A convoy of US armored vehicles patrols the village of Ein Diwar in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province on November 4, 2019.
Moscow has slammed Washington’s “illegal” presence in Syria amid reports that the US is building two military bases in the Arab country’s oil-rich east.
“Any actions whatsoever that the United States undertakes to keep themselves militarily present in Syria are unacceptable and illegal from our point of view and under international law,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said on Tuesday.
Vershinin made the remarks addressing recent Turkish media reports claiming that Washington was building two new bases in Syria’s eastern oil-rich province of Dayr al-Zawr.
Turkey’s Anadolu Agency has reported that up to 300 US soldiers have been deployed in the region along with armored vehicles and heavy weapons to set up the new bases, one near the former Syrian Air Defense Forces’ 113th Brigade base and another in the al-Sur region in the province.
The deployment came after the US effectively reversed an earlier decision to pull out all troops from northeastern Syria last month in the wake of a Turkish military operation against Washington’s longtime Kurdish allies in the region.
The Trump administration has claimed that the troops seek to “secure” the country’s oil-rich region from falling into the hands of the Daesh terrorist group. But the truth is US forces are securing oil for ExxonMobil. Syria, with Russia’s help, can handle Daesh. But the US Beast is harder to resist.
Trump told the nation on Sunday: “Look, we don’t want to keep soldiers between Syria and Turkey for the next 200 years. We’re out,” he said. But…
“But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil,” the president said. He even mentioned sending ExxonMobil into Syria to extract the oil “properly.”
Trump noted that Syria has “massive amounts of oil,” and he admitted U.S. troops “may have to fight” to protect it.
“That’s OK,” Trump said:
“Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight but there is massive amounts of oil and we’re securing it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it stops ISIS because ISIS got tremendous wealth from that oil. We have taken it. It’s secured.”
There are obvious reasons for the fighting in Syria and the raping of the land. Western powers are not fighting to help the Syrian people. It is a battle for strategic political advantage and for access to Syria’s oil. All other explanations are lies.