Hungary Rejects Croatian Oil Route Over High Fees and EU Call to Stop Russian Oil
Sputnik – 02.08.2024
Croatia is not a reliable partner for oil transit, since it has raised the duty fivefold since 2022, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday, commenting on Brussels’ proposal to replace the Russian oil supplies stopped by Kiev with transit through Croatia.
Earlier in the day, the Financial Times reported, citing a letter from EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, that the European Commission had advised Hungary and Slovakia to abandon Russian oil and seek alternative sources in response to a complaint that Ukraine has blocked the transit of oil from Russia.
“Croatia is simply not a reliable transit country,” Szijjarto wrote on social media, adding that since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Croatia has increased the price of oil transit fivefold compared to the average market price.
Last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Ukraine had stopped the transit of Lukoil’s oil. The Slovak Economy Ministry confirmed that the country was no longer receiving oil from the Russian oil giant, which was sanctioned by Ukraine. On July 22, Szijjarto said that Hungary and Slovakia had launched consultations of the European Commission with Ukraine due to a stop in the transit of oil from Russia through the Druzhba pipeline. On Thursday, EU Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said that Kiev’s decision shows no energy supply risks for Hungary or Slovakia, so the Commission will not hold urgent consultations on the issue.
Dombrovskis said in the letter to Budapest and Bratislava that “diversification away from Russian fossil fuels should be actively pursued,” the report read on Thursday.
He reportedly added that at a meeting of representatives of all EU member states last week, “a significant number … questioned why Hungary and Slovakia had apparently not yet explored alternatives so far”.
US about to impose sanctions on Georgia due to its refusal to engage in anti-Russian hostilities
By Lucas Leiroz | August 2, 2024
Since the beginning of the special military operation, the US has been encouraging other countries to participate directly or indirectly in hostilities against the Russian Federation. Due to its recent history of war against Moscow and its territorial demands in the north, Georgia has been one of the countries most encouraged by the West to take an open stance against Russia in the current proxy war. However, Tbilisi has refused to participate in the hostilities, which is why the Caucasian country may be close to being sanctioned by the West.
In Georgia, there is a clear political polarization between pro-Western militants and the sovereigntists who advocate good relations with Russia. Currently, the parliament is controlled by the sovereigntist wing, with the Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze, often described as “pro-Russian” by the West due to his foreign policy stance. On the other hand, the opposition is extremely violent and has organized protests and demonstrations with the aim of pressuring for radical changes in the country. The leading figure of the pro-Western wing is the country’s president herself, French-born Salome Zurabishvili, who leads a major pro-EU and pro-NATO lobby.
Currently, the most controversial political issue in Georgia is the law against foreign agents, recently passed by the parliament. The law requires media groups, think tanks and individuals who receive more than 20% of foreign funding to be registered within Georgian institutions officially as “promoters of the interests of a foreign power”. Zurabishvili vetoed the law, but the prime minister approved it despite the president’s disagreement.
Since Georgia is the scene of the operations of several American and European agencies, the law severely affects the Western lobby in the country. Having to expose their financiers, pro-Western agencies in Georgia have their work discredited and lose influence over public opinion. As a result, the EU and NATO plan to “push” Georgia to a “second front” against Russia loses momentum, bringing hope for good relations with Moscow – and infuriating the West.
Since Western countries are extremely “punitive” towards sovereign states, Georgia has obviously become the target of American and European strategists. After several hostile statements, threats and even attempts at a color revolution, now the Under Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien officially announced to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Washington is planning to impose sanctions on Georgia.
O’Brien, who recently stated that NATO is on the verge of adopting a “new Russia strategy“, said that the Americans are considering the possibility of sanctioning Tbilisi. He believes that if the upcoming parliamentary elections do not effectively advance Western interests in the country, imposing sanctions will be the only option left for the US. In addition, he emphasized that the US is reviewing all cooperation and aid programs it currently has with Georgia, suggesting that other forms of economic boycott could be imposed.
“You asked about sanctions, we are actively considering our options there. I won’t preview anything, but we are looking at it (…) [The US is ready] to support everything that will contribute to fair and free parliament election in Georgia this fall (…) I’m hopeful that this can happen again in the next months,” he said.
Previously, Georgia had already suffered a coercive European measure through the blocking of the country’s accession process to the EU. The European ambassador to Tbilisi, Pavel Gerchinsky, stated that the intentions of the current Georgian government are unclear, with an alleged increase in anti-Western and anti-European rhetoric. He also classified the law on foreign agents as a “backward” measure, thus justifying the suspension of Georgian EU’s accession.
“The intentions of the current Georgian government are unclear to EU leaders. The Transparency of Foreign Influence Act is clearly a step backwards. […] Also, the anti-Western, anti-European rhetoric is completely incompatible with the declared goal of joining the European Union. Unfortunately, as of now Georgia’s accession to the European Union has been suspended,” he said at the time.
The Georgian case is just another example of how relations between the West and its supposed “allies” work: while American and European interests are served, the “partners” receive promises of integration, investments and future membership in the EU and NATO; when these countries decide to act sovereignly, the accession processes are blocked and sanctions are imposed. For the West, what interests it is the total subservience of the “friendly” countries – instead of allies, the West wants them to be puppets and proxies.
Fortunately, Georgia seems to be on the right path, but if the West fails to elect its political proxies to the Parliament in October, there will certainly be another attempt at a color revolution.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
US Recognizes Opposition Candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as Winner of Venezuela Election – Blinken
Sputnik – 02.08.2024
WASHINGTON – The United States has determined it will recognize opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez the winner of the Venezuelan presidential election, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press release.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Blinken said in the release on Thursday.
Blinken called on the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a peaceful transition of power in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law.
Moreover, Blinken also said that the United States rejects Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s “unsubstantiated” allegations against opposition leaders, including González and María Corina Machado.
Machado co-founded the Venezuelan Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Sumate which received significant financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In 2005, she traveled to the White House to meet then-US President George W Bush, a meeting that was described in classified diplomatic cables as “poking [then Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez in the eye.”
In 2014, she took a diplomatic position with the government of Panama, which gave her the ability to speak at the Organization of American States (OAS). She used that platform to publicly call for foreign intervention in Venezuela. She has since been banned from running for office.
Earlier this week, Maduro said Gonzalez and Machado must face justice.
On Thursday, RT journalist Fiorella Isabel reported that a draft resolution for the US House of Representatives was being floated around Washington looking for co-signers. That draft calls for more sanctions on Venezuela and would recognize González as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
She added that the draft was authored by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL).
In 2019, the US officially recognized Juan Guaido as the interim President of Venezuela. He was eventually removed as the leader of the opposition from his own party and currently lives in Miami, Florida.
The National Electoral Council declared Maduro president-elect for 2025-2031 after the presidential elections were held in Venezuela on July 28. The Electoral Council said Maduro won 51% of the vote.
Protests broke out the day after the election, leading to clashes between the police and protesters in Caracas. Protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails at law enforcement officers. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, 77 law enforcement officers were injured; more than 1,000 people were detained on charges of destruction of state infrastructure, incitement of hatred and terrorism.
The Venezuelan government said a number of countries interfered in the elections and the people’s right to self-determination.
Israel Has a History of Killing Hamas Leaders Who Are Trying To Secure Ceasefires
Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckless assassination of Ismail Haniyeh undermines the prospects for a peace deal and the release of the hostages
Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar, on March 26, 2024. Photo by AFP via Getty Images
By Mehdi Hasan – zeteo – July 31, 2024
“Israel’s leaders killed three birds with one stone,” wrote Reuven Pedatzur, a senior military affairs analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “They assassinated the man who had the power to make a deal with Israel; they took revenge on someone who had caused more than a few Israeli casualties; and they signaled to Hamas that communications with it will be conducted only through military force.”
Was Pedatzur referring to the Israeli assassination of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political bureau, in Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning?
No. Pedatzur died in a road traffic accident in 2014. His quote from Haaretz, above, was in response to the Israeli assassination of another senior Hamas commander, Ahmed Jabari, in November 2012, which kicked off the 2012 Gaza war.
As my former colleague at The Intercept, Jon Schwarz, documented in great detail last year, “Jabari had come to believe that it was in the best interest of Palestinians for Hamas to negotiate a long-term truce” and had been in communication with the respected Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. “Just before the assassination, [Baskin] gave Jabari a draft proposal for such a truce to review and approve. The draft was agreed to by Baskin and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, and Baskin also said he had previously shown it to Ehud Barak, then the Israeli minister of defense.”
Would Jabari have signed off on a ‘hudna,’ or long-term truce, between Hamas and Israel? We’ll never know.
Israel, in fact, has a long and cynical history of killing Hamas leaders who are in the midst of ceasefire negotiations or, even, proposing long-term truces with the Jewish state.
Remember Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas? He was assassinated less than three months after he proposed a long-term truce with Israel “if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
His successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was assassinated less than three months after he made a similar truce offer to Israel.
Then there was the Netanyahu government’s 2012 assassination of Jabari, who, as mentioned, was reviewing a “long-term mutual cease-fire” deal just “hours before he was killed,” according to Baskin.
The parallels between 2012 and 2024, between the killings of Jabari and Haniyeh, are eery.
“He was in line to die, not an angel and not a righteous man of peace,” Baskin said of Jabari shortly after his killing, “but his assassination also killed the possibility of achieving a truce and also the Egyptian mediators’ ability to function.”
The same could be said of Haniyeh. Mainstream Western media outlets agree that the Hamas leader was – by Hamas standards – a “pragmatist”; a key figure in the ongoing negotiations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages.
From Reuters:
“For all the tough language in public, Arab diplomats and officials had viewed [Haniyeh] as relatively pragmatic compared with more hardline voices inside Gaza, where the military wing of Hamas planned the October 7 attack. While telling Israel’s military they would find themselves ‘drowning in the sands of Gaza,’ he and his predecessor as Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, had shuttled around the region for talks over a Qatari-brokered cease-fire deal with Israel that would include exchanging hostages for Palestinians in Israeli jails as well as more aid for Gaza.”
From Sky News:
“Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas. He was less hard-line and militaristic than Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza and is leading the battle. Haniyeh was the public face of Hamas’s diplomacy in Arab capitals. He was leading efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.”
This was the person that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu chose to assassinate on Iranian soil on Wednesday.
Why?
Put simply, Netanyahu and his coalition of fascists and bigots do not want a deal to release the hostages. They prefer to continue the war, no matter the cost to Gaza’s civilians or to their own citizens still held inside of the enclave. Despite Joe Biden’s ludicrous claims to the contrary, it is Netanyahu who has been the biggest obstacle to a deal to free Israel’s hostages in Gaza. The former spokesperson for the hostages’ families says Netanyahu rejected a deal. Benny Gantz, a former member of Israel’s war cabinet, says Netanyahu blocked a deal. Israeli defense officials tell Haaretz that “Netanyahu systematically foiled the negotiations to free the hostages.”
There is nothing new here. To misquote Winston Churchill, Israel has always preferred “war-war” over “jaw-jaw.” Israeli governments – especially those led by Netanyahu – have preferred having Hamas as the permanent enemy – or as an “asset,” to quote the current Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – rather than trying to do a permanent deal with Hamas.
As the late Israeli journalist Pedatzur wrote, in his analysis of the disastrous Jabari assassination in 2012:
“Our decision makers, including the defense minister and perhaps also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knew about Jabari’s role in advancing a permanent cease-fire agreement. … Thus the decision to kill Jabari shows that our decision makers decided a cease-fire would be undesirable for Israel at this time, and that attacking Hamas would be preferable.”
Change the name ‘Jabari’ to ‘Haniyeh’ above, and those words could have been written today.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The Israeli Terrorist State
By Craig Murray | July 31, 2024
It is no longer possible to categorise the nihilistic violence of the Israeli state. It appears to have no objective other than violence and an urge for desolation.
In 24 hours Israel has murdered the man with whom it would need to negotiate hostage release in the short term and political settlement in the long term, and a key figure in its most dangerous potential military enemy which has refrained from full-on war.
In doing so it has violated the territory, indeed the capitals, of two crucial regional states.
Israel has also taken a policy decision that the mass rape of detainees by soldiers – and, somewhat strangely, homosexual rape in particular – is acceptable in war and not to be punished.
Ironically Israel has also underlined its genocidal intent in Gaza by proving that it has the technical ability to carry out targeted attacks, and that the flattening of entire cities with 2,000lb bombs and the massacre of tens of thousands of innocents has been a policy choice.
The western media appears paralysed by this. I have seen virtually no serious comment or analysis. Nor has anybody pointed out the contrast between Israel’s lies about mass rape on October 7 and Israel’s now-admitted policy of tolerating rape of detainees.
The political class seems even more paralysed than the media class. Caught in their commitment to Zionism – basically bought and paid for – they have nothing to say about these incredible events more sensible than Kamala Harris’s zombie-like incantation of “Israel’s right to self-defence”.
The British Foreign Office has failed to produce its promised considered reaction to the ICJ Opinion on the illegality of Israeli occupation, let alone responded sensibly to Israel’s crazed paroxysm of destruction this week.
For me it is now axiomatic that there is no two state solution and that apartheid Israel must be completely dismantled as an entity. I believe that more and more people around the entire globe believe that now.
And if we have to dismantle our own political and media classes to get there, so be it.
Israel’s allies block Security Council statement condemning Tehran attack
The Cradle | August 1, 2024
The US, UK, and France blocked a Russian-proposed statement at the UN Security Council (UNSC) condemning the assassination of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran’s envoy to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani said on 1 August.
“Russia’s proposed statement condemning Israel’s heinous act was blocked by the US, UK, and France,” Iravani told Russian media following an emergency UNSC meeting on Wednesday night.
“It is now absolutely necessary to hold the occupying [Israeli] regime accountable for the atrocities it committed,” the Iranian diplomat added. “This regime cannot be allowed to escape accountability and consequences for the violations it has committed.”
During the session, Iravani stressed that Tehran “reserves its inherent right to self-defense in accordance with international law” and said that “the responsibility of the United States as a strategic ally and main supporter of the Israeli regime in the region cannot be overlooked in this horrific crime. This act could not [have] occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the US.”
Permanent UNSC members Russia and China strongly condemned Israel’s attacks on the Iranian and Lebanese capitals, blasting Tel Aviv for once more sabotaging Gaza ceasefire talks and pushing the region to the brink of all-out war.
“China is deeply concerned about the potential for this incident to further destabilize the region,” Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative to the UN, emphasized during the meeting. “China strongly opposes and condemns recent irresponsible actions, including Israel’s attacks on southern Beirut,” he added.
Fu also called on Tel Aviv to cease all military actions in Gaza and appealed to “influential countries” to “put more pressure and work more vigorously … to put out the flames of war in Gaza.”
Russia’s first deputy envoy to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, also condemned Haniyeh’s killing, calling it an “attempt” to drag Iran into war.
“This provocative attack was carried out while the Hamas leader was in Iran on an official invitation to attend the inauguration ceremony of the President-elect of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian. Those behind this political assassination had to realize how dangerous the consequences could have been for the entire region,” Polyansky said.
“The misguided practice of targeted liquidations of prominent political and military figures is bringing the Middle East to the brink of a region-wide war,” the Russian diplomat added.
Feda Abdelhady Nasser, the deputy permanent observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, told the gathered diplomats that the global community “has a choice to make” between “peace and security” or letting “Israel drag us all to the abyss.”
“Israel has been the oppressor, tormentor, and murderer of Palestinians for decades, and it is the longstanding destabilizer of our region,” Nasser highlighted.
Lebanon’s Acting Permanent Representative to the UN, Hadi Hashem, contested Israel’s claims that the attack on the Beirut suburb of Dahye this week was an act of “self-defense.”
“Israel’s claim that it seeks to protect the population it occupies is a display of hypocrisy,” Hachem said, adding, “The real goal of Israel is to prolong and escalate the hostilities. And it is ironic that the killer of tens of thousands of children in Gaza sheds tears for the children of the occupied Syrian Golan.”
Similarly, Syria’s UN ambassador, Qusai al-Dahhak, stressed that “Israel is responsible for the crime in Majdal Shams” and noted that the territory is Syrian, accusing Israel of “weaponizing” the attack on the Druze community “to continue its aggression on the states of the region.”
Robert Wood, deputy US ambassador to the UN, called on UNSC members with influence over Iran “to increase pressure on it to stop escalating its proxy conflict against Israel and other actors.”
France and the UK took a similar line, reiterating a call for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza and condemning what they said was Iranian support for “destabilizing actors in the region.”
Lebanon files complaint at UNSC, ITU, accuses ‘Israel’ of cyberwarfare
Al Mayadeen | August 1, 2024
The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has filed a complaint with the United Nations Security Council and the Secretary-General of the United Nations through its permanent mission in New York over the Israeli occupation’s repeat violations of Lebanon’s cyberspace.
The complaint calls on Security Council member states to condemn the Israeli cyber attacks on Lebanon, which pose a serious threat to civil aviation services and endanger the security and safety of communication networks, devices, applications, and electronic data in vital Lebanese facilities.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also requested its permanent mission in Geneva to file a complaint with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The complaint urges the ITU to take the necessary technical measures to stop these attacks and assist Lebanon in ensuring the proper functioning of its communication networks.
The Ministry’s actions are based on a report from the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications, which revealed the source of interference in northern occupied Palestine that has caused a decline in the accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in Lebanon, affecting transport and communication services.
The report also indicated the presence of repeated warnings from the Network Time Protocol server, showing the frequent loss of GPS signals and a decline in the quality of service and user experience for mobile network operators.
Since the onset of the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip in October 2023 and the escalation along the Lebanon-occupied Palestine border area, residents in Beirut have intermittently experienced disruptions in the functioning of widely-used electronic maps, such as Google Maps, and interference with GPS signals.
This disruption in location services for transportation applications, like Uber, is attributed to the interference with GPS signals. Lebanon accuses the Israeli occupation of deliberately causing this interference to hinder land and air transportation amid the ongoing escalation in southern Lebanon.
Not the first complaint
Lebanon’s permanent mission to the United Nations lodged in February a formal complaint to the UN Security Council against the Israeli attacks in South Lebanon, which was not the first time.
The submitted complaint detailed that an Israeli drone, using a guided missile, targeted a residential building in the city of Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, resulting in the martyrdom of 10 people, including women and children.
The mission stated that these strikes amount to a “war crime” while addressing the rotating President of the Security Council Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.
Iraq boosts security on Syrian border after US proxies free hundreds of ISIS fighters
The Cradle | August 1, 2024
The Iraqi armed forces have increased security along the country’s border with Syria following the release of hundreds of ISIS fighters from prison camps controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
“The porous nature of the Iraq–Syria border, coupled with the ongoing conflict in the region, creates ideal conditions for ISIS to regroup and launch attacks,” Ahmad al-Sharifi, a strategic expert, told Shafaq News Agency on 1 August, adding that Baghdad has increased patrols along the border region and are “closely monitoring the situation in northeastern Syria.”
Sharifi also explained that the prisoner release is a result of the need by the SDF to “free up manpower for the frontlines” to face a potential confrontation with Turkiye.
In mid-July, authorities from the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) issued a general amnesty that has so far secured the release of over 1,500 Syrian ISIS fighters convicted of terrorism-related offenses, provided they “did not participate directly in combat” against the SDF.
The US-backed SDF holds thousands of ISIS fighters and their family members in around two dozen prison camps in occupied northeast Syria. These include 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.
Kurdish officials said the amnesty was based “on the recommendation” of the tribal forum titled “Dialogue, Safety, Construction for a Unified Decentralized Syria,” held in Hasakah on 25 May.
“We, the Shabak, Christian, Yezidi, Kakayi, and Turkmen communities, are afraid of the resurgence of ISIS like the tragedy that occurred in 2014. Now that the SDF has released these fighters, where will they go? They will return to the border of Nineveh province or go to the Kurdistan Region, so the communities living in Nineveh are afraid,” Majed Shabaki, an activist from Mosul, told Kurdistan 24 last week.
“All those released by SDF have been dispersed along the Iraqi borders, and there is no monitoring. According to gathered information by the Iraqi government, none of these released ISIS fighters hold Iraqi citizenship and are all foreigners,” Mohammed Kakeyi, chairman of the Nineveh Provincial Council’s Security and Defense Committee, revealed to the Kurdish news outlet.
The mass release of ISIS fighters in northeast Syria coincides with an expansion of Turkiye’s military campaign against Kurdish groups on its borders with Iraq and Syria, plus renewed attacks by local resistance factions against US bases in both nations.
The move by the SDF also follows an ongoing resurgence of the extremist armed group in Syria, where they have repeatedly launched bloody attacks against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
In 2022, the US military described the SDF-run prison camps as an ISIS “army in waiting.”
America’s Syrian Gulag
By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | August 1, 2024
At the beginning of last month the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Ethan Goldrich, granted an interview to Rudaw, which is something like PBS for Iraqi Kurdistan. He emphasized that the United States has no plan to end its occupation of northeast Syria, where the U.S. continues to maintain some nine hundred troops under the guise of preventing the resurgence of the Islamic State. The U.S. claims it is in Syria under the authorization of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 to bring an end to the “Syrian Crisis,” however much of the crisis has ended, and where it has not it is primarily due to foreign occupation. Overall, the interview shows that the U.S. is continuing its dead-end policy, but Goldrich does say something interesting: the United States has concerns about providing “humanitarian” assistance for a network of prisons for IS fighters.
To those who know about the United States’ continued presence in Syria supporting the Kurdish separatists and their military known as the Syrian Democratic Force [SDF], it is commonly said that the American motive is to steal Syrian oil and grain. One would also wonder how much nine hundred soldiers could accomplish, but of course as usual they are actually there as hostages, to ensure that in Syria cannot try to retake this area without killing Americans and thus unleashing the wrath of the U.S. government. This prison network provides another important angle to the occupation. While the prisons in Syrian Kurdistan are not secret, they are also not well known. However, CNN (of all places) recently featured an excellent investigation exposing that more than 50,000 humans are kept in a network of twenty-seven facilities in Syria. CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward was given rare access to the prisons and her reporting is illuminating. All of the inmates are denied access to any form of legal process and have no chance of release besides a vague hope that their home countries may repatriate them. Everything the United States has done in Syria, of course, it has been done in the name of human rights; but it seems to be the case that all of these individuals would have had a better chance of receiving some form of trial and definite sentencing under the government of the Syrian Arab Republic. At the very least, they could not be denied a legal process to a greater extent than they currently are.
There are two primary categories of prisoners the U.S.-funded facilities are holding in Syria. The first are accused Islamic State terrorists—most of them probably are fighters captured by the SDF, but in the absence of a legal process it is impossible to know—and families of Islamic State militants. The largest prison is known as “Panorama” and holds 4,000 inmates. According to CNN, legal experts have called it, “A U.S.-funded legal black hole, worse than Guantanamo Bay.” Clarissa Ward was allowed to see two cells and speak to a handful of prisoners. The first thing one notices is that this is a “nice” facility. One would imagine the SDF would hold prisoners in some ancient Ottoman fortress, but this is clearly a modern and newly built prison for which the U.S. taxpayer has paid a fortune. It is overcrowded, but nothing like the images one commonly sees of third world prisons. Of course it was a managed tour, as Ward acknowledged in her report. The problem is that the inmates have been there for years and have no legal rights, though an SDF official claimed that they intend to reintegrate these people into society; it has just not been possible to make progress in that regard as no country will take them.
While the men are mostly kept in conventional prisons, the women and children, who are not accused of any crime, are kept in what must be the world’s largest literal concentration camp, Al Hol. The camp holds 40,000 people. Five years after the fall of the caliphate there is no plan for what to do with the individuals stored at this desert camp. Many of the women remain ideologically committed, though Ward also spoke to one former American citizen who has fully turned against IS and even stopped covering in the camp, but she has had her U.S. citizenship stripped on grounds that there was an error in her naturalization process. At a certain age—supposedly eighteen, but according to inmates as early as fourteen—the boys are removed from the camp and sent to the prisons to stop the teens from marrying and producing a “new generation of Islamic extremists.” While the conditions appear to to be broadly humane, if bleak, it is indeed hard to imagine a better breeding ground for radical Islam than this desert city of IS wives denied human rights by a United States proxy. It is of course the case that IS arose from American managed prisons in Iraq in the first place.
The biggest question is why CNN was given this access, with the SDF volunteering information about a prison system which has been criticized by basically every major human rights organization. Based on the interviews it seems to me that the SDF wants out of this obligation. The United States is functionally making them run a Gulag Archipelago and even if they are paid for it, running the prisons consumes an enormous amount of man hours by personnel who could be put to other uses. Further, there is the constant risk of breakouts (as happened in 2022) and of terrorist groups trying to liberate the camp. However, the United States clearly has no other plan for the ultimate fate of these humans, unless they intend to use them to unleash a new wave of terrorism. This is simply yet another policy where our ruling class has no exit strategy. It seems that the U.S. will occupy northeast Syria forever, if only to imprison some 50,000 people without trial. The irony, of course, is that they will continue to justify their presence by saying they need to bring human rights to Syria, just not for those trapped in this desert Guantanamo.
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