Syria truce results in arming terrorists: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Mimi al-Laham, an activist and political commentator in Australia, about a high-ranking Iranian official saying terrorists and armed groups, erroneously called moderate opposition, have joined hands in capitalizing on the ceasefire in Syria.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The report says that the ceasefire is a chance for the militants to regroup some of them to actually connect with other militants and re-strategize their offensive. Your thoughts.  

Laham: That is exactly right what he said and not something it is being said since the first ceasefire that ever happened in Syria which led to what we have now, a full-blown war. So every single ceasefire that has happened thus far, almost every single ceasefire has resulted in the terrorists to just recollecting themselves, getting their arms, their ammunition and then mounting another offensive.

So I do not see Syria, Russia and Iran getting anything from negotiating with the US because at the end of the day the US claims to be influencing the moderate opposition, the moderate rebels and if in a ceasefire basically all of these groups are still fighting, that means that none of them are moderates and they are all terrorists. So it just goes to show you that Syria is fighting a terrorist problem and they cannot be controlled, they are just savages.  

Press TV: Another thing that he said like you just mentioned was the fact that calling these so-called moderates, “moderates” when they are in fact terrorists like you just said, what does this allow? Does this allow the certain allies of the terrorists to be able to say that we are backing them when they are moderates when they are really not, this only allows certain countries - I let you mention them - back them without the word terrorist coming into play?

Laham: Well that is the thing. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, they all have basically immunity to back al-Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh) under the banner of terrorist and also the United States has the immunity. It thinks it has immunity to back these people while calling them moderate rebels. Now these moderate rebels who have been established eat hearts and behead people and torture people, that is all on camera and yet they still somehow draw a line between the different groups and al-Qaeda even whilst they have now announced that they are allied in Aleppo.

So I do not understand how this charade is allowed to be continued in the international community but just recently the US admitted to giving 23 million dollars to the White Helmets NGO which was then seen participating in al-Qaeda rallies and executions.

So really there needs to be some accountability and the term “moderate rebels” needs to be laughed at basically because this ceasefire has shown that it does not exist.  

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