How the Assad family built an empire of fear in Syria

On Sunday morning, as gaunt detainees flooded out of Syrian regime prisons and jubilant Damascenes streamed into the presidential palace to root around abandoned designer shopping bags, Bashar al-Assad was nowhere to be found.

The only sign of the dynastic president, whose family had ruled Syria for half a century, was his ubiquitous portrait. Except now, instead of in its usual pride of place on walls and above desks, Assad’s images were being trampled under the feet of people the dictator had for years tried to bomb, gas and torture into submission.

It was a stunning downfall. Damascus without the Assad family, who enforced their minority rule with an iron fist, is almost unimaginable for many Syrians.

For Haid Haid, a Syrian columnist and consulting fellow with Chatham House, the regime’s enduring legacy would be defined by its attempt to “destroy people’s spirit and prevent them from imagining that they could 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 position on the Mediterranean.

The Assad regime, which has ruled Syria since 1970, “had all the time and the tools to make Syria like Singapore, if they wanted”, said Bassam Barbandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected to the opposition. “But they didn’t. They tried to crush the people . . . in order to survive.”

Ultimately Bashar, his brother Maher and wife Asma — a London-born ex-JP Morgan banker once feted by Vogue as “a rose in the desert” — used their ruthless power to finance the regime while the economy cratered in the rubble of Syria’s civil war. Analysts said the family controlled smuggling and even benefited from the growing trade in Captagon, an illicit stimulant mainly produced in Syria.

It became “like a mafia running a state”, said Malik al-Abdeh, a London-based Syrian analyst. The result for many ordinary people was that Syria was so “closely associated with your own torture or your own tormentor . . . that you almost begin 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, an offshoot of Shia 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, became defence minister and finally seized power in a coup.

A minority ruler in a mainly Sunni country, Hafez concentrated power with loyal members of his sect and buttressed his rule with brutal intelligence agencies that monitored Syrians’ every move. He also pitted the agencies against each other, heightening the sense of paranoia and fear. He was “a cold and calculated political and security operative”, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The dictator brooked no dissent. In 1982, he put down an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama with a bloody massacre of tens of thousands of people.

“There’s been a thesis for a long time that this is a minority regime without popular support,” said Abdeh. “Therefore, they have to use violence to maintain power, and this is all a house of cards.”

The Assad patriarch also sought to project their power across the region. Under Hafez, the Syrian army intervened in Lebanon’s civil war, occupying parts of the country for years, and became widely feared for their ruthlessness as Lebanese citizens disappeared into Syrian prisons.

Hafez’s second son Bashar, born in 1965, grew up in the shadow of his charismatic elder brother Bassel, heir-apparent to Hafez’s throne. Bashar meanwhile qualified as a doctor and went to London to train as an ophthalmologist.

But Hafez’s plans for his succession were 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.

Different powers vied to woo Bashar, who was then aged just 34. Syria’s former coloniser France even awarded him its highest civilian award, the Légion d’honneur, after he ascended to power in 2001. Western countries initially believed that “a more Western, liberalised, potentially ‘cosmopolitan’ leader coming into power . . . was going to be a good development”, said Lister.

But Bashar grew close to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, and ultimately to Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” of anti-US forces.

This alliance with Hizbollah destabilised Lebanon as weapons flowed across the border. Many in the region saw Syria’s hand behind the assassination of Lebanon’s prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, though a UN-backed tribunal did not charge any Syrians.

Domestically, Bashar sought to steer Syria from the socialist economic model adopted by his father towards a putatively free-market economy, also prompting 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 kleptocracy: although some businesses were able to profit, family members like his cousin Rami Makhlouf dominated the economy. 

While less advantaged inhabitants of the countryside and suburbs felt they were being left behind, Bashar counted on support from Syria’s urban mercantile families and minorities.

But Bashar was never on comfortable ground, said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House. His “constant paranoia meant he mistrusted his own circle”, she said. “His rule was marked by a breakdown of trust even within his own regime.”

Then a wave of protests across 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 faced a choice. Rather than move towards reform and reconciliation, he opted to crush the rebellion. More than 300,000 civilians were killed in the first decade of war, the UN has estimated, with deadly chemical attacks becoming its grisliest hallmark.

He “was living with the ghost of his dad”, said Barbandi. “He wanted to be stronger or tougher in dealing with the Syrians than his dad in Hama.”

Bashar was not the only Assad to play a role in crushing the uprising. Maher, his younger brother, ran the Syrian army’s notoriously brutal Fourth Division, while experts say he controlled smuggling, including weapons and oil — illicit revenue streams that helped finance the war effort.

Bashar staved off defeat with the help of his backers Hizbollah, Iran and Russia, and declared his intention to win back “every inch” of Syria. But even as the fighting slowed and front lines stabilised in 2019, Syria’s economy buckled.

This was “a defining moment”, said Karam Shaar, a Syrian political economy specialist based in New Zealand. With his economic woes compounded by the global pandemic, a financial meltdown in neighbouring Lebanon and international sanctions, Assad started shaking down business people, and even his own cousin Makhlouf.

Asma, Bashar’s wife, was also taking control of the spoils. She consolidated control over the aid sector, a huge — and rare — source of clean cash into Syria, while her allies manoeuvred into positions of economic power.

With public salaries eroded by inflation, and after years of bloody war, Assad’s army became “a shadow of itself”, Shaar said. Even Assad’s coastal Alawite heartland was demoralised.

A presidency that had held absolute power over the lives of its people had become reliant on international supporters. But when a lightning advance by well-armed, well-organised rebels took advantage of Tehran and Moscow’s own problems, Assad’s backers appeared unable to counter the opposition push.

As fighters ripped pictures of Bashar and dragged statues of Hafez around with trucks, Assad’s house of cards finally came down.

The Assad dynasty will be remembered for its callous disregard for Syrian lives. But Haid, the columnist, said Syrians were moving past its empire of fear: “We have seen how people were able to overcome that and create the future they want for themselves.”