WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2019) The United States intends to retain control of the oil fields in northeast Syria despite scaling down its military presence in the area, US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday.
"We have our troops out of there, and we will be bringing a lot of them back home, but again we are keeping the oil," Trump said at the beginning of his meeting with his Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House.
About 90 percent of Syrian oil reserves are concentrated to the east of the Euphrates River, the region that was previously a stronghold of Islamic State terror group (banned in Russia) and is now mainly controlled by Kurds allied with the United States.
In October, in the face of the Turkish cross-border offensive against the Kurdish militias, the United States initially withdrew its forces from northeastern Syria, but later announced that it would keep a small number of troops in the area to protect the oil fields.
