Felicity Arbuthnot: The Age of the Siege: Nazi

Military Tactics Revisited: Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity. (Alice Walker, born 1944). Former Danish PM and Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, "Du har blod pa dine haender" ("You have blood on your hands"), Danish protester, 2003. The siege of Leningrad is still considered the most lethal siege in world history, a shocking racially motivated starvation policy, described as an integral part of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union during World War II. The 872 day siege began on 8th September 1941 and was finally broken on 27th January 1944. It is described as one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and overwhelmingly the most costly in casualties. Some historians cite it as a genocide. Due to record keeping complexities, the exact number of deaths resultant from the blockades deprivations are uncertain. Figures range from 632,000 to 1.5 million. Sieges now extend to entire countries, they have become the torture before the destruction. They are not counted in long days, but in long years. Ironically the disparity in the deaths in Iraq resultant from that siege, mirror near exactly what was considered genocide in Leningrad. Syria has been subject to EU restrictions since 2011, ever more strangulating, with near every kind of financial transaction made impossible by May 2011, when restrictions were also placed on President Assad himself, all senior government officials, senior security and armed forces Heads. The list of that denied is dizzying. By February 2012, assets of individuals were frozen, as those of the Central Bank of Syria. Cargo flights by Syrian carriers to the EU were also barred, as was trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds. Anything which might translate into hard cash, without which neither individuals or countries can purchase the most basic essentials. By July 2012, Syrian Arab Airlines and even Syria's Cotton Marketing Organization had joined the EU's victims.