ASSAD’S SHAMELESS SPEECH TO MARK THE ANNIVERSARY OF ONE OF HIS MOST EVIL ACTS
Four years after gas attack on Damascus suburb that killed 1,400, Syrian president criticises West’s role in the war
Syrian president Bashar Al Assad attacked the role of western countries in Syria’s civil war in a speech delivered four years after his forces allegedly gassed a Damascus suburb.
The Syrian president praised his allies from outside Syria, including Russia, Iran and Hizbollah and sounded an optimistic note about his government’s prospects.
“Talking about foiling the western project doesn’t mean we are victorious – the battle is still going on, and the signs of victory are there, but victory itself is another thing,” he said.
Mr Al Assad’s words came nearly four years to the day his government was accused of carrying out a sarin gas attack that killed up to 1,400 people.
The attack marked a turning point with regards to international involvement in the conflict. US president Barack Obama had said before the attack that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government was a “red line” that would trigger US military action.
Instead, the US brokered a last-minute deal with the Syrian government to allow inspection and destruction of its remaining chemical weapons under the supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Although many weapons were destroyed, OPCW officials have since said that the Syrian government was a reluctant partner in the effort and that whether all of the weapons had been destroyed was unclear.
The OPCW has confirmed that chemical weapons have been used in the conflict repeatedly since 2013, with the most recent instance being an attack in northern Syria in April involving sarin gas.
News of April’s attack prompted US president Donald Trump to launch missile and air strikes against Syrian government infrastructure. But last month, Mr Trump ended a four-year-old CIA programme to support rebel groups fighting the Syrian government and the US military in Syria issued a directive to groups it supports that they should fight only ISIL, and not the Syrian government. The US has also recently worked with Russia to broker a ceasefire in southern Syria.
Such moves appear to validate Mr Al Assad’s strategy of attrition in the war that is now in its sixth year.
“The price of resistance is much lower than the price of surrender. We paid a dear price in Syria in this war, but we managed to foil the western project,” he said. “The West is like a snake, changing its skin according to the situation.”
Mr Al Assad vowed that relations would not be normalised with countries that continued to support the opposition.
“We are not in a state of isolation as they think, but this state of arrogance makes them think in that way,” he said. “There will be no security co-operation or opening of embassies or role for some states that say they are looking for a solution until they cut off their ties with terrorism in an unambiguous way.”
As Mr Al Assad spoke, the uneasy alliance the US has fallen into with the Syrian government was on display. The Syrian army on Saturday launched operations in parallel to those of the US-supported Lebanese army to oust ISIL from a stronghold straddling the Syrian-Lebanese border. Syrian government forces have also been pushing against ISIL-controlled areas in east Syria from the west as US-backed Syrian militia forces move on them from the north under the cover of US air strikes and artillery.
Although Syria’s war looks different than it did in 2013, the attacks are not forgotten.
In the eastern Damascus suburb of Saqba, one of the suburbs targeted in the 2013 attacks, Abdulah Hafi, an antigovernment activist, used the word doomsday when asked to recall the event.
“I remember hundreds of kids not moving,” said Mr Hafi, who worked on an ambulance crew at the time of the attacks. “Lots of dead.”
Saqba remains under rebel control, and is one of the areas where the Russian government recently helped to broker a truce between the rebels and the government. But that ceasefire has been broken repeatedly, and Mr Hafi said that continued shelling by the Syrian government would prevent Saqba residents from holding any commemoration of the event.
“There were several ideas, but the conditions stopped us,” Mr Hafi said yesterday. “After the ceasefire promises, nothing has changed. Five civilians were killed yesterday, and there was shelling today.”
“The first thing that comes to my mind – you can’t imagine that you will see that many dead people in just one time, in just one place. Hundreds of people,” said Humam Husari, a filmmaker who shot video on the day of the event that was broadcast around the world.
Mr Husari, who lives in the suburb of Zamalka, which was also hit by the 2013 attacks, said that fighting there had quieted to the point where an event had been planned to mark the anniversary.
He remains haunted by the event, and has been working on a film about the event featuring some of the survivors.
“I will show the trailer for my film, and people will share their stories,” Mr Husari said.
In the Damascus suburb of Saqba, an activist used the word doomsday when recalling the gas attack