BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad fled the country Sunday, bringing a dramatic end to his nearly 14-year struggle to maintain control as his country fragmented in a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional and international powers.
Assad’s departure stands in stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after three decades under his father’s iron fist. Aged only 34, this Western-trained ophthalmologist appears to be a geek, keen on technology and a fan of computers, with a gentle demeanor.
But in the face of protests against his rule that erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to his father’s brutal tactics to try to crush dissent. As the uprising turned into a full-blown civil war, he deployed his army to blow up opposition-held cities, with the support of his allies Iran and Russia.
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International rights groups and prosecutors have denounced widespread use of torture and extrajudicial killings in detention centers run by the Syrian government. The war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
The conflict appears frozen in recent years, with Assad’s government regaining control of most of Syria’s territory while the northwest remains under the control of opposition groups and the northeast under Kurdish control.
Although Damascus remained under crippling Western sanctions, neighboring countries had begun to resign themselves to Assad’s continued rule. The Arab League restored Syria’s membership last year and Saudi Arabia announced in May the appointment of its first ambassador since cutting ties with Damascus 12 years ago.
However, the geopolitical trend quickly reversed when opposition groups in northwest Syria launched a surprise offensive in late November. Government forces quickly collapsed while Assad’s allies preoccupied with other conflicts – Russia’s war in Ukraine and the year-long wars between Israel and the Iran-backed militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas – seemed reluctant to intervene by force.
The end of decades of family rule
Assad came to power in 2000 by a twist of fate. His father had cultivated Bashar’s older brother, Basil, as his successor, but in 1994, Basil was killed in a car accident in Damascus. Bashar was brought back from his ophthalmology practice in London, undergone military training and elevated to the rank of colonel to establish his credentials so he could one day govern.
When Hafez Assad died in 2000, Parliament quickly lowered the age requirement for the presidency from 40 to 34. Bashar’s election was sealed by a national referendum, in which he was the only candidate.
Hafez, a longtime military man, ruled the country for nearly 30 years, during which he established a Soviet-style centralized economy and kept such a stifling hand on dissent that Syrians feared even to joke about it. politics with their friends.
He pursued a secular ideology that sought to bury sectarian differences under Arab nationalism and the image of heroic resistance to Israel. He formed an alliance with Shiite religious leaders in Iran, sealed Syrian rule over Lebanon, and established a network of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups.
At first, Bashar seemed completely different from his strongman father.
Tall and lanky with a slight lisp, he had a calm and gentle demeanor. His only official position before becoming president was that of head of the Syrian Computer Society. His wife, Asma al-Akhras, whom he married several months after taking office, was attractive, elegant and of British descent.
The young couple, who eventually had three children, seemed to be fleeing the traps of power. They lived in an apartment in the posh Abu Rummaneh neighborhood of Damascus, as opposed to a lavish mansion like other Arab leaders.
Upon coming to power, Assad released political prisoners and allowed more open discourse. During the “Damascus Spring,” salons for intellectuals emerged where Syrians could discuss art, culture and politics to a degree not possible under his father.
But after a thousand intellectuals signed a public petition calling for multi-party democracy and greater freedoms in 2001, and others attempted to form a political party, the salons were stifled by the fearsome police secret, which imprisoned dozens of activists.
Tested by the Arab Spring, Assad relied on old alliances to stay in power
Instead of political opening, Assad turned to economic reforms. He slowly lifted economic restrictions, let in foreign banks, opened the doors to imports and gave more power to the private sector. Damascus and other cities long mired in gloom have seen the blossoming of shopping centers, new restaurants and consumer goods. Tourism has developed.
Abroad, he stuck to the line his father had set, based on the alliance with Iran and a policy insisting on the full return of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel, albeit in practice Assad has never confronted Israel militarily.
In 2005, it suffered a major blow with the loss of decades-old Syrian control over neighboring Lebanon following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. While many Lebanese blamed Damascus for the assassination, Syria was forced to withdraw its troops from the country and a pro-US government came to power.
At the same time, the Arab world has divided into two camps: one composed of countries allied with the United States and led by Sunnis, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the other of Syria and Iran, led by Shiites, which have links to Hezbollah and Palestinian militants.
Throughout his history, Assad has largely relied on the same power base as his father: his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that makes up about 10 percent of the population. Many positions in his government went to younger generations of the same families who had worked for his father. Also attracted were members of the new middle class created by his reforms, notably important Sunni merchant families.
Assad also turned to his own family. His younger brother Maher led the elite Presidential Guard and would lead the suppression of the uprising. Their sister Bushra was a strong voice in his circle, alongside her husband, Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, until he was killed in a bomb attack in 2012. Bashar’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, became the country’s biggest businessman, heading a financial empire before the two men had a falling out that led to Makhlouf’s ouster.
Assad also handed more and more key roles to his wife, Asma, before she announced in May that she was undergoing treatment for leukemia and retiring from the stage.
When protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, ultimately toppling their leaders, Assad dismissed the possibility of the same thing happening in his country, insisting that his regime was more in tune with its people. After the Arab Spring wave reached Syria, its security forces launched a brutal crackdown while Assad constantly denied facing a popular revolt. Instead, he blamed “foreign-backed terrorists” who were trying to destabilize his regime.
His rhetoric struck a chord with many Syrian minority groups – including Christians, Druze and Shiites – as well as some Sunnis who were even more fearful of the prospect of rule by Sunni extremists they disliked. the authoritarian Assad regime.
As the uprising degenerated into civil war, millions of Syrians fled to Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, then to Europe.
Ironically, on February 26, 2011, two days after Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak regime fell to protesters and just days before the wave of Arab Spring protests swept through his country, Assad emailed a joke that he had heard, mocking the Egyptian leader’s stubbornness. refusal to withdraw.
