US TROOPS are back in military bases in north eastern Syria which they had previously evacuated ahead of Turkey’s military action against Kurdish forces in the area.
American forces arrived in the west of Syria’s northern province of Raqqa on Saturday to rebuild their military base. Also on Friday, US forces began rebuilding a military base in northern Syria’s Sarrin village, south of Kobani, officially known as Ayn al-Arab.
US troops also resumed patrols near oil fields in northeastern Syria on Friday, after an intermission prompted by Turkey’s military incursion.
Turkey’s offensive came after the US abruptly pulled its forces out of the region, clearing the path for Turkey to go ahead with the planned military action against Washington’s longtime Kurdish allies.
Russia, meanwhile, has slammed the US plan to seize Syrian oil fields as ‘criminal activity,’ warning that Washington stands to rake in millions of dollars a month from the seizure.
Pentagon chief Mark Esper said the deployment will seek to secure oil resources from Daesh. Washington, he said, will use ‘overwhelming’ force against any challenge to the USA including Syria’s own government.
Speaking last week, President Donald Trump suggested that Washington sought economic interests by controlling the oil fields. It is also seeking to prevent the Syrian government and its army from moving north to take the oil fields that would be a major strategic defeat for US imperialism.
In fact the uprising that is taking place in oil rich Iraq makes it certain that US troops will be reinforced in the region and not be wound down.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has gathered the country’s security chiefs for a meeting, and called for measures to ensure the safety of protesters amid an ongoing wave of anti-government demonstrations that have been put down with the utmost violence by the security forces he addressed.
During Saturday night’s meeting, which was also attended by Interior Minister Yassin Al-Yasiri, the participants reviewed the performance of security forces in line with their duties to ensure domestic stability, as well as safeguarding the country’s public and private property and its vital and vast oil installations.
On Sunday, workers spilled out into the streets of the capital Baghdad and several other cities, shutting down streets, schools and government offices.
In Baghdad, university students parked their cars in the middle of main thoroughfares, blocking traffic. Police officers manning nearby checkpoints did not intervene.
Students took part in sit-ins at schools, and the national teachers union extended its strike that was launched last week. The Iraqi president says Adel Abdul-Mahdi is willing to resign as prime minister if a replacement is found.
In Kut to the east, protesters blocked main roads and bridges, and most schools were closed. Protesters said they will not stop until the message gets to the government and corrupt officials are kicked out.
Further south in Hillah, Nasiriyah, Diwaniyah and the holy city of Karbala, most government offices were closed. In the country’s southern oil-rich port city of Basra, which has the poorest people in Iraq, public schools were shut down for the first time since the demonstrations began last month.
At the start of October, street protests erupted in several Iraqi cities over unemployment and a lack of basic services. The rallies resumed on October 25 after a pause of about two weeks, but took a violent turn.
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has appealed for calm, warning of the danger of Iraq plunging into a civil war.
The truth is that with ISIS out of the way the masses of the working class and the youth are now pushing forward for a workers government and a regime that will use the oil wealth for the benefit of workers, not to fill the foreign bank accounts of corrupt bureaucrats.
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on lies peddled by Blair and Bush, that it had weapons of mass destruction, Baathist Syria and Iraq were allies.
Now with Syrian workers demanding the return of their oil wealth, alongside the Iraqi workers and youth demanding the end of corruption and a workers government, the situation is being created for a revolutionary unity to drive imperialism out of the Middle East so that the oil wealth can be used for the benefit of the people as it was before the invasion of Iraq.
