President Khoja said that ISIS’s capture of Tadmur provides new evidence of the Assad regime’s reluctance to put up a real fight against this extremist organization. By abandoning cities and towns to ISIS, the Assad regime seeks to lure the world into accepting it as a partner against terrorism, to tarnish the image of the Syrian Revolution and to put the world and Syrians in front of two options: Either me or ISIS.
“Tadmur’s quick fall indicates that Assad is exploiting extremist organizations to its own advantage, a sign of the quick degradation of its military and its inability to keep its control on the ground,” Khoja said.
He describes the strategy of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition as fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail unless it is recalibrated through stepping up coordination and support for the Free Syrian Army as the only force capable of countering the Assad regime and ISIS. Khoja stresses the need to meet the Syrians’ dire need to safe areas and to provide rebels with advanced weapons.
Khoja calls for uniting in the face of the Assad regime, ISIS and the sectarian militias imported by Assad from across the border to stop the suffering of the Syrian people and eliminate the threat of extremist organizations. (Source: Syrian Coalition)