dinsdag 21 november 2017
Defeat of ISIS in last stronghold signals new stage of US war in Syria
Photo
released on Monday, Sept 4, 2017 by the Syrian official news agency
By
Bill Van Auken
Syrian
government troops, supported by Iranian-backed Iraqi and Lebanese
Shia militia forces, have routed ISIS from its last stronghold in
Syria, the Euphrates River town of Albu Kamal just across the border
from Iraq.
Far
from signaling an end to the US intervention in Syria, launched in
the name of fighting ISIS in that country and in Iraq, the collapse
of the Islamist militia has only set the stage for a further
escalation in Washington’s drive to assert its hegemony in the
Middle East by military means.
Remaining
ISIS fighters withdrew from Albu Kamal in the face of the government
offensive. The group is now believed to control only a few small
villages along the Euphrates and small nearby desert areas.
The
taking of Albu Kamal follows the driving out of ISIS from the Iraqi
city of Qaim, where Iranian-backed militias also took the lead. The
linking up of these forces effectively secured the much vaunted “land
bridge” linking Tehran to a northern tier of Arab states—Iraq,
Syria and Lebanon—which have all established close ties to Iran.
Washington’s
main aim now is to blow up these ties. To that end, the Trump
administration has sought to sabotage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), the nuclear accord struck between Tehran and the
major world powers, while seeking to forge an anti-Iranian axis
linking the US, Israel and the reactionary Sunni Persian Gulf oil
monarchies led by Saudi Arabia.
This
anti-Iranian alliance has found its most destructive expression in
Washington’s backing for Saudi Arabia’s two-and-a-half-year-old
war against Yemen, where an unrelenting bombing campaign combined
with a blockade of the country’s airports, sea ports and borders is
unleashing a famine that could claim the lives of millions.
The
Saudi regime orchestrated the convening of a meeting of the Arab
League in Cairo on Sunday for the purpose of condemning Iran and the
Lebanese Shia movement, Hezbollah. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir
told the assembly that the monarchy “will not stand by and will not
hesitate to defend its security” from Iranian “aggression.”
This
supposed “aggression” consists of a missile fired from Yemen on
November 4 which was brought down near Riyadh’s international
airport without causing any casualties or significant damage. This,
after Saudi warplanes have bombed Yemeni schools, hospitals,
residential areas and essential infrastructure into rubble. Both Iran
and Hezbollah have denied Saudi claims that they supplied the
missile, while a UN monitoring agency has stated that there are no
indications of missiles being brought into the impoverished
war-ravaged country.
Lebanese
Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari boycotted the meeting in Cairo, while Syria has been
expelled from the Arab League. While hosting the meeting and heavily
dependent on Saudi aid, the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi appeared to distance itself from the aggressive anti-Iranian
line from Riyadh, with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry
calling for the defusing of tensions in the region. Sisi himself
called for the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Lebanon in the
interest of “stability.” Hariri was apparently kidnapped by the
Saudi regime and forced to resign his position in an attempt to blow
up the Lebanese government, which includes Hezbollah.
Within
Syria itself, US military operations have already shifted from
combating ISIS to countering Iranian influence and Syrian government
consolidation of control over the areas previously held by the
Islamist militia and other Al Qaeda-linked forces.
This
has been made explicit in the form of the direct US role in
evacuating ISIS fighters and commanders from areas under siege by the
Pentagon and its proxy ground troops organized in the
Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Repeated charges by
both Iran and Russia of such complicity have been confirmed by the
BBC, which documented the US military and the Kurdish YPG militia
organizing a convoy that rescued some 4,000 ISIS fighters and family
members together with tons of arms, ammunition and explosives from
Raqqa
last month.
The
purpose of this operation was to redirect the ISIS forces against the
offensive by Syrian government troops, while freeing up the US
proxies in the SDF to make a dash for strategically vital oilfields
north of the Euphrates.
Both
Iran and Russia have charged that the US also intervened in an
attempt to prevent the fall of Albu Kamal to the Syrian government
troops and their Shia militia allies. The Russian Defense Ministry
charged that US warplanes were deployed to effectively provide air
cover for ISIS by preventing Russian planes from bombing the Islamist
militia’s positions.
Last
week, US Defense Secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis made clear
that Washington has no intention of ending its illegal military
intervention in Syria, ostensibly launched for the purpose of
defeating ISIS. “We’re not just going to walk away right now
before the Geneva process has traction,” he said.
Mattis
was referring to the long-stalled UN-brokered talks between the
government of President Bashar al-Assad and the so-called rebels
backed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Gulf monarchies.
Washington
is attempting to uphold this process—and the demand for the ouster
of Assad—in opposition to attempts by Russia, Iran and Turkey, the
three largest regional powers, to broker their own political solution
to the Syrian crisis, the product of the US-backed war for regime
change.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin is hosting his Iranian and Turkish
counterparts, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a summit in
Sochi Wednesday to discuss a joint position on Syria. Washington’s
reliance on the Syrian Kurdish forces has served to further solidify
relations between Ankara and Moscow.
While
there are tactical difference within the US establishment and its
military and intelligence apparatus over how to proceed in the Middle
East, there is general consensus on an escalation toward military
confrontation with Iran.
In
a piece published by the Wall
Street Journal
titled “Iran Strategy Needs Much Improvement,” Kenneth Pollack of
the Brookings Institution argues that the nuclear deal, Yemen and
Lebanon are distractions from the main arena for such a
confrontation: Iraq and Syria.
Pollack,
a former CIA agent and National Security Council official, who was
one of the leading advocates of the US invasion of Iraq, argues that
Tehran is “badly overexposed” by its intervention on the side of
both the Iraqi and Syrian governments against ISIS.
“Washington
could take advantage of this by ramping up covert assistance to
Syrian rebels to try to bleed Damascus and its Iranian backer over
time,” he writes, “the way the US supported the Afghan mujahedeen
against the Soviets in the 1980s.”
That
the US support for the Afghan mujahedeen produced Al Qaeda, US
imperialism’s supposed arch enemy in an unending global war on
terror, does not give this imperialist strategist the slightest
pause. He like others in US intelligence circles know that such
movements have a dual use, serving at one point as proxy forces in
wars for regime change, only to be transformed at another into a
pretext for US interventions in the name of fighting terror.
At
the same time, Pollack calls for the US to maintain “a large
residual military force” in Iraq to counter Iranian influence.
What
is involved in this proposal is a continuation and escalation of the
campaigns of US military aggression that have already claimed the
lives of over a million Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
To thwart Iran’s influence, Washington is prepared to blow up the
entire region.
This
article first appeared on World
Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
on
21
November 2017,
and was republished with permission.
Labels:
Afghanistan,
Article in English,
Egypte,
Internationale organisaties,
Irak,
Iran,
Islamic State,
Israel,
Jemen,
Libanon,
Rusland,
Saudi Arabië,
Syrië,
Turkije,
UAE,
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