WarSclerotic

‘Assad: Syria troops’ violence not my resp… JPost – Middle East.

    Syrian President Bashar Assad told US news station ABC that he is not directly responsible for acts of violence committed by his security forces since an uprising against the Alawite president began in Syria in March of this year, Dubai-based Arabic-language news channel Al Arabiya reported Wednesday.

According to a press statement released by ABC concerning the interview – which will be aired Wednesday evening – Assad said “I am the president…I am not the owner of the nation, so these are not my troops,” according to Al Arabiya.

“There is a difference between a deliberate policy of repression, and the presence of some errors committed by some officials. There is a great difference,” Assad reportedly said.

The situation in Syria has grown increasingly chaotic in the last few months, with a death toll rising above 4,000 people according to the United Nations.

Western leaders, Turkey and the Arab League have ordered that the Syrian president stop a brutal crackdown on protesters that has caused thousands of deaths, and usher in political reforms that he promised almost immediately after the uprising began.

UN officials have said Syria is close to “civil war,” and there are fears that sectarian differences among Syria’s ethnically diverse population could push the country into a conflict similar to that in neighboring Iraq.

In addition to accusations by human rights groups of torture, killings, and unwarranted arrests of activists and bloggers by the Syrian armed forces, recent reports point to a new phenomenon of unknown assailants and deaths on both the pro- and anti-Assad sides.

In the past two days, more people were killed in mysterious circumstances than by the state security forces firing in the streets, activists and residents say. Yet very little is known for certain about who is behind such killings, which appear to have targeted government supporters, as well as opponents.

Along with a rise in ambushes and bomb attacks by military defectors who have set up a “Free Syrian Army”, the emergence of irregular militias has complicated what began in March as a popular revolt against Assad, inspired by unarmed demonstrators who led Arab Spring protests elsewhere.

Available reports offer only a partial explanation of who stood behind the kidnapping and murder of over 60 Syrians whose bodies were dumped on Monday in two separate places in Homs.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted a witness in Homs as saying on Monday he saw the bodies of 34 people “who were originally kidnapped earlier today by Shabiha from the neighborhood uprising against the regime”.

Shabiha is a popular name for state-backed paramilitaries drawn from Assad’s minority Alawite sect, who are outnumbered about eight to one by Syria’s Sunni Muslim people

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