The United States operates about a dozen illegal military bases in Syria, most of them concentrated in energy and food-rich areas of the country east of the Euphrates, which contain about nine-tenths of the war-torn nation’s oil and gas resources. Damascus estimates total damage to its hydrocarbons industry of over $100 billion.
US forces in Syria reportedly smuggled a combined 95 tankers’ worth of crude oil out of the country using two different convoys over the weekend.
Sources in the al-Yaroubia countryside in al-Hasakah province told local media Sunday that 40 tankers of crude oil were shipped to Iraq from the al-Jazeera oil fields using the illegal Mahmoudiya border crossing.
The Damascus government has not been able to reestablish control over most of its oil-rich northeastern territories and its border with western Iraq, with the area under occupation by US forces and their Kurdish-majority ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ militia allies, which have set up de-facto self-rule over the region. US forces have threatened to respond to any attempt by the Syrian Army and its allies to reestablish control over the country’s lands with overwhelming force.
The US and the SDF have plundered billions of dollars-worth of oil from eastern Syria over the course of the Pentagon’s seven-year occupation of the region going back to 2016, when US forces helped local Kurdish militias chase Daesh (ISIS)* terrorists out.
Syrian officials, Russia’s military and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commanders have accused the US of secretly assisting, training, arming and financing jihadist militias in a bid to sow chaos and wage a never-ending dirty war against the government of President Bashar Assad after failing to oust him during the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ protests which swept much of the region.
Last week, A’ed al-Helali, a member of the Fattah Alliance in Iraq’s parliament, accused Washington of continuing its occupation and plunder of Syria specifically to finance local terrorists. “The US is not wasting money from its own budget, but is trying to find other outlets to obtain it in order to finance terrorist groups, which is what it is doing with the Syrian oil. The presence of US forces in the Syrian eastern Euphrates region is supporting these groups,” al-Helali said in an interview with local media.
The Biden administration has generally refrained from commenting on its Syrian oil smuggling activities, assuring that the US’s illegal presence in the country is designed only to prevent a resurgence of Daesh. President Trump was more open about US plans, saying repeatedly in 2018 and 2019 (to the horror of the deep state establishment) that American troops were stationed in Syria “only for the oil.” Assad praised Trump for at least being an “honest enemy.”

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