Translation of Bashar al-Assad’s statement on Syrian Armed Forces Day

Bashar al-Assad gave a written statement (from an undisclosed location) for Armed Forces Day, as Syrian troops bombard and attack Aleppo. These are his words to the armed forces. Arabic taken from here.

Our battle with the enemy is a battle of many obvious forms, goals, and markers… a battle upon which rests the destiny of our people; past, present and future. For our enemy has come into our midst, making domestic collaborators into a crossing and steed for them to strike the stability of our nation, shake the security of the citizens an continue to drain our economic capability and our technical capacity, and by extension weaken us and prevent us from drawing our future and joining the ranks of developed societies capable of keeping up with the times and confronting its dangers and challenges … They wanted to deprive our people of their national resolve and force them into being prostrate in their arms…

But it stunned them to see this noble people in the heart of a single man confronting their schemes and resisting and defeating them. So they strove to search for an exit from their defeats to concoct more scehemes to target our steadfast country and assigned this task to their local agents. Except our people with their awareness, foiled this schemes and cancelled the wagers of the schemers to affect the awareness of this people which proved that they would resist being broken or constrained.