Assad blames external forces for prolonging war

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has said foreign support of terrorist groups has prolonged the war in Syria.

In an interview with Italy’s TG5 channel, Al-Assad commented: “You cannot talk about the war being over until you get rid of the terrorists in Syria… and those terrorists unfortunately still have formal support from many countries including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and many Western countries.”

He slammed European countries for supporting terrorism and imposing an embargo on Syria. Commenting on the millions of Syrian refugees who fled the country to escape the systemic bombing and destruction he said: “They don’t need your support in your country; they need your support in our country. They need to stop supporting terrorists; they need to lift the embargo that pushed many Syrians to go to Europe because of the embargo, not only because of the terrorism. Because of the embargo, they cannot live anymore in their country.”

Despite being accused of carrying out war crimes against his own people as well as fuelling extremism to undermine his opposition, Al-Assad urged that lessons be learnt from the crisis: “This war has brought many Syrians together. They learned the lessons – so many lessons – that if we don’t accept each other, if we don’t respect each other on every level of this word, you cannot have unified society. Without this unified society, Syria cannot be reborn. So, I think, not only to talk about the rebirth of Syria, I can feel today that if you don’t have terrorism, the social society is going to be much stronger than the society that you knew before the war, because of the lesson that we’ve learned.”