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US Expands Syria Strikes, Civilian Death Toll

Date: 30 September 2014 - 21:09

News ID: ۵۷۶۶

US airstrikes are expanding in scope, with four different provinces of the country hit in attacks, including areas where the terrorist group of ISIL is virtually non-existent.
President Obama has been insisting it is an oversimplification to say this war is America versus ISIL. Indeed, that’s the case, but while the president is seeking to downplay the scope of the conflict, the signs are that he’s at war with actually a much broader swath of allied terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and ISIL – not to mention Syria, which is in fact fighting all these terrorist goons.
According to Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, "There is a big danger here that US air strikes in Syria are going to resemble the drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen in the sense that there is no accountability for who is killed. We have reports of civilian casualties from people in the area. There has to be some public accountability for what happens when there are allegations of civilian casualties."
According to Naiman, the US hand in civilian deaths extends beyond direct bombings. "The indirect US intervention is left unchecked as well: US training and funding and equipping proxy groups in Iraq and Syria. There is very strong evidence that many of the US allies that have been receiving US military assistance and training and equipment have been committing gross human rights violations and the US has not been held accountable."
At the same time, US warplanes, backed by NATO, Saudi, Qatari, Bahraini, Jordanian and UAE aircraft are also bombing Syria’s oil refineries and civilian infrastructure with little care for civilian life on the ground. Washington claims the strikes aim to destroy the black market oil trade and cut this important source of income for the terrorist group of ISIL. Yet the real agenda appears to be the "Big Switch” to their original mission.
US bombs are falling to keep the Middle East under US control by any means necessary, even if that requires rewriting history at the United Nations; reinventing language to call this "counter-terrorism” and not aggression; hitting its own ISIL foot soldiers; preparing for an inevitable ground invasion by 15,000 military "advisers;” training and arming 5,000 "moderate” terrorists, and bombing Syria into submission and regime change.
The reality is that ISIL does sell crude from captured oilfields on the black market. The oil being sold ranges between $25 per barrel to $60 per barrel compared to the current market prices of about $102. ISIL smuggles over 30,000 barrels a day, which generates around $2 million per day.
Cross border oil tanker owners, cartels and gangs are also involved. They smuggle on tankers and makeshift pipelines along longstanding, informal trade routes through northern parts of Iraq, southern Turkey, and eastern Syria. It’s all the reason why Turkey, Jordan, Israel and the Kurdistan region have turned a blind eye to the trade: They themselves benefit from the cheap oil.
According to Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, the cheap oil is also being smuggled to far off places in Europe like Bulgaria, Greece and Ukraine via Turkey and Cyprus. Reports suggest ISIL has already been paid in cash by the time the stolen oil reaches these points.
There can be little doubt that the best way to starve ISIL of oil revenue is to crack down on those doing this illegal trade, and mount international pressure on Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus and others in Europe to close down ISIL’s black markets and transit routes. They should also be charged under UN legislation against terrorist financing, and forced to comply with Security Council Resolution 2170, which aims to put an end to money laundering stemming from oil smuggling that contributes to ISIL operations.
The crackdown can destroy the black market trade and hit ISIL where it hurts hardest. But this can only be the case if Washington also forces its regional allies to stop financing ISIL. After all, it was their generous petrodollar cash handouts that made ISIL one of the richest terror magnets in the world - long before the extremist cult and its al-Qaeda soul mates could seize oil fields and refineries in Iraq and Syria.
Under international law, the US cannot destroy Syria’s civilian infrastructure. But Under Resolution 2170, the US can crack down on the extensive sales network and force its racketeer allies to stop trading the pirated crude oil. It’s the only way to prove this is not about mission creep and regime change, or salvaging the imperial policy in the Middle East.