MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. Large-scale military action in Syria is ending, however, ideological conflict on the country’s territory will continue, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil stated in an interview with TASS.
According to him, currently, there are pockets of conflict in Syria that had been left there deliberately to destabilize the situation in the country. "The big war is about to end, especially if Idlib ends," Bassil pointed out. "But this does not mean that the breeds of terrorism are not still planted in Syria under the protection of some countries and some forces, who are using extremism, terrorism and Islamist movements as a way to spread extremism and chaos. In that regard, it’s not ending ideologically, it’s ending on the ground in most of Syria."
"But of course, the plot in Syria has failed, like it failed in 2006 in Lebanon (the conflict in the south of Lebanon in 2006 between Israel and the Shia Hezbollah movement - TASS)," the Lebanese minister stressed. "It’s failing now in Syria and it will fail wherever you are imposing rules or solutions that do not correspond to the reality of the peoples and of the region."
The civil war began in Syria after a mass anti-government unrest was quashed in March 2011. The opposition demanded holding democratic reforms and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation. The authorities tried to bring order to the country through force and prevent a large-scale revolt, but the political and military support of the opposition from abroad (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the United States and some European Union’s countries) facilitated the conflict’s escalation. The war has lasted for seven years. In this time, according to the UN’s data, over 400,000 people died and more than 5.6 mln became refugees (before the war had begun, Syria’s population reached 22 mln people).