Terrorism is being exported to the Middle East from Europe, especially from France, said Syria’s President Bashar Assad in an interview to French media. He also criticized western states for politically supporting terrorists in the region.
In the ongoing war in Syria, government forces have been fighting terrorists since the very beginning of the conflict in its third year, said Assad in an interview with Paris Match news magazine given in late November and published on Wednesday.
“Let’s be honest: had Qatar not paid money to those terrorists at that time, and had Turkey not supported them logistically, and had not the West supported them politically, things would have been different. If we in Syria had problems and mistakes before the crisis, which is normal, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the events had internal causes,” the RT quoted Assad as saying.
He explained that currently Syria is fighting against “not only gangs”, but also states that support them with “billions of dollars.”
He refuted claims that the Syrian government supports IS militants, which are on the rampage in parts of Syria and Iraq, calling them absurd.
“The truth is that ISIS was created in Iraq in 2006. It was the United States which occupied Iraq, not Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [IS leader] was in American prisons, not in Syrian prisons. So, who created ISIS, Syria or the United States?”
Terrorism is an ideology which twenty years ago was exported to the West from Sunni Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Assad stated. He believes that the process has reversed with terrorists coming to the Middle East from Europe and “especially France”.
