SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad confirmed yesterday that his government will pardon all ‘militants’ who turn in their weapons, stressing that the policy has been exercised by Damascus since the beginning of the crisis in the Middle Eastern country.
‘If the terrorists want to return to normal life and lay down arms, they will get amnesty … We have been doing this for … years I think,’ Assad told the Greek ITV channel on Wednesday according to the official Syrian SANA news agency.
He added that the issue ‘is not about my victory … The most important thing is the victory of the Syrian people because it is a war waged against the Syrian people.’ He concluded: ‘Amnesty is … a good option to help those people who took up arms for different reasons to return to normal life … to go to political institutions … to head to the polls … to go for any kind of political measures available in any country.’
In fact, the Russian and Syrian governments started a large-scale humanitarian operation in Aleppo yesterday, the Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu has confirmed.
‘The Russian Centre for Reconciliation of warring parties will open three humanitarian corridors together with the Syrian government to provide assistance to people who were taken hostage by terrorists, as well as for militants who want to lay down their arms. Mobile centres will be opened near these corridors to provide food and medical assistance to people,’ the defence minister added.
The Russian Defence Ministry still hopes to receive from the United States coordinates of areas where the Free Syrian Army is stationed, Sergey Shoigu said. ‘We still hope to receive from our US colleagues the coordinates of areas where units of the Free Syrian Army are stationed and information about a typical unit of moderate opposition – what weapons and equipment they usually have, including the number of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems,’ Shoigu said.
‘Since our US partners have not provided information on disengagement between Jabhat al-Nusra (terrorist organisation banned in Russia) and the Free Syrian Army, we will create the fourth corridor in the north of Aleppo toward Castello Road for the safe passage of armed militants,’ he said.
The Russian Defence Minister has also called on international organisations to take part in the humanitarian operation in the Syrian city of Aleppo. We ask international humanitarian organisations working in Syria to join this operation,’ Shoigu said on Thursday.
The fall of Aleppo and the surrender or passage out of the city for both disarmed and armed ‘opposition fighters’, along with the current disablement of the Turkish army, and its inability to further intervene in the situation, will mark the end of the war, and the victory of Syria.
It will only leave to be done the clearing out of the IS fighters currently occupying their one-time capital of Raqqa. They are already retreating towards Mosul.
This victory will be a triumph not just for the Syrian people but for all of the peoples of the Middle East, the working people of the world, and all of the planet’s anti-imperialist forces.
The imperialist powers who tore Iraq and Libya into pieces, butchering their leaders, destroying advanced societies, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and creating millions of refugees by opening up the way for the Islamists, have been unable to repeat the operation in Syria, despite the most determined and bloodthirsty efforts.
Part of their problem was that the British working class refused to allow Cameron to join in an Obama attack on Syria, defeating Cameron in the British parliament. Of this we can be truly proud!
Syria’s victory will greatly encourage the Palestinian masses to push forward to create their state with Jerusalem as the capital of a secular socialist society, where Jews, Muslims and Christians can live side by side and flourish.
This victory will also rock the Gulf feudalists of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain to their foundations, and inspire the masses of the Middle East to organise to abolish these creations of the Sykes-Picot imperialist carving up of the region, and replace them with a Socialist Federation of Middle Eastern States.
