Coalition airstrikes in Syria are futile, says Assad

Airstrikes by the US and the coalition against Islamic State are neither "serious" nor "efficient", the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has told Paris Match magazine in a rare interview.

”You cannot end terrorism with airstrikes,” Assad said. He seemed to make an indirect offer of assistance, adding that “ground forces who know the geography and act simultaneously are indispensable. That is why there have been no tangible results in two months (since the US started bombing)… It is we who are leading the ground war against [Islamic State]\, and we have seen no changes.”

Assad's remarks sounded like a retort to the US secretary of state John Kerry, who told a December 3rd meeting of the coalition in Brussels that airstrikes have inflicted serious damage on IS.

The US-led coalition has carried out 1,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. Assad called them "merely cosmetic" and said his air force carries out more sorties. "It's not true that the coalition strikes help us. They would have helped us if they were serious and efficient." Although the coalition targets his enemies, Assad complained that the intervention was "illegal… because it has not received the approval of the Security Council" and "because it violates Syrian sovereignty."

The Syrian president did not mention the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has supported his regime through nearly four years of civil war, and which this week began bombing IS positions in the Iraqi province of Diyala. Tehran stresses the decisive nature of its intervention, and, like Assad, claims the US-led coalition is ineffectual.

Assad spoke scathingly of France, portraying the last two French presidents as puppets of Qatar and Washington. "Terrorism…at present is coming to us from Europe, and especially France," he said. "I am neither the personal enemy nor the rival of [\President Francois] Hollande. IS is more like his rival, since they're about as unpopular as he is."

French policy in Libya had disastrous consequences, with chaos following the death of Muammar Gadafy. Asked if he has considered leaving power, Assad said, “The captain doesn’t abandon ship in the tempest.” Did he fear meeting the same fate as Saddam Hussein and Gadafy? “The captain does not think of life or death. He thinks of saving his ship,” he replied. “My goal is not to remain president, neither before, during or after the crisis.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on December 2nd it had recorded the deaths of 202,354 people in Syrian since March 2011. The UN says more than 190,000 have died. “The figures going around today… are exaggerated. They are false,” Assad said.

The Syrian dictator used the words "terrorism" or "terrorists" 24 times in the two and a half page interview. "If Qatar had not financed these terrorists since the beginning; if Turkey had not given them logistical support and the West had not supported them politically, things would have been different," he said.

“No one can say yet when this war will end, or how,” Assad said, predicting that it “will be long and difficult.”