In his 7 October statement renewing US national emergency powers in Syria, US President Joe Biden said: “The situation in and in relation to Syria, and in particular the actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria, undermines the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, endangers civilians, and further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The full statement obviously has several intended audiences, but then quite remarkably, veers to cast Turkey, a NATO ally, almost as an existential threat to the United States. Ankara understands that the exaggerated accusation may be a tactic to keep Turkey from carrying out military operations east of Euphrates River, currently controlled by US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias.

But whether Turkey aims to make this move is beside the point. What this harsh White House language seems to be communicating is a US red line whereby the Kurdish-controlled area in northeastern Syria is regarded as a federal district – as in Washington, DC or Puerto Rico. That is the crux of all that matters.

For years, US policymakers regarded Turkish misgivings over this issue as either paranoiac or conspiratorial. When Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a multi-billion-dollar energy package in 2013 by bypassing the central government in Baghdad, it was Washington that warned Ankara that such acts could only empower the Kurds’ drive for independence. To note, these contracts eventually did not yield any favorable results.

Fast forward to 2017, when Washington tamped down the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum quickly and decisively. The move made Ankara temporarily cool its concerns over the US’ stance on Kurdish nationhood, but found itself on alert again when the Pentagon began working closely with the YPG militia in Syria.

Turkey argues that the YPG is an extension of a group the US State Department classifies as a terrorist organization: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The US maintains that its support of the YPG does not indicate hostility toward Turkey, its territorial integrity or national harmony; it merely needs non-US bodies on the ground to fight ISIS and, frankly, Syrian allied forces attempting to recover their resource-rich swathe of territory.

For years now, the American media has glorified the bravery of Kurdish fighters to generate sympathy, and cast Turkey as a racist state prepared to commit cross-border genocide against Kurdish populations. This simplistic approach in shaping people’s perception is one aspect of Washington’s policy agenda. The other part frames the US-YPG relationship as being merely transactional – the YPG maximizes its political and military power and the US scores gains against ISIS and the Syrian government.

The question is whether US-backed Kurdish forces are even an antidote to ISIS. Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford doesn’t think so. “The YPG militia cannot destroy ISIS,” he said in a recent webinar event. “An autonomous (Kurdish) administration is not going to resolve the ISIS problem.”

So then, why does Biden’s administration believe that Turkey undermines US counter-terrorism efforts enough to pose a national security threat? If one examines Washington’s own post-9/11 foreign policy track record in Turkey’s neighborhood, there’s vitually nothing resembling “peace, security, and stability in the region.”

Is Turkey single-handedly responsible for these American failures? No. Could the Kurdish militia pose a threat to Turkey’s national unity and peace? Yes. Does the YPG have a right under international law to defend itself? Let’s get honest here – these NATO allies no longer trust each other enough to look away. And frankly, neither Turkey, nor the US, nor the YPG have the right to invoke international law in their fights against each other inside Syrian territory.

The US-Turkey relationship has never been an easy one due to Ankara’s poor record of human rights and rule of law, and its 1974 Cyprus intervention. These differences have grown in recent years, and include Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program, its exposure to CAATSA sanctions, bitter fights over its acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems, and so forth. But no issue today is of more concern to the Turks than the Kurdish one, and Washington doesn’t want to hear it.

When then-Vice President Biden visited Ankara on August 24, 2016, Turkey launched its Operation Euphrates Shield in northeastern Syria. Whether Biden received prior notice remains a mystery; it was the first high-level US visit to Turkey after the failed 15 July putsch by the Turkish-banned Fethullah Gulen movement (Gulen enjoys asylum in the United States), and perhaps Ankara was feeling vindictive.

“We couldn’t understand if it was an internet game, if it was serious, when it happened,” Biden has said. The again, he also assured Turkey that the US would extradite Gulen if the evidence warranted a trial, and that it would cut support to the YPG if they did not withdraw to the east of the Euphrates river.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome later this month, but the way Washington is ignoring him after years of support is making him restless. The inner ranks of the Ankara beltway are still reeling from the speed at which Turkey went from downing a Russian fighter jet for its 8-second incursion into Turkish air space, to purchasing S-400s from Russia the next day.

Given Ankara’s chaotic past decade, nothing is taken at face value anymore. But the US is also no longer perceived as a respectful partner in building democracy and human rights. Today, it is regarded more as a cold-blooded, interest-driven power broker, with little loyalty. While Russia, China and Iran are also viewed as sanguine players, they at least appear to respect their alliances.

Neither of these rising regional powers can single-handedly shape the world order in the way the Americans have done for decades. But, together, they are jockeying to exert influence and maximize their benefits in the wake of Washington’s error-filled, foreign policy decline in influence. The more the US sidelines the interests of its NATO ally in favor of Kurdish militias, the more tectonic opportunities arise for Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran’s benefit.

Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately for almost three hours in Sochi on 29 September. It is in Putin’s interest to exploit or magnify US-Turkish differences to wrench Turkey away from its Western alliance, where anti-Erdoganism creates unprecedented opportunities for Russia. For years, Washington supported Erdogan in power; now Moscow is playing the same game.

The YPG recently killed two Turkish special operations police officers in northern Syria. Since then both Erdogan and Turkey’s Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar have spoken cautiously about their next step. On Friday, the Turkish president promised a “different” kind of anti-terror response in Syria, and took a swipe at the Americans: “The terrorists of the PKK, YPG and PYD are running wild in entire Syria, not only in the northern part. The leading supporters of them are the international coalition and the US,” he said.

It is unclear what Erdogan intends to do next. It could be a limited operation targeting only the Tel Rifaat area – which is under the supervision of the Russians, who have promised to clear out YPG militia. But Moscow will want something in exchange – likely, the complete removal of Turkish-backed militants in Idlib.

However, if Erdogan and Putin reached a comprehensive agreement in their latest bilateral meeting, Turkey could also aim for the area (30 kilometers deep, from Manbij to al-Malikiyah) of Operation Peace Spring, which Biden would fiercely oppose. Or it could do nothing at all. For Ankara, these are not easy times to make hard decisions.

One direction will leave Erdogan stuck with uneasy allies who militarily support his most belligerent foes. The other direction will see him abandoning all hope of territorial gains in the Levant, highlight his decade-long failed investment in Syrian regime-change, and place him firmly back within Turkey’s borders.

President Biden has either misread the tea leaves in the region or actively wants Moscow to exert even more influence over Ankara. Either way, Erdogan may find himself outmatched in the duel between Moscow and Washington. The end game could be a new West Asian order.

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New documents show that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) still owes $137 million dollars to Genel Energy PLC, an Anglo-Turkish company that began exploiting Kurdistan’s oil fields just prior to the commencement of the US occupation of Iraq. The KRG owes the company this amount despite already paying Genel Energy $33.7 million dollars in June this year.

How international oil companies entered Iraqi Kurdistan

The development of hydrocarbons in Iraqi Kurdistan has been of tremendous importance for the political economy of the region. It has also been one of the main factors in allowing the Kurdish region the autonomy it enjoys today.

Exploitation of oil and gas in the region known as the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), however, has not always been this regularized.

A peek into recent history shows that oil exploration in the areas now part of the KRI were limited prior to 2004. Iraq’s assets had been fully nationalized by 1975, and the Baath government of Saddam Hussein was simply not interested in developing the regions primarily inhabited by Kurds.

Moreover, Kurdish opposition to central government activities in their areas were often met with acts of sabotage.

Yet there has been extensive knowledge of the hydrocarbon resources present in the region for well over a century. The Chemchemal gas field was discovered as early as 1921, the Khor Mor gas field in 1953, the Demir Dagh oilfield in 1960, and the Taq Taq oilfield in 1978.

The earliest well to be drilled – called Chia Surkh – has existed since 1901.

Between 1991 and 2004, during the Kurdish struggle for independence, there was little exploration in Taq Taq for local use, but with sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN, and amidst the uncertain political and security situation, no international company could operate in the region.

Certainly, the Kurds had neither the knowledge nor the resources to do so.

A Turkish company grabs oil rights right before the Iraq invasion

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein led to an influx of international companies into Kurdistan. Among these oil and gas operators were the Swiss Group Addax, Norway’s DNOASA, UAE’s Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, and Canada’s Western Zagros Resources.

Exploration of Iraqi-Kurdish oil fields started in 2004, and was enlarged under Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami who was appointed in 2006.

With one exception. Several months before the March invasion of Iraq, a little-known company crept into Iraqi Kurdistan to sign a contract with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The company, Genel Energy, backed by major Turkish investors, quietly signed a production-sharing contract for the Taq Taq field in July 2002, and amended it in January 2004. It was the first oil company to build a new oil well in Iraqi Kurdistan after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In fact, Genel Energy was founded in 2002 for this precise purpose by the owner of Çukurova Holding, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, and his business partner Mehmet Sepil. In 2011, Genel Energy merged with Nathaniel Rothschild’s Vallares.

This now Anglo-Turkish company retained the name Genel Energy upon the $2.1 billion dollar merger.

The next year, a secret energy deal was struck between Turkey and the KRG, to distance their activities from the central government in Baghdad, which is constitutionally responsibility for all Iraqi oil. The two conspired to bypass a traditional pipeline and build their own, so they could directly transport around one million barrels per day (at the time, a third of Iraq’s oil output) of Iraqi oil from Genel’s Kurdistan fields into Turkey. While awaiting the new pipeline, Genel Energy reportedly transported 500 trucks each day by land to the Turkish border.

The former British Petroleum (BP) chief executive running Genel Energy was followed in this scheme by major US oil companies Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others, bolstering Kurdish plans to break Baghdad’s control over oil shipments from the Kurdistan region.

A driving force behind these maneuvers was Turkish President Erdogan’s determination to reduce his country’s dependence on Russian and Iranian oil imports and seek cheaper sources. In early 2013, Erdogan made a deal with KRG Prime Minister Nechivan Barzani to increase Turkish stakes in Kurdish oil and negotiate terms for the direct pipeline to Turkey.

It was a blow to Iraq’s sovereignty, as the Turkish-Kurdish agreement would further diminish Baghdad’s oversight of its natural resources and its access to the funds derived from oil sales.

Today, Genel Energy owns rights in at least six production-sharing contracts (PSCs) in Iraqi Kurdistan, and is the largest oil producer in the region. It is the only company that holds more than one production license in the region, making the KRG’s cooperation with the Turkish oil company one of a kind. Genel Energy’s only other activities can be traced to Somaliland, another country that Turkey attempts to control.

The Baghdad–Erbil oil dispute

Disagreements between Baghdad and the KRG over oil production have been one of the most persistent reasons for Iraq’s lack of unity today. And there are three reasons why a lasting resolution of this dispute appears out of reach.

The first is legal, and it concerns the right to export oil under Iraq’s federal system. Iraq’s constitution, ratified in 2005, states that the country’s oil is “owned by all the people of Iraq,” and therefore oil revenues should be shared throughout the nation. The KRG obviously intends to have its cake and eat it too – as well as share much of it with the Turks.

The second is distrust, rooted in the KRG’s desire to control independent revenue streams free from Baghdad’s whims, and the latter’s reluctance to bankroll the Kurdish separatism that reared its ugly head in Erbil’s 2017 referendum.

The third is financial, as ties and dues concerning oil budget are further complicated by KRG obligations to creditors who lent the region billions of dollars against future oil deliveries. These debts actively threaten Iraq’s economy.

By 2014, the KRG had begun to unilaterally export oil via pipeline through Turkey. Soon it added Kirkuk’s fields – after Iraqi forces withdrew from the area during the ISIS onslaught – boosting exports to over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd). The Baghdad–Erbil clash reached its height in 2017 due to the referendum that threatened to sever an “independent” Kurdistan from Iraq.

Immediately after the referendum, in which Erbil attempted not only to politically split with Baghdad, but also unjustly claimed Kirkuk’s oilfields as its own, federal forces and allied militias advanced to reclaim Kirkuk and its oilfields.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had been emboldened by the stream of income it received through Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy and other major US oil companies active in the region. Neither Turkey nor the US profit from a strong, unified and independent Iraq.

Turkey’s constant violations of Iraqi sovereignty

It is not only KRG’s oil dealings that frustrate the Iraqi government. Turkey’s repeated violations of Iraqi sovereignty have also heightened tensions between Baghdad and Erbil.

Turkey not only shows little regard for Iraqi sovereignty in its relentless cross-border airstrikes and ground offensives against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but it also undermines Iraqi territorial integrity by establishing dozens of Turkish military bases, some of them a mere 30-40 kilometers from its border. There is little doubt it has the confidence to act this way, in no small part because of the military and political cover extended by the KRG in northern Iraq.

Ankara’s goals are more than military ones, however. Turkey seeks to dominate Erbil’s political course and KRG’s trade sector through institutions such as Çukurova Holding. This group of companies is not only active in the oil sector, but holds the largest stakes in KRG’s chemicals, paper, packaging, steel and textiles sectors.

It only takes a glance at Zakho’s border crossing or a brief stroll through the bazaar in Erbil or Duhok to realize how large, in fact, Turkey’s footprint is in Iraq today. Ankara’s influence in the KRG oil sector is only the tip of this iceberg.

And the Barzani family has always been eager to let the Turks in.

Allegations of a secret deal

It is no secret that the leading family of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the Barzani family, and their political party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have had a very close relationship with Turkey for decades.

Starting in 1992, and continuing through to 1998, Turkey helped the KDP gain control over the largest part of the Iraqi-Kurdish region. In return, the KDP has never opposed Turkey’s targeting of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on its territory. The PKK is a popular Kurdish socialist-nationalist political and military movement now primarily based in the Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, and has been a thorn in Turkey’s side for decades.

Relations between Turkey, which has persecuted Kurdish populations both inside and outside its borders, and the KDP are not, however, focused only on a political and security alliance. There are collaborations in every field. For years, there has been word of a secret 50-year deal between Turkey and the KDP, although it remains unclear what precisely this agreement entailed.

The establishment of Genel Energy just prior to the invasion of Iraq, with the purpose of exploring and producing Kurdistan’s untapped oil resources, however, fits right into the history of stealthy deals between the two.

But their interests do not always converge, and it is not unheard of for Turkey and the Barzanis to play hardball against the other.

“One of the allegations made in the region is that $42 billion of the Barzani family money is in banks in Turkey,” says Iraqi-Kurdish politician Polat Bozan. “Barzani has invested $42 billion from Kurdistan’s oil in Turkey’s banks, and this is being used by Turkey against Barzani.”

According to Bozan, Turkey holds the Barzani family in an iron grip through the assets it has placed in Turkey’s hands. “It is certain that Kurdish oil is included in the agreement,” he says.

Genel Energy’s hold on Kurdistan oil

What is certain is that the Anglo-Turkish company, Genel Energy, holds the KRG in an iron grip, despite the latter’s recent attempts to break that hold.

In an August 20 statement, Genel Energy said it had received notice from the KRG Ministry of Natural Resources of its intention to terminate the Bina Bawi and Miran production-sharing contracts (PSCs).

The company said it sees “no ground” for such a move and that it will “take steps to protect its rights.”

The gas fields of Bina Bawi and Miran contain an estimated 14.8 trillion cubic feet of raw gas, which Genel Energy planned to export to a growing market in Turkey, according to Bloomberg.

It is unlikely these contracts will be effectively terminated, as the Kurdistan Regional Government still owes Genel Energy $137 million dollars, despite having repaid the company $33.7 million dollars in June this year. So Kurdistan, and therefore Iraq, will remain under financial duress for the foreseeable future, unless political currents shift significantly, and Baghdad takes the lead in shrugging off its 18-year NATO noose.

Statement concerning receipt of payments for KRI oil sales.

“We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil,” President Trump stated on November 3, before adding, “I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

Though he had promised a withdrawal of U.S. troops from their illegal occupation of Syria, Trump shocked many with his blunt admission that troops were being left behind to prevent Syrian oil resources from being developed by the Syrian government and, instead, kept in the hands of whomever the U.S. deemed fit to control them, in this case, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-majority militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Though Trump himself received all of the credit — and the scorn — for this controversial new policy, what has been left out of the media coverage is the fact that key players in the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby played a major role in its creation with the purpose of selling Syrian oil to the state of Israel. While recent developments in the Syrian conflict may have hindered such a plan from becoming reality, it nonetheless offers a telling example of the covert role often played by the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby in shaping key elements of U.S. foreign policy and closed-door deals with major regional implications.

Indeed, the Israel lobby-led effort to have the U.S. facilitate the sale of Syrian oil to Israel is not an isolated incident given that, just a few years ago, other individuals connected to the same pro-Israel lobby groups and Zionist neoconservatives manipulated both U.S. policy and Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in order to allow Iraqi oil to be sold to Israel without the approval of the Iraqi government. These designs, not unlike those that continue to unfold in Syria, were in service to longstanding neoconservative and Zionist efforts to balkanize Iraq by strengthening the KRG and weakening Baghdad.

After the occupation of Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate by ISIS (June 2014-October 2015), the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) took advantage of the Iraqi military’s retreat and, amidst the chaos, illegally seized Kirkuk on June 12. Their claim to the city was supported by both the U.S. and Israel and, later, the U.S.-led coalition targeting ISIS. This gave the KRG control, not only of Iraq’s export pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port, but also to Iraq’s largest oil fields.

Israel imported massive amounts of oil from the Kurds during this period, all without the consent of Baghdad. Israel was also the largest customer of oil sold by ISIS, who used Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk to sell oil in areas of Iraq and Syria under its control. To do this in ISIS-controlled territories of Iraq, the oil was sent first to the Kurdish city of Zakho near the Turkey border and then into Turkey, deceptively labeled as oil that originated from Iraqi Kurdistan. ISIS did nothing to impede the KRG’s own oil exports even though they easily could have given that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan export pipeline passed through areas that ISIS had occupied for years.

In retrospect, and following revelations from Wikileaks and new information regarding the background of relevant actors, it has been revealed that much of the covert maneuvering behind the scenes that enabled this scenario intimately involved the United States’ powerful pro-Israel lobby. Now, with a similar scenario unfolding in Syria, efforts by the U.S.’ Israel lobby to manipulate U.S. foreign policy in order to shift the flow of hydrocarbons for Israel’s benefit can instead be seen as a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident.

“Keep the oil” for Israel

After recent shifts in the Trump administration in its Syria policy, U.S. troops have controversially been kept in Syria to “keep the oil,” with U.S. military officials subsequently claiming that doing so was “a subset of the counter-ISIS mission.” However, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper later claimed that another factor behind U.S. insistence on guarding Syrian oil fields was to prevent the extraction and subsequent sale of Syrian oil by either the Syrian government or Russia.

One key, yet often overlooked, player behind the push to prevent a full U.S. troop withdrawal in Syria in order to “keep the oil” was current U.S. ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield. Satterfield was previously the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, where he yielded great influence over U.S. policy in both Iraq and Syria and worked closely with Brett McGurk, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and later special presidential envoy for the U.S.-led “anti-ISIS” coalition.

Over the course of his long diplomatic career, Satterfield has been known to the U.S. government as an Israeli intelligence asset embedded in the U.S. State Department. Indeed, Satterfield was named as a major player in what is now known as the AIPAC espionage scandal, also known as the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal, although he was oddly never charged for his role after the intervention of his superiors at the State Department in the George W. Bush administration.

In 2005, federal prosecutors cited a U.S. government official as having illegally passed classified information to Steve Rosen, then working for AIPAC, who then passed that information to the Israeli government. That classified information included intelligence on Iran and the nature of U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing. Subsequent media reports from the New York Times and other outlets revealed that this government official was none other than David Satterfield, who was then serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs.

Charges against Rosen, as well as his co-conspirator and fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman, were dropped in 2009 and no charges were levied against Satterfield after State Department officials shockingly claimed that Satterfield had “acted within his authority” in leaking classified information to an individual working to advance the interests of a foreign government. Richard Armitage, a neoconservative ally with a long history of ties to CIA covert operations in the Middle East and elsewhere, has since claimed that he was one of Satterfield’s main defenders in conversations with the FBI during this time when he was serving as Deputy Secretary of State.

The other government official named in the indictment, former Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin, was not so lucky and was charged under the Espionage Act in 2006. Satterfield, instead of being censured for his role in leaking sensitive information to a foreign government, was subsequently promoted in 2006 to serve as the Coordinator for Iraq and Senior Adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In addition to his history of leaking classified information to AIPAC, Satterfield also has a longstanding relationship with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a controversial spin-off of AIPAC also known by its acronym WINEP. WINEP’s website has long listed Satterfield as one of its experts and Satterfield has spoken at several WINEP events and policy forums, including several after his involvement with the AIPAC espionage scandal became public knowledge. However, despite his longstanding and controversial ties to the U.S. pro-Israel lobby, Satterfield’s current relationship with some elements of that lobby, such as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), is complicated at best.

While Satterfield’s role in yet another reversal of a promised withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria has largely escaped media scrutiny, another individual with deep ties to the Israel lobby and Syrian “rebel” groups has also been ignored by the media, despite his outsized role in taking advantage of this new U.S. policy for Israel’s benefit.

US Israel Lobby secures deal with Kurds

Earlier this year, well before Trump’s new Syria policy of “keeping the oil” had officially taken shape, another individual with deep ties to the U.S. Israel lobby secured a lucrative agreement with U.S.-backed Kurdish groups in Syria. An official document issued earlier this year by the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political arm of the Kurdish majority and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a New Jersey-based company, founded and run by U.S.-Israeli dual citizen Mordechai “Motti” Kahana, was given control of the oil in territory held by the SDC.

Per the document, the SDC formally accepted the offer from Kahana’s company — Global Development Corporation (GDC) — to represent SDC in all matters pertaining to the sale of oil extracted in territory it controls and also grants GDC “the right to explore and develop oil that is located in areas we govern.”

The document also states that the amount of oil then being produced in SDC-controlled areas was 125,000 barrels per day and that they anticipated that this would increase to 400,000 barrels per day and that this oil is considered a foreign asset under the control of the United States by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

After the document was made public by the Lebanese outlet Al-Akhbar, the SDC claimed that it was a forgery, even though Kahana had separately confirmed its contents and shared the letter itself to the Los Angeles Times as recently as a few weeks ago. Kahana previously attempted to distance himself from the effort and told the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom in July that he had made the offer to the SDC as means to prevent the “Assad regime” of Syria from obtaining revenue from the sale of Syrian oil.

The Kurds currently hold 11 oil wells in an area controlled by the [Syrian] Democratic Forces. The overwhelming majority of Syrian oil is in that area. I don’t want this oil reaching Iran, or the Assad regime.”

At the time, Kahana also stated that “the moment the Trump administration gives its approval, we can begin to export this oil at fair prices.”

Given that Kahana has openly confirmed that he is representing the SDC’s oil business shortly after Trump’s adoption of the controversial “keep the oil policy,” it seems plausible that Kahana has now received the approval needed for his company to export the oil on behalf of the SDC. Several media reports have speculated that, if Kahana’s efforts go forward unimpeded, the Syrian oil will be sold to Israel.

However, considering Turkey’s aversion to engaging in any activities that may benefit the PKK-SDF – there are considerable obstacles to Kahana’s plans. While the SDF — along with assistance from U.S. troops — still controls several oil fields in Syria, experts assert that they can only realistically sell the oil to the Syrian government. Not even the Iraqi Kurds are a candidate, considering Baghdad’s firm control over the Iraq-Syria border and the KRG’s weakened state after its failed independence bid in late 2017.

Regardless, Kahana’s involvement in this affair is significant for a few reasons. First, Kahana has been a key player in the promotion and funding of radical groups in Syria and has even been caught hiring so-called “rebels” to kidnap Syrian Jews and take them to Israel against their will. It was Kahana, for instance, who financed and orchestrated the now infamous trip of the late Senator John McCain to Syria, where he met with Syrian “rebels” including Khalid al-Hamad – a “moderate” rebel who gained notoriety after a video of him eating the heart of a Syrian Army soldier went viral online. McCain had also admitted meeting with ISIS members, though it is unclear if he did so on this trip or another trip to Syria.

In addition, Kahana was also the mastermind behind the “Caesar” controversy, whereby a Syrian using the pseudonym “Caesar” was brought to the U.S. by Kahana and went on to make claims regarding torture and other crimes allegedly committed by the Assad-led government Syria, claims which were later discredited by independent analysts. He was also very involvedin Israel’s failed efforts to establish a “safe zone” in Southern Syria as a means of covertly expanding Israel’s territory from the occupied Golan Heights and into Quneitra.

Notably, Kahana has deep ties — not just to efforts to overthrow the Syrian government — but also to U.S. Israel lobby, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) where Satterfield is as an expert. For instance, Kahana was a key player in a 2013 symposiumorganized by WINEP along with Syrian opposition groups intimately involved in the arming of so-called “rebels.” One of the other participants in the symposium alongside Kahana was Mouaz Moustafa, director of the “Syrian Emergency Task Force” who assisted Kahana in bringing McCain to Syria in 2013. Moustafa was listed as a WINEP expert on the organization’s website but was later mysteriously deleted.

Kahana is also intimately involved with the Israeli American Council (IAC), a pro-Israel lobby organization, as a team member of its national conference. IAC was co-founded and is chaired by Adam Milstein, a multimillionaire and convicted felon who is also on the boards of AIPAC, StandWithUs, Birthright and other prominent pro-Israel lobby organizations. One of IAC’s top donors is Sheldon Adelson, who is also the top donor to President Trump as well as the entire Republican Party.

Though the machinations of both Kahana and Satterfield to guide U.S. policy in order to manipulate the flow of Syria’s hydrocarbons for Israel’s benefit may seem shocking to some, this same tactic of pro-Israel lobbyists using the Kurds to illegally sell a country’s oil to Israel was developed a few years prior, not in Syria, but Iraq. Notably, the individuals responsible for that policy in Iraq shared connections to several of the same pro-Israel lobby organizations as both Satterfield and Kahana, suggesting that their recent efforts in Syria are not an isolated event, but a pattern.

War against ISIS is a war for oil

In an email dated June 15, 2014, James Franklin Jeffrey (former Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey and current U.S. Special Representative for Syria) revealed to Stephen Hadley, a former George Bush administration advisor then working at the government-funded United States Institute of Peace, his intent to advise the KRG in order to sustain Kirkuk’s oil production. The plan, as Jeffery described it, was to supply both the Kurdistan province with oil and allow the export of oil via Kirkuk-Ceyhan to Israel, robbing Iraq of its oil and strengthening the country’s Kurdish region along with its regional government’s bid for autonomy.

Jeffrey, whose hawkish views on Iran and Syria are well-known, mentioned that Brett McGurk, the U.S.’ main negotiator between Baghdad and the KRG, was acting as his liaison with the KRG. McGurk, who had served in various capacities in Iraq under both Bush and Obama, was then also serving Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran. A year later, he would be made the special presidential envoy for the U.S.-led “anti-ISIS” coalition and, as previously mentioned, worked closely with David Satterfield.

Jeffrey was then a private citizen not currently employed by the government and was used as a non-governmental channel in the pursuit of the plans described in the leaked emails published by WikiLeaks. Jeffrey’s behind-the-scenes activities with regards to the KRG’s oil exports were done clandestinely, largely because he was then employed by a prominent arm of the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby.

At the time of the email, Jeffrey was serving as a distinguished fellow (2013-2018) at WINEP. As previously mentioned, WINEP is a pro-Israel foreign policy think-tank that espouses neoconservative views and was created in 1985 by researchers that had hastily left AIPAC to escape investigations against the organization that were related to some of its members conducting espionage on behalf of Israel. AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, is the largest registered Israel lobbyist organization in the US (albeit registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act would be more suitable), and, in addition to the 1985 incident that led to WINEP’s creation, has had members indicted for espionage against the U.S. on Israel’s behalf.

WINEP’s launch was funded by former President of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles,  Barbara Weinberg, who is its founding president and constant Chairman Emerita. Nicknamed ‘Barbi’, she is the wife of the late Lawrence Weinberg who was President of AIPAC from 1976-81 and who JJ Goldberg, author of the 1997 book Jewish Power, referred to as one of a select few individuals who essentially dominated AIPAC regardless of its elected leadership. Co-founder alongside Weinberg was Martin Indyk. Indyk, U.S. Ambassador to Israel (1995-97) and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (1997-99), led the AIPAC research time that formed WINEP to escape the aforementioned investigations.

WINEP has historically received funding from donors who donate to causes of special interest for Zionism and Israel. Among its trustees are extremely prominent names in political Zionism and funders of other Israel Lobby organizations, such as Charles and Edgar Bronfman and the Chernicks. Its membership remains dominated by individuals who have spent their careers promoting Israeli interests in the U.S.

WINEP has become more well-known, and arguably more controversial, in recent years after its research director famously called for false-flag attacks to trigger a U.S. war with Iran in 2012, statements well-aligned with longstanding attempts by the Israel Lobby to bring about such a war.

A worthy partner in crime

Stephen Hadley, another private citizen who Jeffrey evidently considered as a partner in his covert dealings discussed in the emails, also has his own past of involvement with Israel-specific intrigues and meddling.

During the G.W. Bush administration, Hadley tagged along with neoconservatives in their numerous creations of fake intelligence and efforts to incriminate Iraq for possessing chemical and nuclear weapons. Hadley was one of the promoters from within the U.S. government of the false claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague.

Hadley also worked with then-Chief of Staff to the Vice President, Lewis Libby — a neoconservative and former lawyer for the Mossad-agent and billionaire Marc Rich — to discredit a CIA investigation into claims of Iraq purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger. That claim famously appeared in Bush’s State of the Union address in 2002.

What this particular claim had in common with the ‘Iraq meets Atta in Prague’ disinformation, and other famous lies against Iraq fabricated and circulated by the dense neocon network, was its source: Israel and pro-Israel partisans.

The distribution network of these now long-debunked claims was none other than the neoconservatives who act a veritable Israeli fifth column that has long sought to promote Israeli foreign policy objectives as being in the interest of the United States. In this, Hadley played his part by helping to ensure that the United States was railroaded into a war that had long been promoted by both Israeli and American neoconservatives, particularly Richard Perle — an advisor to WINEP — who had been promoting regime change in Iraq for Israel’s explicit benefit for decades.

In short, for covert intrigues to serve Israel that would likely be met with protest if pitched to the government for implementation as policy, Hadley’s resume was impressive.

Israeli interests pursued through covert channels

Given his employment at WINEP during this time, Jeffrey’s intent to advise the KRG to sustain Kirkuk’s oil production despite the seizure of the Baiji oil refinery by ISIS is somewhat suspect, especially since it required that 100,000 barrels per day pass through ISIS-controlled territory unimpeded.

Jeffrey’s email from June 14, therefore, demonstrated that he had foreknowledge that ISIS would not disturb the KRG as long as the Kurds redirected oil that was intended originally for Baiji to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan export pipeline, facilitating its export and later sale to Israel.

Notably, up until its liberation in mid-2015 by the Iraqi government and aligned Shia paramilitaries, ISIS kept the refinery running and, only upon their retreat, destroyed the facility.

In July 2014, the KRG began confidently supplying Kurdish areas with Kirkuk’s oil per the plan laid out by Jeffrey in the aforementioned email. Baghdad soon became aware of the arrangement and lashed out at Israel and Turkey, whose banks were used by the KRG to receive the oil revenue from Israel.

One would normally expect ISIS to be opposed to such collusion given that the KRG, while a beneficiary of the ISIS-Baghdad conflict, was not an ally of ISIS. Thus, a foreign power with strategic ties to ISIS used its close ties to the KRG and assurances that it was on-board for the oil trade, to deliver a credible guarantee that ISIS would ‘cooperate’ and that a boom in production and exports was in the cards.

This foreign power — acting as a guarantor for the ISIS-KRG understanding vis-a-vis the illegal oil economy, represented by Jeffrey and clearly not on good terms with Iraq’s government — was quite clearly Israel.

Israel established considerable financial support as well as the provision of armaments to other extremist terrorist groups active near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Southern Syria when war first broke out in Syria in 2011. At least four of these extremist groups were led by individuals with direct ties to Israeli intelligence. These same groups, sometimes promoted as ‘moderates’ by some media, were actively fighting Syria’s government – an enemy of Israel and ally of Iran – before ISIS existed and eagerly partnered with ISIS when it expanded its campaign into Syria.

Furthermore, Israeli officials have publicly admitted maintaining regular communication with ISIS cells in Southern Syria and have publicly expressed their desire that ISIS not be defeated in the country. In Libya, Israeli Mossad operatives have been found embedded within ISIS, suggesting that Israel has covert but definite ties with the group outside of Syria as well.

Israel has also long promoted the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, with Israel having provided Iraq’s Kurds with weapons, training and teams of Mossad advisers as far back as the 1960s. More recently, Israel was the only state to support the KRG independence referendum in September 2017 despite its futility, hinting at the regard Israel holds for the KRG. Iraq’s government subsequently militarily defeated the KRG’s push for statehood and reclaimed Kirkuk’s oil fields with assistance from the Shia paramilitaries which were responsible for defeating ISIS in the area.

A 2014 map shows the areas under ISIS and Kurdish control at the time. Source | Telegraph

This arrangement orchestrated by Jeffrey, served the long-time neoconservative-Israeli agenda of empowering the Kurds, selling Iraqi oil to Israel and weakening Iraq’s Baghdad-based government.

WINEP’s close association with AIPAC, which has spied on the U.S. on behalf of Israel several times in the past with no consequence, combined with Jeffrey’s long-time acquaintance with key U.S. figures in Iraq, such as McGurk, provided an ideal opening for Israel in Iraq. Following the implementation of Jeffrey’s plan, Israeli imports of KRG oil constituted 77 percent of Israel’s total oil imports during the KRG’s occupation of Kirkuk.

The WINEP connection to the KRG-Israel oil deal demonstrates the key role played by the U.S. pro-Israel Lobby, not only in terms of sustaining U.S. financial aid to Israel and ratcheting up tensions with Israel’s adversaries but also in facilitating the more covert aspects of U.S.-Israeli cooperation and the implementation of policies that favor Israel.

Yet the role played by the U.S. Israel lobby in this capacity, particularly in terms of orchestrating oil sale agreements for Israel’s benefit, is hardly exclusive to Iraq and can accurately be described as a repeated pattern of behavior.

mintpressnews.com

Imperial power has been exercised by the United States for some considerable time, and it is difficult to conclude that anyone has benefited from its wars. For example, the UN notes that there are 70 million displaced persons — more than there have ever been at any time in world history. But on goes the chilling drama, with the latest publicised victims being the Kurds in Northern Syria, a US-created shambles which is being resolved as far as practicable following an agreement between Presidents Erdogan and Putin.

But the problems of the Kurds in the Middle East are wide and deep and involve countries that do not look objectively at the misery and distress of so many of the Kurdish people.

The Kurds don’t have a country of their own, in spite of there being some 30-40 million of them. (Nobody knows exactly how many.) They “inhabit a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia and make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but have never obtained a permanent nation state.”

It was sparingly reported in the Western media that in Geneva on October 23 a Kurdish Syrian man doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire outside the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). According to Reuters the Geneva police spokesman said “Given his state, it was impossible to ask him about his motive, but we imagine that it was the political situation.” Perhaps. But I’m certain it was sheer despair, torment and utter wretchedness, similar to those I described fifteen years ago in a piece about the plight of Kurds.

Twenty-five years ago I lived in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and my daily walk took me past the UNHCR office, opposite which some Kurdish refugees had erected a neat and tidy tent hamlet on the side of the road. As I walked briskly past of an evening, one of them, a particularly villainous-seeming fellow, greeted me with a charming smile. His flinty blue eyes softened as he bade me Hello, and after a few days of mutual greeting we began to chat.

The story of his group was of unrelieved persecution and privation. Having fled the savage reprisals of Saddam Hussein, following encouragement by Bush senior for Kurds and Shias to rise against their oppressor (after which Bush did exactly nothing to help them), they made their way from Iraq across Iran to Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, and then north to Islamabad, a trek of about two thousand miles. There, they hoped, the UNHCR would look kindly upon them and relocate them to a country in which they could live like human beings, which to them, as to the countless millions of despairing displaced persons round the world, would be Paradise.

The UNHCR has its problems, internal and imposed by outsiders, but in general is a particularly saintly, harassed and unforgivably underfunded organisation whose dedicated officials are at their wits’ end about how to help the millions of exiles who desperately need their assistance.

Where on earth could they settle down, these Kurdish orphans of Washington’s Operation Desert Storm? Who would take them? Answer came there none, although those who fled to Pakistan did have at least some hope of attention from the UNHCR. But unfortunately for them Pakistan was the fiefdom of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a corrupt and oily knave whose solution was to gather up the Kurds in dead of night and transport the lot of them back to the deserts of Balochistan, hundreds of miles away.

In fact, not quite all of them ; for in one of the tents was a tiny baby, discovered at dawn by the scavengers who quickly gathered to see what the Kurds, the poorest of the poor, might have left behind after they were again hounded from one hell to another.

Horrified local Pakistanis and some of us foreign do-gooding busybodies inquired about the fate of the infant. But in spite of our efforts we came up against the usual brick wall of bureaucratic indifference. “There is no problem” we were told. No ; of course not. For that baby was only one of millions of anonymous and helpless mites born into a world grown too accustomed to hideous inhumanity. But where did the child end up?

And today I wondered if the man who set himself on fire in Geneva might have been that baby.

Whoever he is, he’s just one of the millions of Kurds without a home. According to the CIA Factbook, the 30-40 million Kurds in the Middle East represent some 10% of Syria’s population, 19% of Turkey’s, 15-20% of the Iraq’s and are the second largest ethnic group in Iran — at 7 million, they are about 10% of the population. The idea of creating a national home for the Kurds is far from new, and was first mooted in 1920 when the Treaty of Sèvres proposed recognition of several independent states, including the country of Kurdistan. It was all too good to last, and the treaty was never ratified. Worse still, the matter of Kurdistan wasn’t even mentioned in the Treaty of Lausanne, which in 1923 delineated the boundaries of modern Turkey.

It went further downhill from there, and none of the countries in which there were Kurdish populations had the slightest intention of permitting them to be independent of central rule, let alone allowing a modest part of their territory to form a Kurdish nation. As can be seen from the map, the areas are contiguous and would be simple to delineate, just as was done by so much colonial map-drawing a hundred years ago.

As time went by, there was increasing international reliance on oil, and it just happened that there was — and is — much oil in Kurdish areas. Which goes a long way to explaining exactly why Washington has been so interested in the region and as recently as October 24 has shown the world that from the years of cretinous Bush to those of poisonous Trump, it is oil and profits that matter most.

Following all the Trump-Pentagon posturing about withdrawal from Syria, there was an abrupt rethink, with defence secretary Esper announcing on October 24 that “we are reinforcing our position” in Syria and deploying an unspecified number of tanks to the north-east. Then Trump tweeted, “When these pundit fools who have called the Middle East wrong for 20 years ask what we are getting out of the deal, I simply say, THE OIL, AND WE ARE BRINGING OUR SOLDIERS BACK HOME, ISIS SECURED!”

Forget freedom, Kurds. You sit on oil, and that’s what’s wanted. There’s no hope you’ll ever have a country of your own.

Notorious examples of this include the accused chemical attacks claimed to have been done by President Assad on the Syrian people, accusations that were caught in a web of lies committed by the Western press and the Obama administration. There have also been continual lies on the source of funding and training of the terrorist groups in these areas which is also largely dependant on the West for its function and existence, not to mention the cases of Libya and Iraq and all the lying that is ongoing on those subjects.

The first question I would ask myself then is why is the Western press so concerned over the lives of the Kurdish people, when they have never cared about all the murder and terror going on against the Syrian people, the Yemeni people, the Libyan people and the Iraqi people that has led to a horrific level of death and an enormous refugee crisis which has largely been ignored by the West. In fact, the only time Western governments and media show some level of human concern is when there is an intention to intervene militarily in these areas.

The topic of the Kurdish peoples’ welfare is the number one topic in the news and even the US Democrat presidential candidate debates. The same Democrats who, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, would rather go to war with Russia than work with Russia to attain peace in the Middle East.

The reason for this extreme level of passion and concern for the Kurdish people is said to be because they helped the US fight the terrorists in Syria…the same terrorists that the US was largely implicated in training and transferring into Syria, the so-called ‘moderate rebels’. This was a rather unsustainable circular pattern, which if carried out for long enough would have resulted in the erasure of the Kurdish fighters in that region due to the US’ direct support for the very terrorists they were fighting, something the Democrats don’t want to bring attention to.

But now there is massive uproar that the Kurdish people are being slaughtered in North-East Syria by the Turkish military. ABC News was at the forefront in the exposure of this terrible genocide showing footage that was claimed to be of the Kurdish massacre. It turned out to be a video from April 2017 of a Kentucky gun-range show. ABC News has apologised for their ‘mistake’ and ho hum let’s go on as if there isn’t something deeply concerning going on. The desperation to rile up Western outcry over this issue should raise suspicion.

When in Doubt Look Toward Putin

President Putin is without a doubt the most competent person in the world to know how best to handle this ‘situation’, which is much more complicated than a simple condemnation of Erdogan or Trump’s seemingly blasé abandonment of the Kurdish people.

In the October 17^th weekly briefing by the Russian Federation, Maria Zakharova was asked in the Q&A section what Russia’s thoughts were on the EU meeting that occurred on Oct 14^th discussing the North-East Syrian situation. Zakharova’s response to this question of the EU’s role in the conflict resolution in Syria was basically…that it was non-existent and thus a non-issue from the standpoint of a constructive agenda. She went on to say that she could have provided a more diplomatic response to this question but if it were not for the millions of people who are indeed suffering who do not even have the opportunity to hear the statement given by the EU High Representative about her involvement in their destinies and in their fate. Zakharova ended by stating that “the years of which this conflict has evolved and the consequences of this conflict as well as the evident results of certain countries involvement in the conflict, allow us [Russia] today to forget about superficial tolerance and call things what they are.”

The strong message sent was therefore that the West has no place in the resolution of the Syrian – Turkey conflict, but rather, that this will be resolved by an agreement between Erdogan and Assad with Russia as the mediator.

Interestingly, Putin’s meeting with Erdogan that occurred on Tuesday Oct 22 resulted in an agreement that the Kurdish fighters would have to move 30 km away from the border area in northeast Syria within 150 hours, and that this 150 hour time period would begin at noon on Wednesday. It was also agreed that both Russian and Syrian troops would control the rest of the border with joint patrols with the Turkish military occurring on the northeast Syrian border area.

There is an obvious long-term plan here, and the US military is not physically sticking its nose in it. So why is everyone so upset again over the US military leaving this region?

The Real Reason for the West’s Emotional Fervour

It should not be news for anyone at this point that Syria is part of the Western geopolitical regime-change warfare that is leading to an eventual direct confrontation with Russia, if successful. This has always been the plan, and started with the toppling of the Iraqi government, followed by the Libyan government and the attempt to overthrow the government of Syria, which has been saved purely due to the intervention of Russia. The plan was to cause an increasing level of chaos that would reach a peak level of mayhem along the Russian border, and like a swarm of wasps one would not be able to identify who stung who and amongst the confusion could easily lead to full scale war. However, the orchestrators of this plan have seriously under-estimated the Russians, in not only their intelligence gathering capabilities, their military strength but also in their very wise diplomatic resolutions and patience for long-term peace plans.

This Western confrontation against Russia would also be backed by NATO’s setting up of ‘defense systems’ in their members’ territories. Turkey is among the absolutely vital strategic regions for the placement of these weapons systems. Therefore, it is no surprise that NATO and the American military industrial complex are very concerned over Erdogan’s succumbing to the strategic advising of Putin. With the recent purchase by Turkey of the S-400 Russian missile system this past summer, which went ahead despite threats by NATO that they would no longer consider Turkey an ally, the balance in the Middle East is increasingly abandoning the West in favour of the Russia-China alliance.

At this point, I think it highly unlikely that Erdogan is under any illusion of how his Western counterparts truly regard the role of Turkey in this fiasco, which is the same poisoned honey they having been dripping into the ears of anyone in the Middle East who has held the grand delusion of becoming a super power as the favourite pet of Britain and the US, and that the reality is that these wannabe demi-gods of the Middle East are completely dispensable and in fact the plan by their Western ‘allies’ is to dispense of them at some point, the uncertainty is just exactly when.

When Erdogan announced an apology to Russia for shooting down the Russian fighter jet in Syrian air in June 2016, there was an attempted coup d’état against Erdogan by a faction of the Turkish Armed Forces orchestrated by US asset Fethullah Gülen only days later. This was no coincidence in timing and Erdogan to the surprise of everyone…survived (it is said only due to receiving intelligence from the Russians merely hours before the actual coup). The West has been a little insecure about where Turkey stands ever since, after all, what can be said when you find yourself in the awkward situation of having to continue relations with someone you tried to dispose of, “Hey I am really sorry about that time I lost my temper and tried to have you brutally killed…But we’re good now right?”. Erdogan is fully aware that Russia is Turkey’s only solution to getting out of its hostage situation under NATO.

So why is there so much uproar against Trump’s decision to remove the US military from Syria?

Because, the presence of the US military was the last controlled hold-out to furthering instability in that area. I think we can all agree that it is not in the interest of Turkey, Syria, the Kurdish fighters nor Russia to have these terrorist cells in the northeast region of Syria activated, it would only be in the interest of the US military, which has been its function there from the get go. The Russian military is fully capable of managing what remains of this clean-up job, nobody needs the US’ continued presence there. And the US military should further remove its presence in any country that does not welcome it.

As some journalists on Strategic Culture have already acknowledged, there is a situation going on within the US that is pretty much equivalent to that of a second civil war. This has been further confirmed by Project Veritas’ expose thanks to a CNN whisteblower, where CNN was caught enforcing the agenda to push the impeachment of Trump on the American people, above all other news. In addition, there is a clear intention from one side to go to war with Russia, and there is another side that does not. Trump despite his distasteful choosing of words and concerning personal beliefs on certain subjects, clearly does not want to go to war with Russia and that is the number one issue in the world because no one will be unaffected by such a catastrophic outcome if there is war. Any drama that is cooked up by the Western press has at this point a near 100% certainty that they are trying to rile up a sentiment to go to war, most notably with the ongoing Russia Gate hoax, the British orchestrated alternate dimension of the Skripal case and the present Ukraine-Gate absurdity.

President Putin is leading one of the most challenging diplomatic situations in history. We should be confident when the Russians say that they don’t need anyone else’s nose in this and we should rather be weary that the largest threat to stability in this region is if the West, notably the US, succeeds in revving up a fervour for another foreign military occupation.

Ben NORTON

US President Donald Trump has reassured supporters that he is “bringing soldiers home” from the “endless” war in Syria. But that is simply not the case.

While Trump has ordered a partial withdrawal of the approximately 1,000 American troops on Syrian territory — who have been enforcing an illegal military occupation under international law — US officials and the president himself have admitted that some will be staying. And they will remain on Syrian soil not to ensure to safety of any group of people, but rather to maintain control over oil and gas fields.

The US military has already killed hundreds of Syrians, and possibly even some Russians, precisely in order to hold on to these Syrian fossil fuel reserves.

Washington’s obsession with toppling the Syrian government refuses to die. The United States remains committed to preventing Damascus from retaking its own oil, as well as its wheat-producing breadbasket region, in order to starve the government of revenue and prevent it from funding reconstruction efforts.

The Washington Post noted in 2018 that the US and its Kurdish allies were militarily occupying a massive “30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place.”

Now, for the first time, Trump has openly confirmed the imperialist ulterior motives behind maintaining a US military presence in Syria.

“We want to keep the oil,” Trump confessed in a cabinet meeting on October 21. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

Three days earlier, the president tweeted, “The U.S. has secured the Oil.”

Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen. Too bad there wasn’t…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 18 октября 2019 г.

“President Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of American troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region’s coveted oil fields.

… A side benefit would be helping the Kurds keep control of oil fields in the east, the official said.”

Trump then explicitly reiterated this policy in a White House press briefing on the Syria withdrawal on October 23.

“We’ve secured the oil (in Syria), and therefore a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be protecting it. And we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.”

Using ISIS as an excuse to occupy Syria’s oil fields

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper – the former vice president of government relations at top weapons manufacturer Raytheon, before being promoted by Trump to the head of the Pentagon – revealed the actual US policy on Syria in a press conference on the 21st:

“We have troops in towns in northeast Syria that are located next to the oil fields. The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal.

… Our forces will remain in the towns that are located near the oil fields.”

Esper added that the US military is “maintaining a combat air patrol above all of our forces on the ground in Syria.”

Unlike Trump, Esper offered an excuse to justify the continued US military occupation of Syria’s oil fields. He insisted that American soldiers remain to help the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold on to the resources and prevent ISIS jihadists from taking them over.

This led mainstream corporate media outlets like CNN to report, “Defense secretary says some US troops will temporarily stay in Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS.”

But any observer who carefully parsed Esper’s comments during his press conference would have been able to detect the real goal behind the prolonged US presence in northeastern Syria. As Esper said, “A purpose of those [US] forces, working with the SDF, is to deny access to those oil fields by ISIS and others who may benefit from revenues that could be earned.”

An excerpt from the Pentagon’s official transcript of the Mark Esper press conference

“And others who may benefit from their revenues earned” is a crucial qualifier. In fact, Esper used this language – “ISIS and others” – two more times in his presser.

Who exactly Esper meant by “others” is clear: The US strategy is to prevent Syria’s UN-recognized government and the Syrian majority that lives under its control from retaking their own oil fields and reaping the benefits of their revenue.

US military massacred hundreds to keep control of Syrian oil fields

This is not just speculation. CNN made it plain when it reported the following in an undeniably blunt passage, citing anonymous US senior military officials:

“The US military has long had military advisers embedded with the Syrian Democratic Forces near the Syrian oil fields at Deir Ezzoir ever since the area was captured from ISIS. The loss of those oil fields denied ISIS a major source of revenue, a one-time source of funds that has differentiated the organization from other terror groups.

The oil fields are assets that have also been long sought after by Russia and the Assad regime, which is strapped for cash after years of civil war. Both Moscow and Damascus hope to use oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria and solidify the regime’s hold.

In a bid to seize the oil fields, Russian mercenaries attacked the areas, leading to a clash that saw dozens if not hundreds of Russian mercenaries killed in US airstrikes, an episode that Trump has touted as proof he is tough on Russia. That action helped deter Russian or regime forces from making similar bids for the oil fields.

The US forces near the oil fields remain in place and senior military officials had previously told CNN that they would likely be among the last to leave Syria.”

CNN thus acknowledged that the US military had killed up to “hundreds” of Syrian and Russia-backed fighters seeking to gain access to Syria’s oil fields. It massacred these fighters not for humanitarian reasons, but to prevent the Syrian government from using “oil revenues to help rebuild western Syria.”

This shockingly direct admission flew in the face of the popular myth that the US was keeping troops in Syria to protect Kurds from an assault by NATO member Turkey.

The CNN report was an apparent reference to the Battle of Khasham, a little known but important episode in the eight-year international proxy war on Syria.

The battle unfolded on February 7, 2018, when the Syrian military and its allies launched an attack to try to retake major oil and gas reserves in Syria’s Deir ez-Zour governorate, which were being occupied by American troops and their Kurdish proxies.

The New York Times seemed to revel in the news that the US military massacred 200 to 300 fighters after hours of “merciless airstrikes from the United States.”

The Times repeatedly stressed that Deir ez-Zour is “oil-rich.” And it cited anonymous US officials who claimed that many of the slaughtered fighters were Russian nationals from the private military company the Wagner Group. These unnamed “American intelligence officials” told the Times that the alleged Russian fighters were “in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government.”

The Times noted that US special operations forces from JSOC were working with Kurdish forces at an outpost next to Syria’s important Conoco gas plant. The Kurdish-led SDF had seized this facility from ISIS in 2017 with the help of the US military. The Wall Street Journal noted at the time that the “plant is capable of producing nearly 450 tons of gas a day,” and was one of ISIS’ most important sources of funding.

The newspaper added, “The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, are racing against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for territorial gains in Syria’s east.” The commodities monitoring websites MarketWatch and OilPrice.com were closely following the story and analyzing which forces would take over one of Syria’s most important gas plants.

Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival

For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.

The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama deployed US troops to northeastern Syria on the grounds of helping the Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fight ISIS. What started as several dozen US special operations forces quickly ballooned into some 2,000 troops, largely stationed in northeastern Syria.

As these US soldiers enabled the YPG retake territory from ISIS, they solidified Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include 90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as 70 percent of its wheat.

The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.

In June, Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus, after the US government pressured them to do so.

The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO, proposed using the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.

A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia, to force concessions in the UN-led diplomatic process.”

Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.

“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory – which is illegal under international law – it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.

A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.

thegrayzone.com

The truth is that in addition to Turkey, the US, the UK, France, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have armed, financed and trained about 250 thousand jihadis from all around the world since 2010 for the purposes of attacking Syria, precipitating a disaster in the region, with repercussions felt in Europe, and committing crimes against humanity.

The Syrian Arab Army, with the assistance of its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies, has managed to overcome the depredations of al-Qaeda and ISIS, confining them to the Idlib region, creating in the process some problems for the countries that armed and supported these monsters.

One of these problems lies with two of NATO’s most important countries, and the respective factions that they support in Syria.

Ankara considers the PKK-affiliated YPG to be a terrorist organization, using the jihadis of al-Nusra Front, Daesh, al-Qaeda and the FSA to attack areas under the control of Damascus in order to exterminate the Kurds.

Before the alt-media started to talk about the use of terrorists against Syria, the complaints emanating from Damascus about what was going on were dismissed as propaganda. Now the mainstream media is all of a sudden beside itself with concern for the wellbeing of the Kurds. When Syrian civilians were under similar assault, the likes of CNN and other international media created a smokescreen to prevent people from understanding what was happening in Syria. Such deliberate obfuscation has caused thousands of deaths that are no less heinous than those committed by Daesh.

Behind the obfuscating fog is the fact that the United States helped create Daesh in Iraq and used them in 2012 as a weapon against Damascus, in full coordination with Erdogan. Dozens of jihadist groups were armed and equipped to support US plans to destroy Syria.

Washington is a master at creating “problems” (al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) for its own geo-political purposes that require the ready-made solution. However, when things do not go to plan, there is a Plan B to fall back on in order to justify an illegal presence under the pretense of fighting terrorism.

Syria was subjected to just this gameplan. But with Damascus getting the better of Daesh, the Pentagon had to fall back on Plan B, which involved the occupation of northern Syria, under the pretext of protecting the Kurds from Daesh as well as advancing the noble quest of fighting terrorism. It is only thanks to the complacency of the mainstream media that such heights of contradiction have been achieved.

The SDF and the YPG illegally occupy Syria under the enabling umbrella of the illegal presence of the US, which hoped to use these proxies to partition Syria through the cause of Kurdish separatism.

Interestingly, the mainstream media never reveals that a good deal of Syria’s Kurds, who have been living for months in areas under the control of Damascus, actually support the Assad government.

Unsurprisingly, the SDF and YPG are supported politically by many Western countries seeking to partition Syria in favor of a Kurdish enclave. Israel, even as it destroys the lives of millions of Palestinians, shamelessly demands self-determination for the Kurds in Syria.

The SDF masters in Washington understand well that without a force on the land controlled by them, they could not prevent Assad from reuniting the country and taking over the a commercial, economic and energy connection project between Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, with the Beijing Economic blessing that intends to invest / grant lines of credit of more than 600 billion dollars between Iran, Syria and Iraq.

The only legitimate authority in Syria that is able to guarantee the safety of civilians from the depredations of Daesh, the FSA, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and all the other 256 iterations of jihadists (none of whom is “moderate”) is the Syrian Arab Army and its central government in Damascus.

Turkey, the SDF and the United States are three irregular, illegal and illegitimate occupants of Syrian soil who are fighting in the midst of thousands of civilians and are causing death and destruction that could easily be avoided.

The international political and media reaction to events happening in Syria confirms in my mind that there is an internal wrangle between the United States, Turkey and the SDF stemming from their defeat at the hands of the Syrian Arab Army and allies; a win for civilization.

The one person who failed to help the United States in World War II, including the D-Day Allied invasion of Normandy, was Fred Trump, Sr., Mr. Trump’s first generation German American father. Starting on September 6, 1940, military conscription for men between the ages of 18 and 36 was mandatory. Fred Trump was 34 when the draft entered into force. Yet, this former member of the pro-Nazi Ku Klux Klan managed to avoid the draft. It was a family trait who would extend to his son, Donald, who claimed he had bone spurs in his feet in a bogus medical examination report ginned up so he could avoid being drafted during the Vietnam war.

As to Trump’s reinvention of the history of World War II and the D-Day invasion, he is absolutely delusional on Kurdish service with Allied forces in the war. It appears that Trump got his incorrect information from an article that appeared in a far-right website called Townhall. The article stated: “the Kurds didn’t show up for us at Normandy or Inchon or Khe Sanh or Kandahar.”

This contention can be shredded along with Trump’s bogus hurricane charts, opinion poll graphs, and unemployment rate claims. The Iraq Levies distinguished themselves in battle as a British-commanded militia that was first known as the “Arab and Kurdish Levies,” In 1922, under the British Mandate in Iraq, the Arab members of the Arab and Kurdish Levies were assimilated into the Iraqi Army. The Kurdish Levies were considered “members of the British Forces who were also inhabitants of Iraq.”

Half of the Levies were Assyrians, with a large contingent of Kurds. An affiliated battalion consisted of Shi’a Marsh Arabs, Turkomans, Mandaeans, Armenians, Yazidis, and Chaldeans.

In 1941, former Iraqi nationalist Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani ousted the Iraqi regent and announced that Iraq was allied with Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers. Rashid Ali’s forces, supported by four Iraqi army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” surrounded and laid siege to the British Royal Air Force base at Habbaniya. The Levies recruited additional Assyrians, Kurds, and Yazidis to counter the siege of the Habbaniya base. After Rashid Ali’s forces were defeated and the pro-Axis prime minister fled to Iran, the Levies were incorporated into British units, including a parachute company, and served in Palestine and Cyprus. The Levies consisted of 166 British officers, 22 Assyrian, 10 Kurdish, 5 Yazidi, 4 Gulf Arab/Trucial, and 3 Baluchi companies.

In 1943, the largely Assyrian/Kurdish Levies were renamed the Royal Air Force Levies. They took part in the Allied invasions of Greece, Albania, and Italy. Some of the ranks of the RAF Levies came from Syria. It is their descendants who were betrayed by the Trump administration and are currently being pummeled by the Turks.

While, perhaps, a handful of Assyrian/Kurdish Levies trained paratroopers may have seen action on D-Day, the mere fact that the Levies provided regional security for Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Trucial Oman, Palestine, Cyprus, and Oman, allowing British and Indian forces to be freed for action in Normandy, makes Trump’s allegations, culled from Townhall, unmitigated “fake history.”

Also lost in Trump’s fractured history lesson is the fact that several Kurds fought with the Soviet army in the eastern offensive against Nazi Germany. The most celebrated of these Kurdish veterans of Soviet action against the Nazis was Samand Aliyeviç Siyabendov, who was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for his service in the Red Army in World War II. Siyabendov authored two Kurdish language poems and wrote an Armenian-Kurdish dictionary.

On June 8, 1941, British, Australian, Indian, and Free French military units launched OPERATION EXPORTER, the Allied invasion of Vichy France-controlled Syria and Lebanon. General Charles De Gaulle’s Free French forces were joined by Syrian Kurds, some of whom also resided in Lebanon, who opposed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime and by those who defected from the Vichy-controlled Army of the Levant to join the Free French invasion force. On June 23, 1941, as De Gaulle entered Damascus, and in retaliation German aircraft bombed the city’s Christian quarter, killing a number of Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian, Circassian, and Kurdish civilians.

By 1943, over 100,000 Free French troops participated in the Allied invasion of Italy. In addition to the Kurds serving in the RAF Levies, Free French forces participating in the campaign included Kurds from Syria. By D-Day, Free French forces numbered over 300,000, again, with Syrian Kurds serving in the ranks, along with Free French troops from other parts of Syria-Lebanon, as well as Chad, Moyen-Congo, Senegal, Upper Volta, Guinea, Togo, Dahomey, Mauritania, French Sudan, Niger, Gabon, Cameroun, Oubangi-Chari, Indochina, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Karikal, Pondicherry, Madagascar, Comoros, and French Somaliland.

When Mr. Trump advances the false notion that the Kurds made no sacrifices for the Allies in World War II, he not only shows his ignorance of history but his disdain for the Kurds. Trump is not the first US president to betray the Kurds. Woodrow Wilson betrayed them during the Versailles peace conference following World War I. The Kurds were promised independence after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Wilson reneged on that promise as diplomats Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France divided up former Ottoman territory in the Middle East between their two respective colonial empires.

In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, devised a plan to arm the Iraqi Kurds against the Baathist government of Iraq. Supporting the plan was the Shah of Iran. Kissinger and the Shah concocted a secret agreement with Saddam Hussein, the de facto leader of Iraq. Iran and the US severed arms shipments to the Kurds. The stab in the back of the Kurds permitted Saddam’s forces to occupy northern Iraq, where tens of thousands of Kurds were slaughtered.

During Operation DESERT STORM in 1991, President George H. W. Bush urged the Kurds and Marsh Arabs to revolt against Saddam Hussein. Promised US military aid never arrived for the ethnic groups and Saddam conducted massacres of the Kurds and Shi’a Arabs of the Shatt al–Arab in the south.

And now, Mr. Trump has betrayed the Syrian Kurds, who have been successful in establishing a nascent functioning local government in the Rojava Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria after the brutality imposed on them by the Saudi- and Turkish-backed Islamic State caliphate. Trump, who is more concerned about the Trump Towers in Istanbul than in protecting an American ally, has sent a stark warning to the Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq. The Turks will not stop at the genocide of the Syrian Kurds because they have always sought to eliminate any vestiges of Kurdish government and culture, whether in eastern Turkey, Syria, or Iraq.

In a field beside a disused railway station on the plain just south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier, a brigade of Syrian Kurdish soldiers were retraining in order to resist an invasion by the Turkish army. “We acted like a regular army when we were fighting Daesh [Isis],” Rojvan, a veteran Kurdish commander of the YPG (People’s Protection Units), told me. “But now it is we who may be under Turkish air attack and we will have to behave more like guerrillas.”

Rojvan and his men had just returned from fighting Isis for 45 days in their last strongholds in eastern Syria. I had met him first in a cemetery in the Kurdish capital Qamishli where he was burying one of his men who had been killed by an Isis rocket when driving a bulldozer to build field fortifications in the middle of a battle.

But now he and his men were learning new tactics to combat the Turkish military units that were beginning to mass on the Turkish side of the border.

Rojvan was a very experienced soldier and not given to false optimism, saying: “We are mainly armed with light weapons like the Kalashnikov and the RPG [rocket propelled grenade] launcher and light machine guns, but we will be resisting tanks and aircraft.”

Rojvan was speaking 18 months ago after the Turkish army and its Syrian Arab allies had invaded the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, forced most of its inhabitants to flee, and was preparing to replace them with Arab settlers.

What happened then may have been a preview of what we are about to see repeated on a much wider scale in northeast Syria after President Trump’s incoherent announcement that the US would not stand in the way of a Turkish invasion.

He has rowed back a little on this in the face of a deluge of criticism, but his basic message – that the US wants out, and does not object to the Turks coming in – has developed its own momentum and will be difficult to stop at this stage.

We are already on the downslope leading to the ethnic cleansing of up to 2 million Kurds in the vast triangle of land which the Kurds call Rojava in northeast Syria. Much of the Kurdish population lives in cities and towns like Qamishli, Kobani and Tal Abyad just south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. They are unlikely to wait to see what a Turkish occupation, backed by bands of Syrian Arab paramilitaries with links to al-Qaeda type groups, is like.

Trump’s support for America’s Kurdish allies was always rickety, but the brazenness of the final betrayal is still breathtaking. All the credit for defeating Isis is given to US forces under Trump’s wise leadership, while in reality the US role was almost entirely confined to airstrikes and artillery fire.

Speaking of the Kurdish role as the military core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the crucial battle for the Isis capital Raqqa, Brett McGurk, the former presidential envoy to the anti-Isis coalition, says on Twitter: “The SDF suffered thousands of casualties in the Raqqa battle. Not a single American life was lost.” Overall, 11,000 Syrian Kurds were killed fighting Isis over the last five years.

McGurk denies that the Kurds ever received lavish supplies of military hardware from the US: “The weapons provided were meagre and just enough for the battle against Isis. (The SDF cleared IEDs by purchasing flocks of sheep.)”

Since 2015 I have been visiting Rojava watching the YPG soldiers advance west and south and always wondering what would happen when Isis was defeated and the US did not need them anymore. The Kurds, who are no political neophytes, wondered the same thing, but there was little they could do to change the direction of events, except hope that the US would not entirely let them down.

It seems that, in the event, their most pessimistic assumptions are being fulfilled, though – such is the nature of the Trump White House – the extent of American betrayal is unclear.

The most important feature by far of the US military presence in Syria is airpower and not the small number of troops on the ground. Will the US maintain an air umbrella over Rojava and, if so, does this mean that the Turks will not be able to deploy their air force against the YPG? If this is indeed the case, it would give the 25,000 battle-hardened YPG troops more of a military option, though, even so, their chances of long-term success are limited.

It is unclear how far the Turks will advance: their attack could at first be in a limited area between the towns of Tal-Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. But the White House statement spoke of Turkey taking responsibility for Isis prisoners, most of whom are in a camp at al-Hol that is deep inside Rojava, close to the Iraqi border. Taking over this would mean the Turks seizing much of northeast Syria.

Do the Kurds have any political options? The only obvious one – supposing the Kurdish alliance with the US to be a broken reed – is to look to President Bashar al-Assad and to Russia. The Kurds do not like the Syrian government, which persecuted and marginalised them for years before 2011, but they do prefer them to Turkish control and probable expulsion.

The problem here is that the Kurds may have left it too late. So long as they were allied to the US, they could not seriously negotiate with Damascus. Now they appear to have the worst of all possible worlds: neither Washington nor Moscow nor Damascus is going to protect them.

But the options were never quite as simple as that: the Syrian army has never been strong enough to fight Turkey. Presidents Putin and Assad do not want a Turkish invasion but they will also be glad to see the back of the American forces.

The de facto Kurdish state of Rojava could swiftly disintegrate under the impact of a Turkish incursion. A scramble for its territory is already beginning: Syrian and Turkish army units are reportedly racing each other to take over the Arab city of Manbij just west of the Euphrates that has been under effective Kurdish control. A new chaotic phase in the Syrian war is beginning.

counterpunch.org