On April 22nd, an unnamed U.S. “Senior Administration Official” told a press conference in Toronto, that the only possible circumstance under which the U.S. Government will agree to pay anything for the harms (bombings of infrastructure etc.) it’s doing to Syria, would be if Syria will agree to cede, to U.S. control, a portion of its land:
QUESTION: When you say no reconstruction money for areas that are under Assad’s control, there is some reconstruction money that’s currently frozen or under question for areas that are not under Assad’s control?
MODERATOR: That’s stabilization, which is different from reconstruction, just to clarify.
Screenshot; source US State Department
“Stabilization” is the solidification of control by the U.S. Government, via its proxies (‘rebels’ trained by U.S. and financed by the Sauds) who are fighting to overthrow Syria’s Government; and the U.S. won’t pay any reconstruction unless it’s “stabilizing” that particular part of Syria. If America’s 7-year-long effort at regime-change in Syria turns out to be a total failure (grabbing no part of its territory), then the U.S. won’t pay even a cent for restoration of Syria from its 7-year-long war to control that country via installing there rulers who will be doing the bidding of the royal Saud family, Saudi Arabia’s owners, who have been America’s direct agent all along in Syria to ultimately take over its Government. (America’s other main ally demanding regime-change in Syria is Israel, which is a Jewish theocracy; and, of course, no predominantly Muslim nation would accept being ruled by Jews of any sort — nor by any Christians. Consequently, the U.S. has been using the fundamentalist Sunni owners of Saudi Arabia — the Saud family (the world’s richest family) — as its agent to fund Syria’s ‘rebels’, and to select which of the ‘rebels’ constitute, at the U.N.-sponsored peace talks for Syria, the ‘opposition’ who are negotiating against Syria’s elected Government to rule the country.) The other participants, along with the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, are the Thanis who own Qatar, and the six royal families who own United Arab Emirates — all likewise being fundamentalist Sunnis. Syria’s Government is committedly secularist and opposed to Sharia (Islamic) law. By installing a Sunni Sharia law government, the Sauds would take effective control over Syria — the U.S. would conquer that land.
On March 16th, the Washington Post bannered “Trump wants to get the U.S. out of Syria’s war, so he asked the Saudi king for $4 billion” and reported that “In a December phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, President Trump had an idea he thought could hasten a U.S. exit from Syria: Ask the king for $4 billion. By the end of the call, according to U.S. officials, the president believed he had a deal. The White House wants money from the kingdom and other nations to help rebuild and stabilize the parts of Syria that the U.S. military and its local allies have liberated from the Islamic State.” The U.S., in actual fact, had ignored ISIS in Syria until Russia on 30 September 2015, at Syria’s request, started bombing it and other jihadists there. After that, opposing ISIS became America’s excuse for its earlier and continuing demand that “Assad must go,” and America’s objective then became bombing and totally destroying ISIS’s Syrian headquarters in Raqqa so as for America and its allies to gain access to Syria’s oil-producing region. The U.S. had never bombed any of ISIS’s oil tanker trucks in Syria until it started doing that on 17 November 2015, after Russia had on September 30th begun its bombings in Syria. Ever since 1949, America’s real target in Syria has been to replace Syria’s Government, and this goes back long before ISIS even existed, anywhere; and Barack Obama had entered office in 2009 hoping to be the U.S. President who would achieve that decades-long U.S. and Saud and Israel objective. So, for the U.S. Government, Syria is to be conquered, never to be restituted unless and until, and only to the extent that, it is conquered.
On April 16th, the Wall Street Journal headlined “U.S. Seeks Arab Force and Funding for Syria: Under plan, troops would replace American military contingent after ISIS defeat and help secure country’s north; proposal faces challenges.” This report said that,
“The initiative comes as the administration has asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to contribute billions of dollars to help restore northern Syria. It wants Arab nations to send troops as well, officials said.”
The article closed:
“Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have helped pay the stipends for the Syrian fighters the U.S. is supporting, American officials say. Administration officials are calculating Arab nations will respond more favorably to a request from Mr. Trump, who already has asked Saudi Arabia to contribute $4 billion to restore former Islamic State-held areas of Syria.”
America’s plan also includes taking control over the dams that supply water to the rest of Syria; so, the goal remains strangulation of Syria’s Government, even if outright conquest of it remains beyond reach.
On 10 June 2017, a meeting was held in Syria’s northeastern city of Qamishli, which borders Turkey, and where Syrian tribal leaders met with America’s allies and with U.S. Colonel John Dorrian (shown here holding a press briefing on a different occasion), at which, according to the Turkish newspaper reporting the event,
“Representatives agreed on a pipeline route. Radical decisions were made regarding the extraction, processing and marketing of the underground wealth of the Haseke, Raqqah and Deir ez Zor regions, which hold 95 percent of Syrian oil and natural gas’ potential.”
However, as of yet, Trump hasn’t been able to achieve the type of deal that he is aiming for. On April 18th, that same Turkish newspaper bannered “US to build Arab force in NE Syria as part of new ploy: The US is seeking to amass an Arab force in northeastern Syria comprised of funding and troops from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.” So, perhaps there will be a portion of Syria that the U.S. will “stabilize” or even, just maybe, restitute for damages done in the effort to conquer it.
Whitney Webb has provided an excellent comprehensive view on which Syrian assets the U.S. Government is hoping to win.
The reconstruction costs to restore Syria were initially roughly estimated at $250 billion, but Syria’s Government now estimates it at around twice that figure.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity
Michel Chossudovsky
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
- ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
- Year: 2015
- Pages: 240 Pages
List Price: $22.95
