The United States, the EU, UK, and Israel are all waging a multi-pronged attack against the Syrian State and its people, however, this reality is never reflected in Western media. This is a silent war, which nobody even knows is going on.
It is often reported, despite the coverage being extremely limited, that the Israeli air-force carries out routine attacks against Syria, however, most other aspects of the Syria-Israel conflict are left out of the equation. The same is true when it comes to Washington’s role in Syria, its airstrikes may receive some attention in the corporate media, but the majority of Americans have no clue to what extent the US Government is involved in Syria.
The silent war on Syria, from the perspective of the West, was so hidden that former US President Donald Trump was deliberately led to believe that he had no American boots on the ground in Syria. When Trump was later made aware that the US military was there, he infamously stated that the presence there is “only for the oil“, enraging his aides who had provided alternative explanations.
The sad reality is, that the American people who are not following the situation in the Middle East can’t exactly be blamed for their lack of knowledge on their military’s presence in Syria. For if the President of the United States didn’t even know this, then it cannot be expected for the general population to understand that the US military is currently occupying a third of Syrian territory.
Right now in Syria, Turkey, a NATO member State, directly occupies northern portions of the country and has a strong influence over al-Qaeda affiliated groups who maintain a de-facto occupation of Syria’s Idlib province. Meanwhile, the most important ally of the US in the Middle East, Israel, not only illegally occupies the Syrian Golan Heights — to the country’s south west — but officially annexed that territory, a move that was recognized by the United States Government. Israel has also historically sought to establish a buffer zone between Syria’s Golan Heights and the government-held areas, under which Israel would effectively push back the Syrian military from even more of its territory.
Then we have the United States military itself, which occupies the al-Tanf area of Syria, located in the South of the country, holding the area with paid mercenary groups and providing air support to its militants. Al-Tanf is strategically located along the Syrian border with both Iraq and Jordan, making it fit into US supply routes perfectly. In addition to this, perhaps most notably, the US maintains control over the North East of Syria.
North-eastern Syria is held by a combination of thousands of US military personnel and tens of thousands of Kurdish militants that belong to Washington’s favorite proxy force, the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF). The SDF were used by the US to push back Daesh from the al-Omar oil fields in the territory they now occupy. Although the SDF aligned Kurdish militants fought valiantly against Daesh, they were simply used in order for Washington to keep Syria’s North East out of the hands of the Damascus based government. The worst part about the SDF’s role as a US proxy, is that under their noses the US prevents the Syrian people located in Syrian government controlled areas from accessing the country’s most fertile agricultural lands and 90% of the nation’s oil.
“International Rules-Based Order” pic.twitter.com/sXq0GuBlgJ
— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 30, 2022
Whilst the US occupies this territory, it also enforces draconian sanctions against the Syrian government, which has in effect crippled Syria’s economy and has pushed many regular Syrians into abject poverty. As if that isn’t bad enough, the US Government has been accused of looting Syrian wheat, oil, and even providing poisoned seeds to destroy agricultural land — a move that could have even poisoned Syrian civilians if they were to have consumed the corrupted crops.
Dana Stroul, now a Biden administration official, said in 2019, very clearly, that “what the Russians want and what Assad [the Syrian President] want, is economic reconstruction and that is basically something the US can hold a card on via the international financial institutions and our cooperation with the Europeans”. She went on to say that if the Syrian government doesn’t change its behavior to a position the US supports, then “we [the US] should hold a line on preventing reconstruction aid and technical expertise from going back into Syria”.
Stroul also confirmed that through the sanctions and the occupation of Syria’s economic powerhouse and hydrocarbons, they could maintain influence over Syria’s direction. This cruel strategy is one of punishing the Syrian people for their government refusing to comply with their occupiers and attackers. It is blackmail.
What is additionally important to understand is that the EU and UK are heavily involved in crushing the Syrian people too. Not only have France and the UK directly launched airstrikes on Syria, also financing terrorist groups in the country and using their intelligence services to aid in smuggling members of Daesh and other groups into Syria, but they are still playing ball with the US.
According to sources quoted by Axios news;
“In private discussions in Jerusalem in June, U.K. envoy Jonathan Hargreaves praised the Israeli airstrike campaign in Syria and said the U.K. and other Western countries are basing some of their policies on its results”.
Israel’s hundreds of attacks on Syria, which have not even received a response since 2018, were clearly unprovoked by the Syrian State and are a clear violation of the country’s sovereignty. The UK official, Jonathan Hargreaves, according to Axios, seems to endorse this policy of airstrikes, for the purpose of supposedly weakening Iran’s influence in Syria.
Israel’s airstrikes, despite claims that they target Iranian influence, have repeatedly struck civilian infrastructure, murdering countless Syrian civilians and members of the Syrian Arab Army. In the past 12 months Israel’s airstrikes have targeted the key Syrian port of Latakia twice, destroying food stocks and even hitting both the Damascus and Aleppo international airports, rendering them temporarily unusable, in separate strikes. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Israel has targeted in its strikes. Tel Aviv has never provided evidence to prove that the targets it was allegedly striking were actually hit, or even the target at all.
Israel, the US, and Turkey all occupy Syrian territory. Combined they have influence over nearly half of the country, mostly through direct and/or proxy military occupation. The US routinely launches airstrikes in the country’s east, with one of its attacks actually proven to have massacred Syrian civilians, including children, in 2019, which was later revealed through investigative work published by the New York Times. In the case of the US government’s occupation and attacks on Syria, it is not only absent of an endorsement from the public or Congress, but what Washington is doing is all but unknown to most of the general population of the United States.
When the US, UK, EU, and Israel talk about combating Iranian influence in Syria, what they are truly saying, is that they are making the Syrian people bleed, starve, and go into poverty, in order to punish them for their government legitimately and legally inviting Iran into their country. The offensive action taken and the occupation of Syrian territory could be easily argued to amount to crimes against humanity. Yet the focus of Western media is Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Just about all the claims made about Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine (plus more) have been, or are currently being committed by NATO member states, and Israel, in Syria.
