Turkey on Friday agreed to put its offensive against Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria on pause, which Donald Trump said would help the United States “secure the oil” in the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump has made quite a few baffling decisions and statements regarding Syria, and the one about “taking control” of oil in the region due to the cease-fire in northern Syria has left observers looking for explanations.
“We've taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we're talking about, the oil that everybody was worried about,” Donald Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon as he praised the deal with Turkey.
Trump also brought up the oil in a string of tweets about the five-day break in hostilities in northern Syria. “The US has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey,” he tweeted.
The US president was likely referring to the oil fields in eastern Syria, which remain under Kurdish control. This part of the country, once held by Daesh* and since liberated by the formerly US-backed Kurdish militia, accounts for most of Syria's oil reserves. The United States has so far failed to facilitate the return of these oil-rich territories to the Damascus government.
The fate of local oil and of thousands of Daesh captives held in Kurdish-run makeshift prisons was called into question amid the week-long Turkish operation in northeast Syria against the Kurdish fighters, who are designated in Turkey as…
