Devastating Quakes? Don’t Care Must Rob: US Continues Oil Looting of Quake-Hit Syria

Over 6,700 Syrians were killed and 14,500+ injured in last month’s ruinous earthquakes. Washington announced a 180-day exemption to Syria sanctions for disaster relief, but ruled out lifting the restrictions completely, and continued its extraction and smuggling of resources from of oil and food-rich areas of the war-torn country.

The United States and its local Kurdish militia allies have smuggled two more convoys-worth of Syrian oil out of the country. Sources told local media Saturday that they’d spotted a 23 vehicle convoy including covered trucks filled with oil heading from Syria’s al-Jazeera oil fields toward the illegal al-Mahmudiya border crossing with Iraq in the al-Yarubiya countryside. Separately, a 34 vehicle convoy, including trucks and tankers, was seen making its way toward Iraq via the illegal al-Walid crossing.

Saturday’s smuggling operations were the second of their kind this week. On Monday, media reported that US occupation forces had shipped oil from al-Jazeera's fields to bases in Iraq.

On Tuesday, Syrian UN representative Bassam Sabbagh blasted Washington’s effort to politicize the humanitarian response in Syria in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquakes, pointing out that the US’s “illegitimate dominance on oil and gas wells in the northeastern part of Syria and the smuggling of petroleum outside the country” constitute a special form of cruelty which “deprived Syrians from these materials and billions of dollars in estimated income.”

The US operates about a dozen military bases in Syria without the permission of the internationally recognized Damascus government. Most of these bases are situated east of the Euphrates River in the energy and food-rich parts of the country, where approximately 90 percent of Syria’s modest oil reserves are concentrated. Syria has never been a major regional oil power, but had enough to ensure energy self- sufficiency, and earn a modest export income, before the US and its regional allies began a long-running dirty war against Damascus in 2011.

Syrian officials have repeatedly demanded that American troops and all other foreign forces operating in the country illegally exit immediately.

Damascus and its allies are convinced that the real purpose of the oil and food smuggling isn’t really to earn any substantial profits from the stolen resources, but to suffocate Syria and prevent the country from rebuilding after it successfully withstood the CIA-backed dirty war.

Syrian officials estimate that the damage caused by the war would require decades and up to $400 billion in resources. However, the continued US occupation of the country’s eastern regions have turned Syria into a net importer of both food and energy from its Russian and Iranian allies. The World Bank estimated this week that last month’s earthquakes added another $5.1 billion in damage, with the damaged areas including world-famous architectural landmarks which the government had already recently spent precious and limited resources rebuilding – such as Aleppo’s UN World Heritage Site Citadel.