United States establishes new base in Syria
The United States Army has set up a new base in the enclave of Deir Ezzor, in eastern Syria, to strengthen its positions in the war that has been going on in the Middle Eastern country since 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a UK-based organisation with a large network of informants on the ground, reported on this new US strategy. The organization stated on its website that massive US reinforcements have been detected in the town of Al-Jazeera, just west of the oil-rich area of Deir Ezzor. Various experts see precisely the oil issue as the main reason why Donald Trump's government has intensely resumed interest in Syria.
This move by the US continues to highlight the renewed interest of the Trump Administration in Syria, linked to the attraction of the oil wealth of the area, after it abandoned its positions months ago and agreed with Turkey to create a security zone on the Turkish-Syrian border, from which the Kurdish-Syrian forces harassed by the Ottoman nation were to leave and to which thousands of Syrian refugees living on Turkish territory were to return, according to the intentions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey raided with its troops to the north of Syria to establish checkpoints and pursue the Kurdish-Syrians under the excuse that the Kurdish ethnic group is carrying out terrorist acts in the south of the Ottoman territory. These positions were established after the agreement reached with the US State Department last year to establish a security zone north of Syrian soil, from which the Kurds were to leave at the demand of 'Sultan' Erdogan and to which the thousands and thousands of Syrian refugees sheltered by Turkey and who fled the civil war were to be sent. This generated controversy because Donald Trump's Executive thus abandoned to their fate Kurdish-Syrian groups such as the People's Protection Units (YPG), integrated into the opposing Democratic Forces of Syria (DFS), momentarily associated with President Bachar al-Asad to drive out the common Turkish enemy in spite of the fact that they were circumscribed to the opposition to the official Syrian regime; which were instrumental in the defeat of Daesh in Syria a year ago, when the bastion of Al-Baghouz fell.
A war, Syria's, that pits the government of Bachar al-Asad, strongly supported by Vladimir Putin's Russia, against the insurgents entrenched in the last rebel stronghold of Idlib, where Turkey positioned itself to the point of demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops after a summit led by Ankara and Moscow last February, which did not produce results. The Al-Asad Administration has been arguing that its objective in the warlike conflict of the Arab country is to end the jihadist terrorism included in the resistance of Idlib, to reunify and to pacify all the country; all this in front of an insurgent opposite pole and a new opposition represented by the interests that Turkey defends, nation that receives the support of mercenaries in salary coming from ex branches of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.
Together with Turkey and Russia, Iran sponsored the peace process in Astaná, where they even offered to mediate to resolve the differences between Ankara and Damascus when in February there was an upsurge of tension in the northwest of Syria that was settled with the ceasefire arranged between Turkey, supporter of the Syrian opposition, and Russia, Al-Asad's partner, implemented since March 6. This cessation of hostilities continues, despite the fact that there are sporadic violations and that the pressure in the Syrian country continues to increase without respect for the current serious panorama that the world is experiencing with the coronavirus pandemic. At present, there is talk of 20,000 Turkish military personnel present in northern Aleppo with more than thirty checkpoints around Idlib, the aforementioned organized rebel stronghold of the extremists that seeks to overthrow the forces of the Bachar al-Asad regime.
Thanks to its new manoeuvre in Syria, the US is increasing its presence in oil and gas fields in the north of the Arab nation. Through the Al-Walid point, the American giant also contributes weekly war material and logistic to the troops of the mentioned DFS, conformed mainly by Kurds. The United States was present in bases to the north and southeast, in the border triangle with Iraq and Jordan, but later abandoned them after the well-known pact with Turkey, although the march did not take place completely. It is now very present in the hydrocarbon nuclei of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa due to the renewed US interest in crude oil. Some sources estimate that the US may have between 3,000 and 4,000 troops currently deployed. Meanwhile, the U.S. also has the support of Israel, which since January has intensified the launching of missiles over Syria from occupied territories in Palestine and the Golan Heights.
The new US plan has become evident once in the last days some 300 US trucks have made incursions into eastern Syria from western Iraq, where the US nation has a military presence also within the international coalition fighting against jihadism, which is very active in Iraqi and Syrian territories in recent times taking advantage of the instability of these Middle Eastern countries and the internal weakness derived from the fight against the health crisis of the COVID-19 disease.
A difficult situation that is aggravated in Syria by the civil war; and in Iraq, since the country of the Gulf is sunk in violent citizen protests against the economic crisis and the political corruption and against the interference of the USA and Iran in its internal affairs (through the nexus with chiíes militias like the Forces of Popular Mobilization in the Iranian case), and, in addition, it is very vulnerable now by the dedication of the Iraqi Armed Forces to protect the population against the coronavirus neglecting therefore the habitual antiterrorist fight.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and continues to have a presence on Syrian territory. Syrian sources revealed that there has been no withdrawal or partial reduction of the Iranian military presence in Syria. These informants told the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi that the Persian working system on Syrian soil has not been changed; they added that Iranian officers had not left any Syrian military facilities, unless their work was completed from a logistical and technical point of view. According to the sources, the official Syrian regime did not ask the Iranians to reduce their influence in Syria, just as the Iranians are not currently planning to reduce their military presence, especially that of their advisers.
The informants added that the military cooperation between Damascus and Teheran did not change after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Forces (international division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran that influences the internal affairs of countries such as Syria, Iraq or Lebanon); killed in an operation with drones carried out on January 3 by the United States near the airport of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, in which Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, vice president of the Shiite People's Mobilization Forces, associated with the Persian country, also fell.
"The Iranian army is still in position. There may have been a change in their positions for logistical and other reasons related to repeated Israeli attacks on some military sites, but their work and technical presence remains the same," they said.
On Tuesday, the US special envoy for Syria's policy and the fight against Daesh, James Jeffrey, remarked that the US sanctions against Iran, derived from the US abandonment in 2018 of the nuclear pact sealed with the Ayatollahs' regime in 2015, have forced it to reduce its military presence in Syria. "We have seen the Iranians withdraw from some of their peripheral activities in Syria due, frankly, to financial problems ... in terms of the enormous success of the Trump Administration's sanctions policies against Iran," James Jeffrey said, adding that "they are having a real effect on Syria.
Meanwhile, three terrorists from the Daesh terrorist group have admitted to conducting "different" operations in coordination with the US in Syria.
In a programme broadcast on Syrian television on Thursday, the three Daesh terrorists have confessed to having carried out "different operations" against Syrian military and civilians "in coordination" beforehand between their leaders and US forces deployed at the strategic military base of Al-Tanf, located at the south-eastern end of Homs province (centre).
