- US occupying forces in northern Syria are continuing to plunder natural resources and farmland, a practice ongoing since 2011
- Recently, US troops smuggled dozens of tanker trucks loaded with Syrian crude oil to their bases in Iraq.
- The fuel and convoys of Syrian wheat were transported through the illegal settlement of Mahmoudia.
- Witnesses report a caravan of 69 tankers loaded with oil and 45 with wheat stolen from silos in Yarubieh city.
- Similar acts of looting occurred on the 19th of the month in the city of Hasakeh, where 45 tankers of Syrian oil were taken out by US forces.
- Prior to the war and US invasion, Syria produced over 380 thousand barrels of crude oil per day, but this has drastically reduced to only 15 thousand barrels per day.
- The country’s oil production now covers only five percent of its needs, with the remaining 95 percent imported amidst difficulties due to the US blockade.
- The US and EU blockade prevents the entry of medicines, food, supplies, and impedes technological and industrial development in Syria.
It looks like most outlets carrying this story are just re-reporting this one from SANA: https://sana.sy/en/?p=329527
And that seems a bit light on details. And the details it does have seem slanted, like painting the US presence as an occupation, a border crossing as an illegal settlement (I can’t even find any other references to Mahmoudiya in Syria with a quick Google), and the photos just show pictures of random tanker trucks, nothing that would indicate location, direction, contents, or operator.
My sense is that the US is supporting a rebel faction in the Syrian civil war, and the ruling faction (Bashar al-Assad’s) is trying to paint them as the bad guy, for something that may or may not be legitimate, and may or may not even be happening at all. There’s not enough evidence here to draw any conclusions.
The US is supporting SDF, a primarily Kurdish group. This is no secret, they have been since 2015 against ISIL (you remember, the guys that were posting videos of beheading people on YouTube).
The Kurds have lived in this area for millennia. They have just as much right to the natural resources there as the Assad government, probably more.
Which is why the Navajo Nation controls land that would have otherwise contained the Hoover Dam, if it were not for the rights that the Navajo held to the natural resources there.
Oh, wait.
Explain to me how it is not. Do they have a UN mandate to be there? No? An invite from the sovereign government body of the land? Neither?
A territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. I’m this case, that area is under the control of the SDF.
Who funds and arms the SDF?
The US, for one. If this is supposed to be a gotcha, that makes it a puppet state at best, still not an occupation.
US literally has bases with US troops in Syria. It’s an occupying force.
This is a good, nuanced interpretation of this, thanks for doing the leg work and summarizing it succinctly.
what definition of occupation does not include the deployment of the US military, which proceeded to build a dozen military bases in a territory of another country, which has continuously made filings to the UN about this occupation?
The definition in the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907.
🙄