On 11 April, the US military transported a fresh shipment of oil stolen from Syria to their bases in Iraq, with at least 32 fuel tankers escorted via the illegal Al-Walid border crossing in northeast Syria. According to locals in the Al-Yarubiya countryside who spoke with SANA, the 77-vehicle convoy came from the oil-rich Hasakah region. This came shortly after the US army base in Deir Ezzor’s Conoco gas field was attacked by rockets, attributed to groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously reported that Washington’s illegal occupation had caused $107 billion in losses to the country’s oil and gas sector since 2011.
An investigation by The Cradle revealed that numerous tankers pass through illegal crossings between Iraq and Syria every week, escorted by US warplanes or helicopters. These convoys move through areas outside the control of the central state, starting from the Jazira region and passing through Hasakah. The vehicles stop for several hours before heading to the Al-Harir military site in Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), where the oil is transferred to other tanks and transported to the US base at Ain al-Assad in Iraq’s Anbar province or Halabja province, where another US military base is located. Shepherds in the region verify these claims, stating that the oil is eventually delivered to the KAR Group, a Kurdish oil company owned by Sheikh Baz Karim Barzanji, a close friend of the Barzani family.
Sheikh Baz came under scrutiny a year ago when one of his villas, reportedly used as a safe house by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, was struck by IRGC missiles, killing and injuring several agents inside. The US maintains around 900 troops in Syria, primarily split between the Al-Tanf base and the country’s resource-rich northeastern region. This occupation is illegal under international law as it was carried out without government approval.
The US army, accompanied by fighters from the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), initially occupied large areas of Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS. However, once ISIS was largely defeated, Washington shifted its focus to controlling Syria’s resources to fund its proxy militias and suppress the Syrian population.
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