Syria’s civil war is stretching into its sixth year. Half a million lives have been lost, and more than half the country’s population is currently displaced. And if recent news is any indication, things aren’t getting better any time soon.
In an interview with the New York Times in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he expected to stay president until at least the end of his current term in 2021. Ruling out any political changes in the foreseeable future, he also said the social fabric in Syria was “much better than before” the war.
In the interview, Assad denied that his regime carried out “double-tap strikes” — a strategy where planes circle back and hit an area already bombed in an effort to kill aid workers — even though multiple reports have indicated otherwise. In fact, the Guardian labelled the tactic a “signature” of the Syrian air force. Among his denials were allegations that the Syrian and Russian regime have repeatedly hit hospitals and medical workers, killing thousands of civilians.
“Let’s suppose that these allegations are correct and this president has killed his own people and the U.S. is helping the Syrian people,” Assad told the Times. “After five years and a half, who supported me? How can I be a president and my people don’t support me?”
Meanwhile, Russia —which has been involved in bombing populated civilian districts — has said it is delaying peace talks indefinitely, a day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that Russia could be planning to “bomb Aleppo to smithereens.”
Kerry has often cut a frustrated figure over the Obama administration’s hesitance to use force in order to push Russia and the Syrian regime to come to the negotiating table in better faith. “I think you’re looking at three people, four people in the administration who have all argued for use of force, and I lost the argument,” he allegedly told a group of Syrian civilians in late September in a “private conversation” later leaked to the New York Times.
Syrians often see Obama’s inaction as tacit support for the Assad regime. Massacres in Syria are occurring practically on a daily basis and the Obama administration’s lack of a clear policy and redrawing of red-lines has left many Syrians, particularly those feeling the effects of Russian and Syrian bombs or Iranian proxy militias, exasperated and feeling as if the value of their peoples’ lives is worthless to the international community.
“There is a perception that a Sunni life doesn’t matter much, that the whole world is ready to reconcile with Assad, sign deals with the Iranians and turn a blind eye on the massacre of Sunni populations,” Ayman Mhanna, Director of the Global Forum for Media Development and head of the Samir Kassir Foundation, the Middle East’s most prominent press freedom organization, told ThinkProgress. “This is the perception that AQ [Al Qaeda] and IS [ISIS] exploit. Only by showing equal resolve to fight all forms of war crimes and put an end to sufferings on all fronts would the world be able to bring an end to the conflict.”