SYRIA - Arab League Sanctions

Is this going to be another ineffective try like the previous one?

"Isolating Syria, Arab League Imposes Broad Sanctions" by NEIL MacFARQUHAR and NADA BAKRI, New York Times 11/27/2011

Excerpt

The Arab League deepened Syria’s international isolation on Sunday by imposing a battery of economic sanctions meant to sever most trade and investment from the Arab world, an unprecedented step against a member state.

The tough measures, aimed at stopping Syria’s bloody crackdown on dissidents, constitute another blow to the Syrian economy, already reeling from sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States.

They were a psychological jab as much as an economic one, further eroding Syria’s longstanding claim to be the heart of Arabism, a claim already battered by the country’s suspension from the league two weeks ago.

For the Arab League, an organization long ridiculed as toothless, it was the second time since the Arab Spring protests began that it had acted against a member country to protect a threatened populace. But while the group invited international military intervention in Libya in March, this time its leaders made clear that sanctions were intended to avoid it.

The action capped a momentous week in a region that has been pummeled by a year of historic change. President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in Yemen, Libya formed a new government, Morocco elected one and Egyptians prepared to vote in their first post-revolutionary elections on Monday.

The sanctions against Syria, backed by 19 member states meeting in Cairo, reflected widespread frustration among Arab governments that Damascus has refused to put in place a peace treaty it accepted three weeks ago as the toll from its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators continues to mount.

“The position of the people, and the Arab position, is that we must end this situation urgently,” said Sheik Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the foreign minister of Qatar and the league’s current chairman. “It has been almost a year that the Syrian people have been killed.”

The immediate catalyst was Syria’s refusal to admit Arab civilian and military observers to oversee the peace agreement, ending a military crackdown that the United Nations says has claimed more than 3,500 lives since March.

The stated aim of the sanctions was not regime change, but to press Syria to comply with the peace plan it had ostensibly accepted.

The league “is trying its best to get the Syrians to accept the political solution that it is offering them,” said one diplomat involved, speaking anonymously in line with his government’s guidelines. “But the Syrians keep maneuvering and haggling, and it is just not going to work. They don’t get it. They still want to play as if they are in the driver’s seat.”