Syria’s President challenges West’s counter-terrorism claims in Afghanistan and Iraq

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has stated that “the majority of those killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were innocent civilians.”

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Saturday during the Newsmaker Interview at the Doha Forum, al-Sharaa said: “In every war in the region—whether in Iraq or Afghanistan—we saw that most of the casualties were civilians, yet many of them were labeled as terrorists. The real criminals are those who call others terrorists.”

He also commented on the situation in Syria, asserting that the Assad regime has killed more than one million people over the past 14 years and that nearly 250,000 individuals remain missing. According to al-Sharaa, the prolonged conflict has displaced more than 14 million Syrians.

He added that the difficult experiences of regional wars over the past 25 years have led people to “better understand the true meaning of the word ‘terrorist’ and who truly deserves such a label.”

Western forces fought in Afghanistan for two decades under the banner of counter-terrorism, a period during which tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, four years after the Islamic Emirate’s return to power, the international community continues to express concern about potential terrorist threats from Afghan territory, while the Islamic Emirate maintains that Afghan soil will not be used to threaten any country.