Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

Special Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era
Demonstrators trample a carpet with a design showing President Bashar Al-Assad during a protest. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 09 December 2024
Follow

Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era
  • What began as a bloodless coup by Hafez Assad in 1970 has ended with his son Bashar fleeing the country
  • Bashar Assad “inherited and built upon” the record of brutal repression that was part of his father’s long rule

LONDON: In scenes reminiscent of every violent regime change in the Middle East’s recent history, on Saturday afternoon jubilant crowds in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus toppled a statue of Hafez Assad, founder of the family regime that, until this weekend, had ruled Syria for over half a century.
The beheading of the larger-than-life bust, captured in shaky smartphone footage, spoke volumes about the roots of the crisis that is now engulfing Syria.
President Bashar Assad, who fled Syria and was granted asylum along with his family by Russia on Sunday, inherited an autocratic system that his father had forged out of the chaos that was the Syrian political landscape for two decades after the country gained its independence in 1949.
Together with Lebanon, Syria, an Ottoman province since the early 16th century, was occupied by France in 1919 after the defeat of the empire in the First World War, and in 1923 became a French mandate under the auspices of the League of Nations.
The mandate triggered a multifactional revolt against French rule, which raged from 1925 to 1927 until it was finally put down by overwhelming French military force.




Bashar Assad fled to Russia on Saturday as rebels took the Syrian capital. (AFP/File)


A complex but relatively peaceful two decades followed until, in the wake of the Second World War, Syria finally won its long-promised independence in 1946.
But the golden era anticipated by Syrians failed to dawn. From 1949 to 1970, the country was wracked by a series of 20 military coups, or attempted coups.
To Syrians and international observers alike, it seemed that Syria was doomed to basket-case status. But waiting in the wings was a man who, in time, would appear to be the answer to the troubled nation’s prayers.
By all accounts, Hafez, born on Oct. 6, 1930, one of 11 children of a poor Alawite farming family, never wanted to be a dictator, or even be involved in politics.
Instead, he wanted to become a doctor, a dream that foundered on the inability of his father, Ali Sulayman, to pay for his tuition (Sulayman would later adopt his local nickname, Al-Assad, “the lion,” as his family’s surname.)
Instead, in 1950 Hafez enrolled in the fee-free Homs Military Academy, learned to fly, joined the Syrian Air Force — and found himself embroiled in the febrile atmosphere of plot and counterplot that prevailed within the military establishment.




Hafez Al-Assad and his wife Anisseh posing for a family picture with his children (L to R) Maher, Bashar, Bassel, Majd and Bushra. (AFP)


In 1955, President Adib Al-Shishakli was overthrown in a military coup that saw the return of civilian government in Syria. For the next few years, Hafez saw active service, training on MiG fighters in Russia and flying air defense missions during the Suez crisis.
Following the formation by Syria and Egypt of the short-lived United Arab Republic in 1958, the air force officer became increasingly politicized, so much so that in March 1963 he played a prominent role in the Ba’athist military coup against Syrian President Nazim Al-Kudsi.
By now, Hafez was in charge of the Syrian Air Force and a member of both the Syrian Regional Command of the Ba’ath Party and the Military Committee, a powerful Ba’athist group within the Syrian military establishment.

KEY DATES OF ASSAD FAMILY RULE

• Oct. 6, 1930: Hafez Assad, son of a poor farmer, is born in Qardaha in northwest Syria.

• 1950: Hafez Assad enters Homs Military Academy.

• February 1966: Hafez Assad appointed defense minister after military coup.

• Nov. 12, 1970: Hafez Assad leads bloodless coup, becoming president of Syria in March 1971.

• June 10, 2000: Hafez Assad dies and is succeeded by his son, Bashar Assad.

• 2012: Protests against Assad’s oppressive regime escalate into civil war.

• Dec. 6, 2024: Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Bashar flees to Russia.

In February 1966, the Military Committee overthrew the Ba’ath Party’s ruling National Command, and Hafez was appointed minister of defense by coup leader Salah Jadid, chief of staff of the Syrian army.
For Jadid, the appointment would prove to be a disastrous miscalculation. On Nov. 12, 1970, Hafez mounted his own bloodless coup. At first, at least, his “Corrective Revolution” (Al-Thawra Al-Tashihiyya) appeared to promise a fresh start for all Syrians.
In the words of Patrick Seale, author of the 1988 biography “Assad of Syria: The Struggle for The Middle East,” Hafez’s rule began “with an immediate and considerable advantage: the regime he displaced was so detested that any alternative came as a relief.




Hafez’s basic accomplishment “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.” (AFP/File)


“As it was an open secret that he was more liberal than Salah Jadid, his victory ushered in a political honeymoon. People were long to breathe more freely.”
Hafez’s basic accomplishment, according to an assessment of his legacy published in 2005 by the Brookings Institution, “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.”
In the process, he established a power structure that defined “fundamental political choices” for his son.
By the time of his death in June 2000, the victim of a cardiac arrest at the age of 69, for 30 years Syria had been in the grip of “a highly developed and coercive police state apparatus,” designed to “put down perceived, potential, and real threats to the regime.”


As a result, “an ongoing record of brutal repression remains an important and inescapable part of Assad’s legacy” — and one that his son would inherit and build upon.
Like his father before him, Bashar sought a career in medicine, studying in Damascus and working as a doctor in the Syrian army before moving to the UK in the 1990s to train as an ophthalmologist.
He was never expected to enter the family business. His father was grooming his eldest son, Bassel, as his successor, but this plan was derailed when Bassel died in a car crash in 1994.




Syrian fighters set alight a picture of  Bashar Al-Assad. (AFP)


Bashar was recalled to Syria, where he entered the military academy in Homs and spent the next six years preparing to succeed his father, surrounding himself with loyal Ba’athist and Alawite supporters in the party and the military.
As the only candidate for the presidency after his father’s death on June 10, 2000, 34-year-old Bashar was a shoo-in — once the Syrian constitution had been amended to lower the age limit for the job from 40.
From the outset, Bashar followed his father’s lead. His first task was to prove himself equal to the job by cracking down ruthlessly on the outbreak of dissent that followed his father’s death.
The demands of protesters, characterized as the “Damascus Spring,” were articulated by the “Statement of 99,” a manifesto signed by intellectuals calling for a new era of freedom of speech and an end to state oppression and imprisonment of political opponents.
Multiple arrests and crackdowns brought about the demise of the Damascus Spring, but the seeds it had sown were only dormant, not dead.




Hafez Al-Assad's sons Maher (R) and Majed (3rd R), his brother Jami (2nd R), son-in-law Syrian General Assef Shawkat (2nd L), and Syrian Baath Party Deputy Secretary General Abdallah al-Ahmar (L). (AFP)


In March 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, a series of mass pro-democracy protests broke out across Syria, with demonstrators demanding the end of the Assad regime.
The protests were met with a brutal crackdown, prompting a descent into what the UN officially declared to be a civil war in June 2012 — a war that has drawn in multiple different players, including Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, by March this year, 13 years on from the start of the seemingly endless war, Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people. Among them are more than 164,000 civilians, including over 15,000 women and 25,000 children, with millions more displaced from their homes.
In its desperate bid to cling on to power, the Assad regime had used a range of barbaric weaponry, including crude but indiscriminately deadly “barrel bombs,” dropped on civilians from helicopters.
In breach of international law, the regime had also regularly deployed chemical weapons, including the neurotoxin sarin, against civilians and armed factions alike.
In 2012, in a deal to stave off threatened air attacks by the US, brokered by his ally Russia, Assad promised to give up his chemical weapons and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.




Portraits of people allegedly killed during the 1982 Hama massacre. (AFP/File)


But only the following year, in August 2013, shocking photographs emerged of child victims of chemical attacks that had been carried out against areas held by militant groups in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
Last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons revealed that Assad’s pledges to hand over all such weapons had still not been met.
As Western sanctions imposed in the wake of state violence in 2011 bit deeper, the Assad regime became, in effect, a narco-state, increasingly dependent for cash flow on sales of the drug Captagon, which has devastated the lives of so many young people and their families across the Middle East.
As an Arab News Deep Dive published in February 2023 revealed, “the vast majority of the tens of millions of pills flooding the Arabian Peninsula every year are manufactured on the doorstep, mainly in Syria and with the active involvement of the regime of President Bashar Assad.”
Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at New Lines, told Arab News there was no doubt that Captagon was “being produced and trafficked by an array of individuals that are very close to the Assad regime, some of them cousins and relatives of regime members.”
Most notable among them, she said, was Bashar’s brother, Maher, affiliated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division, a military unit whose primary mission was to protect the Syrian regime from internal and external threats.




People celebrate with anti-government fighters at Umayyad Square in Damascus. (AFP)


Since the start of the Syrian civil war a decade ago, what had begun as a trickle of captagon into the region had turned into a flood. Facing global sanctions that have left it desperate for revenue, the Syrian regime has gone into the drug-manufacturing business, working with Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Lebanon to smuggle industrial quantities of captagon into Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, by land, sea and air.
According to a report published in April 2022 by Washington think tank the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, war-torn Syria had become “the hub for industrial-sized production.” It added that “elements of the Syrian government are key drivers of the Captagon trade, with ministerial-level complicity in production and smuggling, using the trade as a means for political and economic survival amid international sanctions.”




Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Basher Assad flees to Russia. (AFP/File)


In a statement in August 2012, US President Barack Obama said Bashar “has lost legitimacy (and) needs to step down. So far, he hasn’t gotten the message, and instead has doubled down in violence on his own people.”
He added: “The international community has sent a clear message that rather than drag his country into civil war he should move in the direction of a political transition. But at this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant.”
Today, with Bashar showing up in Moscow and Damascus in the hands of the rebels, Syrians can only pray that, with the Assad dynasty seemingly out of power after half a century of tyranny, their traumatized country’s long overdue soft landing is, finally, imminent.

 


Israel steps up Syria strikes, says Turkiye aims for ‘protectorate’

Israel steps up Syria strikes, says Turkiye aims for ‘protectorate’
Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

Israel steps up Syria strikes, says Turkiye aims for ‘protectorate’

Israel steps up Syria strikes, says Turkiye aims for ‘protectorate’
The Israeli army said its forces killed several militants who opened fire on Israeli troops
Reflecting Israeli concerns about Turkish influence in the new Syria, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Ankara of playing a “negative role” there

DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM: Israel stepped up airstrikes on Syria overnight, declaring the attacks a warning to the new Islamist rulers in Damascus as it accused their Turkish allies on Thursday of trying to turn the country into a Turkish protectorate.
The strikes, targeting air bases, a site near Damascus and the southwest, put renewed focus on Israeli concerns about the Islamists who deposed Bashar Assad in December, with Israeli officials viewing them as a rising threat at their border.
The Israeli army, which seized ground in the southwest after Assad was toppled, said its forces killed several militants who opened fire on Israeli troops operating in that area overnight. Syria’s state news agency SANA said that Israeli shelling had killed nine people in the area.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the airstrikes late on Wednesday evening were “a clear message and a warning for the future — we will not allow the security of the State of Israel to be harmed.”
Katz said in a statement that Israel’s armed forces would remain in buffer zones within Syria and act against threats to its security, warning Syria’s government it would pay a heavy price if it allowed forces hostile to Israel to enter.
Reflecting Israeli concerns about Turkish influence in the new Syria, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Ankara of playing a “negative role” there, in Lebanon and other regions.
“They are doing their utmost to have Syria as a Turkish protectorate. It’s clear that is their intention,” he told a press conference in Paris.
The Syrian foreign ministry said the Israeli strikes were an unjustified escalation aimed at destablising the country, calling on the international community to put pressure on Israel to “stop its aggression.”
Israel bombed Syria frequently when the country was governed by Assad, targeting the foothold established by his ally Iran during the civil war.

AIR BASE DESTROYED
The strikes late on Wednesday night were some of the most intensive Israeli attacks in Syria since Assad was toppled.
The Syrian foreign ministry said Israel struck five separate areas within a 30-minute window, resulting in the near-complete destruction of the Hama air base and wounding dozens of civilians and soldiers.
The Israeli military said it had struck remaining military capabilities at air bases in Hama and Homs provinces, in addition to remaining military infrastructure in the Damascus area, where Syrian media and officials said the vicinity of a scientific research facility was hit.
In Hama, a Syrian military source told Reuters a dozen strikes demolished the runways, tower, arms depots and hangars at the military airport. “Israel has completely destroyed Hama air base to ensure it is not used,” the source said.
Israel also said on Wednesday it targeted the T4 air base in Homs province, which it has repeatedly hit over the past week.
In the incident in southwestern Syria, the Israeli military said its forces were operating in the Tasil area, “confiscating weapons and destroying terrorist infrastructure” when several militants fired on them.
“The forces responded with fire and eliminated several armed terrorists from the ground and air,” the Israeli military said, adding there were no casualties among Israeli forces.
“The presence of weapons in southern Syria constitutes a threat to the State of Israel,” it said. “The IDF will not allow a military threat to exist in Syria and will act against it.”

Israeli strikes on Gaza overnight leaves more than 50 Palestinians dead

Israeli strikes on Gaza overnight leaves more than 50 Palestinians dead
Updated 03 April 2025
Follow

Israeli strikes on Gaza overnight leaves more than 50 Palestinians dead

Israeli strikes on Gaza overnight leaves more than 50 Palestinians dead
  • The Israeli military ordered the residents of several areas — Shujaiya, Jadida, Turkomen and eastern Zeytoun — to evacuate on Thursday
  • Israel has imposed a month-long halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle

DEIR AL BALAH: Overnight strikes by Israel killed at least 55 people across the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said Thursday, a day after senior government officials said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and establish a new security corridor across the Palestinian territory.
Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel has imposed a month-long halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle.
Officials in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the strip, said the bodies of 14 people had been taken to Nasser Hospital – nine of them from the same family. The dead included five children and four women. The bodies of another 19 people, including five children aged between 1 and 7 years and a pregnant woman, were taken to the European hospital near Khan Younis, hospital officials said. In Gaza City, 21 bodies were taken to Ahli hospital, including those of seven children.
The Israeli military ordered the residents of several areas — Shujaiya, Jadida, Turkomen and eastern Zeytoun — to evacuate on Thursday, adding that the army “will work with extreme force in your area.” It said people should move to shelters west of Gaza City.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu referred to the new axis as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting it would run between the two southern cities. He said it would be “a second Philadelphi corridor ” referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt further south, which has been under Israeli control since last May.
Israel has reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, also named for a former settlement, that cuts off the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow coastal strip. Both of the existing corridors run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.
“We are cutting up the strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority, led by rivals of Hamas, expressed its “complete rejection” of the planned corridor. Its statement also called for Hamas to give up power in Gaza, where the militant group has faced rare protests recently.
Netanyahu’s announcement came after the defense minister, Israel Katz, said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones, apparently referring to an existing buffer zone along Gaza’s entire perimeter. He called on Gaza residents to “expel Hamas and return all the hostages,” saying “this is the only way to end the war.”
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout. The group has rejected demands that it lay down its arms or leave the territory.
Netanyahu visits Hungary
Netanyahu arrived in Hungary early Thursday on his second foreign trip since the world’s top war crimes court issued an arrest warrant against him in November over Israel’s war in Gaza.
Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the the International Criminal Court has said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas — charges that Israeli officials deny.
ICC member countries, such as Hungary, are required to arrest suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil, but the court has no way to enforce that and relies on states to comply. As Netanyahu arrived in Budapest, Hungary said it will begin the procedure of withdrawing from the ICC.
Plans for Gaza
On Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel plans to maintain overall security control of Gaza after the war and implement US President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle much of its population elsewhere through what the Israeli leader referred to as “voluntary emigration.”
Palestinians have rejected the plan, viewing it as expulsion from their homeland after Israel’s offensive left much of it uninhabitable, and human rights experts say implementing the plan would likely violate international law.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has left vast areas of Gaza in ruins and at its height displaced around 90 percent of the population.
Israeli strikes on Syria
Separately, Israeli strikes killed at least nine people in southwestern Syria, Syrian state media reported Thursday.
SANA said the nine were civilians, without giving details. Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they were local gunmen from the Daraa province, frustrated with Israeli military encroachment and attacks in recent months.
Israel has seized parts of southwestern Syria and created a buffer-zone there, which it says is to secure Israel’s safety from armed groups. But critics say the military operation has created tensions in Syria and prevents any long-term stability and reconstruction for the war-torn country.
Israel also struck five cities in Syria late Wednesday, including over a dozen strikes near a strategic air base in the city of Hama.


Germany urges return to ‘serious’ talks on Gaza truce

Germany urges return to ‘serious’ talks on Gaza truce
Updated 26 min 52 sec ago
Follow

Germany urges return to ‘serious’ talks on Gaza truce

Germany urges return to ‘serious’ talks on Gaza truce
  • Speaking alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Berlin, Scholz also called for more humanitarian aid for Gaza

Berlin: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Thursday for a return to “serious” negotiations to end the Gaza conflict as Israel pushed on with a renewed assault targeting Hamas in the territory.
“What is needed now is a return to the ceasefire and the release of all hostages,” Scholz said, urging a return to “serious negotiations with the aim of agreeing a post-war order for Gaza that protects Israel’s security.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the military was “dissecting” the Gaza Strip and seizing territory to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages still held in the enclave.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel resumed intense bombing of Gaza on March 18 before launching a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire.
At least 1,066 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed military operations there, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Speaking alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Berlin, Scholz also called for more humanitarian aid for Gaza.
“No humanitarian aid has reached Gaza for a month,” he said. “This cannot and must not continue.”
He added that “a sustainable peace that stabilizes the situation in the West Bank as well as Gaza can only be achieved through a political solution.”
Abdullah II also called for a return to a ceasefire and for aid deliveries to resume into Gaza.
“Israel’s war on Gaza must stop. The ceasefire must be reinstated... and aid flow must resume,” he said.
“The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza has already reached unspeakable levels and action must be taken to immediately address it.”


UN rights chief says ‘appalled’ by reports of Khartoum executions

UN rights chief says ‘appalled’ by reports of Khartoum executions
Updated 03 April 2025
Follow

UN rights chief says ‘appalled’ by reports of Khartoum executions

UN rights chief says ‘appalled’ by reports of Khartoum executions

GENEVA: UN rights chief Volker Turk said Thursday that he was “appalled” by reports of extrajudicial killings of civilians in Sudan’s capital Khartoum last week after its recapture by the army from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
“I am utterly appalled by the credible reports of numerous incidents of summary executions of civilians in several areas of Khartoum, on apparent suspicions that they were collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces,” Turk said in a statement.


Turkiye detains 11 after protest boycott calls

Turkiye detains 11 after protest boycott calls
Updated 03 April 2025
Follow

Turkiye detains 11 after protest boycott calls

Turkiye detains 11 after protest boycott calls
  • The leader of the main opposition CHP party called for the purchase boycott on Wednesday to put more pressure on the government

Istanbul: Turkish authorities on Thursday detained at least 11 people suspected of spreading calls for a blanket boycott of purchases to protest the jailing of Istanbul’s opposition mayor, the official Anadolu news agency reported.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the calls, accusing the suspects of inciting “hatred and discrimination,” Anadolu said, adding that authorities were seeking five additional suspects.
The leader of the main opposition CHP party called for the purchase boycott on Wednesday to put more pressure on the government after the March 19 arrest of Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
Imamoglu is the main rival to President Recip Tayyip Erdogan, and his detention set off a wave of mass protests not seen in Turkiye for more than a decade.
Nearly 2,000 people, including several hundred students and young people, have been arrested since the start of the protests.
Some cafes, restaurants and bars heeded the boycott call and remained closed Wednesday in Istanbul as well as in the capital Ankara, AFP journalists reported.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel had already launched a call to boycott dozens of Turkish companies and groups reputed to be close to Erdogan’s government.