To Capture and Subdue: America's Theft of Syrian Oil Has Very Little To Do
With Money
Years of US support to Al-Qaeda and ISIS and efforts to effect regime change
in the country have culminated in the theft of Syria's oil, but is that
really America's coup de gras in Syria?
by Steven Chovanec
August 25th, 2020
By Steven Chovanec
Near the end of July, one of the most important recent developments in U.S.
foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing. Not
surprisingly, hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely
unaware that it happened.
Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo
confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta
Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria.
The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on
an American military presence to secure its territory. That military
presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the
government of the country that it is operating within.
Shadowy US Firm Run by Former Diplomat Cinches Syria Oil Deal with Kurds
Delta Crescent Energy, run by the CEO of a private mercenary firm, has inked
a deal with Kurdish rebels to "steal" oil in Syria.
MintPress News | Raul Diego | Aug 5
Pompeo confirmed that the plans for implanting the firm into the U.S.-held
territory are "now in implementation" and that they could potentially be
"very powerful." This is quite a momentous event given its nature as a
blatant example of neocolonial extraction, or, as Stephen Kinzer puts it
writing for the Boston Globe, "This is a vivid throwback to earlier imperial
eras, when conquerors felt free to loot the resources of any territory they
could capture and subdue."
Indeed, the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to "capture and
subdue" these resources is a sordid, yet informative tale that by itself
arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures.
To capture and subdue
When a legitimate protest movement developed organically in Syria in early
2011, the U.S. saw an opportunity to destabilize, and potentially overthrow,
the government of a country that had long pushed back against its efforts
for greater control in the region.
Syria had maintained itself outside of the orbit of U.S. influence and had
frustratingly prevented American corporations from penetrating its economy
to access its markets and resources.
As the foremost academic expert on Middle East affairs, Christopher
Davidson, wrote in his seminal work, "Shadow Wars, The Secret Struggle for
the Middle East," discussing both Syria and Libya's strategic importance,
"the fact remained that these two regimes, sitting astride vast natural
resources and in command of key ports, rivers, and borders, were still
significant obstacles that had long frustrated the ambitions of Western
governments and their constituent corporations to gain greater access."
"With Syria," Davidson wrote, "having long proven antagonistic to Western
interests. a golden opportunity had presented itself in 2011 to oust [this]
administration once and for all under the pretext of humanitarian and even
democratic causes."
Mccain Syria
US Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman meet with Syrians at the
Yayladagi camp on the Turkish-Syrian border. April 10, 2012. Umit Bektas |
Reuters
The U.S., therefore, began organizing and overseeing a militarization of the
uprising early on, and soon co-opted the movement along with allied states
Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Writing at the end of
2011, Columbia University's Joseph Massad explained how there was no longer
any doubt that "the Syrian popular struggle for democracy [has] already been
hijacked," given that "the Arab League and imperial powers have taken over
and assumed the leadership of their struggle."
Soon, through the sponsoring of extremist elements, the insurgency was
dominated by Salafists of the al-Qaeda variety.
According to the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by 2013 "there was no
viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad" and "the U.S. was arming extremists."
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that "although many in the
American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was
dominated by extremists," still "the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming."
When ISIS split off from al-Qaeda and formed its own Caliphate, the U.S.
continued pumping money and weapons into the insurgency, even though it was
known that this aid was going into the hands of ISIS and other jihadists.
U.S. allies directly supported ISIS.
ISIS Morphs from Deadly Enemy in Syria to Useful Weapon in Abu Kamal
The United States needs the Islamic State (ISIS), first as a pretext for the
occupation of Syria then as a buffer to Iran in Abu Kamal.
MintPress News | Steven Chovanec | 11:42 AM
U.S. officials admitted that they saw the rise of ISIS as a beneficial
development that could help pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to
give in to America's demands.
Leaked audio of then-Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that "we were
watching. and we know that this [ISIS] was growing. We saw that Daesh was
growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought,
however, we could probably manage - that Assad would then negotiate." As
ISIS was bearing down on the capital city of Damascus, the U.S. was pressing
Assad to step down to a U.S.-approved government.
Then, however, Russia intervened with its air force to prevent an ISIS
takeover of the country and shifted the balance of forces against the
jihadist group. ISIS' viability as a tool to pressure the government was
spent.
The arsonist and the firefighter
So, a new strategy was implemented: instead of allowing Russia and Syria to
take back the territories that ISIS captured throughout the war, the U.S.
would use the ISIS threat as an excuse to take those territories before they
were able to. Like an arsonist who comes to put out the fire, the U.S. would
now charge itself with the task of stamping out the Islamist scourge and
thereby legitimize its own seizure of Syrian land. The U.S. partnered with
the Kurdish militias who acted as their "boots on the ground" in this
endeavor and supported them with airstrikes.
The strategy of how these areas were taken was very specific. It was
designed primarily to allow ISIS to escape and redirect itself back into the
fight against Syria and Russia. This was done through leaving "an escape
route for militants" or through deals that were made where ISIS voluntarily
agreed to cede its territory. The militants were then able to escape and go
wreak havoc against America's enemies in Syria.
Interestingly, in terms of the oil fields now being handed off to an
American corporation, the U.S. barely even fought ISIS to gain control over
them; ISIS simply handed them over.
Syria and Russia were quickly closing in on the then-ISIS controlled
oilfields, so the U.S. oversaw a deal between the Kurds and ISIS to give up
control of the city. According to veteran Middle East war correspondent
Elijah Magnier, "U.S.-backed forces advanced in north-eastern areas under
ISIS control, with little or no military engagement: ISIS pulled out from
more than 28 villages and oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates River,
surrendering these to the Kurdish-U.S. forces following an understanding
these reached with the terrorist group."
A man works a primitive refinery making crude oil into diesel in a
U.S-backed Kurdish village in Rmeilan, Syria, April 6, 2018. Hussein Malla |
AP
Sources quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that ISIS
preferred seeing the fields in the hands of the U.S. and the Kurds rather
than the Syrian government.
The rationale behind this occupation was best described by Syria expert
Joshua Landis, who wrote that the areas of northern Syria under control of
the Kurds are the U.S.' "main instrument in gaining leverage" over the
government. By "denying Damascus access to North Syria" and "controlling
half of Syria's energy resources" "the U.S. will be able to keep Syria poor
and under-resources." So, by "promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria" the
U.S. "hopes to deny Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory," while
"keeping Damascus weak and divided," this serving "no purpose other than to
stop trade" and to "beggar Assad and keep Syria divided, weak and poor."
Or, in the words of Jim Jeffrey, the Trump administrations special
representative for Syria who is charged with overseeing U.S. policy, the
intent is to "make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver
of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out
of it."
Anchoring American troops in Syria
This is the history by which an American firm was able to secure a contract
to extract oil in Syria. And while the actual resources gained will not be
of much value (Syria has only 0.1% of the world's oil reserves), the
presence of an American company will likely serve as a justification to
maintain a U.S. military presence in the region. "It is a fiendishly clever
maneuver aimed at anchoring American troops in Syria for a long time,"
Stephen Kinzer explains, one that will aid the policymakers who hold "the
view that the United States must remain militarily dominant in the Middle
East."
The Caesar Act: The Latest Western Attack on Syria Didn't Drop From a Plane
Wounded soldiers are but a small subset of Syrians devastated by the
sweeping sanctions imposed on Syria under the Caesar Act.
MintPress News | Eva Bartlett | Jun 24
This analysis corroborates the extensive scholarship of people like Mason
Gaffney, professor of economics emeritus at the University of California,
who, writing in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, sums up his
thesis that throughout its history "U.S. military spending has been largely
devoted to protecting the overseas assets of multinational corporations that
are based in the United States. The U.S. military provides its services by
supporting compliant political leaders in developing countries and by
punishing or deposing regimes that threaten the interests of U.S.-based
corporations."
In essence, by protecting this "global 'sprawl' of extractive companies" the
U.S. Department of Defense "provides a giant subsidy to companies operating
overseas," one that is paid for by the taxpayer, not the corporate
beneficiaries. It is hard to estimate the exact amount of money the U.S. has
invested into the Syria effort, though it likely is near the trillion dollar
figure. The U.S. taxpayer doesn't get anything out of that, but companies
that are awarded oil contracts do.
What is perhaps most important about this lesson however is that this is
just a singular example of a common occurrence that happens all over the
world. A primary function of U.S. foreign policy is to "make the world safe
for American businesses," and the upwards of a thousand military bases the
U.S. has stationed across the globe are set up to help protect those
corporate investments. While this history is unique to Syria, similar kinds
of histories are responsible for U.S. corporation's extractive activities in
other global arenas.
So, next time you see headlines about Exxon being in some kind of legal
dispute with, say, Venezuela, ask yourself how was it that those companies
became involved with the resources of that part of the world? More often
than not, the answer will be similar to how this U.S. company got involved
in Syria.
Given all of this, it perhaps might seem to be too mild of a critique to
simply say that this Syria enterprise harkens back to older imperial eras
where conquerors simply took what they wished: the sophistication of
colonialism has indeed improved by leaps and bounds since then.
