Pompeo: “I’ll be very blunt and direct today: America is a force for good in the Middle East." 1/10/19…The area in northeast Syria “that is under control of [US backed] Kurdish forces is strategically important because that’s where “most of Syria’s major oil production facilities” are located.”...US is a dictatorship. It's taken for granted that elections can't change anything and that US taxpayers are slaves.
4/10/19, “Pompeo Wrong on Assad Control in Syria,” factcheck.org, Eugene Kiely
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrongly stated that Syrian President “Bashar al-Assad controls a small fraction of Syria.” Middle East experts tell us that Assad controls a majority of Syria’s land and population.
Pompeo made his remarks during an April 8 interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Pompeo urged the Cuban government to stop supporting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — telling Baier that Maduro’s “days are numbered” — when in an aside the secretary also remarked about Assad’s power in Syria.
Pompeo, April 8: “I might add, Bashar al-Assad controls a small fraction of Syria today. The work that the Trump administration has done to deny Assad the capacity to rebuild his nation — this is the guy [the elected President] who believes he won, but the truth is the Middle East is in a much more stable, much better place today than it was when President Obama was running the joint in Syria.”
[Image, Feb. 2009, John Kerry and his wife dine with Syria Pres. Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria when Kerry was chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee. UK Telegraph]
“Pompeo’s comment is false,” Steven Heydemann, director of Middle East Studies at Smith College, told us in an email. “The Assad [elected government] regime controls about 60% of Syrian territory, including the entire western ‘spine’ of the country that includes all its major cities and a large majority of its population.”
The [so-called] civil war in Syria started in March 2011, and, at its weakest point in 2015, Assad’s government held less than a fifth of Syria. “However, the Asad government — backed by Russia and Iran — has reasserted control over much of western Syria since 2015, and appears poised to claim victory in the conflict,” according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
“CRS, March 25: The collapse of IS [Islamic State] and [US taxpayer funded] opposition territorial control in most of Syria since 2015 has been matched by significant military and territorial gains by the Syrian government. The U.S. intelligence community’s 2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment stated in February 2018 that, “The conflict has decisively shifted in the [elected government of] Syrian regime’s favor, enabling Russia and Iran to further entrench themselves inside the country.””
A Jan. 14 Bloomberg News article on the various forces still fighting in Syria includes a map that shows the [elected Pres.] Assad regime controls about two-thirds of Syria — nearly all of the land southwest of the Euphrates River, which serves as a natural barrier between the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the Russia-backed Syrian military.
“The Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, comprising about a quarter of the country, are the largest remaining areas outside of Syrian government control,” the CRS report said. “[Syria’s elected Pres.] Assad has stated that his government intends to recover these areas, whether by negotiations or military force.”
Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, agreed that Pompeo’s statement was “not correct.” In an email, he told us that “in terms of population, Assad controls a substantially higher percentage of the densely populated regions of the country.”
“The main cities under [Syria’s elected] government control are: Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus, Palmyra, Albu Kamal,” according to a March 13 Al-Jazeera article headlined “Syria’s War: Who Control What?” Aleppo is the largest city in Syria, followed by Damascus and Homs, according to the World Atlas.
“The [elected government of Syria] regime is not in control of two important areas [thanks to illegal intervention by the US]: parts of northwest Syria from north of Homs up to the border with Turkey. This area includes the city and province of Idlib [which contains the largest Al Qaeda population center in the world] and areas under Turkish control,” Heydemann said. “In addition, the regime is not in control of a large part of Syria’s northeast, which is dominated by Kurdish forces that are supported by the U.S.”
Idlib province has been under [US backed Al Qaeda] rebel control since 2015. It is the “the most significant zone remaining outside of government control in western Syria” — “the final opposition stronghold,” according to CRS. Idlib is strategically important to the Assad regime because it allows direct transit from government-control areas in the south to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, according to CRS.
The area in the northeast that is under control of Kurdish forces is strategically important because that’s where “most of Syria’s major oil production facilities” are located, Heydemann said. “However,” he added, “the PYD – the most powerful Kurdish political party in the northeast – has entered into agreements to provide the Assad regime with oil from the areas it controls.”
The Wall Street Journal, in a Feb. 8 article, said the decision by the Kurdish forces to sell oil to the Assad regime “represent[s] a new challenge to U.S. efforts to starve [millions of innocent Syrians and] the Syrian government of oil.”
Clearly, Assad doesn’t have full control of Syria as he did before the civil war. But he controls more than “a small fraction” of it, contrary to what Pompeo said.
We asked the State Department to clarify Pompeo’s remarks, but did not receive a response. We will update this article if we do.”
……………………………………………
Added: Idlib province in Syria is the largest collection of al-Qaida affiliates in the world today. US taxpayers have been forced by US dictatorship to protect terrorists, and to prevent Syria’s elected government from clearing them out.
May 6, 2019, “Syria – Russian And Syrian Airforce Prepare The Ground For An Attack On Idlib Province,” Moon of Alabama
Will the US “do anything to stop the Syrian operations. That now seems unlikely:
“”Idlib is essentially the largest collection of al-Qaida affiliates in the world right now,“ Michael Mulroy, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said this week during remarks at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
“We have very limited insights as to what’s going on,” he added.” That this is (again) publicly recognized, likely means that Syria is now allowed to clean up the mess. Back in 2017 and 2018, when Syria was ready to retake Idleb, the U.S. threatened to [protect Al Qaeda and] stop any attack. At that time it still cared for its ally Turkey which would be swamped with new refugee wave should the HTS terrorists and their families have to retreat from Idelb. The U.S. no longer cares about Turkey. Any new difficulty for the wannabe Sultan Erdogan will likely be welcome.
The terrorist haven in Idlib is only one of the many problems Syria still has to cope with.
The worst is currently a shortage of gasoline as U.S. sanctions block Iranian oil deliveries to Syria. Iranian tankers with the destination of Syria are held up at the Suez canal. Requesting gasoline from Russia would have a political price that Syria seems not ready to pay. The Syrian oilfields, which could produce enough to keep the country running, are under control of the U.S. proxy forces. The U.S. prohibited to sell that oil to the Syrian government.”
...............
No comments:
Post a Comment