On Sunday morning, as emaciated prisoners flooded out of Syrian regime prisons and jubilant Damascenes flocked to the presidential palace to feast on abandoned designer shopping bags, Bashar al-Assad was nowhere to be seen.
The only sign of the dynastic president, whose family ruled Syria for half a century, was his ubiquitous portrait. Except now, instead of their usual pride of place on walls and above tables, Assad’s pictures were trampled underfoot by people the dictator had spent years trying to bomb, gas and torture into submission.
It was a stunning decline. Damascus without the Assad family, which enforced its minority rule with an iron hand, is almost unimaginable for many Syrians.
For Haid Haid, a Syria columnist and adviser to Chatham House, the regime’s lasting legacy would be defined by its attempt to “destroy the human spirit and prevent them from imagining that they can live in a better place”.
Bordered by Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, Syria is blessed with natural resources, a rich ancient history and a strategic location on the Mediterranean.
The Assad regime, which has ruled Syria since 1970, “had all the time and tools to make Syria like Singapore if it wanted to,” said Bassam Barbandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected to the opposition. “But they didn’t. They tried to break the people. . . in order to survive.”
Ultimately, Bashar, his brother Maher and wife Asma — a London-born former JP Morgan banker once hailed by Vogue as a “rose in the desert” — used their ruthless power to fund the regime as the economy collapsed in the rubble of Syria’s civil society. war. Analysts say the family controlled smuggling and even benefited from the growing trade captagonan illicit stimulant mostly produced in Syria.
It has become “like a mafia running the country,” said Malik al-Abdeh, a London-based Syria analyst. The result for many ordinary people was that Syria was so “closely associated with your own torture or your own torturer . . . that you are almost starting to hate your country”.
The original architect of this dark regime was the son of a poor family from Syria’s coastal region and a member of the Alawite sect, a branch of Shiite Islam. Hafez al-Assad, an air force pilot, rose through the secular and Arab nationalist Syrian Ba’ath Party, which took control of Syria in 1963, to become defense minister and finally seize power in a coup.
A minority ruler in a majority-Sunni country, Hafez concentrated power with loyal members of his sect and backed up his rule with brutal intelligence agencies that tracked the Syrians’ every move. It also pitted the agencies against each other, heightening the sense of paranoia and fear. He was a “cold and calculating political and security operative,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
The dictator did not tolerate dissent. In 1982, he crushed the Islamist rebellion in the city of Hama with the bloody slaughter of tens of thousands of people.
“For a long time there has been a thesis that this is a minority regime without the support of the people,” said Abdeh. “So they have to use violence to maintain power, and it’s all a house of cards.”
The Assad patriarch also sought to project his power across the region. Under Hafez, the Syrian army intervened in Lebanon’s civil war, occupying parts of the country for years and feared by many for its ruthlessness as Lebanese citizens languished in Syrian prisons.
Hafez’s second son Bashar, born in 1965, grew up in the shadow of his charismatic older brother Bassel, the heir to Hafez’s throne. In the meantime, Bashar qualified as a doctor and went to London to train as an ophthalmologist.
But Hafez’s plans for his succession were dashed when Bassel crashed his Mercedes and died aged 31 in 1994. Bashar was invited to Damascus and is ready to become president himself. Six years later Hafez died.
Various powers competed to woo Bashar, who was only 34 at the time. Syria’s former colonizer France even awarded him its highest civilian decoration, the Légion d’honneur, after he came to power in 2001. Western countries initially believed he was “a more westernized, liberalized, potentially ‘cosmopolitan’ leader coming to power . . . it will be a good development,” said Lister.
But Bashar became close to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and eventually to Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” of anti-American forces.
This alliance with Hezbollah destabilized Lebanon as weapons flowed across the border. Many in the region saw Syria’s role behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, although the UN-backed court did not indict a single Syrian.
Domestically, Bashar has sought to steer Syria away from the socialist economic model adopted by his father towards a supposedly free market economy, which has also raised hopes of a so-called Damascus Spring with greater personal freedoms.
But the promise of reform soon proved empty. Syrian economists say he instead introduced a kleptocracy: while some businesses could profit, family members like his cousin Rami Makhlouf dominated the economy.
While the less privileged residents of the countryside and suburbs felt left behind, Bashar counted on the support of Syria’s urban merchant families and minorities.
But Bashar was never on comfortable ground, said Lina Khatib, a fellow at Chatham House. His “constant paranoia meant he didn’t trust his own circle,” she said. “His rule was marked by a breakdown of confidence even within his own regime.”
Then a wave of protests across the Arab world in 2011 ignited simmering socioeconomic tensions in Syria, fueled by discontent over corruption and Assad’s autocratic rule. Protesters flooded the streets calling for the fall of the regime.
Bashar faced a choice. Instead of moving towards reform and reconciliation, he decided to crush the rebellion. More than 300,000 civilians were killed in the first decade of the war, the UN estimates, with deadly chemical attacks becoming its most horrific feature.
“He lived with his father’s spirit,” Barbandi said. He wanted to be stronger or tougher in dealing with the Syrians than his father in Hama.
Bashar was not the only Assad to play a role in crushing the uprising. Maher, his younger brother, led the Syrian army’s notoriously brutal Fourth Division, while experts say he controlled smuggling, including weapons and oil — illicit sources of income that helped finance the war effort.
Bashar avoided defeat with the help of his backers Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, and announced his intention to reclaim “every inch” of Syria. But even as fighting slowed and front lines stabilized in 2019, Syria’s economy faltered.
This was a “decisive moment,” said Karam Shaar, a New Zealand-based Syrian political economy expert. With his economic problems exacerbated by the global pandemic, the financial collapse in neighboring Lebanon and international sanctions, Assad began shaking businessmenand even his own cousin Makhlouf.
Asma, Bashar’s wife, was also there taking control of the prey. It has consolidated control over the aid sector, a huge — and rare — source of clean money in Syria, while its allies have maneuvered into positions of economic power.
With public sector wages eroded by inflation and after years of bloody war, Assad’s army has become “a shadow of its former self,” Shaar said. Even Assad’s the coastal center of the Alawites was demoralized.
A presidency that had absolute power over the lives of its people became dependent on international supporters. But when the lightning advance of well-armed, well-organized rebels took advantage of Tehran and Moscow’s own problems, Assad’s supporters seemed unable to counter the opposition’s pressure.
As fighters tore down pictures of Bashar and hauled away statues of Hafez in trucks, Assad’s house of cards finally collapsed.
The Assad dynasty will be remembered for its callous disregard for the lives of Syrians. But Haid, the columnist, said Syrians were going through their own reign of fear: “We’ve seen how people have been able to overcome that and create the future they want for themselves.”
