Waking up at 5 a.m. to see a message of “congratulations” flash on his phone and then reading the news that his niece, Kamala Harris, had been picked by presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as his running mate was a moment of pride and elation for Gopalan Balachandran.    The 79-year-old academician, who lives in New Delhi, believes that Harris’s Indian heritage and family culture has played a key role in shaping the Asian American politician.     Harris’s choice comes with many firsts:  She is the first Black woman and the first Asian American woman to join a major party ticket for a presidential election in the U.S.  Gopalan Balachandran, maternal uncle of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) talks to media outside his house in New Delhi, India, Aug. 12, 2020.“I knew she was quite ambitious in the sense that she always wanted to run for public office and achieve something, and that spirit she took from her mother. So this was inevitable,” Balachandran, the younger brother of Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, told VOA. “The women in our family are extremely strong, the men not so much,” he laughs. “She can handle the campaign.”    He recalls his family’s values of openmindedness way back in the 1940s and 1950s when India was still a deeply traditional society — that progressive culture allowed Harris’s mother to move to the United States when she was 19 years old to do doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley.      “At that time the number of unmarried women who went from India to the U.S. was miniscule. But our family always said do what you want, study and then carve out your own path.” It is a message, Balachandran says, Harris absorbed deeply while being raised by her mother, who separated from her Jamaican-born father when she was five.     Since her childhood, Harris regularly used to visit her maternal grandparents in the southern city of Chennai and her uncle and aunt in India. In interviews, she has spoken of the influence her grandfather, a civil servant, had on her.    FILE – U.S. Senator Kamala Harris’s maternal grandparents’ former apartment is pictured where she visited occasionally, in Chennai, India, Aug. 12, 2020.“Kamala has also picked up human values from the family. She used to always tell me — I just do what any normal human being should do,” says Balachandran, who visited her when she ran for senator from California.He recalls how the four brothers and sisters, including Harris’s mother, pursued their own paths — he married a Mexican, his younger sister did not marry, while another sister who lives in Canada married but had no children.   Harris’s first name also connects her to her Indian heritage. Kamala means lotus flower, whose symbolic significance in Indian culture point to its deep roots — the flower and its roots grow underwater while its petals rise above the surface.     Balachandran’s hopes from his niece:  if she becomes vice president, she will help raise “global positive awareness” of the United States at a time when China is also vying for global leadership.    For countless Indians, who have watched with pride the successful journey of the Indian-American community in the United States, the selection of Harris marked yet another milestone in the journey of people with Indian heritage.    FILE – A group of attendees gesture in front of a poster of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi before a community reception at SAP Center in San Jose, California, Sept. 27, 2015.“It shows the diversity of the U.S., that anybody can rise to the top, whether it is in politics or other spheres,” says Varun Mehta, a retired professional, whose two daughters live in New York and Los Angeles. While Indians have made their mark in the technology sphere, heading companies such as Google and Microsoft, politics is a new arena to conquer. “It’s a good moment for Indians.”    FILE – Ram Madhav, a senior leader in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), poses after his interview with Reuters in New Delhi, India, July 10, 2019.Expressions of pride also came in on social media. A prominent leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Ram Madhav, gave a thumbs up sign on Twitter after noting that Harris could be the first woman of Indian descent to be nominated as an official vice-presidential candidate.First Indian and Asian woman to get the nomination as official VP candidate. 👍 https://t.co/zrGa612Rio
— Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) August 12, 2020But at a time when there are fears of a rise in Hindu nationalism in India, some drew attention to the broader significance of the choice of Kamala Harris as a vice presidential running mate.      “We should recognize that Kamala Harris isn’t just of Indian descent. She epitomizes what the world should be — borderless and interracial,” prominent businessman Anand Mahindra wrote on Twitter. 
 
But in her family in India, it was simply a day to rejoice. Balachandran exchanged a happy early morning phone call with his sister, Sarala Gopalan, both hoping they would see their niece sworn in as vice president.   Postal box with the name Sarala Gopalan, aunt of Kamala Harris, is seen outside Harris’ maternal grandparents’ former apartment which she visited occasionally, in Chennai.“If I send her a message right now saying Kamala I need you, the next day she will be there,” Sarala Gopalan told an Indian television news channel, describing her as kind and affectionate.  
And after the flurry of calls Balachandran received on the selection, he jokingly says he plans to print visiting cards saying “G. Balachandran, the favorite uncle of Kamala Harris.”    
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Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden has chosen Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent, to be selected for a presidential ticket by a major party. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story.
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U.S. Senator Kamala Harris is trying to become the first woman elected as the country’s vice president after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden selected her as his running mate. The child of a father from Jamaica and a mother from India, both of whom immigrated to the United States, Harris is already the first Black woman and first South Asian American to be part of a U.S. presidential ticket. The 55-year-old’s resume includes being the first Black attorney general of the state of California as well as the first woman to hold the job.  Her 2016 election to a U.S. Senate seat representing California made her the first woman of South Asian heritage to do so. Harris herself wanted to be in Biden’s position as the Democrat seeking to deny President Donald Trump another term and put the White House back in Democratic hands.   Her campaign had a strong start, with 20,000 people attending her kickoff rally in her hometown of Oakland, California. In early July 2019, she trailed only Biden in public opinion polls after drawing praise for her performance in one of the early debates against the then-large field of Democratic candidates.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about his plans to combat racial inequality at a campaign event in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., July 28, 2020.But in the months that followed, her poll numbers steadily declined and in early December she announced she was dropping out of the race, citing difficulties in raising money for her campaign. In March, just after Biden pulled ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders with a number of state primary wins, Harris gave Biden her endorsement in the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee, saying, “I believe in Joe.” “One of the things that we need right now is we need a leader who really does care about the people and who can therefore unify the people,” Harris said.  “And I believe Joe can do that.” Biden, in announcing Harris as his choice to join him on the November ballot, described her Tuesday as “a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants.” Harris earned an undergraduate degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., a historically Black college where she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.  She went on to earn a law degree from the University of California, Hastings, before going to work in the Alameda County district attorney’s office.Harris served two terms as district attorney of San Francisco before being elected California’s attorney general. Her record in those California jobs has been a target of scrutiny, with critics faulting her for not enacting criminal justice reforms and not doing enough to investigate police shootings. With those issues prominent in the United States with protesters carrying out months of demonstrations against police violence and inequality, Harris has been among lawmakers pushing legislation to enact police reforms on a national level. 
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The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to have an effect on the sporting world, as two major U.S. college athletic conferences announced Tuesday they are postponing their upcoming fall (gridiron) football seasons. Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said after consulting with the conference’s medical advisory board “it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.”  Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said the presidents and chancellors of all of the member schools agreed their individual programs “are a part of broader campuses in communities where in many cases the prevalence of COVID-19 is significant.”   The Big Ten includes such legendary collegiate football programs as Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, while the Pac-12 conference, based primarily in the western United States, includes such traditional powerhouses as Stanford, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  In addition to football, the Big Ten says it is postponing all of its fall sports activities, including men and women’s track and field and American-style soccer. The Pac-12 said it will not hold any sports competitions for the remainder of 2020. The two conferences, along with the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern and Big 12, make up the so-called “Power Five” major college athletic conferences, whose football programs are not only among the best in the nation, but also bring in billions of dollars in revenue from ticket sales and national television contracts.  The prospect of any U.S. college football being played during the traditional fall season amid the COVID-19 pandemic was thrown into doubt well before the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their seasons.  Three other lesser conferences, including the Ivy League, which represents such prestigious schools as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, have either postponed or outright canceled their football seasons.  Medical experts have expressed concern that otherwise young and healthy athletes could develop long term health problems if they contract COVID-19, including heart and lung damage.In this May 20, 2020 photo provided by the University of Alabama, football head coach Nick Saban and the school’s elephant mascot, Big Al, wear masks on the university campus in Tuscaloosa, AL.But U.S. President Donald Trump has been one of the leading figures urging college football to begin its season as normal, telling reporters at the White House Tuesday the players are “young, strong people” who will be able to fight off the virus.    The pandemic has forced the National Basketball League and National Hockey League to resume their seasons in centralized locations, dubbed “bubbles,” where players and coaching staffs must remain during competition.  Major League Baseball’s shortened 60-game season has been marred with several players from the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals testing positive for COVID-19, forcing the league to postpone dozens of games and putting the truncated season at risk of being canceled. Also on Tuesday, President Trump announced an agreement between the federal government and an American biotechnology company to manufacture and deliver 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.      The company, Moderna, is to manufacture the vaccine while clinical trials are underway.  The company developed the vaccine in a joint initiative with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Three vaccine candidates in the United States are in the final stage of human trials.     “We’re on track to rapidly produce 100 million doses as soon as the vaccine is approved and up to 500 million shortly thereafter,” said Trump during a White House news conference.  The Trump administration’s latest actions are “increasing the likelihood that the United States will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a statement.     The president has recently stated he is optimistic a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready by the time of the U.S. presidential election in early November.   Trump did not comment on an announcement earlier in the day by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country has become the first in the world to formally approve a new COVID-19 vaccine, despite a lack of data to back up his claims that the drug is safe to administer to humans.Russian President Putin Says Country is First to Formally Approve Coronavirus VaccinePutin claims new vaccine “works quite effectively…forms a stable immunity”The Russian president also said his daughter has been inoculated in an early testing phase. She ran a slight fever on the first day, but her temperature dropped to normal the following day, according to Putin.      Production of the new Russian vaccine — which has been dubbed Sputnik V, in honor of the world’s first man-made satellite launched by the then-Soviet Union in 1957 — will begin next month, with mass vaccinations starting as early as October.   The new vaccine is one of more than 100 possible vaccines being developed in a global race by governments and biomedical firms to blunt a pandemic that has now infected more than 20 million people worldwide.      But it is not among the handful that reached the third and final phase of testing in human trials, which usually involve thousands of people and lasts for months, according to the World Health Organization.   Scientists within Russia have also questioned the move to register the vaccine before Phase 3 trials are complete, which are needed to prove it is not harmful to patients.    Russia has also been accused by the United States, Britain and Canada of using hackers to steal vaccine research from labs in their countries. 
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Kamala Harris, a U.S. senator from California and former presidential candidate, is Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate, the Biden campaign announced Tuesday, via a tweet to supporters. Biden’s one-time opponent has made headlines for her sharp criticism of him on the campaign trail, alongside controversy over her time as a prosecutor in California. “@JoeBiden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals,” wrote Harris on Twitter. “I’m honored to join him as our party’s nominee for Vice President and do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief..@JoeBiden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals.I’m honored to join him as our party’s nominee for Vice President, and do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief.— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 11, 2020 Within minutes of the Biden campaign’s announcement, President Donald Trump tweeted a video lambasting Harris as “rushing to the radical left,” citing her support for tax hikes and Medicare for All.pic.twitter.com/jXoffXyZed— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2020Harris is the first Black woman and first candidate of Indian descent to be named on a major U.S. party’s ticket Harris, 55, is the daughter of immigrants. Her mother was an India-born breast cancer researcher, who did her last decade of research at Berkeley Lab, which conducts research for the Department of Energy. Harris’ father is a Stanford University emeritus economics professor who was born in Jamaica. “Hopefully it signifies a tremendous shift in the Democratic Party by finally recognizing how important Black people, and most specifically Black women, are to the base,” Angela Rye, a Democratic political strategist and former Congressional Black Caucus executive director, told the Los Angeles Times. Despite her humble upbringing, Harris was well-known in San Francisco social circles Harris’ parents divorced when she was 7 years old, and Harris was raised largely by her mother. “We moved a lot,” she told The New Yorker last summer.But in San Francisco, Democratic stronghold and home to Californian political families, such as the Feinsteins and Pelosis, she familiarized herself with the social scene.  
“In San Francisco — this was especially true 25 years ago — there’s a group of people who socialize with each other, and are very supportive of the opera, the ballet, the arts,” Sharon Owsley, a longtime Harris friend and former employee, told The New Yorker. “Entry into the group depends on your attributes — not if you have money, but if you are smart. That was the appeal of Kamala. She can turn a room into a group of bystanders.” She didn’t like the Obama comparisons early in her career Headlines labeling Harris “the female Obama” have followed her for years, from her time as a district attorney to the end of her bid for the presidency. “One thing that above all else drives her crazy is getting reduced to a demographic stereotype,” Sean Clegg, a longtime adviser, told The New Yorker in 2019. “She was a prosecutor. They didn’t have the same life experience. She told us, ‘Don’t define me based on something a man did.’”Still, Obama applauded the Biden campaign’s announcement, tweeting Tuesday, “She [Harris] is more than prepared for the job. He added, “This is a good day for our country.”I’ve known Senator @KamalaHarris for a long time. She is more than prepared for the job. She’s spent her career defending our Constitution and fighting for folks who need a fair shake. This is a good day for our country. Now let’s go win this thing. pic.twitter.com/duJhFhWp6g— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 11, 2020Her past as a prosecutor has been both a boon and a drawback Criminal justice reform was a centerpiece of Harris’ presidential bid, highlighting the 13 years she spent as a prosecutor in Alameda County and across the bay in San Francisco. She bills herself as a “progressive prosecutor” and says she worked to reform the criminal justice system, often pointing at an initiative she launched in 2005 to help first-time drug offenders reintegrate into society.But critics have denounced some of her tough-on-crime policies, including an anti-truancy program that threatened jail time for parents whose children skipped school, and her handling of wrongful convictions. One of the most controversial cases during Harris’ stint as a district attorney was that of Jamal Trulove, who served more than six years in prison on a murder charge from a 2007 shooting. He was acquitted in a retrial in 2015, and in 2018, was awarded $13.1 million dollars after a jury found police officers fabricated evidence against him and withheld evidence that would have helped his case. In the wake of this summer’s protests against racism and police brutality, Harris’ background could be a turnoff for voters, especially younger and more liberal people of color. Harris has held elected office since 2003 — and hasn’t looked back That year, she won election for San Francisco district attorney and won reelection in 2007. Three years later, in 2010, she narrowly beat Republican Steve Cooley to become California attorney general. She was reelected in 2014 over Republican attorney Ronald Gold. Harris took her political career a step further in 2016, when she defeated former Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez for election as U.S. senator from California. Harris kicked off her presidential campaign just halfway through her first term as senator  
She announced her candidacy on “Good Morning America” on Jan. 21, 2019, which coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Her slogan, “Kamala Harris For The People” referenced her past as a prosecutor. Despite her sharp criticism of Biden, Harris endorsed him for president in March Three months after dropping out of the presidential race, Harris posted a video on Twitter in which she told supporters, “I believe in Joe.”  “I will do everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States,” she wrote in the accompanying tweet..@JoeBiden has served our country with dignity and we need him now more than ever. I will do everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/DbB2fGWpaa— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 8, 2020The endorsement was a far cry from the campaign trail. In a viral moment during her first presidential debate in June 2019, she called out Biden for speaking warmly of his working relationships with segregationist lawmakers at a campaign event that month. She attacked his opposition to school busing in the 1970s to integrate schools. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said. “And that little girl was me.” But within a day of her dropping out, Biden told reporters he would “of course” consider her as vice presidential running mate. “Senator Harris has the capacity to be anything she wants to be. I mean it sincerely,” Biden said in December 2019.”She is solid. She can be president someday herself. She can be the vice president. She can go on to be a Supreme Court justice. She can be an attorney general. I mean, she has enormous capability.”   
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Months after her presidential campaign collapsed amid questions over her political identity, Kamala Harris suddenly and forcefully found her voice – and at a fortuitous time. Harris, a 55-year-old U.S. senator from California, was chosen by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his running mate on Tuesday, making history as the first Black woman and Asian-American on a major presidential ticket. Her selection came as little surprise. With the United States in the midst of a reckoning over its history of racial injustice, Biden had increasingly been pressed to select a woman of color. Harris, who became the Senate’s second Black woman in its history when she was elected in 2016, was always at the top of the list. But Harris did anything but keep a low profile while Biden was making up his mind. Instead, she emerged as a fierce advocate for police reform and social justice – in the Senate, in the streets, and on the airwaves, sparring with Republicans on the Senate floor and offering fiery critiques of Republican President Donald Trump. “She has been very resolute,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, the longstanding civil rights and social justice advocacy group, which has worked with Harris on reform issues. “She has the ability to go toe-to-toe with anybody.” For Harris, the barrier-breaking former prosecutor and California state attorney general, the moment provided a clarity of purpose that was often absent from her failed presidential bid. After a strong start, Harris’ campaign quickly foundered amid strategic somersaults. First positioning herself as a progressive in the mold of reformers such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Harris then tried to tack toward the center. Her position on healthcare, for example, became a mishmash. She dropped out in December, before a single vote was cast in the Democratic nominating contests.Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., listens during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to examine Department of Homeland Security personnel deployments to recent protests on Aug. 6, 2020, in Washington.“She was trying to play the middle a little bit and trying to be all things to all people,” said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Now, Payne said, “There is a little more of a defined voice. There’s more clarity to her public persona.” Winning over Floyd lawyer, past doubtersHer background in law enforcement had been seen as a vulnerability early in the race for the party’s nomination. But her work of late has impressed some past doubters who say she did not do enough to investigate police shootings and too often sided with prosecutors in wrongful conviction cases in the past. In the days after George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May, sparking a national conversation on race, Harris joined protesters in the streets of Washington. On Capitol Hill, she, along with Senator Cory Booker, an African American who made his own bid for the presidency, became the drivers of the Democratic effort to battle police abuses and led the pushback against an alternative Republican police reform measure, which she blasted as “lip service.” Her efforts received important recognition in early August when Ben Crump, the attorney for Floyd’s family, published an opinion article supporting her candidacy. “The case for me is simple: She’s been a change agent at every level of government – local, state, and federal – for 30 years,” Crump wrote as the search for Biden’s running mate entered a final stage. Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who last year assailed Harris’ record as a prosecutor and attorney general, said Harris has made an “important shift” on criminal justice. She now hopes Harris will become a leading adviser to Biden on the issue. “She got a good, hard shove to the left. I really hope she seizes that moment and resists the urge to drift toward safety and the center,” Bazelon said. Shoring upWhile advocating for social justice publicly, Harris was also working to shore up her relationship with Biden. The two had long been friendly because of Harris’ friendship with Biden’s late son, Beau Biden, who served as Delaware’s attorney general and worked with Harris when she held the same position for her state. “Back when Kamala was Attorney General, she worked closely with Beau. I watched as they took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse,” the elder Biden wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “I was proud then, and I’m proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign.” But Harris’ relationship with Joe Biden was sorely tested last year when in a Democratic debate she battered Biden over his long-ago stance on mandatory busing for public school students. Biden’s wife, Jill, later said she viewed the attack as a “punch in the gut,” while some Biden aides saw it as opportunistic. Since she endorsed him in March, Harris has become a fierce advocate of his candidacy and an effective fundraiser on his behalf. Biden told reporters in August he had put the debate fracas behind him. “I don’t hold grudges,” he said. Even so, Harris had to survive a last-minute lobbying campaign against her selection, one that included close Biden allies, over concerns she was too politically ambitious and would not put Biden’s interests ahead of hers. That push, in turn, sparked a backlash among Harris’ supporters who called the arguments sexist. Harris has used the time since her campaign exit well, Payne said. “She realized that one of her vulnerabilities was her background as a prosecutor,” he said. “She did some repair work. She did some fence-mending to get ready for the moment.” 
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Tensions are flaring in an eastern Syria province after the assassinations of several powerful Arab tribal leaders, with U.S.-backed forces accusing Islamic State (IS) sleeper cells and Syrian government proxies of carrying out such attacks to cause instability in the former IS stronghold.   In the past two weeks, three leaders of the al-Agidat and al-Baggara tribes were killed by unknown gunmen in separate incidents in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, local news reported.   The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a major U.S. partner in the fight against IS terrorists, has accused sleeper cells affiliated with IS of the recent killings in the Arab-majority province.“These cells from the remnants of ISIS strive to cause confusion, whether through assassinations, spreading rumors, mining and booby-trapping operations,” the SDF said in a statement Monday, using another acronym for IS.   The SDF also accused the Syrian regime, Turkey and their respective local allies of using certain elements in Deir al-Zour to cause instability.   “Through their plans, these forces have targeted security and civil peace by sabotaging and weakening service and administrative sectors and creating a rift between the tribes and the civil administration,” the SDF said in its statement, noting that their goal “is to turn the tribes against each other and against the Syrian Democratic Forces and the international coalition.”   Following the Turkish-led invasion of parts of northeast Syria in October 2019, the SDF has often accused Ankara of destabilizing other SDF-held areas in eastern Syria. Turkey denies such allegations. The country views the SDF as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. While Turkey has denied the SDF allegations about its involvement in eastern Syria, Turkish officials have often said that SDF fighters are targets for Turkish forces.      IS attacks   In March 2019, the SDF, supported by the U.S.-led coalition against IS, declared the physical collapse of the so-called IS caliphate after defeating the group in its last stronghold in Deir al-Zour province.    But IS militants have since continued to carry out attacks against SDF fighters and civilians in the Syrian province.    In June and July, the SDF launched two major campaigns to hunt down IS remnants in Deir al-Zour, killing and arresting hundreds of militants.US-Backed Forces Renew Campaign Against IS Remnants in Eastern SyriaSDF forces have launched a second phase of their campaign to hunt down remnants of the IS terror group in eastern Syria Col. Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the global coalition against IS, told VOA that “the coalition’s view is that the parties in [Deir al-Zour] should focus on keeping ISIS from causing chaos.”   Regime cells   A senior SDF official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that in addition to IS sleeper cells, the Syrian regime and its allies have also been using their networks to “cause chaos” in the SDF-held parts of Deir al-Zour.   “We are facing complex security challenges on many fronts in Deir al-Zour,” the SDF official said, noting that “the Syrian regime is increasingly using some local networks to target our forces and civilians.”    Forces loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian-backed militias control the western part of Deir al-Zour.    Reaction to the oil deal  Some experts say a recent deal between the SDF and a U.S. company to develop and export crude oil in areas under the SDF control in northeastern Syria could be a factor in a growing Syrian government involvement in attacks in eastern Syria.US Firm Secures Oil Deal with US-Backed Forces in Syria An American company has reportedly reached a deal with Kurdish forces in northeast Syria to develop and export crude oil“This deal has infuriated the Syrian regime, because it means the region will never return under its control,” said Omar Abu Layla, director of Deir Ezzor 24, a news and research group focused on developments in eastern Syria.  “Everyone thinks that only Daesh has sleeper cells in the Deir al-Zour region, but the reality is the [Syrian] regime, Iran and even al-Nusra [al-Qaida’s former Syria affiliate] have their own cells in Deir al-Zour,” he told VOA, using an Arabic acronym for IS.  Abu Layla, whose group has a network of researchers in oil-rich Deir al-Zour, said the oil deal “was the last straw for the Syrian regime, who immediately gave the green light to its cells to launch attacks in Deir al-Zour.”     The Syrian government last week condemned the deal between the SDF and the U.S. company, describing it as stealing Syria’s oil.  Mismanagement and corruption   The SDF-held part of Deir al-Zour is run by the group’s local affiliate, the Deir al-Zour Military Council, which has often been accused by locals and experts of corruption and incompetence.   “Since the liberation of Baghouz [IS’s last stronghold in Deir al-Zour] in March 2019, there has been mismanagement by the international coalition and the SDF in the area [through] relying on corrupt civilian elements that were previously linked to IS and the regime,” said Abdullah Al-Ghadhawi, a Syrian researcher with the Washington-based Center for Global Policy whose research focuses on dynamics in Deir al-Zour.   Ghadhawi told VOA that it was a strategic mistake by the SDF and its coalition partners “to expand the Deir al-Zour Military Council with unruly and unprofessional forces.”  “IS is a party to the equation and it carries out activities, but the one who rules the region is responsible for its security,” he added.   Analyst Abu Layla echoed similar views.   “If the SDF wants a sustainable security solution in Deir al-Zour, it needs to be more inclusive by having a better representation of the tribes in the local administration as well as bringing competent individuals to run the region,” he said.    An SDF official admitted that corruption is a major problem for their local partners in Deir al-Zour. He said it would take some time to remove corrupt military and civilian officials from the ranks of the SDF.    
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