US gov’t blocks with Moscow to defend stake in Middle East

BY MAGGIE TROWE

In recent months Washington and Moscow have forged a strategic bloc to tamp down instability and combat in Syria and open the door to new attacks on Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. The U.S. government judges that this new axis, which includes working with Tehran, can better advance its imperialist interests in the region.

The deal includes shoring up the brutal regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the most stable force in the area, as well as recognizing de facto autonomy of the Syrian Kurds. Moscow carried out a partial withdrawal of forces last month.

A truce put in place in March permits military action against Islamic State as well as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.

Both Washington and Moscow have stepped up attacks against Islamic State. Moscow’s bombers have backed Assad’s forces, joined by combat troops from Iran and Hezbollah, in ousting IS from Palmyra, pressing them back toward the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate in Raqqa. On April 4 Islamic State forces were driven out of al-Qaryatain, 60 miles west of Palmyra.

Washington carried out 17 different strikes against Islamic State across Syria and Iraq March 31. To advance their efforts, the Pentagon is considering increasing the number of U.S. special operations forces in Syria. They would like to cobble together Arab opposition forces to work with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to get to Raqqa first.

In Iraq, artillery fire from U.S. Marines on the ground at newly established Fire Base Bell and U.S. airstrikes pounded Islamic State some 50 miles south of Mosul.

Washington counts on Peshmerga combatants from the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq in this fight, as well as U.S.-trained Iraqi special forces and the less competent Iraqi regular army.

“If I was told I was there to fight for the unity of Iraq, I would not stay a single minute,” Peshmerga commander Kemal Kirkuki told Rudaw news service in an interview published April 2. He said Iraq should be replaced by three separate countries of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, as existed before the imperialist victors of World War I imposed new borders a century ago. “We will be good neighbors, and we can help each other.”

As a result of years of war and plummeting oil prices, the Iraqi economy is in shambles. The government struggles to pay wages and pensions. Unemployment is at an estimated 50 percent, and much higher in IS-occupied areas.

The devastating civil war in Syria began in 2011, after the government brutally crushed mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of Syrians demanding political rights and an end to Assad’s regime. Against this backdrop, Islamic State, a brutal split from al-Qaeda with a leadership that includes former officers of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, seized a sizable area in both Syria and Iraq.

The five years of bloody war in Syria has left half a million dead and millions homeless. Refugees with the means have attempted to get to Europe, with almost a million making it last year.

A scheme adopted in 2015 to relocate some 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy throughout the European Union has resulted in only 600 being moved.

The EU has now reached agreement with Turkey to send Ankara cash in exchange for rulers there taking steps to cut the refugee flow and to accept refugees from detention camps in Greece. The first levy, mainly Pakistanis, were deported to Turkey April 6.

“Greece does not want to host us. Turkey is not allowing us. Where should we go?” one Iraqi refugee told Reuters. “We drown in the sea with our children, that’s it.”

Iran’s economy recovers

The Iranian economy, larger than Australia’s and the second largest in the Mideast, is picking up as the deal to ease sanctions in exchange for Tehran’s agreement to curtail progress toward nuclear weapons goes into effect. The deal was brokered by Washington last July as part of the U.S. rulers’ pivot toward Tehran and Moscow.

In January Tehran announced a $600 billion increase in trade with China over the next 10 years, and in February, a $40 billion deal with Moscow.

Iran’s oil production rose by 100,000 barrels per day in March to 3.2 million bpd, the highest level in nearly four years. Tehran registered a positive balance of trade for the first time in nearly 37 years, in spite of rock-bottom world oil prices.

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