Biden continues policies which put kids in cages, in Syria

By Robert Inlakesh

Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.

Joe Biden and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, backed policies towards Syria which saw innocent children separated from their families and placed in cages. But the worst part of it, is that they have no quarrels with doing it again.

Despite many having celebrated US President, Joe Biden’s, alleged policy position of eliminating the conditions which led to the separation of families and placing children in cages, the reality is that he still supports that very same policy in Syria.

Then Vice President Joe Biden, along with his pick to lead the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were amongst the most prominent people in the Obama administration to have drafted their war strategy in Syria. This strategy entailed arming, training and funding what they called “moderate rebels”, which turned out not only to fail when these forces engaged the likes of Daesh and others on the battlefield, but just so happened to align themselves with Al-Qaeda.

Biden recently signed three separate executive orders in order to reform, not necessarily legislation but policy, when it comes to the highly criticized actions of US immigration detainment facilities. However, many don’t consider that President Biden had presided over an administration who deported more refugees than Donald Trump and also helped pave the way to the highly criticized actions under the Trump administration.

Under the then Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, the CIA funneled weapons and money into extreme Takfiri Islamic groups via a covert program known as ‘Timber Sycamore’. The primary stated aim of funding these groups in Syria was to allegedly instal “moderate forces” in control in Syria, removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. Another part of this strategy was to allegedly combat the more radical groups like Daesh, which these groups rarely ever did.

The United States, alongside the likes of Saudi Arabia in Syria, funded the terrorist group known as Jaysh al-Islam (army of Islam). Jaysh al-Islam was found to have not only encaged entire families – including children of course – as far back as in 2015; but was also using them to deter airstrikes on their positions in Eastern Ghouta. This was whilst the Western mainstream press was presenting the “rebels” as being the victims, actively using their information against the Syrian government.

In the 2016 Wikileaks ‘Hillary Emails’ dump, we also learned that Hillary Clinton openly discussed Saudi Arabia and Qatar as having backed Daesh and Al-Qaeda in Syria. Not only this, but US-backed factions had openly aligned themselves with Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria) and had committed horrific atrocities on camera. One such brutal act was committed by ‘Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki’, which were backed by the United States at the time and described as “moderate rebels”, was the beheading of a 10 year old Palestinian boy, which they gleefully filmed.

There are a plethora of crimes committed by US-backed factions and the “accidental” airdropping of weapons to Daesh (which we could take hours going over), but what is most key to understand is Joe Biden’s role in these crimes. The reason Joe Biden has to be held to account for this, now, and why it should be a huge issue of concern, is due to the fact that his entire administration is seeking a continuation of its occupation of Syrian lands.

The current policy of today, however, is not necessarily one of attempting to once again fund armed groups – although that can’t be ruled out as a possibility – but rather to strangle the people of Syria. For instance, Biden’s pick to head the Pentagon’s Middle East desk, Dana Stroul, openly speaks about what objectives the US has in occupying North-Eastern Syria:

“The first one was the one-third of Syrian territory that was owned via the US military with its local partner…that one-third of Syria is the resource-rich – it’s the economic powerhouse of Syria. So where the hydrocarbons are, which obviously is very much in the public debate here in Washington these days, as well as the agricultural powerhouse.”[sic]

Additionally alarming is that Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, indicated that not only would the US stay in Syria, during his Senate Confirmation Hearing addresses, but also considered taking further action in Syria. Blinken, being one of the men behind the catastrophic US government failure in Syria which helped lead to the deaths of up to half a million people in the country, wants more pressure on a Syrian government that is unable to even re-ignite its economy to aid its impoverished population.

The biggest problem is, that through the likes of the hard-line Trump-era “Caesar Act” sanctions, the people of Syria now have little options left and suffer immensely, all due to a US obsession with destroying their country and ceasing its resource utilization. The sanctions placed upon Syria are not starving or hurting the government, but instead the people of Syria, and this economic fallout is even spilling over into Lebanon.

If the Biden administration really cared about refugees, then why continue to create them in the first place? Why not enable them to return home where many would love to go, but can’t, due to US economic warfare?

Why should a man who helped push millions of people from their homes – many of them dying in the process – be praised over some weak executive orders? From a Syrian refugee’s perspective, how can you praise the man who planned the murder of your family and the destruction of your home, simply for letting you live in his yard (the US) in the dirt (refugee camps) after the fact, yet making the decision to no longer separate you from your children during this process?

Not only this, but it’s clear from Antony Blinken having lied about Iran being months away from a Nuclear bomb, echoing Israeli Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, that the US government is perhaps seeking to pursue Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign even further. If this campaign is continued, a big part of it is focused on Syria, and it seems that the Democrat establishment is picking up where it left off in war-torn country.

Kids may or may not be in cages along the US border anymore under Biden, but in Syria, every man, woman and child lives in one big cage under Joe Biden’s policies.

This article was originally published by The Last American Vagabond on February 5, 2021.

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