Bashar Hafez al-Assad (Born 11 September 1965, age 56) is the current President of Syria, who served since his father
's death in 2000. Assad's rule is notoriously controversial, especially since the country is engulfed in a bloody Civil War since 2011.
Bashar is the second son of Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad, who led a series of coups in the 1960s that radically changed Syria. The first coup brought the Syrian branch of the Ba'ath Party to power, while the second purged the party of its Sunni Muslim and Christian leaders, leaving only the minority Alawites, of whom Hafez and his family belong to. Hafez ruled Syria as president for 29 years, installing a cult of personality revolving around his family. Bashar became Hafez's heir apparent in 1994, when his older brother, Bassel, died in a car accident. He was described as being a shy boy, uninterested in politics and the military, much unlike his brothers. Bashar assumed office in 2000, after Hafez's death, and allied his country with the United States during the War on Terror. In the beginning of his term, he was considered a "reformer" who would fix the issues left by his father such as the military intervention of Lebanon, democratization of their country and the hostility with Israel in order to normalize relationships with the Western world. However, the political system remained the same as Bashar continued to centralize his authority, silence the opposition and place family members in high position in the government.
Nevertheless, he remained a relatively quiet and unassuming figure in Middle-East politics during the 2000s. This changed in 2011, when The Arab Spring came along. As noted above, the Alawites basically controlled Syria as their fiefdom even though they constituted less than 15% of the population. Protests, led by Sunni Muslims who formed over 75% of the population, began to erupt, with the reasons provided being disaffection over high unemployment and lack of political representation. However, Assad was having none of that and cracked down hard on dissenters. The violent repression drew criticism from Western nations who pressured him to step down via sanctions, but when it became clear that Assad would not comply, the unrest in Syria soon turned into insurgency as armed rebel groups rose up to overthrow his regime, beginning the Syrian Civil War.
By 2014, it seemed his regime was about to collapse as his forces broke down against the rise of the Islamist groups who also sought to overthrow Assad because he is not considered a true Muslim for being an Alawite note note The most infamous of these was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who managed to conquer large swathes of land and became a threat not just to Assad, but other rebels and even other jihadists. This lead to an international intervention by several foreign superpowers in order to curb Islamic State with Russia and Iran directly supporting Assad whereas the West partially changed the policy about Assad, choosing to ignore him in order to focus on the fundamentalists while still covertly supporting the Syrian opposition.
After the Islamic State was (mostly) dealt with, however, Assad's luck began to turn. With the help of Russia and Iran, the Syrian government slowly chipped away at the rebels. Homs, a strategic city located between the country's capital, Damascus, and the largest city, Aleppo, was captured in 2015, followed by Aleppo itself in 2016. In 2018, the government recaptured the southern governorates of Daraa and Quneitra, the "cradle of the revolution", as they were the first areas to rebel against the government. The rebels were forced to either stay and live under his rule, which would mean mandatory conscription and punishment to various degrees, or flee to the northwest, chiefly Idlib Governorate, the last zone still free of the Syrian government's reach. Assad's government has been besieging the northwest since then, though its movement is checked by Turkey, the self-proclaimed protector of the revolution, which is worried that the collapse of the rebellion would trigger a massive humanitarian crisis, with millions of Syrians potentially crossing its borders.
All in all, Bashar al-Assad has survived 9 years of civil war that has killed up to 580,000 people, uprooted 7.6 million people from their homes, forced 5.1 million people to flee the country, overwhelmed Syria's neighbors, caused a refugee crisis in Europe, created a period of terror that briefly encaptured the world, and basically made everyone miserable. And he shows no signs of stopping.
Attitudes and opinions held towards Assad shifted greatly in part to how the war was conducted. His critics accuse him of several war crimes like using chemical weapons on civilians, jailing opponents and torturing them in vicious manners, facilitating the rise of Islamic State by releasing jihadists from the prisons and escalating the conflict because of his refusal to hand over power. On the other side, he has supporters who despite his authoritarian nature (or perhaps precisely because of it) view him as a stabilizing force against jihadists and fear of Syria collapsing into anarchy just like what happened to its neighbor Iraq after Saddam Hussein's removal (this is of course a bit hypocritical, considering that Syria is basically a hellhole at this point, in a condition far worse than what Iraq endured after the 2003 American invasion. Even in its worst, Iraq didn't cause a whopping 5 million people to flee the country, overwhelming its neighbors). Nevertheless, the West have been constantly criticizing him, with various sanctions slapped on him, his family, government, and the country in general, and blockades imposed by countries bordering Syria, choking off the economy (though by 2019, most have opened their borders; only Turkey and Israel — which never had any relations with Syria anyway — have yet to do so).
On the other hand, it appears that Assad has largely become a figurehead in the larger war since Iran and especially Russia came to support his country directly from 2015 onward. While his government is no doubt responsible for a slew of human rights abuses, most of the American and Israeli criticisms and retaliatory attacks nowadays are targeted at the Iran-backed militias who are residing in Syria, while Turkey made a point to bypass Syria entirely in favor of talking to Russia regarding ceasefire and peace talks.
Tropes pertaining to Bashar al-Assad's portrayals in media:
- The Bad Guy Wins:
- In the Last Men in Aleppo documentary, his Syrian Arab Army retakes Aleppo from the rebels.
- Since 2020, Bashar has succeeded in recapturing most of the country and is entering negotiation talks with the Kurds to get them surrender to him (and Turkey regularly attacks the Kurds, besides). The rebels, who at their strongest controlled more territory than Assad, have been reduced to a small corner in Syria's northwest, where they endure daily bombings and artillery attacks by the government. From the point of Syria's revolutionaries, The Bad Guy really does win (or is close to winning).
- Better the Devil You Know: Those more reluctant to support Assad consider him a better alternative to the rebels and jihadists.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: He has been characterized as a soft-spoken and stoic figure in contrast to other Arab leaders, but also portrayed as extremely ruthless. In fact, this was what made Syria's brutal, world-affecting civil war even more astonishing. Western media was used to dealing with outspoken Arab leaders like Iraq's Saddam Hussein or Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, which was why their countries got all the spotlight, while Syria was almost unknown before the civil war erupted.
- Deadly Doctor: Assad is an ophthalmologist.
- Glorious Leader: According to his more hardcore supporters and media sympathetic of him.
- Foil: He and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Both are dictators who have ruled their respective countries for years, but their personalities couldn't be any different. Gaddafi was bombastic and very theatrical, while Assad is soft-spoken and largely content staying out of the public eye. Their fates post-Arab Spring are also opposed: Gaddafi died the same year Libya's civil war erupted, while Assad is still alive and going strong nine years into Syria's civil war.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Notably averted. Bashar has very distinctive blue eyes, which are often noted in Western media. They are actually not that uncommon in the Middle East, but the stereotype of Arabs as a one big race of brown-skinned, brown-eyed people in popular media makes this rather remarkable.
- President Evil: In negative portrayals, obviously, though his position was inherited like a monarchy rather than voted into power.
- Spare to the Throne: His brother Bassel was expected to become President, undertaking military and political training while Bashar became a doctor instead. When he died in a car crash, the Presidency passed to him.
- Villainous Mother-Son Duo: Before her death in 2016, Bashar was reportedly close to his mother, Anisa Makhlouf, whom he regularly consulted on political matters. Reportedly, she was the one who advised him to brutally crack down on protesters during the 2011 uprising, which resulted in the current civil war.
- We Used to Be Friends: Before the civil war, he and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were close as far as politicians go. After that, the relationship soured greatly, since Syria and Turkey became the fiercest enemies of the war. Among foreign enemies, Assad has particularly singled out Erdoğan for his support of "terrorists".
Assad is featured/referenced in the following works:
- France: The second war zone in which the eponymous Intrepid Journalist ventures is not named, but several things bring Syria to mind, chiefly the fact that the locals speak Arabic and that "the regime" (like al-Assad's) has no qualms bombarding its own population.
- Les Guignols de l'Info: This puppet show portrayed him as a casually murderous President for Life who loves Deadly Euphemisms.
- Messiah opens with Damascus being besieged by Islamic State and Assad is nowhere to be seen. However, a vandalized poster of his is shown during the prologue indicating that something unpleasant happened to him.
- Paladin of Shadows: He cameos in the first book alongside Osama bin Laden.
- The Pianist from Syria - A Memoir:
... Assad died, and his son Bashar came to power. The dictatorship was just as brutal as before, and the torture chambers were as full as they'd ever been.
- Tyrant (2014) follows a heavily dramatized version of Bashar al-Assad as Bassam "Barry" Al-Fayeed, a pediatrician who is forced to assume the role of dictator after his father's passing.
