Syria Demands US Compensate It for Seven Years of War and Plundering

The Syrian Arab News Agency reported the nation’s foreign ministry issuing a statement that brands Washington responsible for what the government calls a terrorist war against Syria and its people.

It condemns both military and economic aggression against the country and attributes both to the designs of the U.S. and its allies to establish permanent military presence, and supremacy, in the region, with the U.S. and Israel also looting the country’s resources. Turkey could be added to the list. The allies referred to also include Washington’s fellow NATO members Britain and France, which have participated in the war against Syrian and its people as well.

Specifically the indictment states this:

“The previous U.S. administration didn’t stop at its controversial proclamation that recognizes Israel’s annexation of the Syrian Golan [Heights], but that administration and the current one resorted to a new method represented by direct U.S. intervention in the northeastern part of Syria through supporting separatist militias in addition to direct U.S. military intervention that shelled infrastructure, and looted Syrian oil and wheat.”

For examples of what the Syrian Foreign Ministry was alluding to, a Los Angeles Times report of several weeks ago detailed the activities of American soldiers in northern Syria in what is informally known as Fort Conoco, “acquired from the long-departed U.S. oil and gas firm that once operated the wells.” A month ago the Syrian government reported that “During the past two weeks, U.S. occupation forces have stolen large quantities of wheat from silos in Tal Alou through more than 112 trucks and sent them to northern Iraq.”

Today’s statement denounced daily transgressions of the Syrian-Iraqi border, a flagrant violation of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of both nations and an ongoing breach of several United Nations resolutions guaranteeing the inviolability of the Syrian Arab Republic and its territory.

The U.S. has, especially with the advent of the Biden-Harris administration to the White House, increasingly deployed convoys of vehicles bringing weapons and matériel from Iraq to Syria, and returning to Iraq with plundered oil and grain. Looting a war-ravaged country reduced to crippling poverty. Think of that the next time you hear or read of a Western official solemnly pontificating about the rules-based international order.

Therefore, the foreign ministry statement concluded, “The Syrian Arab Republic holds the U.S. administration responsible for the repercussions of its criminal polices against the Syrian people, and calls on the U.S. to compensate for the grave losses resulting from U.S. occupation and aggression against the Syrian people.”

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.