The group, which gathers information from a network of activists inside Syria, says there are some 70,000 draft dodgers in government-controlled areas alone.
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By promulgating this declaration, the Syrian government and allies Iran, Russian Federation and Hizbullah are seeking to convince the US-led coalition to make common cause against Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and other Sunni extremist groups wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq and mounting attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen and, last week, Turkey.
Syria was in a war funded by the richest and most powerful states, he said.
Despite his assertion that “everything is available” for the army, Al-Assad admitted that there is a “shortage in manpower”.
However, debkafile’s military and intelligence source are able to fill this gap: Shortly before the speech he delivered in Damascus, Assad was presented by Tehran with a new rehabilitation plan for his army, updated to the latest events.
With the war in Syria in its fifth year, Assad said he was certain that the could defend the main areas where it was consolidating, namely Damascus and the coastal cities of Homs and Hama.
In the assessment of many diplomats and analysts, Assad has been forced to forgo some far-flung parts of the country to focus efforts on protecting more defensible areas in the west.
The army still, however, has footholds in the north-east, the east, and the south, in addition to Syria’s second city Aleppo.
“The initiatives that we make are not articles in the press but an actual work on ground”, he said, adding that “the only initiative they accept is when we give them the homelands and their masters, something that they will not get”.
In his address, which was broadcast on Syrian state television, Assad also praised Iranian military support for his regime, describing Iran as a “sister country”. He publicly acknowledged Hezbollah’s “important” and “effective” assistance for the first time.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy on the Syria crisis, has been shuttling among the war’s myriad parties and is expected to make a report and recommendations in the coming days to the Security Council.
Assad also said any political dialogue to end his country’s conflict will be “hollow” and “meaningless” unless it is based on combating terrorism.
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In his speech, Assad congratulated his best friend in Tehran for pulling off this feat in Vienna and commended the “positive changes in western attitudes to the {Syrian] conflict”. Another Anbar councilor, Faleh al-Issawi, said about two dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in the clashes.
