WASHINGTON DC - The United States on Monday called on the parties engaged in the ongoing conflict in Syria to do “everything possible” to protect civilians, while stressing that its position on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime remains unchanged.
“We’re going to continue to make clear to every party and every country who engages with parties inside Syria that they do everything possible to protect civilians,” US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told Rudaw during a press briefing on Monday.
A coalition of Syrian rebel groups spearheaded by the jihadist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) launched a major offensive against the Syrian army over the past week. They took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and advanced their offensive into Hama province.
During the HTS-led march towards Aleppo, the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of strategic locations in eastern Aleppo and formed a corridor to the city from the Euphrates River, briefly capturing key sites such as Aleppo International Airport.
It later tactically withdrew from many of the sites, while maintaining hold over Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh, both long held by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) - the SDF’s backbone.
The SDF said on Monday it is working with “relevant parties” in Syria to safely evacuate the people of the strategic town of Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province to northeast Syria (Rojava) amid intense attacks by Turkish-backed militants.
Despite their allies in Syria being under attack, Miller stressed that US troops are in Syria to participate in the global coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS).
“We have forces there to participate to participate in the coalition against ISIS to prevent ISIS from reasserting itself inside Syria but I can tell you that all of our engagements inside Syria and everywhere in the world we push every party that we engage with to do everything possible to protect civilians,” Miller said.
Since the outbreak of the conflict last week, Syrian and Russian warplanes conducted over 420 airstrikes in Aleppo and other rebel-held areas, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Syrian President Assad on Monday said that the developments are part of a wider plan to divide the region, in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, with Tehran also a key backer of Damascus.
“The terrorist escalation that is taking place reflects far-reaching goals in an attempt to divide the region, fragment its countries, and redraw the maps anew according to the interests and goals of the United States and the West,” Assad told Pezeshkian, as reported by the Syrian presidency.
Assad vowed that the escalation “will only increase Syria’s determination to confront and eliminate terrorists in all Syrian territories,” while Pezeshkian reaffirmed support for Damascus.
Miller said that both Russia and Iran have a destabilization role with their influence in Syria and the region, adding that their role has been “unhelpful” in resolving the situation in Syria.
“We also believe it would be helpful if Russia and Iran stopped their destabilizing influence inside Syria. We have seen them continue to destabilize the situation going back more than a decade now, continue to play a role that is unhelpful not just to the Syrian people but to the broader region,” Miller said.
Regarding the US stance on Assad, Miller said that Washington’s position, of a future without the Syrian president, remains unchanged, and the US wants to see the political process go forward.
“Nothing has changed with respect to our policy. Assad is a brutal dictator with blood on his hands, the blood of innocent civilians inside Syria, blood of his own people on his hands. Ultimately, what we want to see is a political process forward, where the Syrian people get to determine who their leaders are,” he said.
Miller said that they continue to call on the Syrian government to participate in dialogue as outlined in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254, which calls for a ceasefire in Syria and a political solution to the decade-long conflict.
“We continue to call on all countries to use their influence to push forward that kind of political process that would lead to a path forward for the Syrian people where the regime engages with opposition groups,” he said.
Syrians rose against the Assad regime in 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, left millions more in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
More than 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than 6 million of whom are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures.
