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On Sunday morning, as gaunt detainees flooded out of Syrian regime prisons and jubilant Damascenes streamed into the presidential palace to root round deserted designer buying luggage, Bashar al-Assad was nowhere to be discovered.
The one signal of the dynastic president, whose household had dominated Syria for half a century, was his ubiquitous portrait. Besides now, as an alternative of in its normal pleasure of place on partitions and above desks, Assad’s photos had been being trampled underneath the ft of individuals the dictator had for years tried to bomb, fuel and torture into submission.
It was a shocking downfall. Damascus with out the Assad household, who enforced their minority rule with an iron fist, is nearly unimaginable for a lot of Syrians.
For Haid Haid, a Syrian columnist and consulting fellow with Chatham Home, the regime’s enduring legacy can be outlined by its try to “destroy folks’s spirit and forestall them from imagining that they might stay in a greater place”.
Bordered by Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, Syria is blessed with pure sources, a wealthy historical historical past and a strategic place on the Mediterranean.
The Assad regime, which has dominated Syria since 1970, “had on a regular basis and the instruments to make Syria like Singapore, in the event that they wished”, mentioned Bassam Barbandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected to the opposition. “However they didn’t. They tried to crush the folks . . . to be able to survive.”
In the end Bashar, his brother Maher and spouse Asma — a London-born ex-JP Morgan banker as soon as feted by Vogue as “a rose within the desert” — used their ruthless energy to finance the regime whereas the financial system cratered within the rubble of Syria’s civil warfare. Analysts mentioned the household managed smuggling and even benefited from the rising commerce in Captagon, a bootleg stimulant primarily produced in Syria.
It grew to become “like a mafia operating a state”, mentioned Malik al-Abdeh, a London-based Syrian analyst. The consequence for a lot of atypical folks was that Syria was so “intently related to your personal torture or your personal tormentor . . . that you simply virtually start to hate your nation”.
The unique architect of this darkish regime was the son of a poor household from Syria’s coastal area and a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Hafez al-Assad, an air drive pilot, rose by means of the secular and Arab nationalist Syrian Ba’ath occasion, which took management of Syria in 1963, grew to become defence minister and eventually seized energy in a coup.
A minority ruler in a primarily Sunni nation, Hafez concentrated energy with loyal members of his sect and buttressed his rule with brutal intelligence companies that monitored Syrians’ each transfer. He additionally pitted the companies towards one another, heightening the sense of paranoia and concern. He was “a chilly and calculated political and safety operative”, mentioned Charles Lister, a senior fellow on the Center East Institute.
The dictator brooked no dissent. In 1982, he put down an Islamist rebellion within the metropolis of Hama with a bloody bloodbath of tens of 1000’s of individuals.
“There’s been a thesis for a very long time that this can be a minority regime with out common assist,” mentioned Abdeh. “Due to this fact, they’ve to make use of violence to keep up energy, and that is all a home of playing cards.”
The Assad patriarch additionally sought to challenge their energy throughout the area. Beneath Hafez, the Syrian military intervened in Lebanon’s civil warfare, occupying components of the nation for years, and have become broadly feared for his or her ruthlessness as Lebanese residents disappeared into Syrian prisons.
Hafez’s second son Bashar, born in 1965, grew up within the shadow of his charismatic elder brother Bassel, heir-apparent to Hafez’s throne. Bashar in the meantime certified as a physician and went to London to coach as an ophthalmologist.
However Hafez’s plans for his succession had been shredded when Bassel crashed his Mercedes and died aged 31 in 1994. Bashar was recalled to Damascus and groomed for the presidency himself. Six years later, Hafez died.
Totally different powers vied to woo Bashar, who was then aged simply 34. Syria’s former coloniser France even awarded him its highest civilian award, the Légion d’honneur, after he ascended to energy in 2001. Western international locations initially believed that “a extra Western, liberalised, doubtlessly ‘cosmopolitan’ chief coming into energy . . . was going to be a very good growth”, mentioned Lister.
However Bashar grew near Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, and in the end to Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” of anti-US forces.
This alliance with Hizbollah destabilised Lebanon as weapons flowed throughout the border. Many within the area noticed Syria’s hand behind the assassination of Lebanon’s prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, although a UN-backed tribunal didn’t cost any Syrians.
Domestically, Bashar sought to steer Syria from the socialist financial mannequin adopted by his father in the direction of a putatively free-market financial system, additionally prompting hopes of a so-called Damascus Spring with larger private freedoms.
However the promise of reform quickly proved empty. Syrian economists say he as an alternative launched kleptocracy: though some companies had been in a position to revenue, relations like his cousin Rami Makhlouf dominated the financial system.
Whereas much less advantaged inhabitants of the countryside and suburbs felt they had been being left behind, Bashar counted on assist from Syria’s city mercantile households and minorities.
However Bashar was by no means on snug floor, mentioned Lina Khatib, an affiliate fellow at Chatham Home. His “fixed paranoia meant he mistrusted his personal circle”, she mentioned. “His rule was marked by a breakdown of belief even inside his personal regime.”
Then a wave of protests throughout the Arab world in 2011 ignited the simmering socio-economic tensions in Syria, stoked by grievances over corruption and Assad’s autocratic rule. Protesters flooded the streets, calling for the regime’s fall.
Bashar confronted a selection. Quite than transfer in the direction of reform and reconciliation, he opted to crush the rebel. Greater than 300,000 civilians had been killed within the first decade of warfare, the UN has estimated, with lethal chemical assaults turning into its grisliest hallmark.
He “was residing with the ghost of his dad”, mentioned Barbandi. “He wished to be stronger or more durable in coping with the Syrians than his dad in Hama.”
Bashar was not the one Assad to play a job in crushing the rebellion. Maher, his youthful brother, ran the Syrian military’s notoriously brutal Fourth Division, whereas consultants say he managed smuggling, together with weapons and oil — illicit income streams that helped finance the warfare effort.
Bashar staved off defeat with the assistance of his backers Hizbollah, Iran and Russia, and declared his intention to win again “each inch” of Syria. However even because the preventing slowed and entrance traces stabilised in 2019, Syria’s financial system buckled.
This was “a defining second”, mentioned Karam Shaar, a Syrian political financial system specialist primarily based in New Zealand. Along with his financial woes compounded by the worldwide pandemic, a monetary meltdown in neighbouring Lebanon and worldwide sanctions, Assad began shaking down enterprise folks, and even his personal cousin Makhlouf.
Asma, Bashar’s spouse, was additionally taking management of the spoils. She consolidated management over the help sector, an enormous — and uncommon — supply of unpolluted money into Syria, whereas her allies manoeuvred into positions of financial energy.
With public salaries eroded by inflation, and after years of bloody warfare, Assad’s military grew to become “a shadow of itself”, Shaar mentioned. Even Assad’s coastal Alawite heartland was demoralised.
A presidency that had held absolute energy over the lives of its folks had develop into reliant on worldwide supporters. However when a lightning advance by well-armed, well-organised rebels took benefit of Tehran and Moscow’s personal issues, Assad’s backers appeared unable to counter the opposition push.
As fighters ripped photos of Bashar and dragged statues of Hafez round with vans, Assad’s home of playing cards lastly got here down.
The Assad dynasty will probably be remembered for its callous disregard for Syrian lives. However Haid, the columnist, mentioned Syrians had been transferring previous its empire of concern: “We’ve seen how folks had been in a position to overcome that and create the longer term they need for themselves.”
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