WITH SYRIAN PRESIDENT CIVILIANS RAGES:
It’s not the role of the West to tell us who’s responsible in Syria, the president or the government or the army or terrorists. The West is not in a position to tell us, at the end. It interfered in a sovereign country and is responsible [for] the killing, regardless of its lies.
‘The West supported the war from the very beginning and it supported the terrorists. The West is responsible first of all.’
Assad’s isolation from Britain is all the more pointed as he spent time there in the 1990s, living in London and training as an ophthalmologist at the Western Eye hospital. London is also the city where his wife Asma was born and grew up, the daughter of Syrian parents.
He admits missing the city, but remains guarded. ‘I lived in London, I learned as a doctor,’ he reflects. ‘It’s impossible for you to live in a city and you don’t feel there is a special link with that city or with the people you work with.
‘But you live sometimes in contradiction; that the same city that you like is the same country that’s been attacking your country, which is not good.’
How, I ask, would he like to be remembered in history?
‘It depends on which history,’ he replies. ‘The Western history? It’s going to be skewed; it’s going to tell lies and lies and lies.
‘Our history, which I care about, I hope will remember me as somebody
‘Western history is going to be skewed’
who fought the terrorists to save his country, and that was my duty as president.’
Iran and Russia, of course, have taken much the same view, and it is their support which has turned the tide of the war in his favour.
Both countries have been heavily criticised for their behaviour at home and abroad, but Assad is unrepentant, insisting that, unlike Britain, they are upholding international law through their presence.
‘Their politics, their behaviours, their values are not about interfering or dictating; they don’t.’
With the help of his allies, Assad has set his sights on regaining the areas of the country that remain outside his control – and retaking Syria as a whole.
It remains a formidable task, not least because the Syrian Democratic Forces, a large Kurdish militia group in northeast Syria, is backed by the US.
There are currently around 2,000 American troops in Syria providing training, arms and air support to the Kurdish militia and it is clear that the SDF, which holds the largest area of Syrian territory outside government control, remains the largest obstacle.
Despite aggressive warnings from the Pentagon, Assad says that he is willing to use force against them if necessary.
If America refuses to back down – and there is no sign that it will – it seems the bloodshed will continue.