Presidents Of Syria

"Oh people of Free Syria, building the homeland is the responsibility of all of us, and this is a call to all Syrians to participate in building a new homeland, in which there is rule through justice and consultation. Together, we will build the future Syria: the Syria that is the beacon of knowledge and progress, the refuge of security and stability, the Syria of comfort, progress and prosperity, the Syria that extends its hand with peace and respect, so that its people can return to a dignified noble homeland, which is prosperous, safe and secure by God’s permission."

"From here, I address you today in my capacity as president of Syria in this fateful period, asking God to grant us all success so we can revive our homeland, and overcome the challenges that we are facing, and that will only be through all standing together in people and leadership. I address you today not as a ruler but as a servant for our wounded homeland, striving with all power and will I have been given to realise Syria’s unity and renaissance, as we should all understand that this is a transitional stage, and it is part of a political process that requires true participation by all Syrian men and women, inside and outside the country, so that we can build their future with freedom and dignity, without marginalisation or sidelining."

"Syria was liberated by the martyrs, male and female detainees, men and women who were tortured, missing men and women, and all their nursing mothers and their oppressed people, because of all their sacrifices and your sacrifices I stand here today, so that together we can open a new chapter in the history of our beloved land."

"I speak to you today not as a ruler, but as a servant to our wounded nation, determined to achieve Syria's unity and revival."

"To the defiant Syrian people, I stand before you today with a heart filled with hope and determination, directing my speech to all Syrian men and women, to those who live in the displacement camps, to the internally displaced and the refugees, to the injured and wounded, to the families of the martyrs and the missing, to the revolutionary activists who dedicated their life to struggle for Free Syria. I stand before you today 54 days after we were all liberated and Syria was liberated from the bonds of a criminal regime that oppressed us for decades. 54 days have passed since the disappearance of 54 years of the darkest forms of dictatorial rule in the history of Syria and the entire world. Syria was liberated by God’s grace first, then by the grace of every person who strove on the inside and the outside. Every person who sacrificed his life and blood, and his home and wealth, and his peace and security."

"Syria today needs more than ever before. Just as we were determined to liberate her, we must now commit to rebuilding and developing her."

"If arrogance consumes the victor, and he forgets the grace of God, he will be led to tyranny. Victory is not merely an achievement; it is a responsibility. The burden on the victorious is heavy, and their duty is immense."

"The fallen regime has left deep wounds—social, economic, and political and other. Healing them requires a lot of wisdom, relentless effort, and tireless perseverance. Those who believe the time for struggle has passed and that comfort has arrived are deluded."

"Those who believe that war permits moral corruption are mistaken, for power, wealth, and weapons lead to widespread tyranny if not governed by values and ethics. The essence of struggle is a battle between righthood and falsehood, good and evil, justice and oppression."

"The people rejoiced, chanting “Allahu Akbar!” for it was the clear conquest and the great victory—the day when the rightful triumphed over falsehood, justice over oppression, and mercy over torture."

"By the grace of God, we broke the chains, freed the tormented, and wiped away the dust of humiliation from Damascus’s shoulders. The sun of Syria rose once more."

"A few months ago, Damascus appeared to me like a devoted mother, gazing at her children with a look of both reproach and desperation, lamenting her wounds, humiliation, and suffering—bleeding but bearing the pain with resilience, on the verge of collapse, crying out: ‘Save your nation! Save it before the disgrace of nations befalls you!’"

"The Kurds are part of our people. They were oppressed, just like we were, and it is our duty to protect and defend them, and to let them return to some villages from which they were displaced during the period of the revolution. This is our duty. On the basis of these principles... With regard to the militants in northeast Syria – all the weapons should be held exclusively by the state. Militants who are qualified to join the Ministry of Defense will be welcome there. On the basis of these terms and principles, we will open negotiations track with SDF, and inshallah, we will find a suitable solution through dialogue."

"We addressed all the parties, and said that the problem is Syrian, and we should resolve it internally and try to find a proper solution in northeast Syria, according to some basic principles: There must not be any partition of Syria, and we should not cement the idea of partition in any way, shape, or form – not even in the form of a federation. Our society is still not ready to understand the nature of federations, and it will head for partition under the title of federation."

"The Syrian problem has lasted for 14 years. There has been a lot of suffering and many attempts to fix things in Syria, but the UN and the international community have failed in bringing about the release of a single prisoner, in these 14 years. They have failed to bring back a single refugee, or to persuade the regime to accept even the minimal political solution, even though it served the interests of the regime. The Syrian people saved themselves by themselves, so I am asking not to burden them with frozen resolutions, which will only increase their suffering and bring them back to square one. What is the goal? The verbatim implementation of this resolution, or the benefit that was gained from this resolution?"

"The new Syria needs to go through several stages. The first stage was to directly take over power, so that the state institutions do not collapse. The following stage will be a transitional phase. Formulating a new constitution, or amending the constitution, requires a lot of time. The experts may need 2-3 years, God knows how long..."

"We will not allow Syria to become a source of harassment for neighboring countries."

"There are many things I just don't have the right to talk about because they are legal issues."

"Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way."

"It doesn't matter if I'm under sanctions and on a terrorist list. The important thing is to lift the sanctions on Syria."

"In Syria, we spoke with all the communities, the Druze, who fought alongside us, the Christians, the Alawites, and the Kurds."

"Our terrorist listing is the result of a political will. We've carried out military operations, we haven't targeted civilians. Terrorism is about targeting civilians, and we haven't done that."

"We Syrians, the victims, are being punished for the acts of our executioner, who is no longer with us. We ask for the international community's help in prosecuting the Assad regime's criminals and recovering the money stolen from Syrians."

"This is a surprise to my eyes, my brothers, I hope you listen to us with your hands. Sit far away, my brothers, rise up, enter God Almighty. Yes, I said the prayer of the Prophet, yes, I said the prayer of the Prophet."

"This, my brothers, is a victory through the suffering of the people who languished in prisons, and by the grace of Almighty God, the mujahideen have liberated the body of the sect despite the tyrant’s blessings."

"Today, Syria is being cleansed by the grace of Almighty God, by the grace of Almighty God and then by the efforts of the heroic mujahideen."

"How many dangers we have avoided by not abandoning Syria, leaving it as a farm for Iranian expansion, spreading sectarianism in it, and stirring corruption, making it a place of innovation in the world."

"By God, goodness is abundant and far be it from God, far be it from God to let this tyrant oppress all the people of Syria. There is no house in Syria where the door of justice has not been knocked on, no house in Syria where the door of justice has not been knocked on. And praise be to God, on the day Syria recovers, God willing, this will be a new victory for the entire Islamic nation, this will be a new historic victory for the region."

"With this spirit … we will not only reach Damascus, but, Allah permitting, Jerusalem will be awaiting our arrival."

"If the Levant is liberated, and if the Muslims come together in a well-guided Islamic government, a well-guided Muslim state that enforces the sharia of Allah Almighty, I will be the first soldier of such a government, and I will be under its jurisdiction. Even Dr. Ayman [al-Zawahiri] will be a soldier serving under the command of such a government [that] enforces all the instructions of Islam."

"Al-Nusra Front doesn't have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the US or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime. Maybe al-Qaeda does that, but not here in Syria."

"There are many strategic relations between Syria and the United States of America."

"Syria has managed to create a significant degree of consensus between countries that would find it difficult to agree on anything at this time."

"No matter how great the challenges, the will of the people is capable of overcoming them."

"Syria expresses its deep solidarity with the peoples suffering from climate disasters."

"Egypt and the Levant are two wings of one bird."

"No nation has ever united without growing stronger... and no nation has ever been divided without weakening."

"The president of Syria is working very, very hard – strong guy, tough guy, pretty rough resume. But you're not going to put a choir boy in there and, you know, get the job done. I spoke with him yesterday because we were talking about the prisons and, you know, what was going on. We have some of the worst terrorists in the world in those prisons. And he's watching it."

"He was cheered by even larger crowds and people picked up the car he was driving and carried it on their shoulders through the streets of Damascus. And the reason that they did this is that the man who preceded him, Salah Jadid, was so hated that they welcomed any change."

"Death a thousand times to the hired Muslim Brothers, Death a thousand times to the Muslim Brothers, the criminal Brothers, the corrupt Brothers."

"Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united....I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."

"Why should we not boycott the Soviet Union and its supporters inside the country? If we do so, we can force them to review their stand. Either they give us what we want and what is necessary or they will lose our friendship."

"Strike the enemy’s settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews."

"When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money."

"None of these allegations you mentioned are concrete, all of them are allegations. You can bring photos from anyone and say this is torture. Who took the pictures? Who is he? Nobody knows. There is no verification of any of this evidence, so it’s all allegations without evidence... It’s funded by Qatar, and they say it’s an anonymous source. So nothing is clear or proven. The pictures are not clear which person they show. They’re just pictures of a head, for example, with some skulls. Who said this is done by the government, not by the rebels? Who said this is a Syrian victim, not someone else? For example, photos published at the beginning of the crisis were from Iraq and Yemen."

"In Assadʹs prisons, thereʹs no such thing as a pampered prisoner."

"Bashar al-Assad′s regime is by no means secular; it is sectarian. When it comes to Muslim-majority countries, many people in the West tend to adopt what I call Huntingtonian secularism, defining secularism in an oversimplified culturalist way as something that is basically against Islam."

"Throughout 2011 and 2012, Assad steadily lost his grip on large parts of the country. In Washington and European capitals, presidents and prime ministers believed his days were numbered. But they had underestimated the dictator with no conscience. He was the true heir of his father. He would make no concessions; his approach was “Assad, or we burn the country.” And he would do just that. The Syrian uprising and the subsequent brutal war have been characterized from many perspectives. Most cite big geopolitical events for saving Assad, like President Obama’s reluctance to intervene as he had done in Libya, or his backing down from a promise to punish Assad for using chemical weapons against his people in 2013. But the longer the outside world allowed Assad to kill, torture, and imprison with impunity, the more the revolution fractured. The Syrian battle for freedom was in a race against the inexorable radicalization and militarization of any revolution that drags on too long. As rage and despair built up, the revolutionaries picked up arms, rebel factions formed and splintered. The revolution was also in a race against those who saw an opportunity in the chaos—two very different groups of men in black, bearing different flags, enemies in fact, had been scouting the terrain. They weren’t even Syrians."

"That was how his country was branded by the dictator: Souriyya al-Assad, the Syria of Assad, as though it were private property. Drilled into children’s heads at school, written on the walls and on banners hanging from bridges, the phrase made clear there was no escaping the Assads, father and son. Then came 2011 and the Arab uprisings. Timid yearnings for freedom became a flood of people on the streets of Syria demanding the fall of the dictator. Millions took to the street. Yassin glimpsed the contours of a more hopeful future. So how could it be that when he returned to his hometown of Raqqa, in the summer of 2013, he found himself at the epicenter of a conflict not his own, looking over the ruins of his life, having been robbed of his soul, his love, his family. Yassin and millions of Syrians were rebelling against tyranny, but their country found itself caught between the spiritual heirs of Ibn Abdelwahhab and the upholders of Khomeini’s legacy; between the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)."

"A day will come when international justice will give its verdict on Bashar al-Assad who is massacring his people."