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Defiant Assad Vows to Retake ‘Every Inch’ of Syria From His Foes Defiant Bashar al-Assad Vows to Retake ‘Every Inch’ of Syria
(about 3 hours later)
Syria’s president promised to retake “every inch” of the country from his foes in a defiant speech on Tuesday that dimmed hope for a revival of talks to end the war, now in its sixth year. WASHINGTON — Syria’s president promised to retake “every inch” of the country from his foes on Tuesday in a defiant speech that appeared to reject the humanitarian relief effort and peaceful transition of power that the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other nations have pressed for since last fall.
The speech by the president, Bashar al-Assad, was his first major address since talks in Geneva mediated by the United Nations broke down in April, and he offered no hint of willingness to compromise. The speech by President Bashar al-Assad was his first major address since the effort to mediate an end to the civil war broke down in Geneva in April. It reflected his sense that Russian intervention in the war has bolstered his position — and his ability to remain in power for the foreseeable future — as the war enters its sixth year.
Mr. Assad described those talks as a failed and “booby-trapped” effort by opponents who have been seeking to depose him since the war first started in 2011 as an uprising against his rule. Mr. Assad’s defiance was notable partly because of efforts in recent months by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and other leaders of a 17-nation collaboration, known as the International Syria Support Group, to set a series of deadlines and limits that Syria could not violate.
“When they failed to achieve what they wanted, their response was an open declaration of supporting terrorism,” Mr. Assad said in the speech in Parliament, as reported by the state news agency and broadcast on national television. Every one of the directives has been broken. A cease-fire designed in Munich in February collapsed. Mr. Kerry’s demand at that time — that humanitarian access had to begin within weeks — was briefly observed in a few towns before access was again largely blocked.
Mr. Assad’s defiance reflected a confidence that analysts said had been strengthened by his country’s most important ally, Russia, which plunged into the war nine months ago and has been assisting Syrian forces in bombing areas held by an array of insurgent groups. Three weeks ago in Vienna, Mr. Kerry appeared before reporters to declare that if Mr. Assad continued to obstruct convoys with humanitarian goods, the West would help the United Nations relief agency conduct airdrops of supplies to starving towns, beginning June 1. The deadline passed a week ago, with little comment by Mr. Kerry or the State Department. It remains unclear when those airdrops will commence, if at all.
Russian airstrikes helped the Syrian Army retake the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State in March. The Russians have also been helping Assad loyalists elsewhere, including against insurgents in and around the city of Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria. Some of these insurgent groups are supported by the United States. At the same Vienna conference, Mr. Kerry rejected the notion that President Obama and other allies would not use force to stop the Syrian government’s indiscriminate bombings or enforce humanitarian access.
“If President Assad has come to a conclusion there’s no Plan B,” he said, “then he’s come to a conclusion that is totally without any foundation whatsoever and even dangerous.” He added that Mr. Assad “should never make a miscalculation about President Obama’s determination to do what is right at any given moment of time, where he believes that he has to make that decision.”
Mr. Kerry, administration officials said, submitted to the White House months ago a “Plan B” that called for escalated military action if Mr. Assad continued his defiance. Mr. Obama has not acted on it, telling aides he was not convinced the plan could make a significant difference in the outcome in Syria, especially since Arab neighbors and European powers have not offered more than token support.
Mr. Obama is wary of drawing the United States deeper into a war in which he initially saw no vital American interest. Mr. Kerry and other officials, in private, have argued that the size of the humanitarian disaster in Syria and the flow of refugees into Europe have created such an interest. With only seven months left in office, Mr. Obama seems unlikely to change his mind.
Mr. Assad spoke as the Syrian authorities imposed new obstacles on international efforts to transport emergency aid to civilians trapped in rebel-held areas.
United Nations officials in Geneva said government approval for a delayed food convoy to Daraya — a suburb of Damascus that received medical aid last week for the first time in four years — was withheld.
Mr. Assad was clear on Tuesday that he had no intention of compromising with his adversaries, and seemed to reject the next deadline: An Aug. 1 target for developing a “transition plan” that Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry have said must ultimately result in someone else running what is left of Syria.
In his speech, Mr. Assad said the peace talks that broke down were a “booby-trapped” effort by opponents who have been seeking to depose him since the war first started in 2011, at the beginning of the Arab Spring.
“When they failed to achieve what they wanted, their response was an open declaration of supporting terrorism,” Mr. Assad said in the speech made in Parliament, as reported by the state news agency and broadcast on national television.
Mr. Assad’s political adversaries reacted with a mix of fury and frustration. “We’re seeing behavior that is the most extreme, the full military solution,” said Bassma Kodmani, a member of the High Negotiations Committee, an opposition group that had been negotiating with the Syrian government through United Nations mediation.
“Seventeen countries have agreed on something, does this have no value at all?” Ms. Kodmani said. “This whole scheme of cooperation to resolve the conflict seems to be failing.”
Mr. Assad seems unlikely to be able to make good on his boast to retake his country. His strength is largely limited to areas where there is a strong presence of his minority Alawite sect.
But bolstered by Russia’s intervention nine months ago to help prop him up, Mr. Assad is stronger than he has been in years, many experts say, and he has rejected the idea that any new government would have to exclude him.
He has the strong support of Iran, his longtime provider of security, though Russian officials seem less concerned about whether Mr. Assad himself remains in power or is replaced by another leader from his Alawite sect.
An announcement by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in March that he was pulling back from Syria appeared to be largely a charade.
Russian airstrikes helped the Syrian army retake the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State that same month. The Russians have also been helping Assad loyalists elsewhere, including against insurgents in and around the city of Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria. Some of these groups are supported by the United States.
“Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we are going to liberate each and every inch of Syria from their hands because we have no other choice but to win,” Mr. Assad said in the speech.“Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we are going to liberate each and every inch of Syria from their hands because we have no other choice but to win,” Mr. Assad said in the speech.
Political analysts said Mr. Assad’s remarks are likely to make any talks with his opponents more problematic, even though both Russia and the United States have called for a resumption of diplomacy through their leadership of the International Syria Support Group, a 17-nation effort to end the war. Behind the scenes, Mr. Kerry has been talking frequently to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to seek assurances that Russia was aiming first at Islamic State forces, and not bombing other insurgent groups. State Department officials offered no details of those discussions, repeating a standard line that they are asking Russia “to use its influence” to allow humanitarian intervention. There appears to be no plan to turn the threat of airdrops — which Mr. Lavrov joined — into a reality.
“It’s pretty clear Assad’s defiance and rigidity at the negotiating table continues to increase after the Russian intervention,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syrian expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This doesn’t bode well for the political negotiations in Geneva to find a political settlement.” At the same time, evidence suggests that many of the groups the United States is backing are under periodic attack from Russia and ground forces supported by Iran. Under those circumstances, there seems little reason to believe that the diplomatic effort Mr. Kerry initiated last fall will make much progress.
Mr. Assad targeted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey with particularly harsh comments, accusing him of helping insurgents in Aleppo, once Syria’s most important commercial center, 40 miles south of Turkey’s border. “It’s pretty clear Assad’s defiance and rigidity at the negotiating table continues to increase after the Russian intervention,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This doesn’t bode well for the political negotiations in Geneva to find a political settlement.”
“Aleppo will be the grave where all the dreams and hopes of that butcher will be buried,” Mr. Assad said, referring to Mr. Erdogan. In a report published Tuesday by the RAND Corporation, two veterans of Mr. Obama’s national security team, James Dobbins and Philip Gordon, argued that the Obama administration’s approach has been too ambitious, and that it would be better to focus on cease-fires and humanitarian access, rather than political change.
Mr. Assad spoke as the Syrian authorities imposed new obstacles on international efforts to transport emergency aid to civilians trapped in rebel-held areas, ignoring repeated warnings, including a June 1 deadline imposed last month by the International Syria Support Group. “The regime is showing no willingness to negotiate seriously on constitutional change or a comprehensive political transition and continues to insist that Assad must stay in power and that all of Syrian territory must be reclaimed,” they wrote in the report, together with Jeffrey Martini, a former State Department official.
United Nations officials in Geneva said government approval for a delayed food convoy to Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, was withheld. “If the parties on the ground and key outside actors forgo overly ambitious political objectives and prioritize extending the cease-fire, humanitarian assistance, and local governance, there is at least a chance that the nightmare Syrians and their neighbors have been living for more than five years can be brought to an end.”
The food convoy had been scheduled to leave for Daraya on Friday but the government had given only “partial approval” that was not sufficient for the convoy to proceed, Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations agency coordinating humanitarian affairs, told reporters in Geneva. s been
It was unclear whether partial approval limited the size of the convoy or the content of the aid. Either way, Mr. Laerke said, “that is not good enough.”
A five-truck convoy with medical supplies was permitted into Daraya on June 1, the first humanitarian relief to reach its 4,000 residents in nearly four years.
That delivery was regarded as a hopeful sign that international aid agencies would have better access to civilians trapped in towns under siege or cut off by conflict from regular assistance, said Jan Egeland, chairman of a task force on humanitarian aid set up by the International Syria Support Group. The delivery of food to Daraya was “a clear test” of prospects for increasing the deliveries of aid this month, he added.
The delays of getting food to Daraya have instead demonstrated how options have been limited by the government’s intransigence.
“The blockage of aid is a political issue,” said Ahmad Fawzi, a United Nations spokesman in Geneva. “We are knocking on every door and asking those with influence to exercise that influence.”
The obstruction of land deliveries has turned a spotlight on United Nations preparations for airdrops to the 19 communities and more than half a million people it has identified as under siege.
The World Food Program, the United Nations food agency, has been conducting high altitude airdrops with Syrian government permission to Deir al-Zour, a town in eastern Syria that is surrounded by the Islamic State.
But other besieged areas are in crowded urban surroundings, which mean airdrops can only be done by helicopter. Mr. Laerke said a written request had been filed with the Syrian authorities on Sunday for permission to deliver aid by air if land access was not possible.