US forces have been illegally occupying oil and food-rich areas of northeastern Syria since the mid-to-late 2010s, setting foot in the country while chasing Daesh (ISIS),* but staying behind long after the terrorist group was routed.
US occupation forces in Syria have made off with dozens’ more truck and tanker loads’ worth of food and oil from the war-torn country, sending them across the border into Iraq using two separate convoys.
Sources on the ground in the Yarubiya countryside near the Iraqi border told Syrian media that a convoy consisting of 40 tankers’ worth of oil exited Syria via the Mahmoudiya border checkpoint.
Separately, sources said, 55 trucks worth of wheat and barley and an unspecified number oil tankers were spotted leaving the Yarubiya countryside via the al-Walid crossing.
Both Mahmoudiya and al-Walid are outside the Syrian government’s control, making them illegal under international law.
Syria, which once enjoyed modest self-sufficiency in both energy and foodstuffs before the US and its allies launched a dirty war aimed at overthrowing President Bashar Assad in 2011, presently depends on food and energy assistance from its Russian and Iranian allies. This support, which helps keep the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country from degenerating into a regional humanitarian crisis, has proven vital amid efforts by Washington to sanction Damascus into submission.
Up to 90 percent of the country’s oil and gas resources are situated in areas east of the Euphrates River which are occupied by the US and its Syrian Democratic Forces militia allies, with a significant portion of the country’s most fertile agricultural lands also situated in these areas, and also under foreign occupation.
The occupation has had a crushing impact on Syria’s economic wellbeing and reconstruction efforts. In September, the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Security Council President Ferit Hoxha highlighting the scale of the economic devastating, estimating that the total cost of the “aggression, looting and sabotage…by US forces and their terrorist tools” had reached a staggering $115.2 billion.
The UN has previously estimated that it will cost between $250 billion and $400 billion to rebuild Syria – which contains some of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities and religious sites sacred to all three Abrahamic religions, and contains nearly two dozen ethnic and religious minorities living alongside the Sunni Arab majority.
The US looting of Syria has continued even amid the escalation of attacks on its illegal bases by militias in solidarity with Gaza from October onward, with an attack on the Conoco Military Base near the country’s largest gas field on Saturday constituting the 100th rocket or drone attack on US forces across Syria and Iraq, according to calculations by US media. Dozens of US troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries in the spate of attacks, with a minority of US lawmakers calling for their immediate withdrawal from the war-torn nation.
