Trump admits War Crime in Syria as Damascus Slams US 'Oil Theft'
JUAN COLE
08/22/2020
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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Last Monday, CNN reports US troops on patrol
in eastern Syria were allowed to move through Syrian territory by the Syrian
Arab Army, but then abruptly a small unit of Syrian troops fired on them.
The US soldiers fired back, and took no casualties, but killed a Syrian
soldier. There were demonstrations against the US in Damascus in the wake of
that killing.
US troops are risking their lives in Syria.
And why are some 500 still there? Trump tried to withdraw them, and did take
them out of the Kurdish areas in the north.
On Thursday, meeting with Iraqi prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Trump
made it crystal clear why US troops still patrolling in Syria. It is, he
said, all about oil.
"As you know, in Syria we're down to almost nothing, except we kept the oil.
But we'll work out some kind of a deal with the Kurds on that. But we left,
but we kept the oil. And we left the border. We said Turkey and Syria can
take care of their own border; we don't have to do it. And that worked out
very well. I remember when I did that, I was scorned by everybody. They
said, "This is terrible."
Well, I did it. It's now two years ago. And we did it with - Mike Pence went
over and met with the various parties and very successfully, and we removed
our troops. Nobody was killed. Nobody. And now they protect their own border
like they have been for hundreds of years. And we'll - we've left. But we
did keep a small force, and we kept the oil. And we'll make a determination
on that oil fairly soon."
As usual, Trump's word salad contained hefty doses of lies and falsehoods
along with one evident truth. "We kept the oil." As for the rest, the US
withdrawal from Syrian Kurdistan in favor of Turkey created havoc, the
displacement of tens of thousands, and many Kurdish deaths.
In recent testimony to Congress, Daniel L. Davis of Defense One pointed out,
secretary of state Mike Pompeo admitted that the US military presence had
allowed Delta Crescent Energy to make a deal with the Syrian Kurds allowing
it to develop Syrian petroleum.
The 500 US troops have been reduced to hired guards for a small oil field.
As Davis notes, Pompeo's testimony infuriated the Turkish government of
president Tayyip Erdogan, which views the Syrian Kurds as terrorists and
does not want them gaining substantial oil revenue.
Turkish media report that officials of the obscure Delta Crescent One firm
are mostly former US government officials, including "James Reese, an ex
officer in the Army's elite Delta Force; former US ambassador to Denmark
James Cainand and John P. Dorrier Jr., a former executive at GulfSands
Petroleum, a UK based company that had previously worked in northeastern
Syria."
The possibility that the Trump administration is doing a private favor for
cronies looms large.
The reputational damage to the US is enormous. For the Americans to occupy
part of Syria and profit off Syrian national resources is a war crime and
violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.
It isn't only Turkey that is angered, but Damascus.
Arabi Today reports on the speech this week of Syrian ambassador to the
United Nations Bashar al-Ja`fari.
He said he condemned, "acts of aggression, occupation and foreign
interference in the internal affairs of Syria, as well as the disastrous
effects of the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the American
administration and the European Union despite the pleas of the
Secretary-General and his Special Envoy and many others- which prevent the
Syrians from obtaining their basic needs of food, medicine and medical
equipment, especially in light of the spread of the Corona pandemic and its
dire effects."
Al-Ja`fari complained about the US occupation of eastern Syria, which, he
said, aimed at plundering Syria's national resources, including Syrian oil
and gas, and at stealing Syrian oil and depriving the Syrians of the
revenues needed for reconstruction in the wake of the nine-year long civil
war.
For the United States of America to turn itself into a petroleum mercenary
for a shadow little oil company and to siphon off a Syrian resource with no
shred of legitimacy in international law is a scandal. It is a scandal that
will harm US diplomacy and give Russia and Iran credible talking points in
their propaganda push against the US in the region. US demands that there be
no foreign interference in the domestic affairs of the countries of the
region, by which it means Russia and Iran should but out, are rendered
laughable by the nature of the US presence in Syria.
The US Left has shouted itself blue in the face chanting, "no war for oil!"
Usually it is hard, though, to know why exactly Washington launches its
wars.
In this case, nothing is hidden.