Baghdad, September 6 (RHC)-- An Iraqi political faction has affirmed that the continued presence of U.S. occupation forces in Syria and the plunder of the Arab nation’s oil resources are part of efforts to provide support and funding for terrorist groups.
A’ed al-Helali, a member of the Fatah (Conquest) Alliance in the Iraqi parliament, made the statement in an interview with the Arabic-language Almaalomah news agency published in Baghdad. Helali stressed that the U.S. troops are present in the Syrian regions east of the Euphrates River with the aim of providing logistical and financial support for the terrorist groups by exploiting the oil in the restive area.
"The American forces, since their presence in the eastern Euphrates region in Syria, have been working to steal Syria’s oil extracted from the fields of that region," the senior Iraqi lawmaker said.
Helali underlined that the United States was working on schemes aimed at investing in the Syrian oil in order to “finance the terrorist groups that it had created." "The U.S. is not wasting money from its own budget, but is trying to find other outlets to obtain it in order to finance terrorist groups, which is what it is doing with the Syrian oil," he added. "The presence of U.S. forces in the Syrian eastern Euphrates region is for supporting these [terrorist] groups."
U.S. military trucks and tankers frequently carry tons of grain and crude oil from the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakah to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq as part of Washington’s systematic smuggling of basic commodities out of Syria.
The U.S. military has for long stationed its forces and equipment in northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
Damascus, however, maintains the deployment is meant to plunder the country’s natural resources. Former U.S. President Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
For nearly ten years, since 2014, the U.S. has deployed forces and military equipment in Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a United Nations mandate under the pretext of fighting Daesh. But there have been several reports showing Washington's direct or indirect support through its regional allies for the terrorist group over the past years.
The Takfiri outfit has already been driven out of all its urban bastions both in Iraq and Syria, but its remnants carry out sporadic terror attacks in both Arab countries.
