I did not choose exile from the truth, and I will not let my silence turn into someone else’s profit. Syria’s oil wealth is no longer Syria’s, and this is what it is costing us in blood.
When I heard U.S. President Trump announce that Syria would become an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz — this, after months of quiet deals to reopen the Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline, the same pipeline America itself wrecked during its occupation of Iraq — my mind went straight back to 2015. I was living only a few kilometers from ISIS-held territory then, and I watched a gas and oil station explode, not once but three times, right in front of my eyes. Flames climbed into the sky, and for miles the air carried nothing but the hiss of burning fuel.
ISIS was never an accident. It was America’s instrument for stripping Syrians of what belongs to them, and it did the job exactly as designed: after an “international arrangement” dressed up as a transition, those same fighters traded their uniforms for suits and became Syria’s new rulers. Today, the group the world now calls HTS signs oil contracts over infrastructure it once blew up with its own hands — and every signature is one more American win chalked up against Iran.
We are all victims of these wars, wherever we happen to live — Syria, America, France, Germany, it makes no difference. But Syria carries something no other country does: a global war fought entirely on its own soil, for sixteen years straight. Much of it never made it into the news, but time has a way of dragging the truth into the light regardless. Israel has now admitted to assassinating a Syrian officer in 2008 who was overseeing the country’s nuclear file — and that confession was never an act of conscience. It was a message: that Syria, under Assad, had come close enough to a nuclear capability to be worth killing over. For years, Arab media pinned the murder on Hezbollah, or on “the regime” itself, and the lie took hold… until Olmert himself came out to contradict it, for reasons that suited no one but him.
Syria has since handed Turkey free rein over what remains of its stockpiled solid uranium, and every day people watch convoys of trucks, hundreds of them, hauling it out of the research centers in Hama and across the border into Turkey.
Al-Julani, Israel’s son in everything but name, has torn up the last card Syria held as a sovereign state.
Now, back to that filthy oil. The very oil whose blockade once helped bring the state to its knees, for no one’s benefit but America’s, is today, on paper, “state property.” In practice, it belongs to one man: Tom Barrack, Syria’s real president in everything but the title. Fuel prices* climb by the day, and no ordinary citizen can get what they need from it unless, of course, they happen to work for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government.
Washington has cleared the way for Iraq to send in hundreds of tankers a day, hauling Syria’s oil out of the country to be shipped off by sea, part of a wider plan to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and keep American energy giants first in line for whatever Syria’s “reconstruction” turns out to be worth. All of it is paid for in the people’s blood: barely a week goes by without news of another tanker accident, more innocent lives lost on roads that were never built to carry convoys like these. None of that troubles Tom Barrack. What troubles him is making sure the millions keep landing in his own pocket.
Yes, electricity is back, but every household ends up switching it off on their own, because the bills have climbed far past what an ordinary citizen can afford. And there is another cost this oil is extracting from us: the garbage piling up in every city and village, breeding disease through the sandfly, because there is no fuel left for a single garbage truck.. only for the convoys that ferry Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officials around.
These paradoxes are eating us alive.
Oil is in every bite of bread, every pill we swallow, every sip of water we drink, and slowly, deliberately, it is poisoning every one of us.
*Official figures on energy prices in Syria.
None of this is new. For over thirteen years of this dirty war, Syria News has documented the theft of Syria’s oil, and its wheat alongside it, under every American administration that had a hand in it: Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again. One report alone tells that story of convoys hauling out oil and grain under Washington’s own flag, and it is only one among dozens, if not hundreds, of others we’ve published on the very same theft, administration after administration.
Safaa Syria is a Syrian woman reporting on events in Syria since war was waged on her nation and Damascus fell into the hands of the HTS-ISIS gangs. For reasons obvious to every reader, we have kept her identity anonymous.
This article first appeared on Substack, rewritten for Syria News with minor edits.
Syria News serves as a vital archive and a source of independent journalism, frequently used for research and as a historical record. To preserve this crucial resource and continue our work, we rely on reader support.
Your donation directly maintains the platform and upholds a space for truth.
You can also donate with Cryptocurrencies through our donate page.
Thank you in advance.
Discover more from Syria News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
