Arab League Imposes Syrian Sanctions as Civil Conflict Grows

The Arab League imposed unprecedented sanctions on Syria, including a freeze on financial assets in Arab countries and a travel ban on senior officials, after it failed to stop its crackdown on protesters.

The measures also will halt dealings with the Syrian central bank, Qatari Prime Minister told reporters yesterday in Cairo. The Arab League banned financial transactions and trade with the Syrian government, excluding basic commodities, he said.

President Bashar Al-Assad, 46, is under economic and political pressure to end an eight-month crackdown against demonstrators, inspired by popular movements that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The violence has moved the country closer to a civil war as military personnel defect and take up arms against the government.

“Sanctions may put more pressure on Assad, but he will continue his current crackdown as is unless something really big happens,” Paul Sullivan, a political scientist specializing in Middle East security at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an e-mailed response to questions. “It has all the indications of a fall into civil war so far.”

The United Nations estimates that at least 3,500 people have been killed since the start of the protests in mid-March. Thirty-one people were killed by security forces yesterday, al- Jazeera television reported, citing activists.

The economic sanctions are the first the Arab League has imposed on a member state since its formation in 1945. In 1979, the league suspended Egypt’s membership after President Anwar Sadat signed a peace agreement with Israel, and reinstated the North African nation in 1989.

Syrian neighbors Iraq and Lebanon abstained from voting on yesterday’s decision. The sanctions were drafted to target Syrian officials and aren’t intended to hurt the Syrian people, Sheikh Hamad said.

The opposition Syrian National Council posted a statement on its Facebook page calling the sanctions “a defeat for the Syrian regime and an important step to isolate it and stop the supplies that feed its criminal war against peaceful protesters.”

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed the Arab League’s “leadership” in seeking an end to the “horrific violence” in Syria, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000, has moved to ease Syria’s economic isolation and encourage foreign investment. He had encouraged private industry in Syria’s state- dominated economy to provide long-term financing for development and economic reforms.

“Syria is a trading nation and they are natural capitalists,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in response to e-mailed questions. “The businessmen in that country will never tolerate being cut off to such a degree. This move will get the business elite off the fence and against the regime.”

Syria’s $60 billion economy, which expanded 5.5 percent in 2010, may shrink 2 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The government expects growth of 1 percent, Finance minister Mohammad Al-Jleilati said in September.

The Arab League suspended Syria, a founding member, for its handling of the unrest about two weeks ago. It was the boldest action by the organization since its condemnation of Muammar Qaddafi’s repression of protests paved the way for the United Nations resolution in March authorizing a North Atlantic Treaty Organization campaign that ended after Qaddafi’s death.

 “The Arab League is now capable of taking actions against an antiquated Arab regime,” Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said in a phone interview yesterday. “The vote illustrates the growing clout of the Arab League in Arab affairs.”

The sanctions on Syria were imposed after Assad’s government ignored an Arab League request to admit monitors, who would check whether the government was ending its violence against protesters. The league rejected Syrian requests to negotiate the terms of the deal, which was agreed on Nov. 2. The original deadline was Nov. 19.

“This is the Arab League trying to keep it an Arab issue,” Ausama Monajed, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group, said in an interview yesterday. “We expected a little bit more but this is an excellent start. They’ve never done anything like it.”

Syria buried 25 soldiers, including six pilots, who were killed by the “armed terrorist groups,” the Syrian Arab News Agency reported yesterday. Their deaths were “blatant proof of organized terrorism against Syria,” the news service said, citing Ghassan Abdelaal, the governor of Homs, a center of the uprising.

Ahead of the league’s decision, a mass rally against the organization was held in Latakia, according to the official Syrian news service.

Sectarian divisions in Syria, where the Alawite minority has ruled over a Sunni Muslim majority since the Assad dynasty took power in 1970, underlie political tensions in the country. In 1982, Assad’s father crushed a rebellion led by Sunni militants in the city of Hama, killing as many as 10,000 people according to estimates cited by Human Rights Watch.

“The Arab League also sees real trouble if Syria falls into a full civil war,” Sullivan said. “The closeness of Assad’s regime to Iran, and Iran’s support of them during this brutal time in Syria, worry and irritate many Sunni leaders in the region.”