| Can US, SDF shut down smuggling of Syrian oil?
The Trump administration is leaving several hundred troops in eastern Syria to partner with the primarily Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to protect Syrian oil east of the Euphrates against IS. The United States also considers its hold on the oil as leverage against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The US partnership with the SDF may not end the sale and smuggling of oil from these fields to the Syrian government, Dan Wilkofsky writes. “The tangled web of business interests and middlemen involved in purchasing and transporting the oil is difficult to identify let alone regulate. More importantly, the SDF has sold crude to government brokers since 2018, even as it targeted smugglers earlier this year; the SDF has only become more dependent on the government after it was left by its US backers to face Turkey’s October offensive alone.”
“Any deliberate cutback in oil sales, if it occurs, is likely to be an SDF attempt to push the uncompromising central government to negotiate in good faith,” Wilkofsky adds.
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Source Al Monitor 30 Nov 2019