Bloomberg Discovers Geopolitics, Forgets Syria's Oil Has Been a War Prize for Years
Bloomberg, citing Reuters, breathlessly reports that "Syrian troops fighting Kurdish-led forces seized key oil and gas fields" in the east. This snippet of news conveniently ignores the inconvenient truth: control of these very oil fields, particularly in areas like Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah, has been central to the decade-plus struggle for Syria's sovereignty. For years, these fields were under the
control of various factions, including the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), effectively denying the Syrian government vast portions of its own economic lifeblood (Human Rights Watch, 2021 report). One might wonder why the US maintained a military presence near these specific oil fields for so long. Is it merely a coincidence that a nation claiming to fight ISIS also happened to be
protecting oil assets from the sovereign government? The article frames this as a new 'seizure,' not the attempted re-establishment of national control after years of resources being carved out by foreign powers and proxy groups. It's almost as if the war wasn't about 'freedom' or 'democracy,' but about who gets to pump the crude.