Rukban

The caliphate suffered its final defeat in Syria over the weekend, giving up the ghost to U.S.-proxy Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) in the town of Baghouz, "the last piece of territory held by ISIS."

One expected more fanfare; instead, the story came and went with hardly any comment. Trump has been proclaiming "mission accomplished" for months, and he has gone back and forth about stationing U.S. troops in Syria, the latest being February's announcement that a total of 400 will remain indefinitely, 200 in Rojava and 200 at al-Tanf.

Like the Integrity Initiative, al-Tanf is one of those topics that the Western mainstream media prefers to ignore. It is a critical border crossing (Syria-Iraq-Jordan) captured by jihadists in 2016 and expanded into a permanent base by the U.S.

Al-Tanf has been in the news recently. The U.S. and its proxies refuse to allow 40,000 refugees  living at the Rukban camp located within al-Tanf to leave. Syria and Russia have tried to negotiate with the U.S. for the freedom of the refugees, and on Saturday 360 refugees were allowed to leave.

The UNHCR has gotten involved. WHO has declared the conditions at Rukban "deplorable." According to a statement released from a multilateral meeting (one the U.S. refused to participate in) yesterday on Rukban:

The position of the command of the American troops is puzzling. They themselves invaded the territory of Syria, illegally occupied the 55-kilometer zone of al-Tanf and, under false pretences, blocked humanitarian initiatives to disband the Rukban camp. Despite the assurances of our American partners about joint cooperation, their goal is clearly not to save Syrian citizens dying from insanitary conditions, hunger, cold and diseases.