The Syrian Arab Army has been dispatched around the northeast Syrian province of Hasakeh, aiming to shore up defenses in villages around the area to try to prevent invading Turkey from pushing deeper into Syria beyond the already-claimed safe zone.
While this is unsurprising given Syria’s priorities in security this area, it potentially complicates America’s new war for Syria’s oil, with Syrian troops now in Mulla Abbas, putting them near one of the oil fields claimed by President Trump as an American-held field.
On Tuesday, this was uneventful, with US and Kurdish YPG forces at the site not opening fire on the Syrian military. At the same time, no one from any side is trying to extract oil yet, so as yet any contesting is purely theoretical.
While Syrian forces are reveling in the process of recovering territory that has been under Kurdish YPG control throughout much of the war, with an eye toward helping the Kurds defend the area from Turkey, that process is going to put more and more Syrian forces in the area around the oilfields.
That Syria wants a presence in the area is unsurprising, as it is both where the Turkish threat is, and along the border area with Iraq. At the same time, President Trump has claimed the fields, and has designs on taking the oil from them, which means any Syrian presence is going to potentially be seen as a threat to US ambitions.
If the US military doesn’t have clear orders to fire on the SAA, then the SAA needs to exploit this to the max and move in as many areas as possible.
Bingo! The area of eastern Syria is immense. One thousand Americans can’t control it, and the Kurds know what’s coming and have already made peace with the Syrian Govt. The Americans will be isolated in little cantons, where they will stay until Trump gets reelected, whereupon he will declare that the SAA and the Kurds, working together, can deal with ISIS and keep the oil out of their hands.
Trump’s Syria oil gambit is about domestic politics and placating the war party. Be patient.
Damn man, I admire your undying faith. I don’t understand it but I do admire it. I know you are truly anti-war so I hope your faith pays off for all of us who think Trump is a bullshitting con man who knows how to work a room.
Yeah, Trump’s flip flopping, pandering to the hawks, and lying has yet to yield even one 4-D chess move in three years, so I’m fully on the side of “bullshitting con artist.”
Another delusional Trump supporter who thinks Trump actually has a plan. Yawn.
Cancer USA never leaves a host voluntarily. It must be excised by force. See: Vietnam.
See the Philippines.
Meh; that oil infrastructure probably doesn’t even work. The Syrian government would have been a main customer, and they’ve had to import from Iran.
The locals probably jury rigged a few for limited local production and simple refining, but the point of occupying would be resource denial over extraction.
The thirty million dollars a year Russia claimed was possible, ain’t a whole lot for an industry that normally prices in billions.
Seems like the US knows, as does everyone else in the world, that all out war with Russia and/or China is out of the question because there would be no winners, so the new way of doing business is grab first and ask questions later. Trump let the cat out of the bag when he uttered in a speech to a bunch of so called Christians a while back,”if you can get away with it, get away with it, right”. Not even a single boo from the audience, the new morality as perpetuated by our Mister Trump.
Comical that when Turkey/Syria/Russia use military force in Syria they are always fighting “rebels”, but when we do the same, the “rebels” morph into “ISIS”.
The cost of repairing the infrastructure (bombed by the US in the first place) to extract the oil is beyond imagination. US doesn’t do that. It only destroys and flatten things. It hasn’t spent a dollar on anything except bombs, guns and what’s needed to whisk ISIS and Kurd terrorist from one location to another.
If US forces attempted to take Syrian oil (provided Syria as the sole supplier of electricity in the region would kindly deliver it’s services to the occupier) how would they export it? They can’t take it to Latakia obviously, because the Syrian government would not allow it. You couldn’t take it north to Turkey either because you’d be passing through a war zone, which is inadvisable with petroleum trucks and Turkey wouldn’t allow it anyway. Would you try to load it on trucks and take it through Iraq to Umm Qasr? That is a long way, through some territory where tens of thousands anti-American militias operate. At the moment, angry crowds have blockaded Umm Qasr as part of the 2019 Iraqi Revolution, and the crowds are deeply anti-American. Plus how many trucks would you need? How many does the US even have in Deir Ezor? The logistics here are impossible. The only reason US special ops can even be in Deir Ezzor is because they have air support from bases in nearby Iraq, but you can’t fly out oil.
Then there’s the question of security. SDF/YPG Kurds are providing the US that. But only in the south 100:ds of miles from where they live, threatening native Arabs at gunpoint. In the north they’ve handed over everything they’ve gobbled up and stolen with US’s assistance to the government for THEIR protection and retreated 30km south.
Eventually they’ll have to hand over the south too once these opportunistic but not necessarily very smart Kurds (again) realize that they’re doing it for nothing trapped with US sitting ducks in the middle of the desert, who again will flee under humiliating circumstances like they did up north when the Turks and their cutthroat militias were advancing on them. Turk militias ordered by Erdogan (on request of Putin no doubt) gave a little taste of how it’s gonna be when they attacked US forces again, Sunday.
The only real buyer for Syrian oil would be the Syrians government; maybe some can be smuggled up to Turkish lines into Turkey, but its doubtful.
I agree 100%, Nikki. There’s no way US forces can pump out Syria’s oil an transport it out – whether on the ground via tanker trucks, or in the air. DJT made a huge mistake in ignoring this conundrum.
The Russians aren’t going to cooperate, as their Deputy Defense Minister had stated. Why should they? These oil fields are the Syrian people’s heritage and the Arab Syrian Army will drive the US forces out, with Russia’s approval, if the Americans don’t withdraw.
The Kurds will stay allied to the USA as long as the USA keeps paying them.
Simply put, the US is unlawfully and illegally in Syria.
Trump has said he wants the troops out. He is commander in chief according to the Constitution…
Hmm….
:-/
He has said that. He’s said lots of contradictory things After he said that, he then said that we were securing the oil fields with US troops, so we can take the oil. Which kind of cancels the previous statement out, wouldn’t you say?
I might, and I would were it not for the fact that I figure some very serious (and likely very deadly) pressure has been brought to bear against him; forcing Trump to to backtrack on what he wants.
He is up to his a*s in alligators and must chose his battles before his 2nd term very carefully I figure. As far as I am concerned it is a miracle he is still alive.
He has no serious “wants” other than remaining in power, like every other President. He may have some random concepts about what he needs to do to stay in power, like most Presidents, but he has no intellectual depth or knowledge to be able to argue those concepts against any opposition – if he even really holds that concepts, which is problematic.
Besides that, he doesn’t really care because he only became President for ego and because he’ll make more billions after leaving office due to the cache of making deals with a President. So, other than trying to remain in power, he has no real skin in the game of foreign policy. Nothing he does is going to affect him other than at the elections.
And even there, his delusional followers will support anyway – just like Hillary Clinton’s delusional women supporters support her. They just took a poll of Democrats and if Clinton runs again, she will be at least in second place if not first place among all the other Democratic candidates. This is how delusional the US electorate is.
The fact remains that Trump is a delusional narcissist – much like Obama, only worse because he can’t even talk properly. Just read those minutes of a recent Cabinet meeting. Trump sounds like a ranting Hitler in the bunker.
If you’re assuming any rational thought capability of this clown, you’re as delusional as he is. People who believe that are suffering from cognitive dissonance – the inability to believe something is real that is emotionally unacceptable. Trump’s supporters can’t accept that he’s as corrupt as every other US President (not to mention even dumber) because they voted for him and thus have to accept responsibility for him. In short, they’re as dumb as he is.
I as an anarchist never vote – so I don’t have to accept responsibility for this Orange Mophead.
Good Luck with that, young man. May experience give you wisdom.
It already has after 70 years of experience.
OK color me surprized.
Well then as I say – reasonable people may disagree amicably.
Have a gud’n!
I’m older than you, so have more experience and know that Trump is the Deep State’s hated Outsider and that’s why they fear him.
You are correct. But that’s not relevant to what I’m saying. Trump is still going to do what they want, even if they’d prefer someone else they can control more easily, like Clinton.
Naw, the MIC love trump, the checks are rolling in. I never buy this “the president is under threat” stuff. When you voluntarily work to be president, or any other responsible post, you volunteer for the problems and dangers also, just like an army private. If he is not willing to do that, he flat out don’t belong there.
You make some good points. The MIC is indeed very happy and it is the lifeblood of the American economy since WW2. Without never ending wars there would be several tens of millions of American out of work and that would be devastating. So, there will be NO global peace in what is left of my lifetime it seems.
However…
That said, I do believe our current pres is indeed a patriot and has genuine desire to make and keep the country great like it was before it lost its ways. I support that. And, I know as an outsider he may have been somewhat naive about how Washington works. And, despite all against him, he is accomplishing a lot of good things. I do not think he lack willingness, just cooperation of the those who should be fighting among themselves to support and assist him.
Last but not least, I am a shades of grey type, not a black and white kind of type in my assessment of what happens. Yeah?
And with this comment, I say thanks for the discussion with you all, it’s been fun. It gets late at night where I am now, so I must say “good night.”
Naw, the MIC love trump, the checks are rolling in. I never buy this “the president is under threat” stuff. When you voluntarily work to be president, or any other responsible post, you volunteer for the problems and dangers also, just like an army private. If he is not willing to do that, he flat out don’t belong there.
Trump says he wants troops out, then sends more troops in.
How hard is it for him to see the difference between those two positions? If he can’t, then why do you think he has any comprehension of anything other than real estate? And even at real estate, he nearly went bankrupt at one point.
He’s an idiot. And you can’t trust anything he says, because real estate developers on his scale are inveterate liars.
Normally I would respond to a comment such as yours that “reasonable people can disagree amicably”, but then you wrote “he’s an idiot” which makes it impossible for me to perceive you as reasonable. Sorry.
Did not NY Times explain this to us very clearly. The patriotic minded people who believe that Trump is not reliable, are just NOT executing the orders, or change them. And it was stated that such disobedience exists in all parts of administration, including military.
It will take a LOOOONG time for our analysts to get it. Syria is not defending its territory from Turkey, it is trying to make a deal with Kurds — the last remaining territory that US is hanging on to. At first, it was to beat ISIS, but in reality to get Kurds an autonomy controlled by US. And would have been a juicy territory controlling Turkish and Syrian borders.
But Turkey will not have it — as that meant contiguous Kurdish territory on both sides of border. And blocking Turkey out of any trade and infrastructure from Anatolia. Since Turkish Kurds are always armed — PKK is arms trafficking to Iraq. It was clear that even Iraqi side would have been drawn into a contiguous territory.
Israel is the main reason for strategy. Having another non-Arab state in the area that will take Arab lands and displace Arab population — would redirect the glare from Israel.
Once ISIS was defeated Turkey, wanted US to disarm YPG/SDF units. Kurds were in the interim set up Parliament, President and Constitution in Kobane , an only town with Kurdish majority. Neither Turkey nor Syria want a small town to become a political mouthpiece for Kurds. But by first allowing Turkey to go after Kurds, and then raising a chorus of Western amen corner to scream against Turkey — three things happened. Turkey cleared only area between Ras Al Ayn and Tel Afar, and Kurds invited Syrian troops and Russian police to secure Kobane, as well as Arab towns held by Kurds — Manbij and Raqqa.
Syria has one reason — and only one reason — to publicly castigate Turkey, and that is getting Kurdish area to agree to Syrian sovereignity.
But this can backfire on both Syria and Turkey. With US now just moving Kurd militants to Deir Azzor —- to “secure oil fields”, US is giving Kurds another option. Now only the fake SDF is in oil fields — but the area of control is larger than that. It extends to Jordanian border, and the key transit routes to Iraq.
And now, if Kurds in Kobane — no longer fearing Turkish invasion — turn their back on Damascus, and demand US protection? Now that US is flashing some money, and Turkey no longer a threat — Kurds can easily turn against Syrian government and resist any concessions in Constitutional committee work. Even though territorially they have no contiguity— they can, as they did before, shamelessly claim Arab populated land.
As for the oil outside Qamishli— it is under Syrian control. There are Syrian controlled towns there, including Hassakah, That area is not Kurdish majority.
The real problem for US is the Syrian population living in US occupied area. They were hoping to be rid of Kurdish military rule, and were hoping that Syrian Army would be coming in. It is hard to say how are they going to react to American troops and YPD ongoing occupation.