Popular uprising against US-led intervention in Northeast Syria will escalate: Analyst.
Trouble is brewing for the US-led coalition forces, with unidentified groups sporadically attacking American outposts, convoys and bases over the past several months in Northeast Syria. Ghassan Kadi, a political analyst of Syrian descent, shed light on the emerging popular resistance against US-backed militants within the country.
On 20 August, prominent members of Arab tribes in the Northeast Syria city of Aleppo and vowed to support a popular resistance against US troops and their ‘proxies’, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have been maintaining illegal bases in the oil-rich regions of Eastern Syria.
Thursday’s statement came on the heels of the Arab Al-Uqaydat tribal summit in Deir ez-Zor Governorate which held the US-led coalition responsible for murdering tribal sheikhs in the area. Syrian tribal leaders gave the US military and the SDF a month to pull out of the region.
With the issue of the Northeast Syria, meanwhile, the number of sporadic attacks against American and allied SDF military installations and convoys on the ground is soaring. On August 18, three small Kaytusha rockets exploded near a US Conoco base in Deir ez-Zor Governorate.
The political analyst believes that the “Arab tribal militia” is perhaps more accurate and descriptive than the other term that is sometimes used, namely, the “Popular Resistance of the Eastern Region” aka “Popular Resistance in Raqqa”. The latter is a paramilitary group headquartered in the province of Raqqa.
“This is an organised group that was formed under a different name by Suleiman Al-Shwakh,” Kadi explains. “Al-Shwakh was assassinated in Damascus in August 2019 and his murder remains unsolved. He was a Syrian War veteran who had fought in Aleppo and Palmyra.”
Still, the emerging resistance movement in Northeast Syria appears to be bigger than that, the expert believes. Meanwhile, the same day when three missiles struck near Conoco, a Russian military convoy returning from a humanitarian mission was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) near the At-Taim oil field, about 15 km outside the city of Deir ez-Zor. The blast claimed the life of a Russian major-general and left two troops injured.
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