The Arab League is trying to pressure Syria to end the violence against its citizens and has agreed to implement sanctions if al-Assad doesn’t agree to allow peace keepers in. But it’s going to be hard for them if its own members don’t comply.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from neighbouring Jordan, said she was hearing that the Jordanian government was asking the Arab League to be excluded from imposing sanctions because of the economic losses involved.
"Jordan is concerned about stopping flights between Damascus and Amman and about a high volume of trade between the two countries, amounting to $400 million per year", she said.
"Nonetheless, Jordan says that as a government it supports the Arab consensus on punitive measures but it does not want to cut its bilateral economic ties.
Iraq and Lebanon have already said they will not impose sanctions on their neighbour.
via Violence in Syria as sanctions deadline looms – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.
In 2010, Syria amounted to four percent of the exports for Jordan. Overall though, Lebanon and Iraq are more important though. Forty-one percent of Syrian exports in 2010 went to those two nations. I hope the Arab League is able to stay together and actually implement these sanctions when al-Assad inevitably doesn’t agree to the peace keepers.