense to constructively engage in the political process. Otherwise, the stalemate is "no". Is that a productive outcome? Is that good for Syria or the Syrian people? https://twitter.com/AbuJamajem/status/1273006987182252032
Between December and March, while the Syrian pound lost a third of its value and people cut down to one meal per day, with a pandemic looming, the Syrian goverment chose to burn millions of dollars in fuel and high explosives forcing a million of its citizens out of their homes.
At the same time, while the Syrian government failed to find hard currency for wheat imports or even domestic purchases, risking a famine later this year, it took possessions of multiple deliveries of heavy military equipment - from Russian barges that should be carrying food.
In nine years, the Syrian gov hasn't moved an inch on anything. We still do not have severity indicators for UN humanitarian response plans. It has systematically violated every local and international agreement struck - from local reconciliation to chemical weapons disarmament.
Short of full-on capitulation financing the Syrian government war-against-its-people deficit (which we already indirectly subsidize via humanitarian aid), whatever is that magical negotiating formula?! What is the theory of change here?
There isn't even a whiff of good faith.
The Syrian gov more-or-less won the war by burning and displacing half the country while externalizing the humanitarian and deferring the economic cost. We have humanitarian imperatives, but we do not have to be unnecessarily complicit in this obscene machinery of violence.
EU sanctions are not extraterritorial and legitimate trade in a range of goods continues. European diplomats are still ready to facilitate hiccups. Negotiating channels are open. If it wants to be treated like a normal government, let Damascus put forward a proposal to consider.
We care more about Syrian lives than the Syrian state. The whole equation is nothing short of a domestic hostage situation. But as negotiators, the least we must ask is that the hostage-taker just briefly lower the knife from the victim's throat before we throw open the vault.
Suddenly, the exact moment the Syrian government's war chest runs dry, they all discover their supreme concern for the lives and livelihoods of Syrian civilians.
PS: As the UK has been finding out, *every* entity dealing with Europe faces conditionality. It's how we do. The world's largest trading block may choose not to make its financial system available to banking institutions financing the import of chemical weapons precursors.
May we out-obstruction one another? Sure. But one side purports to be the legitimate government of Syria with all the rights and responsibilities that come with it. It showed that it may regulate its own affairs. But so do we.
