Work for a more peaceful world: stop the arms trade and respect international law by withdrawing US troops from Iraq and Syria: Ben Chacko

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The killing of three US soldiers along the Jordan-Syria border risks a spiralling Middle East war, a risk heightened by the reflex blaming of Iran and the clamour for revenge driven by hawkish US politicians in an election year.

Ben Chacko (right) has noted that attacks on US forces are always presented in mass media as unprovoked. British politicians too will depict them as acts of illegal terrorism which need to be punished to shore up the “international rules-based order.” He continues:

“We should therefore be clear: US troops would not be under attack in the Middle East if they were not stationed in the Middle East, often against the wishes of the host countries”.

Bloomberg reports that the US has about 47,000 troops stationed across the region, commenting that Americans don’t know of them but Iranian-backed groups do.

US military personnel at the Buehring base camp in Udairi, in the northwestern region of Kuwait, on May 10, 2023.

Sunday’s attack was launched by a group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. US troops in Iraq have come under fire dozens of times since Israel’s invasion of Gaza began.

“What won’t be mentioned in most media reports”, Chacko observes, “is that the Iraqi government has told them to leave. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said earlier this month that their “destabilising” presence incited spillover attacks from the Gaza war that could escalate into a new civil war in the long-suffering country”.

The Iraqi parliament voted to expel all US troops more than four years ago, after the US illegally murdered Iranian general Qassim Soleimani while he was visiting Iraq as its government’s guest.

Stationing troops in a country against its wishes is not upholding an “international rules-based order” — it is an act of contempt for international law.

Tower 22, where the three US soldiers were killed, is close to the intersection of Jordan, Syria and Iraq and is described as a “critical logistical base for US forces in Syria.” US forces are certainly not in Syria at its government’s invitation. Officially, 900 troops remain there to prevent a revival of the Islamic State terror group.

Ex-president Donald Trump was more honest when he admitted they were there “only for the oil.” Syrian authorities have complained that the US illegally exports about 80% of the country’s oil output through contracts signed with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the north-east.

Iran has links to many armed groups in the region, with the spread of Iran-backed militias in Iraq one of the many unintended consequences of Britain and the US’s unprovoked attack on the latter. But if the Middle East and north Africa have been flooded with weapons, it is not primarily by Iran.

The destruction of Libya by NATO powers in 2010-11 saw militant groups seize stockpiles of weapons and ammo that were then sold abroad, a key factor in the jihadist insurgencies that have plagued the Sahel ever since.

Rockets, shells and heavy ordinance inside an abandoned bunker complex near the eastern Libyan city of Ajdabiyah

The US threw lorryloads of armaments into the Syrian civil war, admitting itself that many of the recipients ended up aligning with Isis. At the weekend, the New York Times reported that a fair proportion of Hamas’s arsenal in Gaza is actually Israeli in origin: “The very weapons that Israeli forces used to enforce a blockade of Gaza are now being used against them”.

The way to stop attacks like this, prompting a downward spiral, is to work for peace.

Israel’s allies need to cut off the weapons and logistical support enabling its Gaza genocide, which is the cause of the current escalation in attacks on Western forces and Israel-linked shipping.

The US should be pressed to respect international law and withdraw its troops from Iraq and Syria, where they are not welcome.

And we should call time on an arms trade that spreads murder and mayhem throughout the world, routinely blowing up in the faces of the countries which provide these arms to a staggering array of customers, in pursuit of short-term outcomes in conflicts like those in Libya or Syria, without thought of what may follow (Ben Chacko).

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Just seen: Al Jazeera: US and Iraq agree to start talks to end presence of US-led coalition. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says talks will take place as part of a military commission that was agreed upon in August 2023.

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