BEIRUT - Syria’s president denied he ordered the deadly crackdown on a nearly 9-month-old uprising in his country, claiming he is not in charge of the troops behind the assault.
Speaking to ABC’s Barbara Walters in a rare interview that aired yesterday, President Bashar Assad maintained he did not give any commands “to kill or be brutal.’’
“They’re not my forces,’’ Assad responded when asked if Syrian troops had cracked down too hard on protesters. “They are military forces [who] belong to the government. I don’t own them. I’m president. I don’t own the country.’’
He said some Syrian troops may have behaved badly, but they faced punishment.
In his role as president, Assad is the commander of Syria’s armed forces.
The United Nations estimates more than 4,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March, many of them civilians and unarmed protesters demanding Assad’s ouster.
“Who said the United Nations is a credible institution?’’ Assad said, when Walters asked him about allegations of widespread violence and torture.
Agreed.
“We don’t kill our people,’’ said Assad, 46, a British-trained eye doctor. “No government in the world [kills] its people unless it is led by a crazy person.’’
Since the uprising began, Assad and his closest advisers have sealed off the country to outsiders while asserting that it is foreign extremists who are behind the uprising, not true reform-seekers aiming to open the authoritarian political system.
But the UN and others dismiss the government’s claims and blame the regime for widespread killings, rape, and torture. Witnesses and activists inside Syria describe brutal repression, with government forces firing on unarmed protesters, and terrifying, house-to-house raids in which families are dragged from their homes in the night.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Assad was trying to shirk responsibility.
“I find it ludicrous that he is attempting to hide behind some sort of shell game, but also some sort of claim that he doesn’t exercise authority in his own country,’’ Toner said.
Murhaf Jouejati, a Syria expert at George Washington University, said Assad’s stonewalling is part of a long tradition for dictators who refuse to accept responsibility.
He pointed to Assad’s uncle, Rifaat, believed to be a driving force behind the 1982 massacre of thousands in the city of Hama, one of the darkest moments in the modern Middle East.
“Bashar Assad said he is not responsible, and we heard his uncle Rifaat Assad say he was not responsible for Hama. So after 41 years the Assad family is not responsible for anything,’’ Jouejati said. “If he is not responsible then we don’t know what he is doing in the presidency.’’
In the early days of the uprising, Assad offered some promises of reform, but at the same time unleashed the military to crush the protests with tanks and snipers.
The relentless bloodshed has pushed many once-peaceful protesters to take up arms. Army dissidents who sided with the protesters have also grown bolder, fighting back against regime forces, attacking military bases, and raising fears of a civil war.
Still, Assad insisted he retains the support of Syrians, and said he was not afraid of meeting the fate of other leaders deposed during the Arab Spring.
“The only thing that you could be afraid of as president [is] to lose the support of your people,’’ he said.
“If you don’t have the support of the people, you cannot be in this position,’’ he said. “Syria is not easy … it is a very difficult country to govern if you don’t have the public support.’’
Assad laughed slightly when asked if he felt guilty about the bloodshed.
“I did my best to protect the people,’’ he said. “You cannot feel guilty when you do your best … you do not feel guilty when you don’t kill people. You feel sorry for the lives that have been lost but you don’t feel guilty.’’
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"Syrian leader puts blame on traitors, terror; Cites foreign conspiracy in 2-hour speech" by Anthony Shadid | New York Times, January 11, 2012
BEIRUT - In his first public address in months, President Bashar Assad of Syria lashed out yesterday at the Arab League for isolating his country, mocked Syrian rebels as traitors, and vowed to subdue what he said was a foreign-backed plot against his country.
“We will defeat this conspiracy,’’ Assad declared in a speech that lasted nearly two hours.
The address repeated what has become a familiar refrain from Assad as he faces his greatest challenge in more than 11 years of authoritarian rule. He pledged to crush what he has cast as terrorism and sabotage, while offering somewhat vague promises of reform. The tenor of his remarks, and his seeming show of confidence, underscored the irreconcilable nature of Syria’s crisis, which pits a protest movement demanding that Assad leave office against a government that rarely acknowledges protesters’ grievances.
“When I rule, I rule because that is the people’s will, and when I leave office, I leave because it is the people’s will,’’ Assad said.
Syria’s uprising seems to have moved into a more complicated, confusing phase in recent weeks. Protests have appeared to revive in some locations, and armed elements of the opposition have seemed emboldened by defections from the security forces.
Meanwhile, bombing attacks in Damascus, the capital, have killed scores of people over the past month. The government has said that foreign-backed terrorists are responsible; the opposition claims the government carried out the bombings in a cynical effort to sully the protesters’ image.
In the latest turn, yesterday, the Arab League denounced attacks on its observers in Syria, who arrived last month to monitor an agreement brokered by the league that was meant to end the violence. The league’s secretary general, Nabil el- Arabi, said that both loyalists and government opponents had carried out attacks, but that in the end the Syrian government was to blame for failing to provide for the security of the mission....
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"Syrian leader makes rare appearance; Addresses rally, pledges to ‘defeat the conspiracy’" by Nada Bakri | New York Times, January 12, 2012
BEIRUT - President Bashar Assad of Syria appeared in public yesterday for the first time since the uprising against his rule began 10 months ago, addressing a rally in Umayyad Square in Damascus. He thanked the crowd for its support and pledged to defeat what he said were conspiracies against his country....
Assad’s speech, his second in two days, appeared intended to convey confidence and project authority, even as protests against him persist in some of the country’s largest cities....
The appearance came on an eventful day in Syria. France 2 Television said that one of its journalists, Gilles Jacquier, 43, was killed by an exploding shell in Homs.
Syrian television and a human rights group based in London said that another Western journalist was wounded there, in what appeared to be an insurgent attack on a crowd of Assad supporters.
And one of the 165 observers sent to Syria by the Arab League to check compliance with the government’s promise to end the violence resigned yesterday, calling the mission’s work a farce.
Assad appeared at the Damascus rally unexpectedly, wearing a jacket but no tie.
His British-educated wife, Asma, and their two children were also present; images broadcast on Addounia TV, a Syrian channel that is close to the government, showed Asma Assad in a black hat, with the children standing in front of her, smiling as her husband spoke to the surging, ecstatic crowd.
Bashar Assad’s televised speech of nearly two hours Tuesday was his first public address since June; that he followed it with a public appearance the next day seemed to indicate an effort to counter his government’s image of isolation.
The observer who resigned yesterday, Anwar Abdel Malik, said he left because he felt that the mission was serving the interests of the government rather than trying to end the crackdown on protesters.
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