Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Roasts France, Western Governments for Arming Jihadists, Creating ISIS

In an interview with France2 on April 21, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivered a stinging denunciation of France and other Western governments for their material support for the jihadists—the nonexistent “moderate opposition”—and for creating the chaotic conditions in the region which led to ISIS’s emergence.

Responding to France2‘s hostile and provocative interviewer, David Pujadas, who quoted “analysts” charging that it was Assad who helped ISIS emerge, Assad shot back that ISIS “was created in Iraq in 2006 under the supervision of the Americans. I’m not in Iraq and I wasn’t in Iraq, and I wasn’t controlling Iraq. The Americans controlled Iraq, and ISIS came from Iraq to Syria, because chaos is contagious.” When there is chaos in a certain country, he continued, “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-Qaeda, and before that you had the Muslim Brotherhood. They all represent the same grassroots for ISIS to come later.”

The Syrian President repeatedly debunked Pujadas’s assertions that the Syrian army uses chemical weapons, chlorine gas, barrel bombs, etc. returning to the central point that the intervention of Western nations created the conditions for ISIS’s creation. Look at the air raids carried out by the 60-nation “coalition,” he said. Syria is a small country, but “what we do is tenfold sometimes, than what they do in one day. Is that serious?…they’re not serious so far. And the other proof is that ISIS has expanded in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, in the region in general. So how can you say it was effective? They’re not serious, that’s why they don’t help anyone in this region.”

The point is, he emphasized, “the coalition against terrorism cannot be formed by countries who support the terrorists at the same time…they send weapons to the same terrorists under the title of ‘moderate opposition’…So, this is a contradiction. It doesn’t work.”

Al-Assad reserved his harshest words for the French. In response to Pujadas’s asking al-Assad whether he takes any responsibility for what’s happened in Syria in recent years, Assad replied “thing are not absolute… Everybody has a responsibility. We have our own problems in Syria…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 the moderate opposition.”

As for his willingness to engage in dialogue with France, Assad stated, “We’re always interested in dialogue with anyone, but that is based on the policy. How can we make dialogue with a regime that supports terrorists in our country, and what for?… When they change their policy, we’ll be ready to make dialogue….” Assad made a point of noting that Francois Holland is the most unpopular president in the history of France since the 1950s.

When Pujadas mentioned that the French Prime Minister had denounced Assad as a butcher, Assad caustically replied, “the statements of the officials in France, no one is taking them seriously now, for one reason: because France is a satellite somehow to the American policy in the region; it’s not independent, it doesn’t have the weight, it doesn’t have the credibility.” He underscored that he was interested in what Syrian people think, not the French.