Further to the dozens of letters that we have addressed to you regarding the barbaric crimes committed by the “international coalition” led by the United States of America, its ongoing attacks against innocent Syrian civilians and its continued efforts to undermine the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic, I should like to inform you that this illegitimate coalition continues to massacre Syrian civilians. On Monday, 4 June 2018, coalition warplanes bombed the homes of civilians in the village Jaza‘, Hasakah governorate, and on Sunday, 3 June 2018, that coalition bombarded the homes of peaceful civilians in the village of Hasan al-Ali. Those incidents were preceded by another massacre on Saturday, 2 June 2018, the victims of which were the people of Dhib Jaza‘ village, Hasakah governorate. In that same period, the coalition repeatedly bombarded the villages of Dahu, Dashishah and Tall al-Shayir, as well as communities in the countryside around Shaddadah, which lies in that same governorate. Aside from the destruction of civilian homes and property and village infrastructure that the shelling caused, 22 civilians, one of whom was an elderly man and the rest women and children, were killed as a result of those horrific crimes.

This rogue coalition that operates outside international law attacked the people of those villages as punishment for their refusal to join the puppet separatist militias of the United States of America in the governorates of Hasakah, Raqqah and Dayr al Zawr. The United States coordinates the relationship between those militias and the terrorists of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and the coalition is placing some ISIL terrorists in the ranks of those militias and using others to attack Syrian Arab Army positions, in order to enable them to retake areas that had been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies from the grip of the terrorists. Moreover, this criminal coalition has continued to provide direct fire support to the ISIL terrorist organization in several clashes with the Syrian Arab Army, including, most recently, on 24 May 2018, when coalition warplanes attacked Syrian Arab Army military positions between Albu Kamal and Humaymah in the Dayr al-Zawr countryside less than 24 hours after the Syrian Arab Army had repulsed an attack by ISIL terrorists against those positions.

The coalition continues to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, support terrorism and use terrorists and separatist militias to achieve its base political objectives, thereby confirming our long-standing assertion that the sole objective of the coalition and its United States leadership is to undermine the sovereignty and territorial unity and integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and prolong the Syrian crisis. Those objectives fly in the face of the relevant Security Council resolutions, all of which stress the need to maintain the unity of the people and territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The Syrian Arab Republic calls upon the States members of the coalition that claim that they care about human rights, international humanitarian law and the Charter of the United Nations to announce their withdrawal from that shameful coalition. The Syrian Arab Republic also calls upon the Security Council to fulfil its responsibility to maintain international peace and security, and to act immediately to put an end to the massacres being perpetrated by the coalition against the Syrian people and to prevent the coalition from committing such massacres again. The Council must also act to end the hostile presence of United States and other foreign forces that are in Syrian territory illegally, and to prevent the United States from carrying out its schemes to support terrorism in the Syrian Arab Republic and plunder the country’s resources. Those schemes have been exposed by the crimes that the United States has most recently committed, as well as by the crimes that it had previously committed, including, in particular, the annihilation of the city of Raqqah and the heinous attack that the United States, France and Britain launched against the Syrian Arab Republic on 14 April 2018. The United States of America has no moral grounds for the policy of aggression that it is pursuing in Syria and the region and around the world, because the United States is at the heart of the process of creating threats to international peace and security.

I should be grateful if the present letter could be issued as a document of the Security Council.

Bashar Ja’afari