Steven Kelley: Daesh has always intended to hide behind civilians

Press TV has interviewed Steven Kelley, a former CIA/NSA contractor from Los Angeles, on the developments in Syria and a UN-brokered deal to let families of foreign-backed militants leave Damascus suburbs.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you think is the significance of these terrorists being relocated to Raqqah?

Kelley: I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I think certainly it shows some progress with the situation with cleansing of Syria, but at the same time, when we see the UN getting involved in a situation like this and trying to broker a withdrawal of the enemy under the auspices of a humanitarian gesture, it always seems to be that the UN comes to the rescue of the bad guys. They’ve done this twice in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian army was ready to be wiped out by the so-called Russian sympathizing rebels, but it’s always come at the last minute.

They seem to rescue these guys from defeat and they turn around and regroup and try to plot a new attack. So, I would expect this will happen with the actual fighters. You mentioned the fact that the Syrian army has deals where they will actually give amnesty to individuals that lay down their arms, but the Syrian army, of course, is very selective. They don’t offer this amnesty to just anybody. Obviously, it is people that are responsible for cutting off heads and that sort of things. They will never give amnesty to those people, but it would seem that this deal that the UN is involved in would certainly allow a free passage and amnesty arrangement for anybody that takes advantage of it. So, it’s not exactly a good thing. I think some of these people need to pay for their crimes.

Press TV: When we talk about the UN actually brokering these talks and everything, do you think, and then talking with ISIL (Daesh), recognizing ISIL, what does that say in itself and then giving safe passage to terrorists?

Kelley: Well, there you go. They’re treating ISIL or these terrorist groups as if it were some sort of a legitimate army. The big difference between the situation of what they were involved within Ukraine was that these were actual government troops wearing uniforms of a recognized government, whereas this situation they’re suggesting that this is a humanitarian effort to rescue families of fighters. Now, clearly the home-grown domestic FSA types, obviously, they live there, they’re going to have families, and certainly those people would need to be removed from an offensive.

But these foreign mercenaries, obviously, the concept of them having families; that’s just ridiculous, unless you want to consider the brides that they bought from the captured towns.

Press TV: We know efforts are being done to actually pave the way for a truce being held in the country. What are the prospects of that happening?

Kelley: I don’t see that happening. I think that on the surface, of course, there’s a lot of diplomatic language being used to suggest that this is a desire, but as we’ve seen Vladimir Putin has come out and said that this would not affect the Russian campaign.

I think that a lot of what they’re doing is that they’re trying to give some sort of opportunity for civilians to leave areas that are about to be recaptured and cleansed of the Daesh.

So, yes, I think, Russia is interested and the Syrian government and all the players over there are interested in trying to separate the innocent civilians from the terrorists.

But there’s only going to be so much time that they’re going to be able to do that. I would expect that the Daesh would certainly be going to keep a large amount of civilians closed by to offer as much as protection for themselves as possible.

We’ve seen them putting women in cages on top of strategic targets and things like this. So, the very fact that these guys have infiltrated civilian population centers means that from day one, they always intended to hide behind civilians.

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