Syrian Arab Army troops manning a checkpoint in the Hasakah countryside managed to expel a joint convoy of US and separatist Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces militia.
The incident, which took place on Saturday, saw a convoy of four US armored vehicles and an SDF vehicle attempting to enter the village of Qabur al-Gharajna in Tell Tamer in Hasakah’s northwest, an area populated by Assyrian Christians, Arabs and Kurds. Army forces manning the checkpoint managed to prevent the convoy from passing, forcing it to turn around and leave the area.
Ak-47-armed Syrian troops and unarmed civilians engaging in standoffs against American MRAP vehicles backed by deadly US airpower often risk their lives doing so, with the tension-filled David vs. Goliath incidents occasionally turning violent.
In August 2020, a firefight between a US convoy and Syrian troops left one Syrian soldier dead and two others injured. The Pentagon blamed Damascus for the incident, but in 2021, a redacted US military report revealed that a mentally unstable US soldier instigated the conflict, and later tried to cover up his forces' responsibility.
US forces first began rolling into Syria in late 2015, ostensibly going after Daesh (ISIS)* militants which took control of wide swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq thanks to a regional power vacuum caused by a CIA dirty war against the Assad government, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Once Daesh was vanquished in 2017, US forces stayed behind, to prevent the terrorist group’s resurgence, or so they said.
Former President Donald Trump revealed the occupation’s true motivations in 2018 and 2019, stating repeatedly, to his officials’ horror, that American forces were deployed in the country “only for the oil.” The Biden administration had subsequently circled back to the ‘preventing Daesh’s resurgence’ justification, with at least 900 soldiers operating in the country today.
The lands east of the Euphrates River occupied by US forces and their SDF allies account for upwards of 90 percent of Syria’s oil and gas resources, and some of its most fertile farmlands, allowing the Arab Republic to enjoy modest energy and food self-sufficiency before the war began in 2011.
Syrian officials have accused the US of continuing its occupation to prevent the country’s reconstruction, and of sitting on top of and siphoning off its energy and food resources through illegal smuggling operations in coordination with crushing sanctions known as the Caesar Act meant to bring the country to its knees.
President Bashar Assad has vowed to continue resisting US aggression, and has thanked his Russian and Iranian partners for assisting the war-torn nation with oil and food assistance and preventing the escalation of a humanitarian catastrophe. This past spring, Assad won a major diplomatic coup against US imperialism in the region, restoring relations with many of Syria’s neighbors, and overseeing the country’s readmission into the Arab League.
* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.