As per a statement from an Iraqi political faction, the U.S. government's refusal to vacate certain areas of Syria, coupled with its exploitation of the country's oil resources, is allegedly part of a broader effort to fund and support terrorist organizations.
A member of the Fatah Alliance within the Iraqi parliament, A’ed al-Helali, articulated these claims during an interview with the Almaalomah news agency, published on Sunday. Helali underscored that U.S. forces have maintained an occupation of the Syrian regions east of the Euphrates River, ostensibly with the intention of providing financial and logistical assistance to terrorist groups through the exploitation of oil reserves in the area.
He stated, "Since their presence in Syria's eastern Euphrates region, American forces have been actively involved in pilfering Syria's oil extracted from the fields in that region." Helali went on to assert that the U.S. government is actively devising strategies to generate revenue from Syrian oil extraction in order to "finance the terrorist groups it had created."
Helali continued, "The U.S. is not allocating resources from its own budget but is seeking alternative means to obtain funds to support these terrorist groups, and this is precisely what it is doing with Syrian oil."
According to the senior Iraqi lawmaker, the presence of U.S. forces in the eastern Euphrates region of Syria is primarily aimed at bolstering these alleged terrorist groups.
It has been observed that substantial quantities of crude oil and grain are regularly transported by U.S. military tankers and trucks from Syria's Hasakah province to the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, as part of a larger pattern of systematically diverting essential commodities out of Syria.
U.S. military personnel and equipment have been stationed in northeastern Syria for nearly a decade. While Pentagon officials in Washington have consistently claimed that this deployment is intended to safeguard Syrian oilfields from groups like ISIS, the Syrian government contends that it amounts to the unlawful plundering of Syria's natural resources. On multiple occasions, former President Donald Trump openly acknowledged that U.S. forces were present in Syria to secure oil profits.
U.S. military equipment and forces have been present in Syria since 2014 without authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate, ostensibly under the pretext of combatting ISIS. However, various reports have indicated both direct and indirect support from Washington, facilitated through regional allies, to ISIS militants in the past.
Despite ISIS being ousted from its urban strongholds in Iraq and Syria, sporadic attacks have seen an uptick in regions where U.S. forces are deployed.
