EU bans export of jet fuel to Assad regime
LONDON — Britain tried to ground the Syrian air force Friday by securing a European Union ban on exporting jet fuel to President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The relentless use of ground attack aircraft has been a central part of Assad’s offensive against the rebels. Syria’s air force possesses 295 warplanes, of which 205 are ground attack models, including one squadron of the Russianmade Sukhoi Su-24.
No other belligerent in the civil war has air power, so this has given the regime a key military advantage.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in airstrikes on rebel-held areas, particularly in and around Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. Barrels packed with shrapnel and explosives have been dropped from the air, along with bombs laden with poisonous chlorine gas.
However, the EU Friday adopted a British proposal to ban the export of jet fuel to Syria from Saturday onward.
“A significant number of innocent civilians — children, women and men — have died because the Assad regime’s air force has deliberately dropped weapons, including barrel bombs,” said Tobias Ellwood, the U.K. Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East.
“This measure will ensure that no EU people or companies will be involved in jet fuel going to Syria. I urge all nations to ban jet fuel going to the Assad regime.”
In practice, Syria imports very little jet fuel from EU member states. However, the measure will also ban insurance companies based in the EU, including Lloyd’s of London, from covering any shipments of jet fuel to Syria from any supplier worldwide.
Officials believe this particular provision will make it harder for the Syrian regime to buy fuel for its air force.
Assad could, of course, turn to uninsured illegal suppliers, but this would probably come at significantly greater cost. An oil embargo and other sanctions imposed by the EU in 2011 and 2012 were designed to choke off the regime’s sources of revenue.
The Syrian air force has recently escalated its raids against rebel targets. After largely ignoring Islamic State extremists, Syrian warplanes have bombed the terrorist movement’s headquarters in the eastern town of Raqqa.
But a study conducted for NBC News found that Assad and Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, have generally avoided fighting one another.
Of the 982 “counter-terrorist” operations carried out by regime forces between January and November, only 59, or six per cent, targeted ISIL. The rest were directed against non-Islamist rebels.