Bush orders sanctions against Syrian officials

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-13-bush-syria_N.htm?csp=34

"President Bush ordered new sanctions on Wednesday to punish Syria for its alleged efforts to undermine stability in Iraq and undercut Lebanon's sovereignty and democracy.
Bush, in an executive order, said he was expanding sanctions against senior government officials in Syria and their associates deemed to be responsible for — or to have benefited from — public corruption. The order did not specifically name any officials.

The White House said Wednesday's order expanded action taken in May 2004 when Bush issued an executive order banning all U.S. exports to Syria except for food and medicine. He ordered the sanctions then after long-standing complaints that the Middle Eastern nation was supporting terrorism and undermining U.S. efforts in Iraq...

The measures follow complaints by the United States that Syria was supporting militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and failing to stop guerrillas from crossing the border into Iraq."

[slipslidingaway]

1. Iraq's refugees in Syria...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892

"...Syria, the only country that initially placed no restrictions on Iraqi immigration, had (according to UN statistics) taken in about 1.25 million displaced Iraqis by early 2007. In addition, the UN estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi refugees were in Jordan, as many as 70,000 in Egypt, approaching 60,000 in Iran, about 30,000 in Lebanon, approximately 200,000 spread across the Gulf States, and another 100,000 in Europe, with a final 50,000 spread around the globe. The United States, which had accepted about 20,000 Iraqi refugees during Saddam Hussein's years, admitted 463 additional ones between the start of the war and mid-2007...

Whether inside or outside the country, even prosperous families before the war faced grim conditions. In Syria, where a careful survey of conditions was undertaken in October 2007, only 24% of all Iraqi families were supported by salaries or wages. Most families were left to live as best they could on dwindling savings or remittances from relatives, and a third of those with funds on hand expected to run out within three months. Under this kind of pressure, increasing numbers were reduced to sex work or other exploitative (or black market) sources of income...

Losing Precious Resources

The job backgrounds of an extraordinary proportion of Iraqi refugees in Syria were professional, managerial, or administrative. In other words, they were collectively the repository of the precious human capital that would otherwise have been needed to sustain, repair, and eventually rebuild their country's ravaged infrastructure. In Iraq, approximately 10% of adults had attended college; more than one-third of the refugees in Syria were university educated. Whereas less than 1% of Iraqis had a postgraduate education, nearly 10% of refugees in Syria had advanced degrees, including 4.5% with doctorates. At the opposite end of the economic spectrum, fully 20% of all Iraqis had no schooling, but only a relative handful of the refugees arriving in Syria (3%) had no education. These proportions were probably even more striking in other more distant receiving lands, where entry was more difficult..."

[TalkAgain]

2. About time............nt