When you have terrorists, you don’t throw at them balloons or you don’t use rubber sticks, for example. You have to use armaments.
BASHAR AL-ASSADEvery country has criminals who have to be fought. They can exist anywhere, including the government or the army – or outside the government and army.
More Bashar al-Assad Quotes
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The fact that there are people who criticize me doesn’t mean that people hate me.
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This is cooperation [with Hezbollah, Iran , from Russia], I don’t know what you mean by support. We have cooperation with countries for decades. Why talk about this cooperation now ?
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To have opposition ? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.
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The army is made of the people ; it cannot be made of robots.
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No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person.
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We’re talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it ; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don’t expect.
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There is no such things as “Islamic terrorism,” because terrorism differs from Islam. There’s just terrorism, not Islamic terrorism. But the term “Islamic terrorism” has become widespread.
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We feel pain for every Syrian victim.
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Syria is in a state of war since its land was occupied for more than four decades, and the nature of the frontier in Syria implies that most of the army is in inhabited areas, most of the centers are in inhabited areas.
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As I said, this [repercussions] may take different forms : direct and indirect. Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments. Indirect when you’re going to have instability and the spread of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.
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I don’t believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.
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We cannot use jihadists because it’s like shooting yourself in the foot.
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The United States accused Syria, and because you accused you have to bring evidence [of chemical weapons], this first of all. We have to find evidences when we are there.
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On the border area with Lebanon where [Hezbollah forces] want to protect themselves and cooperate with us, but they don’t exist all over Syria.
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We learned that lesson very well, especially in the eighties, that terrorists cannot be used as a political card, you cannot put it in your pocket, because it’s like a scorpion; it will bite you someday.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD