22-9-23
Dear Partners in Thought,
After nineteen months of the Ukraine invasion and many pieces on the tragic subject, I decided to focus briefly on another matter carrying its share of upheaval, by writing about Bashar al-Assad. Here is a man who led an improbable life from potential Western-like leader, if only in appearance, to civil war maker and despot. Con Coughlin, a veteran war correspondent since the Beirut of the early 1980s, wrote “Assad – The Triumph of Tyranny”, an eye-opening book on a man of benign appearance behind one of the greatest and bloodiest tragedies of the 21st century. I have to admit that my knowledge of the Middle East as a child living in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s was limited to “Exodus” with Paul Newman and “Lawrence of Arabia” with Peter O’Toole until the Yom Kippur War suddenly changed that for me into a darker story – all while knowing on the surface, that the region was not a symbol of stability, since the state of Israel had been recreated also to assuage the sins of the Nazi German era. The book about Bashar al-Assad is full of many stories and provides a flood of angles reflecting the complexities of the Middle East. It also sheds some light on a man that we all saw but few knew well. As such, this Book Note will be longer than usual, so as to capture all the key events of the Bashar al-Assad saga.
We all remember Bashar as a nice and mild-mannered individual carrying hopes of modernity. Often with his charming wife Asma (once known by Vogue as “the rose of the desert”), they created a stylish and sympathetic couple in the early 2000s, after he took the leadership of Syria. The impactful couple, boosted by a very photogenic Asma, could have been a strategic tool for Syrian image re-engineering. Asma was a London-born Syrian, part of the refined Sunni elite (quite remote from the Assads’ rough Alawite crowds) and a JP Morgan investment banker. (On a funny side note, Asma, a very bright young lady, forewent Harvard Business School to elope with Bashar, after they had met when he was training as a compulsorily low-profile ophthalmologist in London, studying hard and quietly listening to Phil Collins and Whiney Houston in his flat). French President Jacques Chirac found him to be a nice leadership style-change for the region, and the former French League of Nations protectorate. Queen Elizabeth and the Syrian couple posed together for nice pictures stressing the normalcy of the new Syria, after the often-hard regime of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father. The future would destroy all of this genuine feel-good factor following tragic events in Lebanon post-Iraq invasion, the Arab Spring and the dreadful civil war that ensued—even if Arab states now seem to wish to reintegrate Bashar into the community of regional nations in mid-2023, and as the Middle East is also changing with Saudi Arabia working on a new regional and global role at many levels including sports. Coughlin’s book is a fascinating and often too-horrific story that deserves much reflection.
Bashar was not destined to be a leader of Syria. He was not the eldest son or even eldest child of Hafez, and had no interest in politics. He indeed studied in London and became an ophthalmologist, something few realise today. The al-Assad family (Assad meaning “lion” and actually not the original family name in the Alawite region) was not destined to lead either, and came from a humble background. But times changed and a new version of Arab “socialism” helped the family seize power gradually from 1963 and fully in 1971. Then as often is the case with strong regimes or monarchies, Hafez’s brother thought he should lead the country instead of Hafez, but was finally exiled (although not shot, due to the intermediation of their mother). When Hafez became gradually ill and thought of succession in the 1990s, his first son, Bassel, who had the characteristics of a strong if not tough leader in the making, died at 31 in a car crash. Hafez’s daughter, Bushra, thought she could lead the country at 41 and was indeed equipped with many of the requisite features. But it was many years before “Me Too”, all the more in an Arab Muslim country, so she was discarded by her father and his senior team. Bashar then became the one left in the shop, with many arguing whether a medical doctor, probably too westernised and with a such a benign appearance, could become the successor of strongman Hafez. But then Bashar was the only Assad with the right seniority left, and when his father died in 2000, the debate was quickly and forcefully closed by him and he became the leader of Syria.
Syria, since the advent of Hafez, was a country not led by religion and a monarchy as often seen in the Middle East, but by the socialist Baathist party—even if ten families around Hafez controlled the wealth of the country. A phenomenon often seen and lived with in what the West used to call “developing nations” the world over (see the 56-year Bongo dynasty in now coup-ridden Africa). Benign kleptocracy was at work, with all the slogans that the regime naturally worked for the people. Bashar ensured that the succession plans went well, even hiding the death of his father from his mother and family the day it happened, so he could prepare his next steps. While he was seen as a benign and even game-changing moderate when he “took over”, he had made sure he cleaned up the military and security services of dissenters. And he warned others with the wrong aspirations, like Rifaat, Hafez’s brother and perennial would be leader, that he was the one in charge.
The book stresses how Hafez’s Syria was not a friend of the West, and preferred to side with the Soviet Union during the Cold War on many issues, as well as post-Shah Iran. Notably when the latter, through its sponsored Hezbollah, sought to exert some control over Lebanon, a neighbour it also saw as its own. Syria’s opposition to Israel, a strong historical US ally in the region, also made the Moscow-Damascus link natural, even if so many Russians (admittedly not Soviet-supporting), emigrated to Israel. On a funny note and a regional scale prelude to how many nations today do not always side with the US or China, preferring to follow an opportunistic approach (like India liking Russian oil, but also getting closer to the West on grand strategic matters due to China), Syria backed the West in the 1990 Gulf War. It never liked its Baathist neighbour Saddam Hussein, while funding and supporting Iranian-led disruption in Lebanon and the region. In the last years of Hafez, Bashar had been in charge of the “Lebanon brief” for Damascus, and had facilitated Iran’s direct and indirect involvement in Lebanese affairs. This included supporting terrorist organisations and their leaders like then well-known Abu Nidal, not to mention Carlos “the jackal” (who liked the Damascus haven) and Islamic Jihad founder Mughniyeh, the man behind many bombings of US and French military barracks in Lebanon in the early 1980s. When he took over the leadership of Syria in 2000, it seemed that Bashar tried initially to be a man of change (more economically than politically) and was perhaps conflicted by projecting the image of a modernised leader with a Western suited-look, while gradually following the steps of his father. More than likely helped by the not so enlightened Baathist old guard. Most observers would agree that it took one year for Bashar to adopt the old Assad style of power management, thus killing any hopes for a long Damascus Spring. Bashar clearly condemned 9-11 and provided intelligence to the CIA, to the delight of its Director George Tenet. All the while the Pentagon still saw him and Syria as part of the “Axis of Evil” and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran. Even the Blair administration tried very hard to get Syria to change its tack, going as far as for the “glamorous Bashar-Asma couple” to meet with the Queen in 2002 (apparently no trace of the visit can be found in the Buckingham Palace registry). As the 2000s unfolded, Bashar showed signs of not knowing where he wanted to stand, being very foreign affairs progressive on one-on-ones with Blair in Damascus, while attacking Israel publicly with a startled British leader at his side the same day. Or being very open with John Paul II, and then blasting Israel publicly during the same visit for having killed Jesus. Bashar initially got closer to the Iranians in order to move away from Russia (who would come back in a decisive way during the Civil War, led by the now disgraced, Prigozhin-friendly General Surovikin) and surprisingly get better weaponry and communication systems from Tehran (on a side note, the fact that Moscow goes to Pyongyang today to get ammunitions it is lacking so much for its ill-fated Ukraine invasion, is also telling).
The first major step in Bashar’s new direction, even if it was not clear or public at the time (nor that it was ever admitted), was the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2004, when a suicide bomber threw himself and two tons of explosives (more than what was used at Oklahoma City in 1995) into the politician’s car and his convoy of bodyguards. It turned out that investigations (including from the UN) pointed to Bashar’s brother and other family members being the culprits, even if Damascus always denied the facts. The roots of the assassination (and Bashar’s gradual anti-Western stance) were to be found in Hariri wanting truer independence for Lebanon, while Bashar wanted Syria to stay in the country as it had since 1976 in a controlling mode during the civil war, and make sure Lebanon would be part of Greater Syria as it should always have been historically. Bashar’s move may have also been helped by George W. Bush’s decisions to back a truly independent Lebanon and sanction Syria in 2003 while DoD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for regime change and keeping Syria as a member of the “Axis of Evil” together with Iran. As a result, Bashar would wish to get closer to Iran and Hamas and take part in making the invasion of Iraq a failure for America, while helping to send Islamic fighters to Iraq to fight Western troops. At the same time even France, not an Iraq war supporter, was now backing the US in wanting Syria out of Lebanon, which stressed a different approach than the one taken by Chirac in 2000 when hopes were high for a new Middle East due to a perceived game-changing Bashar. In 2005, a few months after Hariri’s murder, and as Lebanon had become ungovernable, Syria and its 14,000 troops and intelligence officers left Lebanon after 29 years of “occupation” or “presence”, as Bashar could no longer manage it, and the anti-Syrian political blocks were about to win the elections; pro-Syrian politicians, like the Maronite Christian President Emile Lahoud, were to be gradually removed from office. Even allies and indeed funders like Saudi Arabia, became dismayed by Bashar’s perceived role in Harari’s assassination. Arab diplomats visiting an ally in Damascus also became concerned about Bashar’s erratic behaviour. Even his vice president, Halim Khaddam, a member of the Baathist old guard, decided to resign, while criticising the blunders of the leadership in Lebanon – and flying to Paris to avoid retribution, while becoming a voice for the opposition to Bashar, a dangerous role in itself even from afar. As he was reaching a low ebb, and questions about his political survival were raised, Bashar strengthened his ties with Iran and Hezbollah in a defensive move and further alienated the West, and even Damascus’s allies in the region. Damascus began a clearing house for Jihadi fighters traveling to Iraq, making Syria the clear enemy of the West and a dangerous, if not unstable, player for the region and its leaders. Only the very intense three-week summer 2006 fight between a Syrian ammunition and equipment-supported Hezbollah and an attacking Israel helped Assad to benefit from Hezbollah not losing (even if no side won) and him not to be the main focus of the region, while he gradually recovered from the setback of the Hariri assassination. Boosted by this rise in popularity, that he doubtless played on, he was “re-elected” for a second presidential term with 99% of the votes, in ways that were expected but without any local troubles. The end of the Iraq war would still see Western powers trying to get Bashar to stop his involvement in Iraq (which he eventually did, at least on the previously known scale) and stopping his support of Hezbollah and Hamas (which he did not, perhaps (or not) pressed by the old Baathist guard, his intelligence agencies, and the key strategic link to Iran). Syria was trying to play a leading regional and international role in hosting the Arab League Summit in 2008, while Sarkozy invited Bashar to the 2008 Bastille Day parade, a feat seen with Macron inviting Modi for the same key French celebration in 2023, also driven by clear foreign policy goals. While he still was strongly opposed to Israel also in very practical ways, Bashar wanted to get Syria supporting the never ending Arab-Israeli peace talks as if living in a parallel world of a country.
At the personal level a benign-looking and seemingly happily-married Bashar was also known as a party goer, heavy drinker and womaniser, even having had a regular German mistress according to clear evidence from Western intelligence. His personal life, like his political stances, appeared very conflicted, all the more given the projected image of a glamorous couple with three young children. His family affairs were not too happy either, with his decision to exile his Hariri-friendly brother in law (once shot by one of his brothers in a brawl), head of military intelligence, and putting aside his sister, once a “could have been” leader of Syria, who had remained too vocal in her aspirations. It nevertheless looked like a big public relations campaign was underway when American Vogue focused on Asma in February 2011 with its “Rose of the Desert” issue, and Damascus was trying hard to manage conflictual geostrategic positions while getting more accepted in the Western world.
At the same time, the Obama administration—in a hopeful gambit—was trying to adopt a more pragmatic approach to Bashar and Syria than his predecessor. And then the Arab Spring erupted following a street vendor setting fire to himself in Tunis in December 2011, as he could no longer stand police harassment. Protests and riots started all over the Arab world, across monarchies and secular countries. Leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya would fall, at times paying the ultimate price, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan weathered the storm. Syria’s descent into chaos started with misbehaving children suffering very seriously at the hands of the local police led by Bashar’s cousin Najib in Deraa, which led to mass protests all across the country in a local replica of the Arab Spring. Bashar, who blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, seemed initially hesitant in how to deal with the unrest, likely due to the new image he was trying to project, but went for usual and tested force (while keeping for himself USD 200m that Saudi Arabia had just given to help him mend fences in Deraa through the funding of community projects). His youngest brother, Maher, also known for his heavy drinking and womanizing, was put in charge of the repressions of the protests. The first international victim of the repressions was the Vogue article that disappeared from the magazine’s website. While what was left of the Syrian opposition hoped that protests might have led Bashar to start implementing his old Damascus Spring reforms, he went to the Syrian Parliament to denounce a conspiracy to destabilise the Syrian government, stressing under the standing ovation of state-appointed delegates that Syria would not be Iraq.
The Syrian civil war, which we all remember unfolding, was deemed by Con Coughlin to be worst war he experienced in forty years of reporting since Beirut in the early eighties. It started with the Arab Spring protests that mutated into a war at home. The difference with other Arab Spring war-like developments, like in Libya, was that chemical weapons were used to defend the regime, likely since December 2012 in Homs, this without clear evidence in spite of suspicions from the international communities and various NGOs. Of historical note, Syria in the 1980s had the third largest chemical weapons stockpile in the world after the US and the Soviet Union. Iran had then contributed in the Bashar years to Syria’s ability to keep using such weapons. In August 2013 various parts of Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, were massively attacked by chemical weapons which, while the strike was always officially denied by the regime, reflected Bashar’s determination to defeat the rebel forces and his gambling drive in extreme circumstances. The attack was launched as a UN inspection team was in the Damascus Four Seasons hotel to investigate such matters under challenging terms and conditions, so as to seed the fact that they could only be the result of rebel actions even if Ghouta itself, under siege for six months, was an opposition stronghold. Chemical weapons had been Obama’s red line which if crossed would lead to US military intervention of an Iraq war nature ten years before. However, Obama did not want to experience an Iraq 2.0 in Syria, nor follow the Franco-British approach that overthrew Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, even if he made clear in December 2011 that Bashar should step aside for the sake of the Syrian people. The UN officially designated the conflict in Syria as a civil war in June 2012, while Obama would forget his chemical weapons red line – at a personal political cost, even if many at home did not want another far away war – while sanctioning Bashar and his brother Maher and funding pro-Western rebel groups. Chemical weapons were one terrible feature of the overtly new Bashar Syrian management style – intelligence was another.
By 2011, the Mukahbarat, the leading domestic intelligence agency and all other security organisations comprising up to 70,000 agents became coordinated under the CCMC or Central Crisis Management Cell that had been created in March of that year, days after the initial Deraa uprising. Most security officials were Alawites as they could be trusted to preserve the Assad regime, and controlled one third of the USD 9bn annual defence budget. At this time, there was one intelligence officer for every 240 Syrian nationals. At some point the regime also turned to irregular militias or “shabiha”, usually from poor Alawite extraction and in the drug trade or racket business, to control the unrest through industrial murder, rape and torture. This very powerful security and repression apparatus was completed by the Baathist Party, set up to control the country, while its local leaders were known to enrich themselves, as seen in many developing countries the world over, via endemic corruption (and knowing that 30% of Syrians were living below the poverty line while 11% were below subsistence levels while the leadership was seen at the opening of the new Opera House in Damascus to cater to the needs of the ruling elite). Bashar would not get involved in details of the repression, but was aware of them and giving a clear freedom of action to his security services to act as they saw fit irrespective of the horrors that would ensue, like with barrel bombs and the targeting of hospitals.
The West was not the only party asking for Syrian reform, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia started to request it, fearing a meltdown of Syria. This prompted Bashar to speak about reforms of many institutions, including the constitution, but keeping the repression which only fostered the civil war. The repression involved death, torture and rape of men, women and children by the Syrian security services to break the opposition, which it only strengthened. Bashar kept arguing that Jihadists and foreign powers wanting to topple his government were responsible for the unrest, insisting it was not another wave of the Arab Spring. He went as far as freeing many Jihadists, only to point to them later, and not the actual secular opposition, as the enemy in order to justify, if not rationalise, the hard repression. At some point, this new turn became more real than Damascus wanted, as Jihadist fighters left Iraq to fight in Syria in an internationalisation of the local conflict. And then these fighters became funded by Turkey, Qatar and even Saudi Arabia as Jabhat al-Nusra, a local al-Qaeda franchise, was created and al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri declared a jihad against the regime, leading to Islamist fighters from the whole region including Libyans and Chechens to come to Syria. The internationalisation of the conflict came at a point when a US-Russia initiative would eventually make Damascus agree to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal. Obama, using Putin’s initiative as likely excuse, would step away from a direct US involvement to remove Bashar, even if many US foreign policy pundits stressed the opposite (as would Britain, as the Commons did not back PM Cameron who would have joined Obama). The US non-involvement made Russia and Iran de facto the only foreign powers involved, this on the side of Bashar in dealing with Sunni Islamist fighters in what was an unexpected salvation. The civil war – and war it had become – saw Damascus losing gradually against the secular and Islamist opposition forces, this prompting Iran and especially Russia now to take a step Obama had not been able to take – direct intervention on the side of Damascus – all the more given the American void and the rise of a new Sunni Islamist group known as Daesh. Russia had been an ally of Syria since the Soviet days, and was the main provider of military equipment to Damascus, also enjoying two bases in Syria. Putin, however, did not seem to be keen on getting involved directly in the conflict, seeing Syria as a side show even if Russia kept vetoing UN resolutions against Syria and was badly in need of an influence-booster globally, but also in the Middle East.
At some point, the war involved up to 150,000 opposition fighters, 80% coming from 100 countries on the secular and mostly Jihadist side, while the Syrian forces, initially 200,000 strong were down to 50,000 (always comprising Sunni conscripts led by Alawite commanders) due to casualties and increasingly mass desertions. It was estimated that 1,000 opposition groups were fighting the Assad regime, some very small and local. The Assad regime was losing and was about to go away. By 2015, there was an assumption that the Assad regime could not survive while the West, that wanted Bashar out, was concerned about who would replace him, a Jihadist takeover not being seen as a viable option in what was increasingly viewed as a lose-lose game. In what could be seen as a bad joke given the Prigozhin story years later, Belarus was deemed to be a viable relocation option for Bashar and his family. While the tide was not good for Bashar, his mother Anisa would have reprimanded him, stressing that if his father and older brother had been around, this defeatist scenario would never have happened. All while Asma would seem to live in another parallel world, focused on design and artistic projects, and trying to defend her husband with her lady friends part of the leading families ruling the Middle East.
Iran had been the reason why Bashar could cling to power as the war was not going his way. Iran’s conservative Islam was at odds with a secular Baathist ideology (even if only power really mattered), but it took a wider view of the conflict and its opposition to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. Iran was not enough for Syria to prevail, which drove Qds Forces Commander Soleimani (who would meet his death in January 2020 with a US drone strike in Baghdad) to convince Russia’s Putin to get involved to stop the debacle that might also hurt Russian interests and see them lose two bases in which they had heavily invested. A Russian-Iranian cooperation pact was signed in July 2015. Putin’s masterstroke was to go to the UN after ten years of absence and announce Russia would be ready to lead the fight against international terrorists in Syria, very much stressing Daesh at the main target (on a quasi-funny note, there had been some 2,400 Russians identified as Daesh members but to be fair the terrorist organisation also included British Jihadists known as “The Beatles” due to their strong Liverpudlian accents).
When the first Russian bombings started, the targets turned out to be US-backed rebel forces. While Russia wanted to support a vital strategic ally, even if Putin held the Syrian leader in low esteem, its key motivation was also to challenge the West in what few saw as a proxy war. All of this only a few months before Russia went into Crimea, thus helping to refocus Western minds about what Russia really was about, and which Putin stressed again following his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It should be stated that the US national security apparatus was not all enamoured by Obama’s cautious approach, since the red line had been crossed and nothing happened, even if his approach was also motivated by the instability seen in Iraq again with Daesh – the likes of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and new CIA David Petraeus wanted some direct intervention on the side of the “secular” opposition. But the problem was that Syrian anti-aircraft defences were Russian-made, and also operated, which the new direct Russian officially anti-terror groups involvement was making impossible to consider lest WW3 was possibly an option.
As Coughlin aptly notes, Russian military’s preferred tactic is to apply brute force to achieve its objectives, irrespective of destruction and misery it may cause (including on its own). 4,000 artillery shells were fired per day at the city of Grozny during the Chechen war. Georgia in 2008 had also been a case of military ineptitude, which would be found again 15 years later in Ukraine. As Russia was increasingly looking at a direct intervention, the Libyan conflict, that had seen a mainly Franco-British operation successfully ejecting Gaddafi, was reviewed by Moscow as it essentially involved support to local militias that carried out the operations, a model William Hague had stressed as “the paradigm for future military interventions to remove rogue regimes”. Russia was very wary of committing ground forces, preferring to follow the Libyan business model, which led to the Gerasimov Doctrine of hybrid warfare. Thus Crimea became the test in 2014, when “little green men” did the initial job, allowing Putin to deny anything until Russia was effectively in control of the peninsula. Crimea, and the lack of Western response, doubtless bolstered Russia’s confidence in going into Syria in the Autumn of 2015, even if 3,000 miles away. Russia would lead a massive air campaign against both the secular and Daesh forces led by now well known if removed General Sergei Surovikin, assisted by the Wagner mercenary group which built its reputation in Syria before venturing into Africa. In a novel development, Russia and its leading officers were also financially rewarded for their support of Bashar in a model adopted later by Wagner Group’s Prigozhin and his various mines in the African Sahel.
While Russia was effectively a war gamechanger, and as Bashar was nominally in charge of Syria, he was no longer leading the war (even if he never was in practical terms and as Iran’s Qds Commander Soleimani had done it before). Russia decided every aspect of the war, making him likely feel he could be replaced if unhappy. Bashar maintained the appearance of being in control of the war for internal purposes, and kept to his state of denial about any atrocity committed in the name of his regime, even during BBC and CBS interviews in the midst of the onslaught. He increasingly stressed to the West that it was better for them that he kept leading Syria than Daesh as the nature of the war had changed its key dynamics. He even kept stressing that diplomacy was the best option, even inviting a French delegation to review what sensible settlement of the war could be achieved. The war was a complex military and foreign policy matter as allies were not liking each other, and foes were also not clear. Turkey supported both the secular opposition and Islamist terror groups, while the latter like Daesh would attack the former alongside Russia which it also fought against. The war had taken a turn in becoming an extension of the now old “war on terror” more than one focused on the current Syrian regime. The West wanted regime change in Damascus but did not want to be helping Daesh. This situation helped Russia (and Iran) take the lead out of a lack of clear Western commitment (based on rational reasons), which eventually led to Bashar staying in power against all odds when Racca, the Syrian capital of Daesh, was taken in October 2017 marking the real end of a conflict that would go on in various small locations for months to come. Bashar’s main challenge to his rule had been destroyed, and he thought he had won, even if in a pyrrhic mode, actually not making much mention of Russian and Iranian assistance. Perhaps the only real winners in this conflict were Russia and Iran. But did the Kremlin use that experience in the best of ways when looking at what came next?
The Syrian tragedy deserves many studies, on too many awful topics, as there are so many questions left. The philosopher in each of us could ask whether “Bashar created the tragedy” or “the tragedy created Bashar” but it is far beyond the point today. How can Syria come back in the world of nations – even if the old-fashioned Western term may seem obsolete? (The same could be asked about Russia of course.) How can half a million dead be forgotten? How can 13 million displaced Syrians, nearly 60% of its 2012 population, many having unwittingly created immigration and refugee havoc in Europe since the mid-2010s, be humanly but also realistically dealt with? (the UN officially stated in August that there were 40 million asylum seekers in the world today, Syrians likely taking first place.) Will Assad be ever forgiven, even on tactical grounds, for what we know, this even as he shows some caution in dealing with the Druze these days? Will his re-joining the Arab community, as seen with the “practical” welcoming back from the Arab League in mid-2023 after 12 years of being shunned, be a sign of things to come? How will Israel, Qatar or even Egypt and Jordan react, not to mention the investment community? There are many questions around Assad, but the region seems to be also on another path with a different Israel, led by a Netanyahu captive of his never seen before coalition. Or, come to that, a Saudi Arabia and an Iran finally being on talking terms, thanks to a more foreign policy assertive Beijing, primarily focused on its world leadership rise and its features, all the more at a time of serious economic and demographic problems at home. It is clear that Saudi Arabia, now a BRICS member (with the UAE and fragile Egypt), and the Gulf states, redefining their economic and existential roots, are taking a more proactive leadership role in the region that would go beyond leading world golf and football for one, and luxury havens for the others. A visionary Saudi MBS stated a few years ago that the Middle East was the new Europe, even if the dream proved to be hard on the economic and political front recently, as seen with protests in Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the deepening civil war in Sudan.
One of the major Syrian issues we can see today for the region (and thus the world) is the Damascus regime having become a major exporter of drugs, its slow path in taking back refugees, and the Iranian-backed militias running around the country. While the UAE was a leading promoter of Syrian rehabilitation, other countries like anti-Bashar Qatar or US-following Kuwait were not keen, while Egypt and Jordan had strong question marks. Saudi Arabia changed its mood in the context of its own leadership rationale, lesser tensions with nemesis Iran and wanting the region more stable, taking the February 2023 earthquake as an opportunity to also change its tune and restart a dialogue with Bashar.
These developments have been indirectly a victory for both the Russian-Iran team and war as a viable option given that it secured Bashar’s regime. Russia also hopes that the Arab League’s rehabilitation will allow it to keep its gains while not focusing as much on Syria going forward, given its other main focus. While the US has reduced its military presence in the Middle East since Obama, the West seems to keep sanctioning Syria, but is too busy today with Ukraine to really care about a regional rehabilitation or trying to stop it. As for Syria itself, Bashar who stands “for Arab identity against Western hegemony” (his speech in Riyadh last May) does not seem apologetic for anything, and would even seek apologies from those in the region who opposed him, while likely using the drug trade as leverage in discussions with its neighbours and their deep concerns about its impact on their own countries. All in all, Bashar has not changed and has benefitted from a complex, and at times strange, geopolitical chessboard to keep ruling Syria, even if at times in vacillating ways. And today some Western analysts see Syria potentially as the last and odd addition to the new anti-Western axis in the making, though not yet very firm, comprising Russia/Belarus, China, North Korea and Iran.
Coughlin’s book is very useful to remember Bashar’s journey and better understand the many features that led to the Syrian tragedy, even if it is full of facts and at times going back and forth with events, making the chronology harder to grasp, especially in the last twelve years. A thorough reading is required, all the more for those not being Middle East old hands, as events, especially during the civil war were plentiful. The story of Bashar and his family could have been one crafted by Shakespeare, and reminds us that freedom and democracy are rare features in today’s world, and that they are worth actively defending and strengthening, unless we all end up becoming residents of Ghouta.
Warmest regards,
Serge
Desperate Measures 