Assad Tells RAI Interview, Three Factors Have Shifted the Situation
The Italian state television, RAI, broadcast a long interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Wednesday. Clips of the interview were broadcast in the prime time news, whereas the entire interview was broadcast on the all-news program Rainews24.
In the interview, Assad says that the Syrian people will decide whether he goes or stays, and that ISIS controls large parts of Syria, but these are mostly desert. He says that the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have created ISIS, and that with the Russian intervention the situation has changed. His meeting with Russian President Putin to discuss military strategy and the strategy from Vienna was very satisfactory.
However, even more important than the interview, itself, was the description of the meeting with Assad by RAI chairwoman Monica Maggioni, prior to the interview. Maggioni, before becoming head of RAI, was a war correspondent, then a political editor, and had interviewed Assad two years ago. Although this current interview was conducted by another journalist, it is clear that she, herself, arranged it.
Maggioni described their meeting in an article in Thursday’s La Stampa under the headline, “Calm and Self-Assured, Assad Seems To Be Strong in the Saddle.” Assad received her not in a bunker, but in his house in the center of Damascus, like any normal host.
Assad “feels that three key factors have changed a scenario which, two years ago, seemed to be approaching the total collapse of Syria: the global threat represented by ISIS; the return of Iran to international tables; and Putin’s action.”
“He characterizes the western policy which has destabilized the region, sometimes supported armed groups and eventually did not control its ultimate consequences, as incomprehensible. ‘Al-Qaeda was created by the Americans, based on the Wahhabist ideology and on Saudi money. ISIS and al-Nusra are an emanation of al-Qaeda.’ And, he says, only Putin’s intervention is allowing the ability to achieve more control.”
Assad “says that in these years, he has too often seen the entire debate on Syria concentrate exclusively around his name, without thinking that since the first months of war, some areas such as Dara, Zindane and Homs, had been infiltrated and dominated by radical groups coming from abroad.”
Many people in rural areas of Syria joined ISIS either for money or to control the territory, and the government is making deals with such people. Maggioni says that this is a shift, “as two years ago he said that he would never negotiate with those who chose the armed struggle.”
An English translation of the full interview can be read here.