Timothy Alexander Guzman – GlobalResearch.ca March 31, 2023

Despite the massive earthquake that devasted parts of Syria and Turkey, the US and its allies continue their war against the Syrian government.  US troops still illegally occupy northeastern Syria since the war began on March 2011 to remove its President, Bashar al-Assad and destabilize the country to effectively balkanize the secular state on behalf of Israel’s expansionist agenda.  It all began in 2010 during the Arab Spring when anti-government protests had spread across most of the Arab world which led to protests in Syria and that’s when Washington’s war planners decided to add fuel to the fire and arm terrorists to further destabilize and ultimately destroy the Syrian government. 

At the start of the civil war, one of the very few media organizations that reported on pro-Assad demonstrations was Al-Jazeera who could not deny that Assad had popular support, the report ‘Thousands rally in support of Syria’s Assad’ said that

“tens of thousands of Syrians have rallied in central Damascus in show of support for President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling a six-month uprising against his rule in which the UN says about 2,900 people have been killed.”  

Al Jazeera’s report said that the Syrian people do support Assad “America, out, out, Syria will stay free” chanted the crowd on Wednesday, many of them carrying pictures of Assad and Syrian flags.”

Nir Rosen, a journalist and author told Al Jazeera that “We might not like to think that but authoritarian regimes sometimes have popular support.” Syria has the most popular support than most governments in the Middle East “In the whole of the Arab countries, certainly the Syrian regime has the largest base of popular support and much of the country still supports him [Assad], he continued “Not only Alawite and the Christian community, but even Sunni Bourgeoisie in Damascus and Aleppo support President Assad.”There is an important fact that the mainstream media barely mentions, and that is Syria is an independent secular state that has diverse ethnic groups including Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Turkmens, and religious groups that includes Christians, Muslims, Alawites (Asma al-Assad, wife of Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian Alawite from Latakia), Druze and Yazidis.  On the international stage, Syria has the full support of Russia, China, Iran, and many countries from the Global South.

However, Syria is not a perfect society, there are human rights issues and since 2006, Syria has developed extreme social problems due to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) recommendations for privatization, austerity measures, the deregulation of the financial system and a freeze in wages which has angered the population, but Assad still has popular support regardless of the situation.       

The US Is Not Interested in Fighting Terrorists, They Are Stealing Syria’s Natural Resources

As the war continued, the governments of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey along with their European partners took advantage of the situation and decided to arm and fund various terrorists groups including ISIS and Al Nusra (the Syrian equivalent of Al-Qaeda) from war torn countries such as Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, they even recruited a number of British and Canadian citizens who were radicalized thus began their assault on the Syrian government and its civilians.  In fact, Wikileaks exposed the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan who sent an email to Hillary Clinton who was the Secretary of State under Obama at the time wrote “AQ is on our side in Syria”, AQ obviously meant Al Qaeda.  These developments began with the Obama regime and continued under former US presidents, Donald Trump (who authorized the plunder of Syrian oil in 2019) and Joe Biden which is basically Obama’s third term.

Click to enlarge

The CIA-backed propaganda organization, the Voice of America (VOA) recently published ‘US Says It Will Not Back Off Syria Mission Despite Deadly Attacks’ reported that “The United States will not back away from its nearly eight-year deployment to Syria, where it is battling the remnants of Islamic State, despite attacks on U.S. forces there last week by an Iran-backed militia, the White House said on Monday.”  They claimed that “A one-way attack drone struck a U.S. base in Syria on March 23, killing an American contractor, injuring another and wounding five U.S. troops.”  The US occupation forces retaliated with air strikes, followed up by an exchange between US forces and pro-Assad forces that reportedly “killed three Syrian troops, 11 Syrian fighters in pro-government militias and five non-Syrian fighters who were aligned with the government.”  VOA pointed out what White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby had said “There’s been no change in the U.S. footprint in Syria as a result of what happened the last few days” and that “the mission against Islamic State would continue.”  All this happened after 171 House Republicans and 150 Democrats defeated a resolution by US Representative from Florida, Matt Gaetz to withdraw all remaining U.S. occupational forces from Syria.

The reality is that there is no mission against ISIS, Al-Nusra or Al-Qaeda.  The real mission is to continue to steal Syria’s natural resources.  According to a Fars News article, ‘Iran Denounces US Occupation of Syria, Bombing of Residential Areas’ an Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kana’ani declared that “the US’ claim to be present in Syria to fight Daesh, in whose creation [Washington] itself played a substantive role, is a mere excuse for continuation of [the country’s] occupation and plunder of Syria’s national riches, including energy and grain,” he continued “Continuation of illegal military presence of the US in addition to occupation of swathes of the Syrian soil and attacking various targets in that country amount to violation of international laws as well as the country’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported last year that during a meeting with the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Recourses that “The amount of oil production during the first half of 2022 amounted to some 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels, of which 14.2 thousand are delivered daily to refineries, while the US occupation forces and their mercenaries steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region.” In early January, Tasnim News Agency published ‘US Army Transports Stolen Oil, Wheat from Syria to Iraq in 60 Trucks (+Video)’ reported that “The US Army continues to transfer Syrian people’s natural resources in a systematic and frequent manner from its sources in the country’s east, while strengthening its unlawful military presence in the region rich in fossil and agricultural resources.”  Not only is the US stealing oil, but they have also been stealing wheat:

The sources who accompanied the crossing of the two stolen wheat and oil shipments in the countryside of the town of (Al-Yarubiyah) adjacent to the Syrian-Iraqi border, the easternmost countryside of Al-Hasakah province, confirmed that “a convoy consisting of 36 tanks loaded with stolen Syrian oil, was taken out by the American forces to their bases in northern Iraq, through the crossing.” (Al-Walid) unlawful border crossing with Iraq.

“Another convoy of 24 trucks, followed by US military vehicles, carrying wheat seized from grain centers and silos in Hasakah, was also moved by the US army through the illegal (Al-Walid) border,” the sources continued

In 2021, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby made claims that the 900 US troops and contractors “are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents, seeking to develop oil resources in Syria.”  Yes, that may be true, but the reason that the US occupation forces are still in Syria is to load up the trucks and transport oil, wheat, and any other natural resources they can get their hands on, not to fight the same terrorists they supported since the conflict began.

*

Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Source