叙利亚总统阿萨德1月6日全国电视讲话全文

President Bashar Al-Assad’s January 6th, 2013 Speech<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Transcript provided by the Syrian Arab News Agency

Mr. Prime Minister,

Heads and members of the leaderships of popular organizations and trade unions,

Sisters and brothers,

Today I look at your faces and the faces of the people of our country as they are covered with sorrow and pain. I look into the eyes of Syria’s children and I don’t see an innocent laugh shinning, nor do I see toys that draw a smile on their faces. I watch the hands of elderly people and see them open to prayer for the safety of a son, a daughter or a grandson.

We meet today with suffering prevailing over Syria’s land leaving no room for joy in any corner of the homeland. Safety and security have been absent from the country’s streets and alleys.

We meet today and there are mothers who lost their sons, families who lost their breadwinners, children who became orphans and brothers who have been parted from each other, being martyred, displaced or missing.

If pain is pervading like a dark cloud over the country, the emotional state, though sublime, is not enough to compensate for the loss of the loved ones or the restoration of security and peace to the country or for providing bread, water, fuel and medicine nationwide.

Out of the womb of pain, hope should be begotten and from the depth of suffering the most important solutions rise. As the dark cloud in the sky conceals sunlight, it also carries in its layers rain, purity and hope of welfare and giving.

These feelings of agony, sadness, challenge and determination constitute a huge energy that will not get Syria out of its crisis unless it turns this energy into a comprehensive national dynamic that saves the homeland from a campaign, unprecedented in the history of the region, targeting it. This national dynamic is the only balm for the deep wounds which affected our society and were about to divide it as it is the only way that is able to preserve Syria geographically and make it stronger politically.

Each citizen is responsible and able to provide something even if it is simple or limited in his/her view, because the homeland is for everyone; we all defend it, each according to his/her capacity and capability, because ideas are forms of defense, stances are forms of defense, construction is a form of defense and protecting people’s properties is a form of defense.

Since the attack is launched against the homeland with all its human and material constituents, the mindful citizen has certainly known that passivity, waiting for time or others to solve the problem is a sort of pushing the country towards the abyss, and not contributing solutions is a kind of taking the homeland backwards with no progress towards overcoming what the homeland is going through.

Because many have fallen into the trap of what has been cast as a conflict between a government and an opposition, i.e. a conflict over office and power, they have kept at a distance and remained silent and neutral. Consequently, it is our duty all to readjust our vision in the direction of the homeland. The conflict is one between the homeland and its enemies, between the people and killers, between the citizens’ bread, water and warmth on the one hand and those who are depriving them of them all on the other, between a state of safety that we used to pride ourselves on, and spreading fear and panic in people’s lives.

They have killed civilians and the innocent in order to kill light and brightness in our country. They have assassinated qualified and distinguished people in order to spread their ignorance over our minds. They have sabotaged the infrastructure built with the people’s money to make suffering pervade into our lives. They deprived children of their schools to devastate the future of the country and express their ignorance. They cut off power supplies, communication lines and fuel supplies, leaving the elderly and children suffering from the cold weather without medicine in confirmation of their savagery. They destroyed wheat silos and robbed the wheat and flour stocks, to make a loaf of bread like a dream for citizens and to starve people. So, is this a conflict for power and office or is it a conflict between the homeland and its enemies? Is it a struggle for power, or is it revenge against the Syrian people who did not give those terrorist killers the key word for dismembering Syria and its society. They are the enemies of the people; and the enemies of the people are the enemies of God; and the enemies of God will be burnt by hellfire on the day of judgment.

At the beginning they wanted it a fake revolution but the Syrian people rebelled against them; then they tried to impose it secretly through money, the media and arms; and when they failed, they moved to the second phase through dropping the masks of a “peaceful revolution” and unveiled the cover of the weapons they were using secretly to use them openly, starting their attempts to occupy certain cities in order to attack other cities. Their brutality didn’t intimidate our people, thanks to their awareness and steadfastness; so our people rejected them and unveiled their lies. Therefore they decided to take revenge on the people through spreading terrorism indiscriminately everywhere.

They call it a revolution, but in fact it has nothing to do with revolutions. A revolution needs thinkers. A revolution is built on thought. Where are their thinkers? A revolution needs leaders. Who is its leader? Revolutions are built on science and thought not on ignorance, on pushing the country ahead not taking it centuries back, on spreading light not cutting power lines. A revolution is usually done by the people not by importing foreigners to rebel against the people. A revolution is in the interest of people not against the interests of people. Is this a revolution? Are those revolutionaries? They are a bunch of criminals.

Takfiris [Muslim apostate] were working at the back rows through bombings and mass killing, leaving the armed gangs at the front line, but the unity of the Syrian people and army forced them to move to fighting at the front lines where they led the rudder of a ship of blood, killing and mutilation. Because takfiri thought is alien to our country, they had to import it from abroad, whether through terrorists or thought. Thus, takfiris, terrorists, al-Qaeda members calling themselves Jihadis streamed from everywhere to command the combat operations on the ground. The gunmen, having failed, retreated to the backlines as aides in acts of kidnapping, pillaging and sabotage, as servants, and at best, guides who spy on their fellow citizens to serve criminals takfiris who only speak the language of slaughtering and mangling.

We are fighting those, most of whom are non-Syrians, who came for twisted concepts and fake terms they call Jihad, but nothing can be farther from Jihad and Islam. Most of them are terrorists instilled with al-Qaeda thought, and I believe that most of you know how this kind of terrorism was fostered three decades ago in Afghanistan by the West and with Arabs’ money. After the mission of these terrorists ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its departure from Afghanistan, terrorism broke loose and started hitting everywhere in the Arab world, the Islamic world and then moved to the West. They tried to get rid of it through Afghanistan War and in the aftermath of Iraq’s War, but this terrorism was unyielding and pervasive, and started to infiltrate Western societies. So, the events in the Arab world, especially in Syria, presented the Western powers with an opportunity to transfer as many terrorists as possible to Syria to turn it into the land of Jihad, hence dispensing with two troublesome rivals at the same time through getting rid of the terrorists and weakening Syria which is a nuisance for the West.

An organization specialized in terrorism issued a month or so ago a report on the decrease in terrorist acts in general, especially in the Middle and East Asia, which is true, because most of the terrorists came to Syria from these countries and some even come from the Western countries. Those terrorists’ infiltration into any society is a security threat, but it is possible to vanquish them when we have the will to do so. The most dangerous still is a social and intellectual infiltration. When this kind of thought infiltrates into a society, it becomes deformed unless this issue is seriously tackled regardless of the crisis in Syria. We have to be above differences. Otherwise, we would bequeath blood to our sons and grandsons. Syria, as we know it, won’t be there, not necessarily geographically speaking, but Syria as a society, because this thought incites sedition and destroys geography and the political meaning of any society which it invades. This is a great responsibility, and we have to unite in order to shoulder it.

The crisis has other dimensions, not only internal ones as it became clear to all who want to see. Regionally, there are parties who seek to divide Syria, others to weaken it, and some parties are providing the criminals with funds and weapons, while others are providing them with support and training. We were not surprised at what some neighboring countries have done to weaken and control the Syrian people, and the countries who sought a place in a history they don’t have, writing it instead with the blood of innocent Syrians, but Syria and the Syrian people are strong, and they vow that they will not forget.