Ammon News - The Guardian - Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula have dominated US foreign policy in the last few weeks, and President Barack Obama, at a European summit, lambasted the Russian leader for being a menace to the international system built over decades. But this Middle East returns to the agenda as the Senate foreign relations committee held a hearing Wednesday on "what's next" for US policy in Syria after the latest round of failed peace talks in Geneva.
Syria entered its fourth year of conflict in mid-March, with no signs it will abate soon. The regional nature of the conflict has alarmed many countries and international groups, as desperate refugees have fled abroad and armed clashes erupted along borders with neighboring countries.
he week of 14 March, 2014, marked the three-year anniversary of the start of the Syrian war. The conflict has so far claimed 140,000 lives (which could well be a conservative estimate, as the UN stopped updating its death toll in January); forced 2.5 million people to flee the country, and left more than 4.3 million displaced within their homeland's borders. The UN estimates that 9.3 million people currently need humanitarian assistance.
• Humanitarian aid: In January 2014 the US announced a pledge of $380m in humanitarian assistance for those inside Syria as well as for refugees in neighboring countries, bringing the total amount of humanitarian aid committed to the conflict, since it began, to more than $1.7bn.
On 26 March, however, a US official condemned, commenting on a UN report, the Assad regime for hindering civilian access to humanitarian relief workers. Merely one month after the UN approved a resolution demanding "rapid, safe and unhindered aid access" in Syria, including across borders, a report declared that the situation "remains extremely challenging".
This month, 19 US senators, led by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, introduced a bipartisan resolution requesting the US increase humanitarian aid. Though the resolution is non-binding, senators hope it could increase pressure on the Obama administration. The resolution gives the administration 90 days to "develop and submit" a strategy for US engagement.
• Diplomatic relations: Since the start of the war in 2011, the US government has repeatedly asked President Bashar al-Assad to step down and has attempted to broker international peace talks, all to no avail. In February, a second round of talks between the Syrian government and the opposition quickly broke down amid recriminations and blame for the bloodshed. A resumption of the talks seems futile, as even the chief UN negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, acknowledged. Furthermore, the US reaction to Russia's takeover of Crimea upset relations with the Kremlin and undermined any chance of Russia-US co-operation over Syria for the foreseeable future.
On 18 March 2014, the US announced the closure of Syria's embassy in Washington and ordered its diplomatic staff to return to Damascus. The US special envoy for Syria, Daniel Rubinstein, said the decision to close the embassy, as well as honorary consulates in Michigan and Texas, was “in consideration of the atrocities the Assad regime has committed against the Syrian people … We have determined it is unacceptable for individuals appointed by that regime to conduct diplomatic or consular operations in the United States.”
• Chemical weapons: Syria is in the process of surrendering its 1,200 tonnes of chemical weapons as part of a Russian-brokered deal to avoid US-led air strikes following the 21 August chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta that claimed between 350 and 1,400 lives. The sarin gas attack was a defining moment in the Syrian war, as it drew international condemnation and pushed Obama to the brink of military intervention.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) led the charge to verify, secure and transport the chemical weapons stocks – a diverse mix of sarin, mustard gas and precursor chemicals. The transfer is several months behind schedule, though in early March Syria was said to have surrendered almost one-third of its arsenal.
• Economic relations: Syria has been subject to US economic sanctions since 2004 under the Syria Accountability Act, which prohibits and restricts the export of most US products to Syria. Further sanctions in 2008 prohibited importation of Syrian petroleum products into the US. At the start of the war, the US imposed yet more sanctions, this time targeting people complicit in human rights abuses or supporting the Assad regime.
• Refugees: In all of 2013, the United States let only 31 Syrian refugees into the country, bringing the total number of those who have fled the conflict and settled permanently in the US to just 90. Last February, the Obama administration announced that it had eased some immigration rules to allow more of the millions of Syrians who are currently displaced to enter the country. The changes granted exemptions only on a case-by-case basis to the "material support" bar in US immigration law, which made it impossible for anyone to enter the country if they had ever provided any kind of support to armed rebel groups, even if those groups had themselves received aid from Washington.
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