Rukban: A US-Controlled Concentration Camp in Syria

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a concentration camp is defined as “a place where large numbers of people are kept as prisoners in extremely bad conditions, especially for political reasons.” It is undeniable that the Rukban camp fits this definition to the letter.

by Whitney Webb

DAMASCUS, SYRIA — The United States military has rejected offers to resolve the growing humanitarian crisis in the Rukban refugee camp in Syria, which sits inside a 55 km zone occupied by the U.S. along the Syria-Jordan border. The U.S. has also refused to let any of the estimated 40,000 refugees — the majority of which are women and children — leave the camp voluntarily, even though children are dying in droves from lack of food, adequate shelter and medical care. The U.S. has also not provided humanitarian aid to the camp even though a U.S. military base is located just 20 km (12.4 miles) away.

The growing desperation inside the Rukban camp has received sparse media coverage, likely because of the U.S.’ control over the area in which the camp is located. The U.S. has been accused of refusing to let civilians leave the area — even though nearly all have expressed a desire to either return to Syrian government-held territory or seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Turkey — because the camp’s presence helps to justify the U.S.’ illegal occupation of the area.

Though the U.S. has long justified its presence in al-Tanf as necessary to defeat Daesh (ISIS), the U.S. government has also acknowledged that al-Tanf’s true strategic importance lies in U.S. efforts to “contain” Iran by blocking a connection from Iran to Syria through Iraq. Al-Tanf lies near the area where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan meet. Thus, in the U.S.’ game of brinkmanship with Iran, Rukban’s estimated 40,000 inhabitants have become pawns whose basic needs are ignored by their occupiers.

U.S. shows no interest in meeting

On Tuesday, delegations from Russia, Syria, the UN, and the Rukban refugee camp met to discuss the fate of the camp’s inhabitants after a UN survey found that 95 percent of the camp’s inhabitants wanted to leave the camp, while 83 percent wanted to return to their hometowns in areas of Syria now under Syrian government control.

However, the U.S. military and State Department officials in nearby Jordan rejected an invitation to Tuesday’s meeting. The U.S. military also prohibited a Syrian-Russian delegation from entering the Rukban camp on Tuesday. The delegation had sought to assess conditions in the camp, which have become increasingly desperate according to reports from a variety of outlets, including U.S. government-funded outlets like Voice of America.

The U.S.’ refusal to attend the meeting or allow the delegation passage comes less than a month after the U.S. military blocked the entry of evacuation buses overseen by Russian and Syrian forces that would have allowed refugees to leave the camp.

The buses would have entered through the “humanitarian corridors” that were recently opened on the Syrian-controlled side of the U.S.-occupied enclave. While camp inhabitants can, in theory, leave the camp through the corridors on foot, the barren area’s remoteness makes such evacuations unfeasible without vehicle transport. Although some families have left this way, the lack of record keeping within the camp has made it impossible to know how many have tried leaving this way since the corridors were opened last month.

An aeriel photo of Rukban, between the Jordan and Syria borders, Feb. 14, 2017. Photo | AP

An often overlooked problem that has prevented them from leaving is that U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained “moderate rebel” groups have been known to block camp inhabitants from leaving, demanding large payments in U.S. dollars to leave the area. The U.S. military took control of Al-Tanf alongside “moderate” rebel forces in 2014 after wresting the area from Daesh. Many of those opposition groups have since been revealed to have ties and sympathies to terrorist groups, including Daesh.

The U.S. has not given a reason for its rejection of Tuesday’s meeting and had previously said that its rejection of the evacuation buses was based on its view that the buses did not meet the U.S.’ “protection standards.”

Horrific conditions and a U.S. shrug

While the U.S. has claimed that it has blocked refugees from leaving on Russian-Syrian buses are under U.S. “protection,” it has done little to abet the suffering of the tens of thousands of civilians in Rukban, even though the area is under complete U.S. military control and a U.S. military base is just a few miles away. Indeed, the extent of U.S. “aid” to the Rukban camp has been medical training of the handful of nurses in the camp, who work in conditions they describe as being like “the Stone Age” owing to the chronic lack of basic medications and doctors.

While medical care is decidedly lacking, the most pressing problem is the access to food, as starvation has become a real threat for those living in Rukban. Last October the opposition-aligned news service, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), reported that the Rukban camp had been without food or essential supplies for months. Only two aid deliveries, managed jointly by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the UN, were able to enter the camp.

One of those shipments, however, almost didn’t happen after the UN delayed the aid “for logistical and security reasons.” While the UN did not specify which “security reasons” had prompted the delay, it was apparently not the Syrian government, as the UN also said in the same statement that the convoy had received approval from Damascus. This suggests that the “security” concerns were related to U.S.-backed militants in the U.S.-controlled area surrounding al-Tanf. Notably, Russian and Syrian sources have claimed that these same militants often “plunder” the aid intended for the camp’s inhabitants for themselves.

Children look for food scraps in a pile of trash in the Rukban camp in Syria, Nov, 2018. Photo | SNHR

Since then, the situation inside the camp has continued to deteriorate. Indeed, things have gotten so desperate that, in January, a mother attempted to set herself and her three children on fire after she couldn’t find food for three straight days and preferred to give her children a quick death rather than watch them starve. Others in the camp rescued the family, though the mother and her infant were seriously injured. Recently aid from the UN and SARC arrived in early February, the first aid shipment in over three months.

The lack of food combined with the lack of medical care has been responsible for scores of deaths in the camp — the majority of which are of children under the age of two, who often die from malnutrition and preventable diseases. Others have died from freezing weather owing to a lack of adequate shelter, with eight children dying in January for that very reason. Satellite images taken of the camp in early March showed the recent creation of a mass grave containing an estimated 300 bodies adjacent to the camp.

Despite the desperate conditions less than 13 miles from its military base, the U.S. has declined to send food, doctors, medical supplies or other forms of aid to Rukban’s inhabitants, while also preventing them from leaving. However, the U.S. has been providing militant groups in the same area with military and logistical support.

Rukban provides a pretext

In addition to presiding over the squalid and starvation conditions in the Rukban camp, the U.S. has also given militant groups present in the area it controls — including Daesh terrorists who have “embedded” themselves in the camp on the U.S.’ watch — free rein to terrorize the camp’s refugees. These militant groups not only control the flow of food and aid in the camp but terrorize its most vulnerable inhabitants, forcing women and children into sex slavery and engaging in human trafficking. All of this is taking place in a “deconfliction zone” controlled by the U.S. military.

These extremist groups, including Daesh, are well-armed, according to Jordanian Brigadier General Sami Kafawin, who told NBC News in 2017 that these groups “have whole weapons systems … small arms, RPGs, anti-aircraft.”

The official reason for the U.S. base in al-Tanf has long been counterterrorism operations that ostensibly target Daesh. However, very few attacks against the terror group have been launched from this base and a UN report released last August found that Daesh had been given “breathing space” in U.S.-occupied areas of Syria, including al-Tanf. The U.S. has stated that it uses the al-Tanf base to train Syrian opposition fighters who then control the area around the base, including Rukban.

Unidentified Syrian rebels surround a piece of US weaponry during training by an American special forces member in Tanf. Photo | Hammurabi’s Justice News

With the U.S. now having claimed that Daesh has been completely defeated in Syria, the official justification for its illegal occupation of Syrian territory is wearing thin. With that justification now on shaky ground, the U.S. is increasingly having to acknowledge its main motive for its presence in al-Tanf — containing Iran and keeping Syria divided.

Indeed, a recent Reuters article notes that the U.S.-controlled area around al-Tanf that includes the Rukban camp “is designed to shield U.S. troops at the Tanf garrison and maintain for Washington a strategic foothold in an area close to a crucial supply route for Iranian weapons entering Syria from Iraq.” This was confirmed by General Joseph Votel late last year when he told NBC News that the U.S. base in al-Tanf was key in countering “the sway of Iran” in Syria.

This followed statements made last July by National Security Advisor John Bolton that U.S. troops would remain in Syria “as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East.” This policy of Iran containment has clearly guided U.S. policy in Syria of late, with at least 1,000 U.S. troops set to stay in Syria illegally despite Daesh’s defeat and President Donald Trump’s recent calls for a troop withdrawal.

The U.S. has been accused of using the civilians trapped in Rukban as a “shield” for its continued operations in Syria aimed at containing Iran’s regional influence. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this month that “the fact that people are not allowed to leave [the camp] and are held hostage makes one suggest that the U.S. needs this camp to continue justifying its illegitimate presence there.” There appear to be few other explanations for the U.S.’ refusal to let camp inhabitants leave the area.

The hypocrisy of U.S. “humanitarian concerns”

The situation in the Rukban camp reveals the dark reality behind the U.S.’ occupation of Syrian territory in Al-Tanf and elsewhere. In order to pursue its policy of Iran “containment” and a divided and partitioned Syria, the U.S. is willing to imprison some 40,000 people — many of them children — in a concentration camp where international aid is blocked and where food is so scarce that mothers are setting themselves and their children on fire so they can avoid slowly starving to death.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a concentration camp is defined as “a place where large numbers of people are kept as prisoners in extremely bad conditions, especially for political reasons.” It is undeniable that the Rukban camp fits this definition to the letter.

That the U.S. justifies its aggressive policies around the world — from Syria to Venezuela and elsewhere — as being motivated by “humanitarian concerns” — when a refugee camp under the U.S.’ complete control in Syria is facing starvation conditions and its inhabitants are being forcefully kept confined in the camp by the U.S. military despite their expressed desire to leave — is an obscene Orwellian twist.  All this to “contain” Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Top photo | The unofficial Rukban camp for displaced Syrians, between the Jordan and Syria borders, Feb. 14, 2017. Raad Adayleh | AP

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Syria’s Rukban Now Little More Than a US-Controlled Concentration Camp – and the Pentagon Won’t Let Refugees Leave

IF Donald Trump is indeed working for the betterment of mankind, nay Americans, then why are American forces still there in Syria after he announced their withdrawal, a few months ago?

Is it about making America great again, or for a Greater Israel?

14 thoughts on “Rukban: A US-Controlled Concentration Camp in Syria”

  1. Mar 29.19 | F. William Engdahl The Lost Hegemon| file:///C:/Users/pc/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/UM0ZX5SJ/Washington_Makes_Jihad_in_Kosovo_to_Control_Oil_-_Excerpt_of_my_Bestseller_Book_The_Lost_Hegemon.pdf

  2. The Jews’ US Tyranny wardog has a “concentration camp?!” Well, the US Tyranny needs a “concentration camp” to go with their gulag in Cuba, and the numerous political prisons providing “jobs” all around the American country. As the Ukrainian and Russian people learned post 1918, it’s not a Jew run tyranny without somewhere to put those not aligned with 2 + 2 being 5.

    “Ignorance is Strength.” I’m weak.

  3. Very Nazi. Also very cowardly. Using the hostages as human shields (as Tanf is surrounded on three sides by superior forces). All the while lying to everone about every aspect of the situation. This is truly despicable, a black stain upon the empire which cannot be unseen.

    1. “Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s., the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentrados (reconcentration camps) set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868–78). The term saw wider use around the Second Boer War (1899–1902), when the British operated such camps in South Africa for interning Boers.” –Wikipedia The first wholesale use of concentration camps were by the British.

      The Nazi’s just adapted the already existing technology.

      Of note is that the Jews of the World, being the first of any nation to declare war (1933) in what became WW-II, were enemy combatants not civilians. Jew enemy combatants under Nazi control were kept, like many other POWS, illegally in work camps, not concentration camps.

      “Ignorance is Strength.” I’m weak.

  4. Its no Secert…THE USA IS THE MOST “EVIL-EMPIRE” IN THE “REAL-STORY” OF THIS PLANET…and they call themselves CHRISTIANS?!?

    1. No Kennyboy, it is the British, they are still the ones to tell the Americans what to do and have been for eternity.
      And they call them Christians too.

      1. You’re Right about That Too…I always like to forefront the USA since they belong in the Same bed together…Course the Real Top dog of the “Big-Three” (Vatican-City of London-Washington DC) is the VATICAN, Who actually created so-called “Christianity” via the Roman empire.

  5. Though the U.S. has long justified its presence in al-Tanf as necessary to defeat Daesh (ISIS), the U.S. government has also acknowledged that al-Tanf’s true strategic importance lies in U.S. efforts to “contain” Iran by blocking a connection from Iran to Syria through Iraq

    They have justified nothing!! They have implemented these terrorist units and used them as an excuse to illegally construct military bases in every country in the world never mind Syria. They will not let people leave because they are afraid of the truth reaching the wider population – this would be catastrophic for america.

    And their soldiers think that they are acting morally, do they even have one ethical bone in their bodies? Really …..

  6. Lets be VERY Clear about the WHITE Race though…THEY are “Attempting” to turn the ENTIRE planet into a “Concentration Camp”
    that THEY control…What do you think “Agenda 2021/2030” is all about??? WHO is behind IT???
    WHO is frightened about “Immigration” and “Borders and Walls”???
    ONLY THE WHITE RACE.
    I came to the conclusion WHAT 9/11 was Really all about some time ago…STOP “NESARA” (NATIONAL-ECONOMIC-SECURITY- AND-REFORMATION-ACT)
    It was ALWAYS about WHITE SUPREMACY…NOT allowing EVERYONE (Especially BLACK people!) REPARATIONS for their ENSLAVEMENT of them!
    EVERYTHING on this planet was STOLEN from “Colored Races”…EVEN THE “REAL-STORY” ABOUT “DIVINE CREATION”…AND “WHO” WAS “FIRST-BORN”…THE BLACK MELANIN PEOPLE”.
    NO CHANCE IT WILL EVER HAPPEN THE “WAY” THEY WANT THOUGH!

    1. Yes there is something mentioned in Isaiah, in that what was stolen will be given back – it is something that I very much look forward too! It will make these thieves look stupid.

    2. Fuck, that was a dumb comment.
      Read up about the Kalergi plan to genocide the white race. Whites being a mere 6 percent of the total population.
      Get out of our countries you scum. Wall’s work well to keep out the low iq filth genetic rats like you out!
      Stop blaming whites for Jew deeds

      1. @Titus Virllus
        OBVIOUSLY, You don’t even Know Your Own HIS-TORY…You should do some REAL research, because YOU will discover that much of IT DOES proves that MUCH of what I post here about this subject WAS WRITTEN BY “WHITE” PEOPLE also known as “HiS-Storians”…Just check it out for yourself.
        It All started about 6 or 7000 years ago when the Neanderthoaus first arrive in what is now called the Eurasian continent…From there spreading to China; India; Southern Asia; the Americas; The Islands around the world…and EVERYWHERE They went they would just TAKE whatever they Pleased, mostly by FORCE.
        They attempted to rewrite the REAL-Story with their version called “History” so as to convince any doubters that their conqoring was Legit.
        Only LOADS of info STILL remains (Written by Whites)…Understand???
        AND Yet, everywhere HE has gone they actually Believe they OWN their STOLEN Property!
        Take AFRICA as an example…In south Africa White are being asked to return that property to its RIGHTFUL owners BLACK people…and Yet they will rather FIGHT than give it back!!!
        WHAT Gaul!!! IF the table was turned WHAT do you Think THEY would do …Do you think even for a Split-Second THEY would do???
        DO YOU THINK “WHITE” AMERICA WOULD RETURN THIS COUNTRY BACK TO ITS “INDIGENOUS PEOPLE”???
        THEY don’t even want to consider “Reparations” EVEN NOW…To its REAL Owners!
        THINK ABOUT “THAT” ATTITUDE TITUS.
        What would YOU do if I came over to YOUR Home and told you to GTF Out, because WANT it for Myself???

      2. Whites have been trying to exterminate themselves, why don’t you wake up? Who started and fought in both great wars and by the way dragged in every other nation to help them fight each other, who?
        Who is fighting in every conflict worldwide, yes you have got it? And lastly but no the least, who invented vaccinations? And what do you think the purpose of this is for.
        Awakened yet?

  7. Remembering what I recall In the “Old (Black) Jewish law system, anything “Stolen” HAD to be returned to the owner…Anything that was Destroyed/Killed MUST be replaced SEVENFOLD…I see That as a HUGE CLUE about what transpires in the time left remaining for the THIEVES controlling this Planet.
    IT, may NOT mean just about “Material” restoration…MORE Importantly SPIRITUAL Restoration as WE once Had LONG AGO…More about That in the days ahead!
    Remember…IT was Not only the MATERIAL WEALTH that was “Stolen”…IT WAS THE “IDENTITY” OF “DIVINE SOURCE” CREATOR THAT WAS “STOLEN”…UNDERSTAND???

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