France 2 TV broadcast a 47-question interview with President Assad on Monday night.
Assad, who is in the middle of a PR campaign including discussions with European media, repeated his standard lines. He denied that the Syrian military attacked civilians, including with barrel bombs and chemical weapons, and said that protests against his rule from 2011 were actually attacks on security forces. He also claimed, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that Iran has not assisted his regime with troops and advisors.
The President’s message to Europe? “Support me, or you get terrorists and extremists”.
See Syria Audio Analysis: Assad Gives Interviews as He Loses the War
Question 1: Good evening, Mr. President, I’d like to start straight forward. For most French, you are in a very large part responsible for the chaos going on in Syria, because of the brutality of the repression during the last four years. According to you, what is your part of responsibility?
Assad: Actually, since the first few weeks of the conflict, the terrorists infiltrated the situation in Syria with the support of Western countries and regional countries, and they started attacking the civilians and destroying public places, public properties and private properties, and that’s documented on the internet, by them, not by us. So, our role as government is to defend our society and our citizens.
If you want to say what you said is correct after four years, how could a government or president that’s been brutal with his population, killing them, and with the support from the other side of the greatest countries and political powers in the world, with the petrodollars in our region…how could he withstand for four years? Is it possible to have the support of your public while you are brutal with your public?
Question 2: In the beginning, there were tens of thousands of people in the street. Were they all jihadists?
Assad: No, definitely not. But the other question is, if in the sixth day of the conflict, the first Syrian policeman was killed…how? By the peaceful demonstration? By the audio waves of the demonstrators? How? He’s been killed by terrorists. Somebody who took a gun and shot that policeman, so he’s a terrorist. It doesn’t matter if he’s a jihadist or not, because he killed a policeman.
Question 3: There were perhaps jihadists or terrorists, but our reporters were there at the beginning and they met a lot of people saying “we want more freedom, more democracy.” They weren’t terrorists or jihadists.
Assad: Definitely, everybody has the right to ask for his freedom, and every government should support freedom, of course, under the constitution. But does freedom mean to kill the civilians, to kill policemen, to destroy the schools, the hospitals, the electricity, the infrastructure? That’s not owned by the government; it’s owned by the Syrian people. It’s not owned by us, it’s not owned by me. Is that the freedom that you’re talking about?
Question 4: A lot of analysts and a lot of journalists say that you have helped ISIS [the Islamic State] to emerge, because it’s an opportunity for you to appear like a shield.
Assad: But ISIS was created in Iraq in 2006 under the supervision of the Americans. I’m not in Iraq and I wasn’t in Iraq. I wasn’t controlling Iraq. The Americans controlled Iraq, and ISIS came from Iraq to Syria, because chaos is contagious. When you have chaos at your neighborhood, you have to expect it in your area.
Question 5: But the word ISIS at the beginning…
Assad: Let me continue. Whenever you have chaos in a certain country, this is a fertile soil for the terrorists to come. So, when there is chaos in Syria, ISIS came to Syria. Before ISIS came al-Nusra Front, which is Al Qa’eda, and before that you had the Muslim Brotherhood. They all represent the same grassroots for ISIS to come later.
Question 6: So you have no responsibility at all for what happened since the last years in Syria?
Assad: Normally, things are not absolute. To have no responsibility is not precise, because everybody has a responsibility. We have our own problems in Syria. The government is responsible, every one of us is responsible, every Syrian citizen is responsible, but now I’m talking about what brought ISIS here: the chaos, and your government, the government – or if you want to call it regime – the French regime, as they call us, is responsible for supporting those jihadists that they called moderate opposition.
Question 7: France is supporting a coalition, national Syrian coalition. Are they terrorists?
Assad: The people who are supported now, who have Western armaments, they became ISIS, they were supported by your state, and by other Western states, by armaments, and that was announced by your Defense Minister. He announced it at the beginning of this year; he said we sent armaments. So, those people you called moderate, in 2012 before the rise of ISIS and before the West acknowledged the existence of Al-Qa’eda faction which is al-Nusra, they published videos where they eat the heart of a Syrian soldier, where they dismember other victims, and where they behead others. They published it, we didn’t. So, how can you ignore this reality, that they want to publish it, and tell you this is the fact?
Question 8: Let’s talk about the present. It appears that the Syrian army continues to utilize indiscriminate weapons like barrel bombs, which have devastating effects on civilians. Why don’t you change this strategy?
Assad: We never heard in our army of indiscriminate killing weapons, because no army, including our army, will accept to use weaponry that doesn’t aim, because it will be of no use. You can’t use it, I mean from a military point of view. This is first. Second, when you want to talk about indiscriminate killing, it’s not about the weapon; it’s about the way you use it, and the proof of that is the drones, the American drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, they killed more civilians than terrorists. They are the highest precision weapon in the world. So, it’s not about the kind of bomb. We have regular bombs, regular armaments.
Question 9: You don’t use barrel bombs?
Assad: What is a barrel bomb? Can you tell me what it is?
Question 10: There are several documents, videos, and photographs like this, where you see a barrel bomb dropped by helicopters. This is Aleppo, this is Hama a few months ago, one year ago. Only Syrian army has helicopters, so what can you answer?
Assad: This is not proof. These are two pictures of two things. No one can link them to each other.
Question 11: Aleppo, Hama.
Assad: No, no. This picture that you mentioned here, what is it? I have never seen such a thing in our army. I’m not talking about the helicopters, I’m talking about two pictures. How can you relate between the two?
Question 12: You say it’s a fake? It’s a false document?
Assad: No, no, it has to be verified, but in our army we only use regular bombs that could be aimed. So, we don’t have any armament that could be shelled indiscriminately. That’s it.
Question 13: But this helicopter, only the Syrian army has helicopters.
Assad: Yes, of course, I didn’t say we didn’t have helicopters, that we don’t use it. I’m talking about the armaments. They aim to target the terrorists. Why to kill indiscriminately? Why to kill the civilians? The war in Syria is about winning the hearts of the people, it’s not about killing people. If you kill people, you cannot be in your position, as a government, or as president. It’s impossible.
Question 14: What about chemical weapons? You committed two years ago not to use chemical weapons. Did you use chlorine gas in the battle of Idlib last month?
Assad: No, this is another fake narrative by the Western governments. Why? Because we have two factories of chlorine. One of them is closed for a few years now, it’s not used anyway, and the other one is in the northern part in Syria, which is the most important factory than the first one. It’s on the Turkish border, it’s under the control of the terrorists for two years, and we sent formal documents to the United Nations regarding that factory. They wanted to come and they sent us a formal response, they couldn’t reach it. So, the chlorine in Syria is under the control of the rebels. This is first. Second, this is not a WMD, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction. The regular armaments that we have are more influential than chlorine, so we don’t need it anyway.
Question 15: But there are investigations, you must have seen that, from HRW, about last month in Idlib [Province]. Three attacks with chlorine smell, with symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic gas, that is what was concluded this investigation. These three attacks took place in territory controlled by armed opposition groups. HRW [Human Rights Watch], are they liars?
Assad: We didn’t use it. We don’t need to use it. We have our regular armaments, and we could achieve our goals without it. So, we don’t use it. No, there’s no proof.
Question 16: There are witnesses, there are testimonies of doctors.
Assad: No, no. We ask, in every allegation regarding the chemical weapons in the past, in the present, we were the party who asked the international institutions to send delegations for investigations. We are, not the opposite, actually. And our soldiers were exposed to sarin gas two years ago, and we invited the United Nations to make investigations. How could we invite them while we are using them? That’s neither true nor reasonable.
Question 17: Are you ready to invite them again, on Idlib?
Assad: We already did. We always invite. We don’t have a problem with that.
