(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — According to Reuters, Washington’s main Syrian partner, the U.S.-backed SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), believes the U.S. military will remain in northern Syria for decades after ISIS is eventually defeated.
The SDF, an alliance of militias composed mainly of the Kurdish YPG movement, believes the U.S. military has a “strategic interest” in staying in the country, SDF spokesman Talal Silo reportedly told Reuters.
“They have a strategy policy for decades to come. There will be military, economic and political agreements in the long term between the leadership of the northern areas (of Syria) … and the U.S. administration,” Silo said.
This was more or less confirmed by Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesperson for the U.S. coalition, who, according to Reuters, said there is “still a lot of fighting to do, even after ISIS has been defeated in Raqqa.”
“Our mission … is to defeat ISIS in designated areas of Iraq and Syria and to set conditions for follow-on operations to increase regional stability,” Dillon also said — without elaborating further.
Clearly, as Reuters acknowledges, these statements are in reference to an oil-rich strategic region known as Deir ez-Zor, which has been designated the location of ISIS’ last stand in Syria.
“They (recently) referred to the possibility of securing an area to prepare for a military airport. These are the beginnings – they’re not giving support just to leave. America is not providing all this support for free,” Silo said.
Silo also suggested that northern Syria could become an additional base for U.S. forces in the region, providing an alternative to Turkey, which recently joined forces with adversaries Russia, Iran, and Qatar.
If the U.S. wants to protect its interests and its allies in the region, it would undoubtedly have to stay indefinitely given the current climate. As Joshua Landis, head of the Middle Eastern Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma explains, the Kurds have “no money,” nor do they have an air force.
“[T]hey’ll be entirely dependent on the US Air Force from now to eternity, and the United States will be stuck in a quagmire, defending a new Kurdish state that America had partnered with to defeat [ISIL],” Landis said, Quartz reported.
This is why the U.S. wants the SDF to inherit the oil-rich region of Deir ez-Zor. According to Landis, America’s strategy is “for the Kurdish forces to take Deir al-Zour, the major regional city and the hub for its oil fields. That way, the Kurds would be able to afford to buy airplanes from the US, rather than require Washington to give them for free.”
There are two major problems with this strategy. The first is that the Syrian government retains an isolated outpost there, and the territory technically belongs to them, anyway. This is why both Russia and Iran have both been striking this territory throughout the year, preparing for what appears to be an inevitable showdown between the U.S.-backed forces and the Syrian forces on the ground.
The U.S. has already deployed upwards of 1,000 troops into Syrian territory, in addition to the growing number of American-owned and run bases that appear to be popping up out of nowhere. However, one would be hard-pressed to find a media outlet that will call this out for what it is: an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation.
Even if the areas the U.S. is inhabiting are no longer under the control of the Syrian government, this does not in any way denigrate Syria’s sovereignty. When Iraq invaded and took control of Kuwait, the U.N. still recognized the Kuwaiti government as the legitimate government of the country. In another example, even though Yemen’s president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, was ousted relatively peacefully some years ago, the U.N. still recognizes him in as Yemen’s leader and has directly enabled Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression to prop up his failing government.
Syria has only one representative at the United Nations, a representative of the current Syrian government. International law will be completely stripped of its usefulness and underlying meaning if the U.S. is allowed to continue these invasive policies unabated.
The only logical way Syria and Russia could oust the U.S. from Syria’s territory would be to directly engage them, which is hardly a prospect worth anticipating. Unless the U.S. intends to willfully remove itself from Syria, there is likely no happy ending to this particular narrative – or perhaps no end in sight at all.
That being said, the Syrian government recently announced that they believe the Syrian war is nearing its end, before adding that any remaining “illegitimate” forces will be confronted — including American ones.
How far down this road Syria and the U.S. are prepared to go is unclear, but what is clear is the potential for this conflict to dramatically inflame into a completely different conflict altogether. As such, one would expect this all to be headline news so the public could be better informed… but it’s not.
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