Attempts to Militarily Rehabilitate Assad Undermine Political Process

Press Statement "Original in Arabic"

Syrian Coalition

Media Office

September 18, 2015

In response to the plan of the international envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, seeking to find a political solution, the Assad regime announced that it has put the new Russian weapons it received to use. Images and videos soon began to flow from Aleppo, Dara’a, Raqqa, Zabadani and Douma showing the aftermath of the regime’s deadly aerial bombardment of residential areas. Over 100 civilians were killed and many more injured in aerial attacks across Syria yesterday.

Moreover, 24 civilians were killed and many more wounded a regime’s barrel bomb attack on a crowded market in the town of Bosra al-Sham in rural Dara’a.

While we in the Syrian Coalition condemn these barbaric crimes, we call upon the UN Security Council to unequivocally condemn these attacks and bring their perpetrators to justice. We also call for taking concrete actions in response to these attacks; most importantly issuing a binding UN resolution to stop Assad’s deliberate bombing of unarmed civilians.

Any attempt by Russia or Iran to rehabilitate the Assad regime politically and militarily will lead to more attrition and is doomed to fail with a crumbling regime that has lost legitimacy. Such attempts will have disastrous results on the Syrian people, the region and on the efforts aimed at reaching a political solution.

Increased violence by the Assad regime will lead to a further surge of extremist groups and will exacerbate the refugee crisis as more Syrians will find themselves forced to risk their lives in perilous sea journeys, thus will further complicate the Syrian file and impede the efforts aimed at bringing about a political solution. They will also take the situation in Syria back to square one of military escalation for which, alongside the Assad regime, the Iranian and Russian regimes are responsible.