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Syria Needs ‘Time’ in Battle, Assad Says Syria Needs ‘Time’ in Battle, Assad Says
(about 4 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in an excerpt from a television interview broadcast Wednesday that his government’s battle against opposition forces would need “time” and had not yet been resolved, in what appeared to be a sober assessment of the resilience of the armed insurgency and the limits of a military hobbled by a steady stream of defections. BEIRUT, Lebanon — During an interview that was broadcast Wednesday night, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria sought to rally public support for his fight against insurgents that has strained his military, subjected his government to defections and assassinations and delivered unrelenting, deadly violence to every corner of the country.
But Mr. Assad also praised the heroism of his army, apparently seeking to bolster public faith that, despite 18 months of rebellion and a crackdown that has made his government an international pariah, he had not lost his will to prevail. Appearing confident and relaxed and sitting in what he said was the presidential palace in Damascus, Mr. Assad said Syria was facing a “regional and international war” that would “take time to resolve.”
“We are moving forward,” Mr. Assad said. “The situation, practically, is better.” His statement was a rare, belated acknowledgment that as the conflict entered its 18th month there was no sign that either the government or any of its disparate groups of opponents were strong enough to prevail. Mr. Assad also spoke frankly about other difficulties his government faced. He talked of the defections by those ranging from his prime minister to army conscripts, but framed them as part of a “self-cleaning” process that was ridding the country of traitors.
The Syrian president made his comments in excerpts from an interview that will broadcast in full on Wednesday night on a private Syrian television station. He sharply criticized foreign powers, especially Turkey, where officials have raised the possibility of outside intervention in Syria. He dismissed a proposal floated by Turkey and other nations to create buffer zones inside Syria as unrealistic. Above all, though, Mr. Assad seemed intent on using the friendly interview, which was carried on a private television channel owned by his cousin Rami Makhlouf, to convey a sense that the government’s survival was inevitable.
“Will we go backward, because of the ignorance of some Turkish officials?” he said. “When we get this done,” he said, “Syria will return to the Syria before the crisis.”
Mr. Assad dismissed defectors who had fled Syria, saying that “patriotic, good people” would not leave the country. And with a chuckle, he dismissed persistent rumors that he had gone into hiding, saying that he was conducting the interview in the presidential palace in Damascus. A supporter of the president, a 40-year-old government worker watched the televised interview in Damascus, where he lives, said it left him feeling reassured. “I think the president proved it’s a conspiracy, targeting divisions and weakening the state,” said the worker, who gave only his first name, Ammar. “The president did this interview to say, ‘I am still in my palace, and control everything.’ ”
The interview comes after days of fierce fighting in the capital’s suburbs, including in the city of Daraya, where hundreds of people were said to have been killed over the last week as the army tried to rout armed opposition fighters who made a base in the city. Opposition activists said that at least 11 people had been killed in fighting in the eastern suburbs of Damascus on Wednesday, where the government has said it is pursuing “cleansing” operations. Events in Syria on Wednesday defied attempts to say which side was in control. Rebel commanders in Idlib Province said they had begun a major offensive against a military airport, destroying 5 to 10 government helicopters. But the government quickly asserted that its soldiers had “bravely” repelled the attack, and that no helicopters had been damaged.
In an article published on Wednesday in the British daily The Independent, residents of Daraya raised the possibility that opposition fighters were behind some of the killings last week. One woman said in the article that she saw at least 10 bodies on the road before government troops had entered Daraya. Another man said that some victims, including civil employees and off-duty conscripts, might have been killed because of their association with the government. The army continued its broad assault on the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a stronghold of opposition since last year that has brought the rebellion to the capital city. In one of the conflict’s bloodiest episodes, hundreds of people were killed last week in fighting in the town of Daraya, in circumstances that remain murky. Refugees from Daraya who fled to Lebanon this week said that opposition fighters were among those killed, but that the army had also executed scores of civilians as it stormed the town. Mr. Assad did not mention the fighting in Daraya during his interview.
Opposition fighters in the northern province of Idlib said Wednesday that they had destroyed at least five government helicopters during an attack on the Taftanaz military airport.  The Syrian official news agency, SANA, quoting a military source, said that government troops had “bravely” repelled the attack and that there were no equipment losses.  In an article published on Wednesday in the British daily newspaper The Independent, some Daraya residents raised the possibility that opposition fighters had been behind some of the killings. The article quoted one woman as saying that she saw at least 10 bodies on the road before government troops entered the city. A man was quoted as saying that some victims, including civil employees and off-duty conscripts, might have been killed because of their association with the government.
In a further sign of the intensity of the conflict, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that the number of Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan last week had more than doubled from the previous week, raising further fears of a growing exodus from Syria that threatens to overwhelm international relief efforts. On Wednesday, activists in the eastern suburbs of Damascus said at least 11 civilians were killed during attacks by government troops using warplanes and helicopters. Syria’s state news media accused the rebels of killing civilians in the suburb of Zamalka, saying that “mercenary terrorists” also planned to fire mortar rounds at the army in an effort to provoke a violent response.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Melissa Fleming, the chief spokeswoman for the refugee agency, said that 10,200 Syrians had crossed into northern Jordan between Aug. 21 and Aug. 27, compared with 4,500 the week before. The refugees, she said, included an increasing number of unaccompanied children, some orphans and others sent ahead by parents, sometimes without passports. Mr. Assad defended the army’s fierce assaults on towns throughout the country, saying his Syrian opponents were carrying out “foreign designs,” and as traitors, could be executed. “This is clear, and we should not be romantic about it,” he said. Speaking of the stalemated fight for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, Mr. Assad called the battle “critical” and said it would take time.
“Refugees say many thousands more are waiting to cross amid violence around Dara’a,” Ms. Fleming said, referring to the southern Syrian province that borders Jordan. “We believe this could be the start of a much larger influx. Some of those who have crossed in recent days — especially Friday — report being bombed by aircraft. There are also reports of shelling, mortars and other weapons fire.” As he has in the past, Mr. Assad denied that the uprising against him, which started with protests in the spring of 2011 that the government countered with deadly force, represented any meaningful, homegrown call for change.
The waves of refugees fleeing Dara’a, the Damascus suburbs, Aleppo and the Idlib region near Turkey in recent days have provided a barometer of the escalating violence in the 18-month-old conflict, in which neither the government of President Bashar al-Assad nor the opposition seems capable of striking a decisive blow. “Many people were tricked in the beginning; they thought that what is happening is a wave of the Arab Spring,” he said.
Ms. Fleming said the number of refugees escaping to Turkey had multiplied to 5,000 a day from 400 or 500 daily several weeks ago. In the past 24 hours, she said, 3,000 people had entered Turkey, with 10,000 more waiting. “The foreign element that was not clear in the beginning is clear now,” Mr. Assad said, taking special aim at the government of Turkey, a neighbor that has raised the possibility of military intervention in Syria.
In Turkey, which had said it would not accept more than 100,000 refugees, officials said that they had revised the number to 120,000, and that they were preparing contingency plans for more. Turkey’s foreign minister said Wednesday that it would urge the United Nations Security Council to consider the creation of “buffer zones” along the border. Turkish officials said the zones, to be administered by the United Nations, would protect thousands of refugees trying to enter Turkey.
Elsewhere around Damascus on Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed when a booby-trapped taxi exploded during a funeral procession in the suburb of Jaramana, in what the state news media called a “terrorist bombing.” An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw damaged buildings and shattered windows, and interviewed a woman who said her 6-year-old daughter had been killed. Syrian Army defectors have also called for such zones, though they envision them as staging grounds for attacks on the Syrian military.
In Idlib Province, at least 23 people were killed after warplanes bombed the city of Kafr Nabl, according to activists and a local opposition commander, who said that one bomb had hit a market and that the dead were mostly civilians. Mr. Assad called such zones unrealistic, and accused the Turkish government of bearing “direct responsibility” for the bloodshed in Syria. He contended that relations with Turkey’s people would remain strong, saying, “We don’t want to go backward because of the ignorance of Turkish officials.”
“The planes used to attack the outskirts, but today they changed their habit and attacked the center,” the commander said. Given the gravity of events in Syria, some parts of the interview seemed bizarre, including a meandering discussion about the lack of sophistication in Syria in the field of human resources and another about the media. Speaking of his country’s growing international isolation, including economic sanctions, Mr. Assad said that Syria’s economy would “adapt,” and that Iran managed to survive under similar restrictions.
The death toll could not be corroborated, but at least five wounded people can be seen in a five-minute video that purports to show the aftermath of one bombing. It seems to have been filmed soon after an airstrike, opening with panicked scenes of cars and shops on fire, a rubble-strewed street and buildings pulverized by an explosion. Mr. Assad broached the delicate subject of defections from his government, which have included that of his prime minister and a general who was said to be one of his closest friends, though he dismissed them as the actions of malcontents, mercenaries or people Syria was better off without.
A man stumbles by the camera, clutching his left ear. “Oh, God!” someone wails, as the camera turns to a man, caked in blood, on a truck bed. Two other victims are carried past the camera: one has a large wound in the right thigh, and the other appears to be dead. Past a large, round crater in the ground, another victim is rolled onto a blanket and a second is dragged by his shirt. “We should not be upset about it,” the president said, contending that the government had never prevented people from leaving. “It is a positive process.”
Citing the failure of Syria’s fractured opposition movement to stem the bloodshed, a Syrian dissident, Bassma Kodmani, announced her resignation on Tuesday from the Syrian National Council, the main exile opposition group. Talal Atrissi, a political analyst in Lebanon who watched the speech, said Mr. Assad seemed more relaxed than he had in previous appearances, suggesting that perhaps he felt he had weathered the worst of a crisis that began weeks ago, when four of Mr. Assad’s top security officials were assassinated and insurgents staged assaults on Damascus and then Aleppo.
Since its creation, the council has been plagued by squabbles and criticized as a front for exiled dissidents — and principally, the Muslim Brotherhood — with little support inside Syria. “He talked about the crisis in a normal way, which is something new,” Mr. Atrissi said. “He talked about the defections, and Turkey, where in the past, he never recognized these problems.”
Ms. Kodmani, who was a member of the council’s executive committee and one of its most prominent faces, alluded to those criticisms in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the council had not maintained “the required credibility” and “veered from the path we set for it.” “It’s as if the regime has taken a deep breath,” Mr. Atrissi said.
She said that she would continue her opposition work from outside the council.

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Mai Ayyad from Cairo; and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

Her comments came as a group of Syrian dissidents presented a report in Berlin that they said was intended as a road map for a democratic transition to power after the fall of President Assad. The report, called the “The Day After Project,” was drafted by 45 Syrian activists who said they represented a broad spectrum of political and religious organizations.
Their meetings, held over the last year and a half, were initiated by the United States Institute of Peace, an independent but Congressionally financed organization, and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Melissa Eddy from Berlin, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.