US occupation troops stationed in northern Syria helped smuggle a new shipment of Syrian oil out of the country, escorting a convoy of 95 fuel tankers through Iraq’s illegal crossings on 22 December.
According to local reports from the countryside of Al-Yarubiyah in Hasakah governorate, the occupation army transferred 65 tankers across the Al-Mahmudiyah crossing and 30 tankers through the Al-Walid crossing into Iraq.
This is the third time this month that the US occupation army has been spotted smuggling Syrian fuel out of the country’s resource-rich northeast. On 12 December, locals reported that 37 fuel tankers were smuggled out of the country, just a week after 66 tankers were seen leaving the region.
According to an investigation by The Cradle, dozens of tankers pass weekly through illegal crossings between Iraq and Syria in convoys accompanied by US warplanes or helicopters.
Shepherds in the region corroborate these claims, saying that the Syrian oil is transported to the Al-Harir military site in Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), a region known as a “hub” for western spy agencies.
The smuggling operation reportedly aims to preserve the area of US influence between Baghdad and Damascus while simultaneously choke-holding the Syrian government – and depriving the largest Syrian population in the area controlled by Damascus of vital resources such as oil, gas, wheat, and medicine.
Earlier this year, the Syrian Oil Ministry released a statement saying that the US army plunders “66,000 barrels of oil every single day,” amounting to around 83 percent of Syria’s daily oil production.
Moreover, in recent months US forces rebuilt an occupation base in the city of Raqqa and have been working to revive the Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionary Brigade), an Islamist militia opposed to the Syrian government.
As part of the hybrid warfare being waged against Damascus, this month, US lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the ‘Countering Assad’s Proliferation Trafficking And Garnering Of Narcotics Act,’ also known as the CAPTAGON Act.
The bipartisan bill marks the start of a new phase of US pressure on Syria and is considered a pretext to increase the siege on the Syrian people, who suffer from extremely difficult economic conditions similar to those they suffered during the famine that the region witnessed during the First World War.
Severe US-imposed sanctions under the “Caesar Act” have contributed to the tragedy gripping the Levantine nation at a time when the country is in the midst of an economic crisis, with the US occupation and the Kurdish Autonomous Administration controlling vast areas of lands rich in oil, gas, and crops in the east of the country, in addition to the Turkish occupation of other regions.