SACD documents Assad’s campaign to use COVID19 against the West’s sanctions

The Syrian Association for Citizen’s Dignity (SACD) has published a briefing paper which aims to deconstruct the Syrian regime’s propaganda effort which claims that the EU and US sanctions
hamper its effort to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper titled “’Assad’s Model’ of Fighting COVID19: Forget Syrian Lives, Use the Crisis to Annul Economic Sanctions” lays out in detail how the West’s sanctions exclude the humanitarian and medical aid needed to fight the pandemic and points to the regime’s corruption and cruelty as the underlying cause of regime’s failure to contain the virus.

“Assad’s strategy is to use the pandemic as a pretext for lifting of the sanctions and it has two “fronts”. One is for Russia, China and their allies to demand the lifting of the sanctions in the United Nations and other international forums, and the other is to mount a sustained propaganda effort is targeting Syrians living under Assad to convince them that the sanctions are the sole source of their suffering,” says Souhaib Bouchy, the author of the SACD briefing.