Spotlight: U.S. policy leads to chaos in Syria, region

The U.S. policy has been the main drive behind the chaos and the conflict that have torn Syria apart over the past five years, a Syrian expert said in an interview with Xinhua on Saturday.

Since the very beginning, the U.S. rhetoric has been biased in favor of a magnified insurgency in Syria, by quickly demonizing the administration of President Bashar al-Assad, and accusing him of being illegitimate, Osama Danura, a Syrian political researcher holding a PhD in political science, told Xinhua.

U.S. President Barack Obama has repeatedly urged Assad to leave power since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, though he had trouble finding a substitute for the embattled leader.

Such statements were seen to encourage the insurgency and inflame the situation, by pushing rebel groups to further destabilize Syria, Danura said.

"Such a stance by the U.S. reflects the imperialism of the U.S. administration, by giving itself the right to determine the legitimacy of the Syrian government without paying a heed to the real aspirations of the Syrian people," Danura added.

On the other hand, the United States, through its regional allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have played a role in the creation of the ultra-radical groups in Syria, the political researcher said.

The United States has long been openly supporting what it called "moderate rebels" in Syria, though reports found that aid aimed at these groups often landed in the hands of radical groups such as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS), who dominated the battlefield through superior military power.

Danura added that the United States has a record of using the radical groups to act at its bidding, citing the U.S role in the creation of al-Qaida.

The analyst said the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the root cause for the chaos that has swept the region, and the power vacuum that came in the wake of Saddam Hussein's downfall was the reason behind the emergence of the IS.

"The United States has repeated such a policy in Syria, and it's not an exaggeration to say that the IS has been created under the eyes of the United States, when old cadres of the Hussein government and al-Qaida members mixed in Iraqi prisons," he said, in reference to the officers of the old Iraqi army that now filled the ranks of the IS after the United States dissolved the Iraqi army.

While the security of Israel has always been a top priority in U.S. Middle East policies, Danura said, Washington has another more secretive agenda, which is to turn Syria into a training ground for terrorist groups and later direct them to adversaries such as Russia and China.

A lot of countries in Central Asia could be threatened, he warned.

"The United States uses such groups to fight its battles, because the U.S. army can no longer be involved into oversees battles, due to the high expenses of such wars and the risk factor on U.S. soldiers," Danura concluded. Endi