Assad The Triumph of Tyranny 9781529074901

Table of contents :
Title page
Dedication page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Map
Introduction
One: A Doctor Calls
Two: The Velvet Glove
Three: Lost Hope
Four: The Tyrant and the Crown
Five: First Blood
Six: Into the Abyss
Seven: War Criminal
Eight: Barbarians at the Gate
Nine: The Russian Playbook
Epilogue: The Reckoning
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography
Notes
Plate Section
About the Author
Also by Con Coughlin
Copyright page

Citation preview

ASSAD The Triumph of Tyranny

CON COUGHLIN

In Memoriam Marie Colvin (1956–2012) A courageous war correspondent and cherished friend ‘War happens to people, one by one’ – Martha Gellhorn

Contents List of Illustrations Map Introduction One: A Doctor Calls Two: The Velvet Glove Three: Lost Hope Four: The Tyrant and the Crown Five: First Blood Six: Into the Abyss Seven: War Criminal Eight: Barbarians at the Gate Nine: The Russian Playbook Epilogue: The Reckoning Acknowledgements Select Bibliography Notes Plate Section

List of Illustrations 1. The Assad family, early 1994. (Universal History Archive/UIG / Bridgeman Images) 2. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad with his youngest brother Rifaat in 1986. (AFP, HO) 3. Mandate for Syria and Lebanon 1922. (Don-kun, TUBS, NordNordWest based on a map by TUBS.) 4. Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s younger brother, who became known as the regime’s ‘enforcer’ for his ruthless suppression of anti-regime protests. (RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP via Getty Images) 5. The funeral of Hafez al-Assad in Damascus, 13 June 2000. (RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP via Getty Images) 6. Bashar al-Assad training as an eye surgeon in London in 1992. (Photograph by Camera Press London) 7. President Clinton and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad hold a joint press conference following their one-day meeting in Geneva. (Wally McNamee via Getty Images) 8. Getting to know you. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright takes time to meet with Bashar al-Assad while visiting Damascus to attend his father’s funeral. (Photo by -/SANA/AFP via Getty Images) 9. The Golan Heights. (CRS, based on data from ArcGIS, U.S. State Department, ESRI, and United Nations) 10. The truck bomb used to assassinate Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafic Hariri was similar in size to that used in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995. (Mohamed Azakir/ REUTERS) 11. Bashar al-Assad shows British Prime Minister Tony Blair around the Grand Mosque in Damascus, 2001. (Photo by ALASTAIR GRANT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

12. Asma and Bashar meet Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace in late December 2002 as part of the Blair government’s charm offensive to befriend the Syrian leader. (KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/AFP via Getty Images) 13. Syrian Major General Ghazi Kanaan, whose suspicious death in October 2005 fuelled further rumours about the Assad regime’s involvement in the Hariri assassination. (Photo by JOSEPH BARRAK/AFP via Getty Images) 14. Many of the rockets fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon against Israel were supplied by the Assad regime in Syria. (SAMUEL ARANDA/AFP via Getty Images) 15. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria summoned Prime Minister Rafic Hariri of Lebanon to Damascus on 26 August 2004, amid a dispute over Syria’s role in Lebanon. (Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo) 16. The Presidential Palace, which dominates the Damascus skyline, was donated as a goodwill gesture by Saudi Arabia, and constructed by Lebanese entrepreneur Rafic Hariri. (Source: El Español) 17. Imad Mughniyeh, the veteran Hezbollah terrorist, who was assassinated in Damascus in February 2008 by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. (Photo by HEZBOLLAH PRESS OFFICE/AFP via Getty Images) 18. Before and after images of Syria’s al-Kabir nuclear reactor after it was destroyed by Israeli war planes in September 2007. (Found at CNN but released by US government, public domain) 19. Asma al-Assad leading a ‘bike ride for peace’ in Syria in April 2007. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images) 20. A fatally injured man lies in the back of a vehicle as he is rushed to a hospital in Deraa, the city south of Damascus where the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011. (ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images) 21. Bashar and his wife Asma attend the opening of Syria’s first opera house at the inauguration of the Assad House for Culture and Arts in 2004. (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP via Getty Images) 22. Graphic photographs of dead Syrian torture victims taken by a Syrian defector were exhibited at the United Nations in New York. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson) 23. Bashar and Asma taking a stroll in Paris in 2010 before the outbreak of the civil war. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images) 24. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, commanding Iranian forces in Syria in March 2015. (REUTERS/ STRINGER Iraq)

25. Palmyra’s Last Treasures in Syria in September 2002. Khaled al-Asaad, the Director of Antiquities and Museum in Palmyra. (Photo by Marc DEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images) 26. Putin and his senior military commanders inform Bashar of their plans for saving his regime in late 2015. (MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP via Getty Images) 27. Bashar addresses his supporters after winning the 2014 presidential election by a predictable landslide. (AFP, HO) 28. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Theatre orchestra at the Palmyra amphitheatre to celebrate its recapture from Daesh militants. (VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP via Getty Images) 29. Sergey Surovikin with Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu, Bashar alAssad and Syrian defence minister Ali Ayyoub in 2017. (Source: Mil.ru.) 30. Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma meeting an earthquake victim in Latakia. (REUTERS/ Yamam Al Shaar)

Introduction The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. John F. Kennedy

The Syrian civil war will go down in history as the greatest humanitarian calamity of the early twenty-first century. What began as a series of antigovernment protests became one of the most brutal conflicts of the modern age, resulting in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, with millions more being made homeless. At the heart of this conflict was a mild-mannered former ophthalmologist who unexpectedly found himself appointed the president of the Syrian Arab Republic. Bashar al-Assad was the second son of the country’s long-serving dictator, Hafez al-Assad, and had not been destined for the leadership. When he did become president in 2000, Bashar was greeted as a refreshing change after the decades of oppressive and despotic rule Syria had endured under Hafez. Prominent world leaders such as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac were intrigued at the prospect of Bashar, together with his charming, Western-educated wife Asma, overseeing a wide-ranging reform programme designed to revitalize the moribund Syrian state. Instead, after more than a decade of brutal conflict, Bashar revealed himself to be nothing more than a vicious dictator responsible for committing some of the worst war crimes of the modern age. Under Bashar’s personal direction, the country’s security forces wilfully brutalized the Syrian population, committing acts of barbarity on an industrial scale, whether it involved torturing schoolboys to death or using chemical weapons against his own people. During the four decades or so that I have been covering wars across the globe, I have never encountered a more savage conflict than the Syrian civil war. When I first began my career as a war correspondent in Beirut in the early 1980s, I found it hard to imagine that any conflict would ever match Lebanon’s fifteenyear civil war in terms of the destruction and suffering it caused. During the

more intense periods of shelling I would sleep in the bath for protection against glass and masonry fragments caused by exploding shells, and would wake the following morning to discover a colleague or a friend had been kidnapped by Iran’s militiamen. The Iran–Iraq war, which I also covered during this period, may have claimed a million lives, but the majority of those killed were enemy combatants fighting on the front line rather than civilians, as I saw for myself when accompanying Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during one particularly gruelling offensive. The Bosnian war in the 1990s was another occasion where I was appalled at the willingness of the participants to engage in unrestrained acts of violence; on that occasion the bloodshed was eventually brought under control by international mediation. And while I have also witnessed immense suffering in more recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the utter devastation Syria suffered during its decade-long civil war was on an entirely different scale. In Lebanon, I used to maintain that a key reason the conflict lasted for so long was the involvement of so many other outside powers in the war – the US, Israel, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia – to name just a few. I believe a similar dynamic contributed to Syria’s civil war, with a wide range of nations declaring, at different stages in the conflict, a vested interest in its outcome. The failure of the Western powers to follow through on their threat to intervene militarily if Bashar resorted to using chemical weapons effectively ended their involvement. The debate about whether to undertake military interventions when rogue regimes brutalize their own people or threaten global security is a highly contentious issue. The decision by the US and Britain not to take action against the Assad regime was a response, in part, to the controversies generated by previous interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Instead, Russia and Iran came to Assad’s rescue – with the result that, when the fighting eventually subsided, Bashar al-Assad, the principal architect of his country’s misery, had survived in power.

ONE

A Doctor Calls Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. Hippocrates

As the only trained doctor in the family, it made sense that Bashar al-Assad, the eldest surviving son of the Assad dynasty, should assume responsibility for caring for his dying father. Throughout the late spring and early summer of 2000, it was clear that Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s ageing dictator, did not have much longer to live. Three decades of despotic rule had taken their toll on the old tyrant’s health, to the extent that, as he neared his life’s end, he was barely able to converse with the friends and family who visited him almost daily in his private quarters at the imposing Presidential Palace that dominated the Damascus skyline. A close family friend who had known Syria’s ailing president for most of his time in power recalled visiting him in late spring. ‘Hafez’s health deteriorated very quickly during those last months,’ the friend remembered. ‘When I saw him in the spring, he could hardly talk. When I asked him a question, he just replied, almost in a whisper, “Go and see Bashar.”’1 President Hafez al-Assad, the head of the Syrian Arab Republic, had run the country for nearly thirty years, having played a prominent role in the succession of coups that had established the revolutionary socialist Baath Party firmly in control of the country from the early 1960s. From the moment he was appointed president in 1971, Hafez had administered an authoritarian regime, one that was as uncompromising in its treatment of domestic critics of his rule as it was its foreign adversaries. No one better understood the ruthlessness of Hafez’s regime than Salah Jadid, the country’s former strongman. Hafez and Jadid had been close associates during the Baath Party’s rise to power in the 1960s, even though they often differed over the implementation of the party’s radical socialist agenda. Matters finally came to a head in the autumn of 1970, prompting Hafez to launch the coup that ultimately resulted in his elevation to the presidency. Hafez’s original plan had been to reappoint Jadid and his supporters to other, less influential, positions in the Syrian administration. Jadid was defiant, telling Hafez that, if the coup failed, ‘you will be dragged through the streets until you

die’. The coup did succeed, and Hafez’s response was to imprison Jadid in Mezzeh prison, located on the site of an old Crusader fort overlooking Damascus. There Jadid remained in a dank cell until he died from a heart attack in 1993, a testament to Hafez’s merciless oppression of anyone who sought to oppose him. Syrians often recount how, from the small window in his prison cell, Jadid could look out at Hafez’s imposing stronghold, the neighbouring Presidential Palace, a constant reminder of his bitter rival’s triumphant rise to power. Bashar had always been in awe of his father. A shy, diffident individual whose original intention had been to pursue a medical career, he had often cut an awkward figure as Hafez’s designated heir. Tall and lanky, with a tendency to lisp when nervous, he was a poor substitute for his more dashing elder brother Bassel, who had been carefully groomed to succeed his father as president. But Bassel’s untimely death in a car accident in 1994 had unexpectedly thrust Bashar into the limelight and, almost overnight, he had emerged as the family’s new heir apparent. Bashar’s appointment as his father’s successor had not been an automatic choice. Of the five children Hafez produced during his thirty-three-year union with Anisa, the family’s stern and influential matriarch, Bassel, a keen sportsman and notorious playboy, had always enjoyed the status of being his father’s favoured son. But Hafez also had a deep affection for Bushra, the couple’s first and only daughter, so much so that, according to one close family friend, the old dictator gave serious consideration to making his daughter his chosen successor after Bassel’s premature demise at the age of thirty-one. The prospects of the couple’s other two sons, Maher and Majid, were also briefly discussed but were soon dismissed. Majid, the youngest child, suffered from severe mental health issues as a result of his heavy drug misuse,2 while Maher, a rising star in the Syrian military, was regarded as too hot-headed and volatile to be a serious contender. Bushra, by contrast, who was nearing her fortieth birthday and had consolidated her position in the regime by marrying into an influential Damascus family, had already proved her credentials by acting as an adviser to her father on economic and foreign affairs. A confident, self-assured and intelligent woman, she was very much a daddy’s girl. Until her father’s health began to fail, Bushra would often accompany him on his trips abroad, and Hafez was impressed by her cleverness and pragmatism. Indeed, by the late 1990s, she was seen a serious contender for the succession in her own right. As Hafez’s ability

to oversee affairs of state became more limited, Bushra set up her own office next to her father in the Presidential Palace, where many routine administrative tasks, as well as much of the important decision-making, was delegated to her. Her influence within the regime had been further bolstered by her marriage to Assef Shawkat, widely regarded as being one of the most accomplished Syrian military officers of his generation and renowned for his staunch loyalty to the Baathist regime. Even if Hafez had been serious about conferring the presidential succession on his much-favoured daughter, the deeply conservative nature of Syrian politics made such an outcome almost impossible. Syria’s Baathist leaders may have taken a deep pride in their efforts to introduce modern socialism to this ancient Arab state, but their revolutionary zeal did not extend to granting Syrian women equality of opportunity, not even if they happened to be the daughter of the country’s all-powerful president. ‘Bushra undoubtedly had the credentials to become president,’ explained one of her contemporaries. ‘But in a conservative, patriarchal society like Syria, appointing a woman to lead the country was simply not an option.’3 No one better understood the dynastic tensions that were created by Hafez’s deliberations over his choice of successor than Bashar, who ultimately received the coveted designation as his father’s heir apparent shortly after his elder brother’s death. Hafez, though, still had reservations about the appointment, fearing that his second son had neither the political acumen nor the strength of character to govern a restless and fractious country like Syria, with its endless sectarian and ethnic rivalries and disputes. Hafez beseeched his close allies and friends to keep a close eye on Syria’s new leader-in-waiting who, at the time he accepted this onerous burden, was still only in his twenties and had been focusing his energies on becoming an eye surgeon in London, not the head of a Middle East dictatorship. Hafez believed his son badly needed a crash course in the skills required to become a global leader, and Bashar soon found himself appointed to a high-ranking role in the Syrian military – a standard requirement for any would-be Middle Eastern despot – as well as occupying several key positions in the Syrian regime. As Hafez himself memorably remarked to a close acquaintance helping his son to learn the ropes of global statesmanship, ‘Syria is a jungle, and Bashar is not yet a wolf.’4 Bashar himself was certainly under no illusions about the scale of the task that confronted him as the day approached when he would be required to fulfil his father’s wish and assume the mantle of becoming Syria’s nineteenth president.

For decades the menacing figure of Hafez al-Assad had loomed large over the landscape of the modern Middle East. Initially, Hafez and his Baathist acolytes were welcomed for bringing a degree of stability to the turbulent world of Syrian politics, and his appointment as president following the 1970 coup was seen as lending a degree of stability to the country after decades of unrest. This spirit of naive optimism soon passed and, as time wore on, Hafez increasingly assumed the ruthless characteristics of some of his more uncompromising predecessors. As far as the outside world was concerned, Hafez first came to prominence for his pivotal role in organizing Syria’s surprise military assault on Israel in 1973 during the feast of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish year, almost succeeding in recapturing the disputed Golan Heights until a desperate Israeli counter-offensive finally secured victory. Nearly a decade later, in 1982, Hafez attracted a different level of notoriety when he found himself condemned as an international pariah after his regime’s vicious suppression of an anti-government Islamist revolt masterminded by the Muslim Brotherhood. The uprising, in the northern city of Hama, was the culmination of a long-running campaign by the Brotherhood against the Assad regime. It was brutally crushed on Hafez’s orders, who entrusted his younger brother Rifaat with responsibility for carrying out the task. Rifaat, who was seven years younger than Hafez, had followed his elder brother through the ranks of the Syrian military and the Baath Party, and the two brothers had formed a close bond as a result of their shared experiences. It was a measure of Hafez’s trust in his brother that he allowed him to set up his own paramilitary group, the so-called Defence Companies, which, after undergoing extensive training under the tutelage of the Soviet Union, was transformed into a regular and effective military force. Rifaat used his own private army to lead the regime’s suppression of the insurrection, and an estimated 12,000 Syrian troops surrounded Hama for three weeks, subjecting it to a constant aerial and artillery bombardment until the rebellion was completely defeated. The Syrian Human Rights Committee later estimated the death toll at 20,000 civilians.5 The Hama massacre, as it soon became known, was subsequently described as one of the ‘deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East’.6 Rifaat’s prominent role in crushing the Hama uprising underscored a central characteristic of the Assad regime: at its core, it was a family affair, and for a time Rifaat regarded himself as his brother’s natural successor. As well as leading the repression in Hama, Rifaat was also starting to make a name for himself beyond Syria. In 1983 US President Ronald Reagan personally thanked

him for his efforts in securing the release of an American hostage, David Dodge, who had been kidnapped in Beirut and smuggled to Iran, where he was held in the country’s notorious Evin prison. Rifaat was able to secure Dodge’s release through his personal contacts with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, prompting the Reagan White House to issue a statement declaring that ‘the United States is grateful to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and to Dr. Rifaat al-Assad for the humanitarian efforts they undertook which led to Mr. Dodge’s release.’7 Any serious prospect of Rifaat being a contender for the presidency evaporated when, the following year, his restless ambition got the better of him, and he devised the hare-brained scheme of overthrowing his brother in an ineptly executed coup. As is often the case with such plots against authoritarian leaders, it is difficult to gather the precise details of what occurred within the inner sanctum of the Assad regime in spring 1984. But what is beyond doubt is that Rifaat, supported by his Defence Companies, made a blatant attempt to seize power. The strains of high office were already taking their toll on Hafez’s health; by late 1983 he was suffering from heart problems to such an extent that he was no longer in a fit condition to run the country. He was obliged to appoint a committee of six trusted Baathist loyalists to govern in his absence. He did not include his brother in this committee, and Rifaat responded to the slight by attempting to seize control of the Syrian capital. By now his Defence Companies amounted to some 55,000 men, complete with tanks, artillery, helicopters and fighter jets, and they moved quickly to take control of the city, setting up roadblocks at all the major intersections and – in order not to leave anyone in any doubt who was running the show – plastering many of the main government buildings with flattering posters of Rifaat. Regular troops were disarmed, police stations and intelligence headquarters commandeered and government buildings occupied as Rifaat’s forces made swift work of taking control of all the main levers of the state. When Hafez learned of his brother’s power grab, he immediately left his sickbed and demanded to meet with Rifaat at his house in the suburbs of Damascus. According to the British journalist Patrick Seale, one of Hafez alAssad’s more sympathetic biographers, the possibility of all-out war between the rival brothers was only averted by the presence of their formidable mother Nai’sa. According to Seale, the meeting began with Hafez shouting at his brother, ‘You want to overthrow the regime? Here I am. I am the regime.’ They hurled insults at each other for at least an hour until Rifaat, succumbing to the

combined pressure of his elder brother and his mother, capitulated and agreed to call off the coup.8 To ease the tension, Hafez agreed to be more considerate towards Rifaat in future, and even promoted him to the position of vice president, a largely honorific title which he shared with two other holders of the same post. But when Hafez was well enough to return to work later that summer, his lingering distrust of his brother meant that Rifaat was never again given any meaningful position of authority. The problematic Defence Companies were cut down to size, and their command transferred to another, more loyal, senior officer; eventually they were disbanded and their units integrated into the mainstream Syrian armed forces. Rifaat’s closest allies, as well as those who had failed to prove their loyalty to Hafez, were purged from the military and the Baath Party in the years that followed. There was even talk of Rifaat being put on trial for treason. He escaped that, but he was subjected to the indignity of making a ‘confession’ on one of Syria’s state-owned television channels. In the end it was Bushra al-Assad, no doubt working at the behest of her mother, who ultimately prevailed on her father not to bring formal charges against his brother, arguing that such a move might bring disgrace upon the family name. Eventually Rifaat was sent into exile on the pretext of a working visit to the Soviet Union, from where he moved to Europe in the mid-1980s, enjoying a luxurious lifestyle largely funded by the Syrian state. Bashar was still a teenager when this bitter feud took place and was immersed in his medical studies at the University of Damascus. Even though he showed little interest in politics – he once said he only visited his father’s office once while he was president – one can only imagine the traumatic impact this monumental power struggle between his father and his uncle would have had. Quiet and reserved and the scion of the country’s all-powerful dictator, Bashar had enjoyed a childhood of luxury and privilege, commuting between the family quarters in the Presidential Palace and the Assads’ coastal retreat overlooking the shores of the Mediterranean at Qurdaha, the family’s ancestral home close to the port of Latakia. Yet, as the family drama erupted in public during spring 1984, the young Bashar would have been made very aware how fleeting the life of a Middle Eastern despot can be. Syria’s history alone is littered with stories of its leaders meeting a brutal end, and Hafez himself had only survived a Muslim Brotherhood assassination attempt in 1980 by kicking away a grenade that had been thrown at him before it exploded.9 The ventured takeover by his treacherous uncle Rifaat, who would now forever be shunned by the family,

surely made Bashar appreciate the perils of being Syria’s leader – a lesson that he would not easily forget. The imperative of maintaining political stability in Syria, together with safeguarding his own claim to the succession, was therefore very much at the forefront of Bashar’s thoughts in the summer of 2000 as his father, now approaching his seventieth birthday, neared the end of his life. Hafez had never fully recovered from the heart problems that had prompted Rifaat to stage his failed coup, and the constant challenge of keeping the Assad regime in power took a heavy toll on his health. It also made him even more determined to ensure the arrangements for his succession were firmly in place so that the regime’s survival was guaranteed in the event of his death and that one of his sons would assume power in his place. Hafez still nurtured doubts about whether Bashar had the necessary credentials to take on the demanding role of president, but as far as the wider Assad clan and the Baath Party were concerned, the succession had been decided: Bashar would inherit. It was now up to him to make sure that, when the time came, the succession plan was implemented according to Hafez’s wishes. For Bashar, therefore, it was an enormous stroke of good fortune that, thanks to his medical training, he enjoyed daily access to his ailing father during the final weeks of his life. And Bashar showed himself to be a paragon of devotion. Every morning, he would visit his father’s bedroom shortly after dawn to assess his condition and make sure his every need was attended to. He would make all the routine medical checks – pulse, temperature, blood pressure – and prescribe any medication that was required to keep his father as comfortable as possible. Bashar, more than anyone else in the Assad family with the possible exception of his mother Anisa, was well aware that his father did not have much longer to live, making it even more important that all the administrative paperwork was in place to ensure the succession went smoothly when the moment came. So, when he had carried out the routine medical examination, he would produce a bundle of government documents for his father to sign. Some of these papers were nothing more than routine executive orders that were essential to the everyday running of the country. Among them, though, were several other documents that were of enormous significance to Bashar himself – the orders that authorized the transfer of key powers from Hafez to his son. Whether Hafez was fully cognizant of exactly what he was signing is an open question. He was heavily sedated – by his diligent son – and drifting in and out of consciousness. The overall effect, however, was that over the course of the few weeks in which

Bashar had sole care of his father he was handed exclusive responsibility for running key areas of the Syrian government, from finance and the economy to the military and intelligence services. Real power was gradually transferred to Bashar even while Hafez was still alive and still the ultimate authority in the land. Bashar’s claim to the presidency became more impregnable by the day. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Bashar’s conduct during the final days of his father’s life was his calm and methodical approach to securing the succession in his favour. Ever since the death of his brother Bassel had effectively made him the designated heir, doubts had persisted, within the family and beyond. Did he have the strength of character to fill his father’s shoes? For all the training he had received on statecraft and security since abandoning his medical career to take his brother’s position as the regime’s heir apparent, Bashar still struggled to convince the sceptics that he was the right man for the job. Hafez was fondly known among his supporters as the ‘Lion of Damascus’ for his ruthless approach to dealing with enemies for nearly thirty years. Bashar, by contrast, looked more like a toothless cub naively navigating a path through the labyrinthine world of Syrian politics. Few observers gave him much chance of survival when compared to more resilient and resourceful rivals like his uncle Rifaat who, despite being confined to exile, continued to regard himself as a legitimate contender for the Syrian presidency. Yet Bashar demonstrated an implacable single-mindedness that many regime supporters – including members of his own family – had believed to be beyond him. Indeed, it is perfectly feasible, given his secretive approach, that even close family members, such as his mother and ever-watchful sister Bushra, had not fully grasped what he was up to while he demonstrated an unusual level of attentiveness to his dying father. Arranging a seamless succession in a secular democracy is not an easy task, especially in a country like Syria, whose history since independence has been defined by numerous coups and counter-coups. Syria is often described as a new country in an old land, and the foundation of the modern state dates to the aftermath of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire’s 400-year rule over one of the Middle East’s most prized possessions was finally brought to an end. From the turn of the twentieth century Syria, or rather its capital Damascus, was regarded as the home of Arab nationalism, a place where fiery young intellectuals made the ancient city the base for their campaign of liberation

against colonial rule. Secret societies proliferated, with groups of young Syrians taking a prominent role in the wider Arab campaign to achieve greater autonomy from the Turks, to win recognition of Arabic as an official language and an acceptance of their political rights. The dominant role played by Syrians in the anti-Ottoman agitation was reflected in the fact that, at a groundbreaking conference held in Paris in 1913 to formulate the Arabs’ demands, the twenty-four participants were almost exclusively Syrian, and divided equally between Muslims and Christians.10 With the outbreak of war the following year, Turkish tolerance of these subversive activities soon wore thin. As a result, between 1915 and 1916, Syrian nationalists experienced the full horror of Turkish repression. Dozens of leading activists, mostly civic leaders, writers and intellectuals who were drawn from a wide range of communities, were arraigned before military tribunals and sentenced to death. The worst toll was the execution of twenty-one activists on 6 May 1916, a date commemorated today as ‘Martyrs’ Day’ in Syria and Lebanon. A century later, Syrian opposition activists would suffer a similar level of brutality at the hands of the Assad regime. The harsh treatment meted out to Arab nationalists by the Turks certainly contributed to the launch of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule, with the banner of Arab nationalism first being raised in Mecca in June 1916. But despite the heroic exploits of the Arab tribesmen in helping Britain and its allies to defeat the Turks and liberate the Arab lands from Ottoman control, the nationalists’ desire to acquire full independence from colonial rule was stymied by the competing interests of Britain and France. In the same month that the nationalist flag first flew, London and Paris had signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a secret pact to carve up the eastern Mediterranean region, which included Syria, to suit their own imperial ambitions. The colonial aspirations of the major European powers were further complicated the following year when the British government published the Balfour Declaration, committing London to support ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’. After the war, the British, who had led the military campaign to defeat the Ottomans, duly assumed control of Palestine, territory that for centuries previously had been administered by Damascus. Syria, meanwhile, was handed over to France, which set about carving up its new fiefdom, creating a Christianrun Lebanese enclave from lands that had been governed by Damascus for hundreds of years, and making little effort to accommodate the aspirations of

Arab nationalists. The French did, though, make one significant contribution towards the creation of what would become modern-day Syria. While most of the country we today recognize as Syria is predominantly Arab speaking and Sunni Muslim (around 75 per cent of Syrians are Sunni), the country has always contained an eclectic assortment of minority groups, some of them exotic remnants of an ancient past, such as the tiny pockets of Turkmen and Aramaic speakers, as well as the more assertive minorities, such as the Alawites and the Druze. In what amounted to a classic colonial policy of divide and rule, the French allocated the Alawites and the Druze their own enclaves, ostensibly to protect them from the Sunni majority which controlled much of the country’s land and wealth. The Alawites were given an area on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean around the port of Latakia, while the Druze were located further south, close to the border of what is modern-day Israel. The Alawite state, as it was called under the terms of the French mandate granted by the League of Nations to govern Syria in 1922, would later become the Assad clan’s family fiefdom. The Assads were originally the Wahhish family – mountain peasants based in the village of Qurdaha, set in the arid landscape of the Alawi Mountains overlooking the eastern Mediterranean and a six-mile donkey ride to the sea. Hafez’s father, Ali Sulayman, was prominent in the local community, and his reputation for defending the rights of his fellow peasants against the venal claims of the big Sunni landowners led him to change the family name from Wahhish to Assad, meaning ‘lion’.11 The villagers were almost exclusively Alawites, members of the minority Muslim sect in Syria that comprises around 12–13 per cent of the population. The Alawites are a secular offshoot of Shiite Islam that most Muslims consider to be heretical, with the result that they were often subjected to persecution and treated as lower-class citizens. According to a fatwa issued by a prominent fourteenth-century Sunni scholar, the Alawites were condemned as being greater infidels than the Christians, Jews or idolators, and devout Muslims were authorized to mount a jihad, or holy war, against them.12 In Ottoman times, when the Alawite mountain-dwellers struggled to eke out a living on their inhospitable land, most wealthy Sunni landowners would employ Alawite peasants as farmworkers or domestic servants. Hafez was the ninth of Ali Sulayman’s eleven children by two wives. He was born in October 1930 and his younger brother Rifaat was born seven years later. At the time of Hafez’s birth, Qurdaha consisted of a hundred or so mud or rough stone houses at the end of a dirt track. The community was poor, its main

income derived from its olive and tobacco crops. The village had no electricity, and little contact with the outside world, but it was Hafez’s good fortune that his father was one of the few literate members of the Qurdaha community and was therefore able to follow events by reading local newspapers. The mountain-dwellers were also beneficiaries of the French administration as a rudimentary form of education was introduced. In Ottoman times, even basic teaching had been discouraged, but the more liberal French brought education to remote villages for the first time. When a primary school was opened in Qurdaha, Ali Sulayman was able to secure a place for his son, thereby giving Hafez an opportunity that had been denied to previous generations of his family. Hafez showed himself to be a bright and industrious pupil, so much so that, at the age of nine, he was sent away to school in Latakia, some distance from his home. Hafez later recalled the loneliness of this period: ‘In those days the thirty kilometres from Qurdaha to Latakia seemed almost as great as the distance today between Damascus and London.’13 Even so, in spite of the loneliness and hardship, the peasant child from the mountains prospered, and was soon doing better than the town boys in exams. Hafez’s education took place against the backdrop of global conflict, a period that would ultimately have a profound impact on Syria’s destiny, even though Hafez claimed it made little impression on him at the time. ‘I was not much concerned about the Second World War: I was far more worried about my homework,’ he recalled.14 Nevertheless, the war eventually put an end to France’s unhappy association with Syria which, despite France’s efforts to impose its will on its restless subjects, had been marred by constant disputes and revolts as Syrian nationalists maintained their campaign for complete independence. The biggest revolt against French colonial rule had taken place in 1925 and had resulted in fierce battles between French forces and nationalist rebels in Damascus, Homs and Hama before it was finally suppressed two years later. The constant anti-French agitation eventually resulted in Syria and France negotiating a treaty of independence in 1936, although it was not until the end of the Second World War that the country’s independence was fully recognized. In the meantime, Syria experienced mixed fortunes, first coming under the control of Vichy France following the fall of France in 1940, before being liberated by British and Free French forces following a brief military campaign in the summer of 1941. The end of hostilities finally resulted in Syria gaining full independence on 17 April 1946, but even then, the country suffered from the same level of political turbulence that it had experienced during the mandate, to

the extent that between 1946 and 1956 Syria had twenty different cabinets and drafted four separate constitutions. To prosper as a fully functioning, independent state, post-colonial Syria cried out for some semblance of political stability, and the craving for a more stable form of government grew as the country lurched from one crisis to another. The weak parliamentary system the newly independent nation had inherited from the French, together with the growing strength of the Syrian military, meant that between 1949 and 1970 – when Hafez finally seized power – there were eight successful coups. The unstable nature of Syrian politics, moreover, turned the country into a political battleground that could be exploited by powerful regional rivals, foremost among whom was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic leader of Egypt’s socialist revolution. Nasser’s successful overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, and the subsequent humiliating defeat he inflicted on Britain and France in 1956 following the Suez crisis, made him the undisputed leader of Arab nationalism, to the extent that in 1958 Egypt and Syria merged to create a sovereign state known as the United Arab Republic (UAR). One of the main objectives of Arab nationalists was to dismantle the arbitrary boundaries established in the Middle East and unite all Arabs in one state. This particularly appealed to Syrians, who had seen their territories split into the new countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The creation of the UAR was therefore seen as a first step to unite all the Arab lands of the region, although the Syrians soon tired of the project when it became clear that Cairo, not Damascus, was the dominant partner in the merger, with Nasser demanding all political parties in Syria be dismantled. The overbearing attitude of the Egyptians quickly persuaded the Syrians that their interests would be better served by ruling themselves, so Syrian participation in the short-lived UAR was abruptly ended by a military coup in Damascus in September 1961. From Syria’s perspective, the great benefit of the short-lived merger was to deepen the country’s sense of national identity, a trend that in 1963 resulted in Syria’s most prominent Arab nationalists, the socialist Baath Party, seizing power. The Baath, or renaissance, party had been set up by a group of Syrian nationalists in Damascus during the Second World War to spread the gospel of Arab independence and social revolution and maintain the campaign for independence from France. Led by Michel Aflaq, an energetic, French-educated political agitator, the Baath sought to restore the Arab nation to its former glories, freed from the shackles of colonial oppression. The young Hafez al-

Assad was still a schoolboy in the coastal city of Latakia when he became an early adherent of the Baathist cause, and he quickly earned a reputation as one of the group’s more effective street fighters. In the dying days of French rule, street brawls were commonplace between the country’s various nationalist factions, with Baathist supporters frequently involved in confrontations with rival groups such as the Communists and the Syrian National Party, which represented the interests of the Sunni landowning classes. The biggest threat the Baathists faced, though, came from the Muslim Brotherhood, the militant Sunni Islamist movement that sought to impose its own vision of conservative Islamic rule on Syria. Hafez, who was already making his name as a student leader, became a target of the Brotherhood, which was constantly looking for an opportunity to beat him up. On one occasion, in 1948, the Muslim Brothers succeeded, and managed to catch Assad on his own, resulting in one of their followers knifing him in the back during a street fight.15 The wound took several weeks to heal and left Hafez with an abiding hatred of the Muslim Brothers. A diligent pupil, the poor Alawite mountain boy had to endure bullying at the hands of his wealthier and more entitled Sunni classmates, an experience that attracted him to political movements, like the Baath, that claimed to stand for the oppressed. As a teenager, he demonstrated his nationalist credentials by celebrating the end of the French mandate, remembering, ‘We all threw away our French books that day.’16 Hafez now became an active campaigner for the Baath, collecting funds to distribute to poor families in the Alawi Mountains. Tall and muscular, his presence was also of value in helping to defend his fellow activists when they came under attack from rival groups. The height of Hafez’s schoolboy political activities was his election as president of the nationwide Union of Syrian Students, a remarkable achievement for someone from such a humble background. In later life Hafez would recall how his formative experience as a student in the brutal world of Syrian politics led him to see himself as a politician first and foremost. By the time the Baath seized power in 1963, Hafez had traded in his promising start in student politics for a career in the Syrian military. He was one of the first pilots to be trained in the fledgling Syrian air force, winning prizes for his aerobatic skill. The Syrian military, for so long the redoubt of the Sunni establishment, had become an attractive proposition for minorities such as the Alawites, Druze and Christians, with the interwar period of the French mandate seeing a significant improvement in their fortunes. By the time Syria gained independence, Alawites were well represented in the military, having taken

advantage of the Sunnis’ reluctance to join an institution run by their French oppressors. Syria’s Sunni bourgeoisie tended to scorn the military as a career, preferring their sons to pursue more profitable courses in the professions, or tending to their lands. This meant that the new emerging officer class contained significant numbers of men from peasant backgrounds, many of whom yearned to challenge the Sunnis’ traditional dominance of Syrian society. The heavily politicized world of the Syrian military appealed to Hafez, who remained deeply involved in Baathist politics. This was a period when the Syrian military was invariably involved in the constant round of coups and countercoups that blighted Syrian politics, and the officer corps acted as a microcosm of Syrian society, with different groups of officers flirting with various political organizations, ranging from the Communists to the Nationalists. Hafez maintained his close ties with the Baathists, even when he found himself posted to Egypt to continue his military training during the short-lived political union between Cairo and Damascus. Initially, Hafez had been excited to find himself posted to the heart of Arab nationalism, especially as the Baathists had been at the forefront of the campaign to persuade Nasser to form a union with Syria. But he soon became disillusioned as Nasser sought to dismantle the Baathists’ political infrastructure and, together with four other officers, Hafez was a founder member of the underground Baathist military committee that campaigned for the break-up of the UAR.17 When the union eventually collapsed, Hafez and his colleagues were thrown into jail in Cairo, where they languished for forty-four days. The union’s failure had a profound impact on Hafez, persuading him that Syria’s destiny must ultimately reside in its own hands; on his return to his homeland he became deeply involved in the political scheming within the Baath Party that resulted in its eventual seizure of power in 1963. Hafez played a key role in the March coup, heading the unit that captured a vital airbase close to the capital while other military units occupied key buildings, including army headquarters in Damascus and the national broadcasting centre. The leaders of the coup celebrated the success of their ‘revolution’ by imposing martial law. A military council, formally known as the National Council for Revolutionary Command, now ruled the country through a puppet government. The template for a Baathist dictatorship had been established. The coup, however, was not universally popular, and the newly established regime brutally suppressed antigovernment protests in Homs and Hama. In 1966 ideological disputes within the leadership resulted in an intra-Baath coup, which led to Hafez being appointed

defence minister and commander of the air force. Israel’s victory over Syria in the 1967 Six Day War inevitably raised questions about Hafez’s qualities as defence minister. Rather than becoming the fall guy for the defeat, Hafez drew on the burgeoning group of Alawite loyalists he had appointed in the Syrian military to move against Salah Jadid, the country’s de facto leader. In November 1970 Jadid was overthrown and Hafez finally achieved his long-held goal of becoming president. Hafez al-Assad had travelled a long, hard and, at times, brutal road on his journey to Syria’s presidency. He had overcome his modest peasant origins, his Alawite heritage and the endless schemes of his rivals to end his bid for glory. He had suffered imprisonment, mourned the loss of close friends and allies and personally witnessed some of the most seismic events in the history of the modern Middle East, from the rise of Nasser to the bitter defeat of the Six Day War. Ever since his early association with the Baath Party as a pugnacious student, Hafez had learned the lesson that both physical and mental strength were vital in order to survive in the savage world of Syrian politics. These dramatic events had taken place before Bashar was born, but as a member of the country’s ruling family he was extremely well versed in the pitfalls of Syrian politics and the need for strong and stable leadership. He was also more than aware that the key to his father’s success – both in assuming power in the first place and in managing to survive in office for thirty years – derived from his ruthless approach to eliminating his rivals and making sure no one could challenge his authority. These considerations were very much in Bashar’s thoughts as he quietly put in place the plans that would ultimately result in him succeeding his father as Syria’s president.

TWO

The Velvet Glove Inside the person you know, there is a person you do not know. Christy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo

On 10 June 2000 Bashar al-Assad made his usual early morning call at the Presidential Palace to check on his father’s health. He knew that the ailing dictator was nearing the end of his life, but nonetheless it came as a shock when he entered the bedroom and found his father’s lifeless body lying peacefully in his bed. Hafez was just a few months short of his seventieth birthday. The rest of the house was still asleep and Bashar, who had anticipated this moment for several weeks, knew that he had to move quickly to secure the succession. He may have been his father’s choice to become the next president of the Syrian Arab Republic, but his appointment was by no means a foregone conclusion. As we have seen, there were powerful factions within the Baath Party who were not convinced that Bashar was the best candidate, and influential members of his own family were keen to stake their claim, including his troublesome uncle Rifaat and Bushra, Bashar’s elder sister, who still harboured her own ambitions of being the first woman to become head of state of an Arab country. Bashar’s first instinct was to make sure that no one else in the family knew that Hafez had died during the night. Having respectfully tended to his dead father’s body, he left the room and quietly locked the door, putting the key in his pocket. He then went to a neighbouring room, where his mother Anisa was staying, and informed her that her husband was resting after a difficult night and was not to be disturbed. Reassuring her that he would come back later that morning to check on his father’s health, he hurried to his office in the presidential complex to begin implementing the carefully laid plan that would guarantee his succession. One of his first calls was to Mustafa Tlass, the longserving head of Syria’s armed forces and a veteran Baathist associate of his father. Tlass had been Hafez’s confidant since the two men met as young officers at the Homs Military Academy in the 1950s, and they had later served together in Cairo. One of the few Sunnis to hold a senior position in the regime, Tlass had been at Hafez’s side during many of the major crises he faced during

his long career. He had proved his loyalty again and again during the numerous coups and counter-coups that characterized Baathist politics in the 1960s and is even credited with personally executing one of Hafez’s main Baathist rivals in 1967.1 Tlass was one of a select group of trusted Baathists who had been given responsibility for implementing Hafez’s dying wish for Bashar to take control; he had no hesitation in implementing the well-rehearsed plan to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Within hours of hearing the news that Hafez was dead, Tlass had arranged for three army divisions to station tanks and armoured units at key points around Damascus. For good measure, Bashar’s younger brother Maher, a senior commander in the Republican Guard, deployed his elite forces too.2 It was only after these vital measures had been taken to safeguard the regime that Bashar returned to his father’s quarters to break the news to his mother and the rest of the family that Hafez had died in his sleep. Having taken precautions to prevent any serious challenge to the status quo, Bashar spent the next few days attending to the other key issues that needed addressing before he could assume the presidency. The first obstacle was to make changes to the Syrian constitution, which stipulated that the minimum age for a president-elect was forty. Bashar was still only thirty-four. A meeting of the People’s Assembly, the regime’s rubber-stamp parliament, was hastily arranged and – perhaps unsurprisingly – voted unanimously to amend Article 83 of the constitution. Henceforward, the minimum age for Syria’s president-elect would be thirty-four. Other formalities to ensure the transition were hurriedly put in place. Over the course of the next few days, Bashar’s nomination as secretary general of the Baath Party was approved, as was his promotion to the country’s highest military rank of fariq, or commander of the armed forces.3 Within days of his father’s demise, Bashar had successfully ensured that he would be Syria’s next dictator. The unbending confidence and efficiency that Bashar displayed as he moved to secure his dynastic inheritance so soon after losing his father took many by surprise, not least those who had questioned whether he had the charisma and strength of character required to lead a fractious and challenging country like Syria. Hafez, it is true, had laid the groundwork for the succession during the final years of his life by appointing his son to several key positions in the regime to give him a better insight into how the Baathist regime functioned. Bashar had risen rapidly through the ranks of the military to become a major on the general staff, and in 1998 he was given responsibility for looking after the Lebanon

portfolio, overseeing Syria’s long-standing interference in the affairs of its Mediterranean neighbour. Bashar’s cause was further assisted by his father’s relentless promotion of fellow Alawites to prominent roles in the regime. Having struggled to overcome the disadvantages of his own peasant background and membership of the heretical Alawite sect, Hafez was determined that his son would not have to confront the same institutional prejudice from the country’s traditional Sunni establishment. Throughout his presidency Hafez made sure that Alawites occupied most of the key posts in the regime’s military and security arrangements; the few Sunnis, such as Tlass, who held senior positions only did so after they had demonstrated their unswerving loyalty to Syria’s uncompromising hard man. The preparations Hafez had put in place to guarantee his son’s succession were paying dividends. The self-assured demeanour that Bashar demonstrated in the days immediately following his father’s death was certainly unexpected by those who did not know him well. Gone was the diffident medical student; instead, foreign dignitaries paying their respects to the Assad family were surprised at Bashar’s composure. One of the first visitors to the Presidential Palace, a close family friend, recalled how relaxed the heir apparent had seemed. Far from being overwhelmed by the loss of the man who had dominated Syria for nearly three decades, Bashar was at pains to reassure his guest that he had everything under control. When the friend asked the young president-in-waiting to ‘assure me that you have done everything that needs to be done to make sure the regime transition takes place’, he was taken aback at the boldness of the response. ‘You see these hands,’ Bashar replied, raising both his palms. ‘When people look at my hands, they think they are soft, as though I am wearing velvet gloves. But they are very mistaken. For, if I take them off, you will see an iron fist.’4 Bashar’s almost boastful response to a relatively straightforward enquiry about his position revealed a new side to his character. Gone was the shy, littleknown figure who had been parachuted into Damascus six years previously to replace his glamorous elder brother. Back then, Bashar had appeared dazed and bewildered, having no choice but to abandon his medical studies in London and fly immediately to Damascus on a private jet to provide moral support for his bereaved family. By contrast, the young man now receiving guests wishing to express their condolences was confident and self-assured, fulfilling his duties as the head of his clan with courteous dignity. And his relaxed demeanour at what might still prove to be a hazardous moment for the Assad regime’s survival

forced many present to undertake a radical reappraisal of that regime’s anointed heir. As the family acquaintance later conceded, prior to this epochal moment in Syria’s fortunes, many people, both within the country and beyond, had underestimated Bashar’s ruthlessness. ‘I suddenly realized that I was not looking at him intelligently enough,’ admitted the acquaintance. ‘I had underestimated him. I never thought he would be able to act in this way. The manner in which he handled the transition after his father’s death, and made sure he got the ultimate prize for himself, was a big surprise to us all.’5 The obstacles Bashar needed to overcome to achieve his goal were certainly significant. While Hafez and his inner circle had formed the view that Bashar was the best option to ensure that the Alawite clique remained in power, their approach did not enjoy universal support among their fellow Baathists, especially those who had been sidelined to accommodate Bashar’s ascent. The history of Baath politics in Syria is defined by constant internecine, often violent, struggles for control. Bashar needed to take great care that he was not outmanoeuvred by his rivals. Implementing a dynastic succession in a secular Arab state presented its own challenges, particularly in a country that – like Syria – prided itself on being a socialist republic. For the monarchies of the Arab world, it was the custom for a senior member of the royal family to inherit the leadership of the country on the death of the then ruler. In neighbouring Jordan, when King Hussein died in February 1999 after a long reign, his eldest son Abdullah was anointed as his successor; Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were among the other Arab monarchies where it was commonplace for a member of the royal family to succeed to the throne. It was a different proposition, though, when it came to secular Arab regimes such as the Baathists who held sway in Damascus. In Iraq, attempts by another Baathist despot, Saddam Hussein, to groom his psychotic sons Uday and Qusay to assume power was a key factor in his mounting unpopularity among Iraq’s restless population. Similarly, efforts by Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to press the claims of his son Saif al-Islam as his chosen successor alienated many of his supporters, as did Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s preferential treatment of his playboy son, Gamal. That Bashar would automatically succeed his father could not be taken for granted. There was certainly no precedent for power passing from father to son in a supposedly democratic Arab republic, and rumblings of discontent were heard from senior members of the Baathist old guard, such as the vice president,

Abdul Halim Khaddam, who argued that a dynastic succession of the type Hafez envisaged for Bashar had no place in a socialist state like Syria. Khaddam, one of the few Sunnis to hold high office in the Assad regime, enjoyed the support of several senior members of Syria’s military and security apparatus who were similarly sceptical about Bashar’s bid for the succession. To delay Bashar’s appointment, Khaddam tried to insist on the implementation of the arrangement Hafez had made for him to serve as an interim president for ninety days until a new leader was chosen by the Baath Party. Bashar and his supporters were having none of it: postponing his appointment for three months would open the way for new contenders to emerge. Khaddam received an summons to the Assad residence and, such was the urgency of the demand, the vice president did not even have time to change out of his tracksuit. On arrival at the palace, he was told in no uncertain terms that his role was simply to rubber-stamp Bashar’s appointment as president later that summer, and not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of a smooth transition.6 A far more serious threat to the succession manifested itself in the perennially restless figure of Bashar’s exiled uncle Rifaat who, despite his pariah status, still hankered after higher office. Bashar was well aware of the danger Rifaat posed. In 1994, Rifaat had been staying at the family retreat at Qurdaha when Bassel died as he was allowed to make occasional visits to the family home on condition he did not involve himself in politics. He saw Bassel’s premature death as an opportunity to revive his own claim to the leadership. Within hours of Bassel’s burial, a crowd of Rifaat’s supporters lifted him onto their shoulders and paraded him around the town’s main square, chanting, ‘With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you.’ Hafez moved quickly to crush any attempt to position his younger brother as his heir, and the following day another rally was held in the square, only this time the chant was for Bashar. Rifaat’s bid had foundered almost before it began. Even so, the danger Rifaat posed to Bashar’s succession plans could not be overlooked, and no sooner had Hafez’s death been announced on Syrian television than his renegade sibling was once more looking to make trouble. After his failed 1994 attempt to become the heir apparent, Rifaat had again been confined to exile, moving effortlessly between his lavish properties in France and Spain, and pursuing his lucrative business interests. Hafez had imposed a final indignity on Rifaat in 1998 when, as part of his programme to groom Bashar for the top job, he stripped his younger brother of his position of vice president, a largely honorific title that he had enjoyed since his failed coup

attempt to overthrow his brother back in 1984. This did not prevent Rifaat from declaring his candidacy the moment he heard about his brother’s death. He issued a statement from his luxurious villa in Marbella proclaiming his credentials for the presidency, arguing that he represented the ‘only constitutional legality’ for becoming the next Syrian leader and claiming his dismissal as vice president was an ‘illegal act’: ‘What is happening in Syria is a real farce and an unconstitutional piece of theatre which is a real violation of the law and the constitution.’ But, try as he might, Rifaat’s attempt to derail the carefully laid plans Hafez had put in place for his son’s succession came to nothing, as the dead dictator’s loyalists in the Syrian military and Baath had already made up their minds in favour of Bashar. Orders were issued to arrest and detain Rifaat if he attempted to attend his brother’s funeral, although this threat did not deter Rifaat from insisting that he would return from exile to Damascus ‘at the appropriate time’ to claim his rightful inheritance.7 When Hafez’s death was announced on state-controlled Syrian television, the moment was marked as though the country had suffered the most catastrophic event in its history. ‘The planet that illuminated the sky of Syria and the Arabs has been extinguished,’ intoned the grief-stricken announcer, tears flowing as he read the official statement. After thirty years of relentless Baathist propaganda extolling the deceased president’s virtues, and no meaningful political opposition or media to challenge the narrative, Hafez’s death prompted widespread national mourning, as well as feelings of deep uncertainty about the future. Ordinary Syrians were mindful of the chaos and bloodshed during the regime’s bitter power struggles in the 1960s and had little desire to repeat the experience. The almost simultaneous announcement that the Baath Party had unanimously chosen Bashar as the country’s next leader attracted hardly a murmur of dissent. ‘Better the devil you know’, seemed to sum up the general mood, as was evident from the results of the national referendum held a few days after the Syrian parliament went through the formality of approving Bashar’s appointment. He won 97.29 per cent of the total vote, only slightly less than the 99 per cent his father had received in the previous one. The plebiscite clearly demonstrated that, whatever reservations ordinary Syrians might have harboured about the Baathists remaining in control, their preference was for stability, even if it meant having another Assad in power. Hafez’s funeral took place three days after his death; Bashar, as head of the family, played a prominent role in the proceedings. Damascus came to a standstill as hundreds of thousands of regime loyalists, some of them bussed in

from their rural Alawite enclaves, took to the streets to proclaim their devotion. With some mourners collapsing in the searing heat, Bashar was the essence of composure as he walked behind his father’s flag-draped coffin, tall and ramrod straight in his black suit, black tie and sunglasses. If he was feeling any emotion about his father’s death, it did not show as, accompanied by his younger brother Maher and the military stalwart, Mustafa Tlass, the family sought to send an unequivocal message that it was still firmly in control. After being paraded through the streets of central Damascus, the coffin was taken to a large marble hall in the People’s Palace, where it was placed on a black-draped pedestal to lie in state so that delegations of Arab leaders could pay their respects. Most Western leaders, who had never enjoyed the easiest of relations with the late dictator, shunned the funeral, opting instead to send their foreign ministers. The only exception was French President Jacques Chirac, who, as head of the former colonial power in Syria, was keen to reaffirm Paris’s historical ties with Damascus. Bashar used the occasion to have a series of private meetings with several world leaders, including the Iranian president, the king of Jordan and President Chirac. While the procession of mourners continued to file past the coffin, Bashar also found time to have a fifteen-minute meeting with Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who, like many Western leaders, was keen to establish whether the appointment of a new president in Damascus might result in a change of attitude in Syria’s dealings with the outside world. The meeting ended with the American diplomat giving Bashar her blessing. ‘It seems to me he is poised and someone who is ready to assume his duties,’ she remarked. ‘I was very encouraged by his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps.’8 For the regime, her comments were tantamount to an official endorsement of its succession plans. Later that day, Hafez’s body was flown to the family’s hometown of Qurdaha in the Alawite Mountains, where it was laid to rest in a grand, purpose-built mausoleum overlooking the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, next to the body of his eldest son, Bassel. ‘It is the misfortune of nearly all despots and dictators that they hardly ever pass on their strength to their successors.’9 So wrote the English historian John Julius Norwich about the predilection of rulers in the ancient world to bestow power upon their less able offspring. Despite Hafez’s considerable efforts to prepare him for the presidency, Bashar al-Assad had always struggled to emerge from

his father’s shadow. Although he fulfilled his ambition of becoming Syria’s undisputed leader, he never fully overcame the perception that his only qualification was being Hafez’s son. As the architect of the modern Syrian state, Hafez would always be a hard act to follow. For Bashar, moreover, there was the added sense that he had only ever been considered for the role because of the unexpected death of his far more dynamic, and charismatic, older brother. ‘There was always this feeling with Bashar that he was trying to be two people at the same time,’ explained a family acquaintance. ‘One half of him was trying to be his father, the other half was trying to be Bassel. He was trying to be two people who didn’t exist.’10 As a child, Bashar certainly struggled to assert his personality over his more assertive elder siblings Bassel and Bushra. Born in Damascus on 11 September 1965, the second son and third child of Hafez and his wife Anisa, Bashar enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a well-to-do neighbourhood of the city. The upwardly mobile Assads lived in a fashionable suburb that had been popular with the French bourgeoisie during the mandate, and all their children attended the Mission Laïque Français, a lycée popular with wealthy Damascene families. The school specialized in promoting French culture, as well as encouraging freedom of thought and expression, which made a welcome change from the more rigid curriculum offered by Islamic institutions. Bashar was, by all accounts, a studious but shy pupil. ‘Bashar was nerdy but average academically, good at memorising,’ recalled a classmate. ‘The only reason we wanted to befriend him was because he was the president’s son.’ He was embarrassed when the teachers went out of their way to support him, particularly when the principal made a special point of chatting to Bashar during his daily rounds. On occasion, the attention gave him anxiety attacks. ‘It was the most awkward moment for Bashar. He would turn red. He did not want to be in the spotlight. He wanted the earth to swallow him.’11 It was a similar story at home, where he was bullied by his elder siblings. Even as a boy, Bashar was tall and lanky, and suffered from a pronounced lisp caused by a deformity to his lower jaw. His father, whose busy work schedule meant he was only rarely at home, had little time for him, preferring to concentrate his affections on Bassel and Bushra, a bossy teenage girl who was the apple of her father’s eye. Hafez’s fondness for his two older children was evident from the way they were treated: Bassel and Bushra were driven to school in a limousine each, while Bashar travelled in a separate car with his younger brothers Maher and Majid, who suffered from learning difficulties. Manaf Tlass,

the son of the regime’s armed forces chief and Bashar’s contemporary, recalled that Bashar was constantly eclipsed by his dynamic elder brother, who even as a teenager was a natural leader to whom all the other boys deferred, while Bashar was seen as an introvert and a loner. ‘Bashar was living in the shadow of his brother. In fact, they were all living in Bassel’s shadow.’12 But it was also as a schoolboy that one of Bashar’s less appealing characteristics became evident. Unlike Bassel, who was generous towards his friends and classmates, Bashar showed little interest in helping anyone or sharing anything.13 Bashar’s childhood, it should be remembered, took place against a background of some of the most tumultuous events in the recent history of the modern Middle East. He was too young to grasp the dramatic events of the Arab defeat in the Six Day War in 1967, but as a five-year-old he would have been aware of his father’s appointment as president. Three years later Hafez joined forces with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat to launch a surprise attack against Israel, and the Israelis responded by bombing several targets in Damascus, including the military headquarters. And from 1976, the Assad regime was heavily involved in the civil war in neighbouring Lebanon, where Hafez claimed he was helping the minority Christian government to defeat the threat posed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, but in reality was attempting to control a country he had always regarded as being an integral part of Syria, an attitude Bashar would also adopt when he was later given responsibility for the Lebanon brief. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 saw Israeli warplanes once again attacking Syrian targets, wiping out the regime’s Soviet-era anti-aircraft missile systems. Indeed, the Israeli military threat was a constant concern throughout Bashar’s childhood, one that would later influence his support for peace efforts in the region. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been a close ally of Syria’s Baathists, was another bitter blow for the Assad regime, which found itself isolated and bereft of allies. The shock of losing Moscow as a close ally even persuaded Hafez in 1990 to provide military support to the US-led coalition that was assembled to confront his fellow Baathist, Saddam Hussein, in neighbouring Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait. The persistent drumbeat of war was not the only concern Bashar had to contend with as he grew up. At the time of his birth, his father was already a prominent figure in the Baath movement, skilfully manoeuvring himself into a position to launch his bid for the presidency. Bashar was five when Hafez eventually became president and, as a child of the ruling family, he inevitably heard stories about the various plots against his father, and the threats to

overthrow the regime, all of which were met with unbridled brutality. Hafez launched a nationwide clampdown in 1977 after a national strike by teachers and factory workers over poor pay resulted in the murder of a senior Baath Party apparatchik. The Muslim Brotherhood was a perennial menace, stoking uprisings in Aleppo in 1979, and Hama in 1982, both of which resulted in the regime inflicting state-sanctioned massacres of the inhabitants. After their thwarted assassination attempt in 1980, Hafez’s fight against the Brotherhood was personal. Moreover, the Assad children were considered legitimate targets, and Bashar himself was said to have been the subject of a kidnap plot in the autumn of 1979, when he was fourteen.14 Bashar also had a ringside view as his father worked to construct a cult of personality around himself, loosely modelled on the autocratic regimes of Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu and the North Korean dictator, Kim Il-sung. Youth movements were established with the primary aim of demonstrating their undying support for the regime. Statues and portraits depicting the Syrian leader as a national hero appeared across the country, while anyone suspected of harbouring anti-regime sentiments was purged from their positions. The national security service, the mukhabarat, was set up to keep a watchful eye on potential dissidents, emulating the Stasi, East Germany’s Soviet-era secret police force. The cult of Hafez was inculcated in the Syrian military, to the extent that the slogan ‘Our Leader Forever Hafez al-Assad’ became the standard chant at military parades. Hafez himself was keen to promote his credentials as a leader on the world stage and was delighted when he was able to persuade US President Richard Nixon to visit Damascus in 1974, even though Nixon’s interest in travelling to the Syrian capital reflected his desire to deflect attention from the deepening Watergate scandal at home. The peasant boy from the Alawite Mountains was developing a taste for the high life, so much so that it was even rumoured in Damascus that Hafez was actively looking for a more glamorous wife than Bashar’s mother Anisa, who shunned the limelight. In a rare comment on his childhood, Bashar paid tribute to his father’s efforts to govern Syria while at the same time providing his children with a conventional upbringing. ‘We only had stability in Syria after my father became president,’ he recalled. ‘Our parents were keen for us to live life as normal.’15 Even so, the constant tension and uncertainty at the Presidential Palace must have made a deep impact on Bashar during his formative years. Rather than seeking a prominent position in the regime, which was the preferred option of many of his relatives, it was perhaps not surprising that Bashar should choose to

pursue his own destiny, away from the internal conflicts within the Baath Party, and eventually opted to pursue a career in medicine. Unlike other members of his clan, he wanted to devote his life to curing people, not killing them. After graduating from high school in 1982, Bashar enrolled at Damascus University to study medicine. As he later recalled, ‘I was excelling at science at school, so that is why I chose medicine.’16 As a university student, Bashar was still regarded as being timid and withdrawn, someone who spoke softly and avoided eye contact when possible. One of his contemporaries remembered him as painfully shy, to the extent that ‘he wouldn’t look in your eye . . . he covered his mouth with hands when he talked and spoke in a low voice.’ He avoided gatherings of more than a handful of people and tended to slouch to make his tall frame appear less conspicuous. ‘He was a totally regular citizen; you wouldn’t guess he was the son of the president unless you knew him personally.’17 In 1992, having completed his studies at Damascus University, Bashar expressed an interest in moving to London to further his medical career. Syria at this point was undergoing a degree of rehabilitation in terms of its relations with the West because Hafez had supported the US-led military coalition to liberate Kuwait in 1990. Syria also had a pivotal role to play in the Arab–Israeli peace process that had been launched once the war was over. Even so, British officials were not overjoyed at the prospect of hosting a prominent member of the Assad family in London. To expedite matters, a close family acquaintance who was on good terms with the British government offered to intervene on Bashar’s behalf and phoned a contact in Downing Street for assistance. ‘Any chance you could help me secure a place for Bashar al-Assad at one of the London medical schools?’ the friend enquired. There was a pause before the official replied, revealing a marked lack of enthusiasm, ‘Do we have to? Can’t he go somewhere else, like Paris?’18 Eventually, Downing Street relented, and Bashar was offered a place to study ophthalmology, his preferred specialism, at the prestigious Western Eye Hospital in Paddington. Bashar was, by all accounts, a quiet, dedicated young doctor who took his studies seriously and appeared determined to make a life for himself in the medical profession, far removed from the Byzantine intrigues that characterized life back home. He lived in an apartment in a townhouse in the exclusive London district of Belgravia, with two Syrian security guards in constant attendance. He rarely socialized; to relax, he liked to listen to middle-of-the-road pop by artists such as Phil Collins and Whitney Houston. He took a keen interest

in technology, particularly computers, and spent much of his spare time studying the new science. When he did venture out, he often used a pseudonym to conceal his true identity, especially when mixing with London’s vibrant Arab community. But most of the time he was to be found at the hospital, working hard to fulfil his ambition of becoming an eye surgeon. Despite his efforts to play down his personal ties to Syria’s ruling family, Bashar’s fellow students and colleagues were aware that he came from a wealthy Middle Eastern background, not least because he arrived at the hospital each morning in a large chauffeur-driven black BMW. There was, though, one notable occasion when he was recognized by a Syrian woman who had arrived for treatment and suddenly became very agitated, forcing Bashar to reveal his privileged background. ‘I haven’t told you before, but my father is the president of Syria,’ he admitted.19 As a student, Bashar made a good impression on the surgeons who trained him. One of them, Professor Edmund Schulenburg, remembered ‘a sensitive young man who was incredibly polite and punctual. Everyone who worked with him found him that way. He wasn’t arrogant. You would never have guessed he was a president’s son. He was quiet and never really spoke about his family. But if anyone asked him a direct question, he very politely answered it honestly.’20 Bashar’s London sojourn was to last just eighteen months. On the morning of 21 January 1994, he learned the tragic news of his elder brother’s death. Back in Damascus, the climate of mistrust within the Presidential Palace was so all consuming that, when a senior officer arrived to break the terrible news, Hafez’s first reaction was, ‘Is this a coup?’ For Bashar, Bassel’s sudden death might also be seen as a personal tragedy. At a stroke, it ended any hopes he had of living a quiet life in London pursuing his chosen profession. Having spent most of his life keeping a discreet distance from the machinations of Syrian politics, Bashar had no option but to become involved. At twenty-eight, he was now the eldest son and, as such, his first and only duty was to his family. Within hours of hearing of his brother’s death, Bashar and his security detail were on a private jet flying back to Damascus. As he later remarked ruefully in an interview, ‘I knew I had to go back to Syria forever.’21 Bashar’s former medical colleagues were not convinced that he was temperamentally suited for a career in politics. ‘I remember thinking that he was really better suited to being an eye surgeon than a leading politician,’ recalled Edmund Schulenburg. ‘I thought he was not strong enough.’22 Bashar’s first obligation on returning to Syria was to attend his brother’s funeral, which took place in the family’s hometown of Qurdaha. Even though

Bassel was only thirty-one at the time of his death and had held only minor positions in the regime, he was given what was in effect a state funeral. Arab presidents, prime ministers and royalty arrived to pay their respects, and Bashar was given responsibility for delivering the eulogy for his dead brother as his father sat, stony-faced, watching the proceedings. This was the first time that many in the Syrian regime had seen Bashar make a public appearance, and his faltering performance hardly inspired confidence that he was the obvious candidate to replace his brother in the Assad hierarchy. Clean-shaven save for a neatly trimmed moustache, Bashar looked distinctly ill at ease. A fresh wind was blowing in from the Mediterranean, making it difficult for him to keep hold of the sheets of paper on which he had hastily scrawled his address. ‘I never imagined myself standing here in this grave moment, with my brother Bassel having departed this world.’ Bashar’s words accurately reflected the inner turmoil he must have been feeling that day. Within the space of a few hours his life had been transformed beyond all recognition. He had assumed a key position in the Assad dynasty and his new destiny was to be the leader of one of the Middle East’s most challenging regimes. He clearly had a lot to learn if he was going to survive.

THREE

Lost Hope So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse! all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good. John Milton, Paradise Lost

Bashar al-Assad finally achieved his goal on the morning of 17 July 2000 when he took the oath of office to become the nineteenth president of the Syrian Arab Republic, after driving himself to the parliament building in a top-of-the-range grey Mercedes saloon. Henceforth, Dr Bashar would be known as President Bashar. The casual nature of his arrival was all part of a conscious effort by the new president to distance himself from the stern, uncompromising nature of his father’s dictatorship. Under his leadership, the country was about to undergo a radical transformation, one aimed at reviving Syria’s fortunes after the political and economic stagnation of the past thirty years. Bashar’s bold vision for his country’s future was set out in his inaugural speech, in which he spoke passionately about making the economy and education the focus of his ambitious reform programme. By Syrian standards, Bashar’s address broke with the Baathist tradition of never publicly criticizing the regime, conduct that would normally result in the offender attracting the attention of the state security forces. But this was the moment he had been waiting for, and he was determined to demonstrate that, while he might bear the name Assad and owe his appointment to his family connections, he was going to be his own man. A bold reformist agenda lay at the heart of his message, one where the latent creative talent of young Syrians would be harnessed to transform the nation into a modern, dynamic state. He was highly critical of the state bureaucracy, which he saw as the main obstacle to the country’s economic development, and he raised the prospect of adopting a more subtle political approach, one where freedom of speech was tolerated, and alternative points of view acknowledged. ‘I find it very important to invite every citizen to participate in the journey of development and modernization if we’re really sincere and serious about attaining desired results in the shortest possible time,’ Bashar declared, making a

direct appeal for the entire nation to provide his government with new ideas and radical proposals. ‘We must rid ourselves of those old ideas that have become obstacles. In order to succeed, we need modern thinking.’ While not openly critical of his father’s legacy, he nevertheless hinted that he was prepared to adopt a more democratic system of government, albeit one that stopped short of embracing full-scale Western-style democracy. ‘The approach of the great leader, Hafez al-Assad, was a very special and unique approach, and therefore it is not easy to emulate, especially as we remember that we are not just required to maintain it, but to develop it as well.’ If the West’s democratic institutions were unsuited for an Arab nation like Syria, then it was necessary, he argued, to develop a democratic system specific to Syria that was rooted in the country’s history and culture.1 Bashar’s speech may have been short on detail, but it nonetheless conveyed the message that, under his command, Syria could look forward to an exciting new era, one in which his dynamic leadership would provide the nation with much-needed reform while at the same time easing the more repressive conditions of the recent past. His hour-long address, broadcast live on stateowned Syrian television, certainly had the desired effect, attracting plaudits both at home and abroad. The carefully crafted script, which ran to more than 7,500 words, succeeded in paying tribute to his father’s legacy while also raising the prospect of genuine change. It satisfied the Baathist old guard, who jealously protected the many privileges and substantial wealth they had accrued under Hafez, while lending encouragement to a new generation of Syrians that their voices would be heard. As one prominent Syrian human rights activist commented at the time, ‘Bashar’s inaugural speech provided a space for hope following the totalitarian years of President Assad. It was as if a nightmare was removed.’2 There was a warm reception, too, from the outside world. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, soon to become his own country’s new head of state, was one of the first Arab dignitaries to visit Damascus, flying in the day after the inauguration to cement his kingdom’s ties with the new leader. Abdullah’s endorsement was especially important, as the Saudi royal family continued to exert great influence over Syrian politics. The Crown Prince was also closely connected to Bashar’s troublesome uncle Rifaat, who still nurtured his own ambitions for the presidency of Syria. Rifaat was on friendly terms with Abdullah, who is credited with loaning the maverick member of the Assad family around $100 million to fund his lavish lifestyle in exile.3 The Saudis had

their own reasons for wanting to reassert the importance of relations between Damascus and Riyadh. For nearly two decades Iran, the Saudis’ great rival for power and influence in the Middle East, had been gradually expanding its ties in both Syria and neighbouring Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shia militia controlled much of southern Lebanon. To prevent Tehran from accomplishing a similar feat in Syria, it was very much in the Saudis’ interests to maintain cordial ties with Syria’s new president. And it was essential to Bashar’s legitimacy that they were seen to support him. France was another enthusiastic suitor of the new regime. As the former colonial power, Paris found it hard to overcome its paternalistic attitude towards its previous charge, and President Jacques Chirac had come to regard the youthful Syrian president as his Middle Eastern protégé. France, striving to maintain its long-standing influence over both Syria and Lebanon, had a vested interest in making sure the Assad transition was a success. Chirac tried to build a close personal bond with Bashar and had hosted a lunch for him at the Elysée Palace a few months before he inherited the presidency. Professing himself impressed by Bashar’s reform programme, the French leader was keen that France should benefit from the new plans to revitalize the moribund Syrian economy. As one seasoned French diplomat commented at the time, ‘The interests of France in this region are of such importance that it is essential for our country to be present all the time.’4 The notion that Bashar would be a bold and progressive reformer was indeed central to the carefully calibrated public relations exercise that had been in play since he was officially designated his father’s heir apparent. Behind the scenes of the new regime, though, Bashar’s conduct told a very different story, one in which he had scant regard for dissenting voices. During the frantic hours following his father’s death he had summoned all the country’s top military commanders to an emergency summit at the Presidential Palace. Under the watchful gaze of Mustafa Tlass, the veteran defence minister, Bashar spoke to each of the senior military officers in turn, informing them of their fate. ‘You, I don’t like, you’re relieved of command,’ Bashar told one of them. ‘You have served your country well and shown your loyalty, so you can stay,’ he informed another. Several officers present who were suspected of being loyal to Baathist factions, and thus opposed to the succession, were arrested on the spot and escorted to one of the regime’s grim detention facilities. Once this brutal review was complete, Bashar ended the meeting with a warning to those officers who

had kept their positions: ‘If any of you here don’t like what I have done, you can be sure of the fate that awaits you.’5 Bashar’s high-handed treatment of Syria’s security establishment may have been at odds with his image as a reformer, but he was determined to head off any serious challenge to his authority. Meanwhile, the slick public relations machine that had been put in place to promote his presidency continued to build the narrative that Syria was about to embark on a radical modernization programme. Following the death of Bashar’s brother Bassel, the regime had sought to have him remembered as ‘the martyred golden knight’. In death, Bassel became a cult figure, with airports, schools, hospitals and other government institutions named in his honour. To make his own mark on the Syrian populace and to differentiate himself from his brother, Bashar placed much emphasis on his interest in science and technology. A popular marketing slogan of the period even read, ‘Bassel the role model, and Bashar the hope’.6 During his apprenticeship for the presidency, Bashar had been appointed chairman of the Syrian Computer Society, a position previously held by Bassel, which Bashar used as a platform to promote his interest in new technology. Drawing on his experience as a postgraduate medical student in London, the modern, Western outlook Bashar had acquired during his stay in the UK was much underlined. His more liberal, open-minded attitude contrasted sharply with the cultural conservatism that defined his father’s generation of Baathists, and this encouraged many young Syrians to believe that, under his leadership, they would enjoy a more open and dynamic society. Bashar and his team drew on this to position him as the champion of Syria’s digital revolution, and he surrounded himself with young Syrians who wanted their country to embrace fully the age of technological innovation, a major undertaking in view of the reluctance of the Baathist old guard to embrace change. Another key element to Bashar’s appeal was that his reform programme would seek to tackle the endemic corruption that had taken root during four decades of Baathist rule. At the time he came to power it was said that just ten families ran Syria – the extended Assad clan being foremost among them. While Hafez had primarily devoted his attention to governing the country, other members of the Assad family had exploited their position to acquire vast fortunes. Under Hafez’s rule, the Assad name had become synonymous with a range of illicit activities, among them drug smuggling and an illegal car-export ring. As one Damascus resident recalled, ‘You would wake up in the morning to find your car had been stolen. A few days later you would receive notification

that it had been sold in Spain to a new owner.’7 Most Syrians were in little doubt that the extended Assad family were all involved in racketeering of some sort, so Bashar had to be portrayed as a leader who was utterly committed to tackling corruption. Signalling his desire to move away from the Baathist obsession with secrecy, which only served to facilitate the ruling elite’s venality, Bashar had developed ties with those advocating a more liberal economic system, one that benefited the entire country and not just the privileged few. For all his talk of reform, Bashar needed to demonstrate he was not a soft touch when it came to withstanding the perils of internal family rivalry. Part of the grooming process for the presidency had required him to take a crash course in the military. He was put on an advanced officers’ programme at the Homs Military Academy, the premier training establishment for the Syrian elite. Despite lacking the requisite qualifications, he nevertheless succeeded in coming top of his class as staff captain. His training would stand him in good stead for the challenges that lay ahead, as well as overcoming the constant tensions that afflicted his own family. Although his disruptive uncle Rifaat was safely consigned to exile, there were still other members of the family who engaged in their own bitter feuds. One of the more explosive instances of violence within the restless Assad clan took place a few months before Bashar became president. His hot-headed younger brother Maher became involved in a heated argument with his brotherin-law, Assef Shawkat, who had become a senior officer in military intelligence. Shawkat was married to Bashar’s sister Bushra, who saw herself as a rival for the presidency. Even so, Shawkat made a point of allying himself with Bashar, to the extent that he took an active role in neutralizing potential challengers. Shortly before Hafez died, Shawkat led a raid on a private harbour close to Latakia that Rifaat owned and which he used for drug smuggling. Bashar suspected it was being used to prepare a military coup if he became president. Several people were killed during Shawkat’s assault on the harbour, which Bashar had authorized while he was in Paris, meeting with President Chirac. When Maher, himself a rising star in the Syrian military, heard about the operation he confronted Shawkat, telling him not to involve himself in family business. A bitter row ensued, with the two men hurling insults. It ended dramatically with Maher pulling a gun and shooting Shawkat in the stomach. He was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, and then transferred to a military hospital in Paris, where Bashar was still being feted at the Elysée Palace. ‘The shooting of Assef Shawkat showed what a dysfunctional family the Assad

family was,’ a close family acquaintance later remarked. ‘To have an important member of the Assad clan like Maher pull a gun and shoot his sister’s husband during an argument in the Presidential Palace laid bare the bitter rivalries that existed among key family members.’8 In the early months of his presidency, Bashar concentrated on the reform agenda he hoped would revive the moribund Syrian state. One of his first acts was to appoint members of the Syrian Computer Society to senior government positions. Even though these computer scientists were portrayed as reformers, most were in fact technocrats whose primary interest was not political reform but introducing structural changes that would stimulate the Syrian economy, such as restructuring the banking system and making investment capital easier to access. For the first time in more than forty years, private banks were given a licence to operate independently, and the Damascus stock market revived. Every government ministry underwent a complete overhaul designed to make them more efficient and responsive to the needs of ordinary Syrians. Bashar wanted people to know that the socialist economic principles that had dominated the Syrian economy during the Hafez era were being gradually dropped in favour of empowering the private sector. The new mood of liberalism was further encouraged by Bashar’s decision to pardon about 600 prisoners in November 2000, and to close the regime’s infamous Mezzeh prison on the outskirts of Damascus, where generations of Syrian political dissidents had languished. There was a very real sense that a more open political system might develop. All forms of political dissent had been suppressed since the early 1980s, so the first calls by activists for basic freedoms, such as free speech, were tentative. The campaign for political reform had begun in the weeks after Bashar’s inauguration, and culminated on September 27 when a group of former political prisoners, lawyers, poets, professors and writers published a statement calling for the release of all political prisoners, the restoration of freedom of expression and an end to martial law, which had been in place since the Baathists first seized power in 1963. Known as the ‘Statement of the 99’ – which represented the exact number of signatories – the declaration was the first serious test of Bashar’s claim to be a liberalizing president. The notion of easing the strict political controls that had sustained the regime in power was anathema to many of the old guard, who warned it would undermine stability. All the early indications, though, suggested that Bashar was

determined to press ahead with his exciting new agenda during a period that became known as the Damascus Spring. The government-owned daily newspaper Al Thawra started publishing articles challenging established government orthodoxy, airing views that would never have been tolerated during the Hafez era. Privately owned newspapers began to flourish, too, and popular cartoonists, such as Ali Ferzat, were allowed to draw unflattering caricatures of key regime figures. Amid this flowering of political activity, societies and debating forums appeared throughout the country, and prominent figures in academia, literature and the arts joined the chorus of calls for change. There were fierce discussions among activists over how far they should push the reform programme. This was a country that had endured political and economic torpor for decades, and some of the more cautious campaigners worried about the pace of change, and whether Syria’s outdated structures would be able to cope. There were concerns, too, about just how much political freedom Bashar was prepared to allow. The campaigners nevertheless overcame their doubts, and in January 2001 took the bold step of issuing of another statement setting out their demands for wholesale political reform. Signed by almost 1,000 prominent Syrians from a variety of backgrounds, the Committees for the Revival of Civil Society called on the Syrian government to undertake comprehensive political and constitutional reform that would allow the formation of independent political parties, with the electoral process being placed under the supervision of an independent judicial body. The declaration presented a second significant challenge for the young president and, when he read the demands, his reforming instincts suddenly appeared to desert him. ‘These people are out of their minds, they are talking fantasies,’ he confided to a friend. ‘They are living on another planet.’9 But in the honeymoon period of Bashar’s presidency, many people were still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, not least the steady stream of foreign dignitaries who travelled to Damascus to make their acquaintance with the new Syrian leader, and to see whether he really was the breath of fresh air he claimed to be. None of the world leaders who had dealt with Hafez had ever enjoyed the experience. Dour and showing little willingness to compromise on his convictions, Hafez would lecture visiting heads of state for hours on the iniquities of Western involvement in the region, reminding them of Syria’s former glories and berating them for their reprehensible treatment of the Palestinians. To make his point, these encounters would often take place in his

office, where an enormous tapestry hanging behind his desk depicted the Battle of Hattin of 1187, when the great Kurdish warrior Saladin inflicted a devastating defeat against the Crusaders in Lower Galilee. Dr Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, endured lengthy meetings listening to Hafez’s seemingly endless monologues during his famous shuttle diplomacy mission in the 1970s to end Arab–Israeli hostilities. In the 1990s US President Bill Clinton, who invested an enormous amount of political capital trying to achieve a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, was subjected to similar treatment during the three sessions he held with Hafez in an attempt to break the impasse, but to no effect. Bashar was a peripheral presence in his father’s long-running negotiations with the Americans to find a framework for a peace settlement with Israel, a process that had originated with the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993. After Egypt, Jordan and Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization had all committed themselves to making peace with Israel, Syria obstinately refused to square the circle of peace. The main sticking point in the talks was the future status of the Golan Heights, which Hafez continued to insist must be returned to Syria. Hafez, who had been defence minister when Israel captured the territory during the Six Day War, regarded its return as an issue of personal honour, and was adamant that the Golan must be returned in its entirety. Even as a student in Damascus, Bashar, whose childhood had been marked by the constant pulse of the Arab–Israeli conflict, took a close interest in the negotiations and had lobbied his father for Syria to attend the ground-breaking Madrid Conference in 1991. Hafez had already decided not to attend, but Bashar believed it was too good an opportunity to miss, and he tried to encourage his father to take a more positive attitude. Bashar’s interest in the Arab–Israeli negotiations became more pronounced after Bassel’s death, and he was enthusiastic about the outline agreement proposed by Israel to return the majority of the Golan Heights, except for a small strip of territory deemed essential for safeguarding the security of northern Israel. Bashar believed the concession was worth making in the broader interests of peace in the region. ‘If we do not say yes to this deal, it will be a crime,’ he confided to one of his confidants.10 Hafez, though, refused to be convinced by the seriousness of the Israeli offer, and rejected the overture from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which he came to rue. ‘I never regretted a decision more in my life than not take up Rabin’s offer to normalize relations,’ Hafez admitted.11

At his final summit with Hafez, which took place in Geneva in March 2000, Clinton was given another long lecture on the history of the border between Syria and Israel. Despite Clinton’s hopes of a breakthrough in renewing talks between Syria and Israel, no agreement was forthcoming, with Clinton’s officials later complaining that the Syrian leader had proved to be ‘immovable’ during the talks.12 Hafez’s obduracy meant that he was still unwilling even to contemplate a deal with Israel unless the Israelis returned all of the Golan Heights. As Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa later told US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, ‘The problem is not a matter of kilometres. It is one of dignity and honour.’13 When Hafez died a few months later, Clinton was gracious enough to pay tribute to his adversary, remarking, ‘although we had our disagreements, he had always been straightforward with me.’14 The prospect of a new, less dogmatic leader assuming power in Damascus was therefore greeted with much relief among those with a stake in the Middle East peace process. In France, President Chirac had already made overtures to befriend Bashar by hosting him in Paris. Apart from encouraging economic reforms in Syria that would improve French trade ties with Damascus, Chirac was keen to see the end of Syria’s military occupation of Lebanon, which dated back to the civil war. The conflict had ended in 1990, but the Syrians had continued to maintain a significant military presence in the country, which gave them exclusive control of its politics and economy. Albright, too, had been quick to extend the hand of friendship when they met at Hafez’s funeral. And all the early indications from Bashar were that he wanted to take a more positive approach to Syria’s engagement with the outside world, including its contribution to the peace talks. After he became president, Bashar was keen to revive the peace talks, which the Clinton administration had continued to pursue despite Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist in November 1995. The last round of talks between Clinton and Hafez had taken place only shortly before the Syrian leader’s demise, and Bashar was keen to find out if it was possible to revive the momentum. When several key players involved in the talks arrived in Damascus for his father’s funeral, he buttonholed them with his own plans on the future of the Golan. Prince Bandar, the influential former Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, was among those attending the funeral who had taken a keen interest in the peace talks; he was fascinated to hear the young president’s views on the subject.

The prince had been on good terms with Hafez, who had asked him to help school Bashar in the complexities of international diplomacy. Prior to Hafez’s death, Bandar had suggested taking Bashar on an extensive tour of the US, with visits to the Boeing company in Seattle before travelling to Silicon Valley to catch up on the latest developments in computer science. From there they planned to travel to Washington, where Bandar, who was on friendly terms with the Clinton administration, would arrange for Bashar to have a tour of the White House. In the event, the trip never materialized, but Bandar continued to maintain close ties with Bashar and was one of the first people to see him after Hafez died. In his conversations with Bandar and other key figures such as Albright, Bashar was eager to set out both his dynamic reform programme for Syria and his ideas for restarting the peace talks. A key aim was to revitalize the Syrian economy and put it on a par with the rapidly developing economies of neighbouring countries like Turkey and Israel. From the tone of his conversations with Bandar, the young president, despite his diffident public persona, did not lack confidence. ‘I will be the Messiah to reform Syria’s political structure which has been set up simply to keep the people in their place,’ he declared.15 Bandar was even more impressed with his innovative thinking on reviving the peace talks with Washington, in particular the dormant Rabin plan on the future status of the Golan Heights. Bashar had evidently given the issue a great deal of thought, and he wanted to make the Golan a demilitarized commercial zone that could be used by both Syria and Israel to expand trade ties between the two countries. Far-fetched as the concept might appear, given the long-standing animosity between them, the fact that Bashar was looking for creative solutions to break the impasse impressed his visitors. As someone whose childhood had been marked by the long-running Arab–Israeli conflict, Bashar appeared to have a genuine interest in resolving the discord. ‘We were all so excited about Syria’s future because Bashar came across as being so bright,’ Bandar recalled. ‘His aim in that first year was to launch a revolution to modernize the country and stop it being a Third World country. And ending hostilities with Israel was an important part of his plan to give Syria a better future.’16 Another factor that helped to promote Bashar’s image as a dynamic new leader was his marriage to Asma al-Akhras, an attractive and intelligent young woman whose family had got to know Bashar during his spell in London. Bashar had been shy and retiring then. It was only after he returned to Damascus that he

began to develop more of a social life, and he was often to be found driving himself to fashionable restaurants with close friends, such as Manaf Tlass, the former defence minister’s son with whom he had grown up. After Bassel’s death Bashar’s friends noticed that he acquired an almost insatiable appetite to date as many women as possible. He showed a particular interest in dating Bassel’s former girlfriends. ‘It was almost as if he was trying to prove himself in some way,’ recalled a contemporary. ‘It seemed he wanted to demonstrate that he was just as good as his brother, if not better.’17 Now that he was president, Bashar understood that he needed to put his playboy days behind him and settle down if he was to be taken seriously as the country’s figurehead. Syria remained, after all, a socially conservative country, and respectable middle-class Syrians would not think well of a president who spent his evenings in louche nightclubs chasing women. The search was on, then, for a suitable bride who would reflect the modern, dynamic leadership that Bashar sought to convey. Before long, Asma, then a twenty-five-year-old investment banker in London, emerged as the ideal match. The daughter of Fawaz al-Akhras, a London-based Syrian cardiologist, Asma had been introduced to Bashar when he was studying in London, but nothing had come of it. The Akhras family had close ties with the Assad regime. Fawaz was often called upon to arrange medical appointments in London for high-ranking officials, while his wife worked as an administrator at the Syrian Embassy in London’s Belgrave Square. Fawaz would later set up the British Syrian Society, a lobbying group aimed at promoting a positive image of the Assad regime in the UK. Asma herself had mainly been raised in Britain, to the extent that she spoke only limited Arabic, acquired during the family’s annual summer visits to Syria. Known by her British friends as Emma, she went to the prestigious Queen’s College school in Marylebone before going to King’s College London, where she graduated with a first-class degree in computer science. Compared with the lavish lifestyle she would later enjoy as Syria’s first lady, Asma’s family lived in the unremarkable west London suburb of Acton in an unassuming semi-detached house. A childhood acquaintance who lived in the same street recalled Asma as a friendly child who liked to play tennis in the local park during the summer. ‘She was very polite, and had a very old-fashioned Sunni Muslim Damascus-style upbringing, where she was taught from an early age to honour the older generation at all times. When Syrian friends of the family came to visit, Asma would serve the tea and take care of them.’18

Although the family lived modestly in London, Asma’s mother nurtured ambitions of her daughter marrying into a wealthy Syrian family and enjoying a bourgeois lifestyle in Damascus. This was partly inspired by the fact that Asma’s aunt had married a young Syrian military officer who had later served as Hafez’s interior minister. As a key figure in the regime, Asma’s uncle and his wife had enjoyed all the lavish benefits the regime had to offer. He had also signed the execution warrants for suspected Muslim Brotherhood militants on the Syrian dictator’s behalf. Asma’s family were keen to develop their ties with the powerful Assad clan in the hope that they could improve their own domestic fortunes. It was to this end that Asma’s mother worked at the Syrian Embassy while her father spent much of his spare time promoting the Assad cause among London’s ex-patriot Arab community. After university, Asma joined the investment banking division of J.P. Morgan, specializing in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. It was then that she renewed her acquaintance with Bashar through the mutual family connections her parents had built up in Damascus. She was about to pursue an MBA at Harvard when she went to spend the summer of 2000 with her aunt in Damascus, and a romance quickly grew. A close family friend recalled having dinner with Bashar that summer and was struck by how enamoured he was with Asma. ‘I am going to get engaged and marry Asma,’ Bashar predicted and, after a whirlwind courtship, the couple were duly wed on New Year’s Day 2001. Clever and accomplished, Asma was seen as a good match for the socially awkward Bashar, while her Westernized background brought a hint of glamour to the intimidating atmosphere of the Presidential Palace. Another notable consideration was that, by marrying Asma, who was from a Sunni family originally from Homs, Bashar had broken with family tradition and married outside the close-knit Alawite clan. Bashar’s choice of a Sunni woman as his bride was seen in some Syrian circles as a gesture towards ending Syria’s longstanding sectarian divide between Alawites and Sunnis. It also had another benefit. Compared with the sophisticated and educated Sunni middle classes who dominated Damascene society, the Alawites were still seen as rough, primitive mountain folk. In marrying Asma, Bashar was adding a new layer of sophistication to the Assad family’s social status. Despite having to abandon her career to wed Bashar, Asma insisted that she had no regrets about deciding to marry the man she loved. ‘We have been friends for a very long time,’ she explained. ‘I came to Syria every year since I was born. It is really through family friends who knew each other since

childhood.’ The friendship had continued off and on when Bashar was studying in London: ‘We hardly saw each other at all. And, if we did, it was more on a friendly basis and nothing else.’19 The ruthless determination of Asma’s mother and aunt to secure the engagement with Bashar was certainly a topic of immense interest in Damascus social circles. Asma herself said she had little hesitation giving up the opportunity to study at Harvard to marry the Syrian president. ‘When I got the offer, it came at a time when I had found the man I loved. So it was almost not a choice – who would choose Harvard over love? No way!’ As for everyday life with her husband, she remarked, ‘He is always very kind and polite, he is very calm. You can talk to him about anything and that is great.’20 The newlyweds did their best to live as normal a life as possible despite their privileged status, eschewing the grandeur of the Presidential Palace to live in a modern villa in the suburbs of Damascus. ‘We don’t live in a palace. We live in a house in the city. This is just an official place for meeting people,’ Asma said of the couple’s living arrangements. Their dislike of official protocol meant they preferred to drive their own cars to meetings and would often be seen making their own way to restaurants and social engagements in the capital. During the first few weeks of their marriage, Asma said she spent her time in jeans and a Tshirt travelling incognito around the rural areas of Syria getting to know the country better. ‘I wanted to meet [ordinary Syrians] before they met me. Before the world met me,’ she recalled. ‘I was able to spend the first couple of months wandering around, meeting other Syrian people. It was my crash course. Because people had no idea who I was, I was able to see people completely honestly, I was able to see what their problems were on the ground.’21 While the Assads settled happily into married life – their first son Hafez, named for his grandfather, was born later that year – Bashar’s popularity soon began to wane as the early promise suggested by the Damascus Spring failed to deliver the desired changes. While Syrians continued to hope that their youthful president and his attractive wife would revive the nation after the repression of the Hafez era, they were disappointed by the regime’s reluctance to acknowledge the bold reform agenda set out by prominent campaigners. The first indication that Bashar was losing his enthusiasm for easing political control came in the first interview he gave after becoming president, in which he suggested that the sentiments expressed in his inaugural speech had been misinterpreted. His priority was ‘social and intellectual development’, not political change, and his

primary interest was driving economic reform. So far as Bashar was concerned, Syrian society was not sufficiently developed to accommodate the wide-ranging liberties, such as freedom of expression, being proposed, and he suggested many of those advocating the reforms were elitists who did not understand the needs of ordinary Syrians. There were others, he added more ominously, who were working with foreign powers with the aim of destabilizing Syria.22 The reforms Bashar had in mind for Syria were more akin to China’s economic model than the free market economies of the West. And, as with Beijing, Damascus was not well disposed to the calls for political reform and personal freedom made by supporters of the Damascus Spring. By early 2001 senior regime figures were publicly denouncing the campaigners, with the information minister claiming that the concept of ‘civil society’ in Syria was an American term, and that attempts to spread Western ideas in the Arab world were little more than the ‘modern weapons of neo-colonialists’.23 Behind the scenes, a power struggle was taking place between the modernizers who sought to end Syria’s reliance on a state-run economy and the old guard who feared that change, apart from depriving them of control, might jeopardize their own opportunities to accrue wealth. Bashar, in public at least, sought to steer a middle course, allowing a modicum of economic reform while resisting the more challenging demands for political freedom. Before long the security authorities were cracking down on the debating forums that had sprung up around the country, with the security services insisting they must apply for a licence before convening further meetings. By early spring of 2001 the more prominent campaigners began to be detained as the regime quickly rediscovered its appetite for brutally suppressing its opponents. Among the first high-profile political dissidents to be detained was Riad alTurk, a prominent opposition figure who had first been jailed for opposing military rule in Syria as far back as 1952. The founder of the political wing of the Syrian Communist Party, Turk had been one of Hafez’s most vocal critics and, when Hafez attempted to repress the party in 1980, Turk was again arrested and imprisoned, on this occasion being held in the most inhumane conditions imaginable. His imprisonment lasted for almost eighteen years, with Turk being placed in solitary confinement in a cell about the length of his body. He was not allowed to exercise, and for the majority of the time he was not given anything with which to occupy his mind. Furthermore, for the first thirteen years Turk was not permitted any communication with or information about his family or friends, including his two daughters. ‘During Hafez’s time, the cells were two

meters by two meters with no windows. You were beaten, there was nothing to read, and the food was miserable. You could hardly breathe in the summer. I never saw the sun for 10 years. You can’t imagine what it was like,’ Turk said of his confinement.24 One of his few diversions was collecting grains of dark cereal he found in the thin soup he was served in the evening and using the grains to create pictures in his cell. Turk was eventually released in 1998 following the personal intervention of Jacques Chirac who, in return for affording Hafez a state visit to France, insisted the dissident was first freed. Hafez was desperate for international backing, and had no option but to agree to the request. Turk was in such bad health on his release that he was flown to Paris, where he underwent surgery for several ailments, before being allowed to return home, where he remained politically inactive for the rest of Hafez’s rule. When Bashar became president, Turk was almost the only Syrian opposition figure to challenge the draft succession, and before long he had assumed a prominent role in the Damascus Spring, leading the calls for democratic change. In 2001 he finally succeeded in provoking the new regime by remarking in a television interview that ‘the dictator was dead’, which meant that the Syrian people deserved to be freed from the shackles of the past and to be allowed to embrace a new future. Turk was arrested a few weeks later, and was sentenced to a further three years’ imprisonment in June 2002 by a state security court for ‘attempting to change the constitution by illegal means’.25 Turk was eventually released after serving fifteen months, following another intervention by Chirac, and continued to play an active role in Syrian opposition circles. Others were not so lucky. Scores of pro-democracy campaigners were detained as the regime sought to extinguish the dangerous sentiments expressed by supporters of the Damascus Spring. The final act of defiance took place in September 2001 and involved Riad Seif, a prominent Syrian businessman who had held the Adidas franchise in Syria before becoming a member of the Syrian parliament. Seif had set up the Forum for National Dialogue, a key debating chamber for Damascus Spring supporters, and arranged to stage a meeting at his home in the city to promote the sweeping political and economic reforms he believed were necessary to heal the divisions of the past fifty years. Seif had already had his card marked by the authorities for daring to criticize the business activities of Bashar’s venal cousin, Rami Makhlouf, the nephew of Hafez’s wife, Anisa. In 2001 Makhlouf had been given the licence to run Syria’s mobile phone network, with the guarantee of vast profits – profits which would form the basis

of a fortune that was, by 2020, worth an estimated $10 billion, making him one of the wealthiest men in Syria.26 Seif had publicly criticized the decision, telling parliament that it was ‘a big scandal that would cost Syria, an underdeveloped country, millions and millions of dollars’.27 Seif soon found himself being made a scapegoat as the authorities moved to crush the last vestiges of anti-Assad opposition. In the days after the meeting at his home several leading campaigners were detained by the security forces, including Seif himself. The crackdown was deeply embarrassing for Bashar, who had tried so hard to present himself, both at home and abroad, as the acceptable face of Syria’s Baathist dictatorship, embarking on a gradual programme of reform. Yet, just one year into his rule, the regime had reverted to the statist control and repressive methods that had defined his father’s era. Desperate to save face with the outside world, Bashar decided that all those arrested should be tried by civilian courts, as opposed to the closed security apparatus that usually dealt with those accused of being enemies of the state. The outcome, though, remained the same, as the all-powerful mukhabarat intelligence service simply told the judges in advance the length of sentence to be passed. When the protesters were brought to trial in the spring of 2002, they were jailed for terms ranging from five to ten years. Seif was convicted on charges of seeking to change the constitution by illegal means and was jailed for five years. He was also given a concurrent six-month sentence for forming a secret society and organizing illegal meetings.28 Many of the activists persecuted during the short-lived Damascus Spring would resurface a decade later to mount a far more serious challenge against the Assad regime when the whole of the Middle East was convulsed by the wave of anti-government protest known as the Arab Spring. At this early stage of his presidency, Bashar still believed he could ride two horses at once. Despite the repressive measures being implemented at home, he hoped that he could still maintain his public image as a modernizing leader committed to reforming his country. The contradictions certainly led many Western analysts to conclude that, for all Bashar’s insistence that he was his own man, he was still beholden to the Baathist old guard who had sustained his father’s dictatorship in power. The veteran American diplomat Dennis Ross, who had worked as Clinton’s Middle East envoy during the protracted peace talks in the 1990s, met Bashar twice after his father died, and formed the opinion that he was desperate to make a good impression: ‘The general feeling among

Western diplomats was that the real power would be behind the scenes, and he would not be his own man.’29 Syrian victims of Bashar’s oppression were less convinced by the influence the old guard exercised over him and believed that he was very much the master of his own destiny. As one veteran Syrian campaigner commented, Hafez would not have allowed him to become president unless he was able to show the same ruthless streak that had kept him in power for thirty years. All this talk of reform and modernization of the country was nothing more than an elaborate public relations exercise. Bashar knew what he was doing, and what he was doing was making sure he stayed in power.30 Other close observers of the Assad family noted that Bashar was considerably less confident than he appeared and was consequently constantly trying to justify himself. ‘Bashar was always in his father’s shadow, and in his big brother’s shadow, and was always worrying about his uncle Rifaat’s attempts to replace him. And he hated it when people underestimated him,’ explained another acquaintance.31 Certainly, for whatever reason, the flickering embers of hope that accompanied Bashar’s ascent to power were extinguished within only a year, never to return.

FOUR

The Tyrant and the Crown Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 laid bare the hollow promise of Bashar’s reform programme, while at the same time exposing the inherent weakness of the Syrian dictator’s position as a world leader. Although Bashar tried to conceal his lack of enthusiasm for political reform, his failure to make any meaningful progress had been noted by the foreign observers who doubted his commitment to making any significant change to the political system. Moreover, any aspirations Bashar entertained about becoming an international statesman were stymied by the rapidly changing dynamics of the Middle East. The appointment of the hawkish Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, as the country’s new prime minister in the spring of 2001 had finally put paid to any hope of reviving the peace process. The arrival of Republican President George W. Bush in the White House the same year meant that Washington was disinclined to invest the same amount of political capital as the Clinton administration in trying to cajole the Syrians to the negotiating table. At best, the Bush administration regarded Syria’s new president as an unreliable lightweight; at worst, they saw him overseeing a regime that sponsored global terrorism. So when a nineteen-strong group of predominantly Saudi Islamist terrorists carried out the most devastating terrorist attack in modern American history, Bashar found himself in a precarious position. The first challenge Bashar faced was that his anti-Israel policy was very much at odds with the pro-Israeli sympathies of the Bush administration. Several prominent neoconservative ideologues with close ties to Israel had been appointed to high-ranking positions by Bush, especially at the Pentagon, where Paul Wolfowitz, a leading light in the neoconservative movement, was deputy secretary of defence. Castigating Israel was a long-established policy of the Assad dynasty. For Hafez, Israel was his sworn enemy, a country that had humiliated Syria in two major wars, in 1967 and 1973, and had provoked another, indirect conflict in 1982 following the Israeli invasion of neighbouring Lebanon. The constant denunciation of Israel by senior regime figures helped to

assert the Baathists’ nationalist credentials while at the same time defining Syria’s role within the Arab world as the most committed foe of the Zionist cause. Bashar had studied Israel closely from the time he spent administering the Lebanon brief Hafez had given him as part of his schooling for the presidency. Even though the Lebanese civil war had ended in 1990, Israel still maintained a significant military presence in the south of the country, arguing that it needed to occupy the territory in order to safeguard its security interests in northern Israel. By the summer of 2000, though, Israel had begun to tire of the constant tensions on the border and was keen to withdraw its forces to the pre-invasion border with Lebanon. The original proposal was that Israel would pull out from Lebanon as part of the Rabin peace initiative between Israel and Syria. In return, the Israelis wanted to see Syria withdraw its own sizeable force from Lebanon, which had been in place since 1976, in the earliest days of the conflict. With the collapse of the Rabin talks, Israel concluded it was still in its interests to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon, which was eventually completed in May 2000. Although Bashar expressed an interest in reviving peace talks with Israel, events on the ground meant this was no longer a viable option. In September 2000 Sharon had inflamed tensions in the Palestinian territories by visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam, provoking unrest that eventually led to the Second Intifada, or uprising. This made it difficult for Bashar to explore the possibility of making peace overtures to Israel. To do so would completely undermine the Baathists’ uncompromising decades-long stance towards Israel. Sharon’s subsequent election as prime minister the following spring effectively ended any hope of resuming the talks. This suited Bashar, who was by now preoccupied with suppressing Syrian supporters of the Damascus Spring, as it meant he could rally domestic support by publicly denouncing Israel, distracting attention from his repression of political opposition. The other issue that contributed significantly to Syria’s international ostracism was the regime’s long-standing association with terrorist organizations, which dated back to the earliest days of the Baathist regime. Autocratic regimes like Syria lent their support to terror groups because it provided them with an opportunity to target their foes while at the same time providing a degree of deniability. During the Hafez era, Syria mainly supported renegade Palestinian groups that had broken away from Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Palestine

Liberation Organization. The notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, for example – who was implicated in, among other atrocities, the attacks on Rome and Vienna airports in 1985 – was one of several unsavoury characters who frequented Damascus, arousing suspicions that Hafez and his security apparatus were involved in the plots.1 The high-profile Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, was another famed terrorist who sought sanctuary in Syria during the Hafez era, and the constant flow of active terrorists through the Syrian capital ultimately resulted in Syria being placed on the US State Department’s list of countries supporting global terrorism in 1979.2 The British government adopted a similar position towards Damascus after the Abu Nidal group was accused of plotting with Syrian intelligence to blow up an Israeli airliner flying out of Heathrow Airport in 1986.3 Syria’s staunchly secular Baathist regime’s association with extremism became a great deal more complicated during the 1980s when it formed a strategic partnership with the leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. From its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was committed to exporting its revolution throughout the Muslim world and to the destruction of the Jewish state. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 presented Tehran with an opportunity to confront its bitter foe. Tehran’s justification for involving itself in the conflict was to protect the people of southern Lebanon, the majority of whom subscribed to the same tradition of Shia Islam as Iran. The first indications that Iran was seeking to involve itself in the conflict came in July, when four Iranians attempting to enter Beirut were kidnapped by Christian militiamen.4 Apart from protecting Lebanese Shia Muslims, another reason Iran wanted to become involved in the conflict was that it gave Tehran the chance to confront the US, which it accused of supporting Israel. Iran and the US had already been involved in one major international crisis over the American Embassy hostage crisis. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had severely damaged Jimmy Carter’s presidency by holding fifty-two US diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days, with their release only being secured in January 1981 as Carter departed the White House. Lebanon, where the Americans had agreed to lead a four-nation peacekeeping mission, provided an ideal opportunity for Tehran to resume hostilities against Washington.5 In April 1983 a suicide bomber detonated a massive car bomb at the American Embassy in Beirut, killing sixty-three people, including the head of the CIA’s Middle East operations, who was holding a meeting at the time of the explosion. A pro-Iranian group called the Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility

for the attack, although American investigators eventually concluded it had been carried out by the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia Hezbollah, or ‘Party of God’, which Iran had established in the Shia heartlands of southern Lebanon. Further attacks followed, including the bombing of the US Marine barracks and the French military base in Beirut in October, which American investigators claimed was also conducted by Hezbollah with the approval and financing of senior Iranian officials.6 The more closely American investigators looked at Iran’s terror network in Lebanon, the more they understood the pivotal role the Assad regime was playing in facilitating Iran’s operations. They quickly identified Imad Mughniyeh, a Shia Muslim from southern Lebanon and the founder of Islamic Jihad, as a key figure in Hezbollah’s terrorist network. Apart from organizing Hezbollah’s operations against the Americans and Israelis, Mughniyeh became an important liaison officer managing the complex relationship between Tehran, Damascus and Hezbollah. His involvement in the attacks on the US Embassy and military barracks in Beirut made him one of America’s most-wanted men, with a $5 million bounty on his head and, prior to the September 11 attacks – or 9/11, as they became known – he was credited with killing more American citizens than anyone else. Hezbollah’s anti-American terrorist campaign also enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union, a close ally of Syria, which opposed America’s military intervention in Lebanon. With the Cold War at its height, Moscow maintained ties with Damascus in a relationship that dated back to 1971, when Hafez signed an agreement with the Kremlin authorizing the establishment of a Russian naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, a prized asset for the Russian navy as it provided the Soviets with their only base in the Mediterranean. The Russians were unhappy to see the Americans establish a significant military presence so close to the Tartus base, and encouraged Syria and its Hezbollah allies to maintain their terrorist campaign to drive the Americans out of Lebanon, which was achieved in 1984 when US President Ronald Reagan ordered the withdrawal of the multinational force. Syria played a central role in supporting Hezbollah’s terrorist operations to the extent that, when pro-Iran groups began taking Western hostages in Beirut, some of the first captives were transported back to Iran via Damascus airport.7 The relationship between Damascus and Tehran was not without its difficulties. There were occasions when Syrian interests diverged from those of Tehran, whose primary focus was to export its Islamic revolution throughout the

Muslim world.8 During the 1990s, for example, when Hafez was involved in peace negotiations with Israel, tensions developed with Tehran, to the extent that when hundreds of Hezbollah supporters staged a demonstration in Beirut to protest at the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, the Lebanese army, then under Syrian control, opened fire, killing nine people. It was Hafez’s way of telling Iran that he would not tolerate any criticism of the talks with Israel. By the time of the 9/11 attacks, Iran’s support for a network of Islamist terrorist groups throughout the Middle East was well established – especially in Lebanon, where Hezbollah had created a ‘state within a state’, with its political wing even gaining representation in the Lebanese parliament. While Iranian support for Islamist terrorism was a constant source of friction between Washington and Tehran, it also meant that Syria, which facilitated Iran’s military and political involvement in Lebanon, was viewed as a hostile state by successive American administrations. Washington’s concern over Iran’s deepening influence in the region increased in the summer of 2000 when, following Israel’s military withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah assumed control of all the territory liberated from Israel’s occupation, thereby creating an Iranian-run fiefdom on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. As the man responsible for the Lebanon brief, Bashar oversaw Iran’s activities in Lebanon. Several key figures in Iran’s terrorist infrastructure, such as Imad Mughniyeh, the founder of Islamic Jihad, maintained residences in Damascus. Bashar himself was on friendly terms with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, who travelled frequently to Tehran to meet with the leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The closeness of Bashar’s relationship with the Hezbollah leadership was duly noted by Western diplomats, especially when he chose to sit next to Nasrallah at his father’s funeral in Qurdaha. The two men watched from a dais as black-clad Hezbollah fighters with bandanas around their heads staged a military parade in honour of the late Syrian dictator.9 From an early stage in his presidency, one of Bashar’s key policy objectives was to strengthen ties with Iran. An important factor in the pro-Iran policy was Bashar’s desire to improve the capabilities of the Syrian armed forces, which had traditionally relied on Moscow for their military equipment, an arrangement that dated back to the Soviet era. But by 2000, much of the Russian military hardware was outdated and ineffective, and no match for the superior firepower available to Syria’s powerful neighbours, Turkey and Israel. Bashar was determined to improve Syria’s ability to defend itself against its near neighbours – Turkey was seen as a major threat because of tensions caused by the presence

of militant Kurdish separatists in Syria – and Damascus began actively looking for new arms suppliers. North Korea and China were possible contenders, while Iran, which had invested heavily in developing missile production, was seen as another source. As a senior intelligence officer in the Syrian military at the time, Issam alRayyes understood that Bashar’s shift towards Tehran was motivated as much by the desire to strengthen Syria’s armed forces as it was to cement a strategic partnership with the ayatollahs. ‘With Bashar in power it was clear that he wanted to move away from our reliance on Russia to provide our military equipment,’ explained Rayyes. ‘The Russian equipment was substandard, and so he wanted to look at ways to acquire more sophisticated kit. Iran was an obvious choice, not least because it meant the Assads could become even stronger strategic partners with the Iranians.’ Rayyes saw for himself how important the Iranians considered their alliance with Bashar when he was sent to Iran to train on a new combat communications system. ‘When we went to Iran we were met by the Revolutionary Guards, who thanked us for taking part in what they said was this important strategic partnership.’10 Bashar’s decision to acquire closer relations with Iran would stand him in good stead for the challenges that lay ahead. The 9/11 attacks placed Bashar in a quandary. He could maintain the rejectionist anti-Western approach that had defined his father’s era, or he could exploit the attacks to help rehabilitate Syria’s standing in world affairs. Syria’s longestablished support for extremist organizations of various ideological hues may have helped to rally domestic support for the Baathist regime, but it meant that Damascus had pariah status in many Western eyes. From Washington’s perspective, Syria shared the same designation as Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. The spotlight was on Bashar, and how he responded to the attacks would have a significant bearing on his global reputation for many years to come. The initial overtures Bashar made after 9/11 were promising. Together with other prominent leaders such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Bashar was forthright in condemning the attacks, and he wrote a confidential note to President George W. Bush offering to share intelligence and tackle Islamistinspired terrorism. The Assad regime was no stranger to confronting this phenomenon, and Hafez’s campaign to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood in the

1980s had proved highly effective, if brutal. In the intervening period the Brotherhood had developed ties with al-Qaeda, to the extent that Mohammed Atta, the mastermind of the attacks against the US, and other al-Qaeda members were in regular contact with Brotherhood cells in Germany. As a CIA officer based in Syria at the time concluded, ‘At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood.’11 Bashar offered to put Syria’s considerable intelligence resources at Washington’s disposal, including hundreds of dossiers detailing the activities of known Islamist radicals in the region. The effectiveness of Syria’s security apparatus meant that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization had no presence in Syria itself. It was in Damascus’s interests, though, to maintain a watchful eye on the activities of Islamist militants in the region, so that the material Syria provided proved enormously helpful to American intelligence and security officials as they sought to avert further attacks. Bashar allowed the CIA and FBI to establish intelligence-gathering operations in Aleppo, close to the Turkish border, while Damascus provided Washington with intelligence concerning future al-Qaeda attack plans. The Syrian material helped to thwart a glider attack on the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Other plots, including an attack on an American target in Canada, were intercepted, to the extent that George Tenet, the CIA director, concluded that Syria was one of the agency’s most effective allies in tackling al-Qaeda, and he lobbied hard within the Bush administration to make sure that Syria did not join other rogue states, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, on Washington’s so-called ‘axis of evil’. Bashar himself saw Washington’s campaign against al-Qaeda in the same terms as the Syrian regime’s long-running fight against the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘September 11th was like out of a Hollywood movie – beyond anyone’s imagination,’ he explained in a New Yorker interview. ‘We thought Al Qaeda was not different than the Muslim Brotherhood as a state of mind.’12 Bashar’s hopes that his generous offer of assistance would help to break the deadlock with Washington were not requited. While important members of the Bush administration, like Tenet, understood the value of the material provided by Damascus, this appreciation did not extend to key departments such as the Pentagon. Despite Bashar’s efforts, Syria was still one of seven countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism by Washington, and the more hawkish members of the Bush team, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, were unwilling to accede to Bashar’s request to have Syria’s designation lifted. For them Syria, with its ties to Hezbollah and other extremist networks, was part of the global

terrorist network they were seeking to dismantle after 9/11, and there was little appetite to reward Bashar for his contribution to what the Bush administration termed the war on terror. ‘The quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the Agency’s expectations,’ said a senior CIA official. ‘From the Syrians’ perspective, they got little in return for it.’13 Another consideration that hampered Bashar’s efforts to revive relations with Washington was his own equivocal attitude on the terrorism issue. At the same time that he was lobbying Washington to lift Syria’s designation as a terrorist entity, Bashar was proud to support what he called the ‘axis of resistance’: groups like Hezbollah and the militant Palestinian Hamas, which were generally regarded as terrorist organizations in Washington, and enjoyed close ties with Syria’s security services. By 2001, for example, Mughniyeh, the architect of the series of deadly terrorist attacks against US forces in Lebanon in the 1980s, was a frequent visitor to the Syrian capital, where he met with senior security officials – including Bashar – and resided in a safe house in central Damascus provided by Syria’s mukhabarat, or intelligence service.14 Nor did Bashar’s constant denunciations of Israel endear him to the Bush administration’s proIsrael lobby, especially when senior regime officials, such as veteran defence minister Mustafa Tlass, publicly promoted conspiracy theories claiming the Israelis, not al-Qaeda, had carried out the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, serious efforts were made by Western leaders to explore whether it might be possible to establish a dialogue with the Syrian leader. A month after 9/11, British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew to Damascus for a summit with Bashar, becoming the first British prime minister to visit Syria. As Blair’s officials explained, the British leader was acting as an outrider for the Bush administration, which was interested in learning whether the Syrian leader was serious about repairing relations with Washington.15 A briefing note prepared by the British Foreign Office prior to Blair’s visit repeated the conventional wisdom among Western policymakers that Bashar’s appointment as president had ‘increased the momentum for reform’ in Damascus, even though by the time Blair arrived the Damascus Spring was already a footnote in Syrian history.16 Blair’s visit to Damascus at the end of October 2001 took place when the USled military operation to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was well underway after the Taliban was accused of providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda, the architects of 9/11. Prior to the trip, Blair was briefed by knowledgeable Syrian experts who made exploratory visits to Damascus. They convinced

themselves that Bashar’s regime was genuine in its desire to improve relations with the West and end decades of diplomatic isolation. Blair’s trip had two aims. The first was to explore ways of weaning Bashar off supporting Hezbollah and other extremist groups, such as the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP), which had assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister in Jerusalem just two weeks before the British leader’s arrival.17 The other was to persuade Syria to re-enter talks with Israel on the return of the Golan Heights. Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, who accompanied Blair to Damascus, said the Syria initiative was part of a broader effort to win Arab support for the military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Blair believed strongly that it was important to address the long-standing issue of Palestinian statehood to prevent Islamist extremists from using it to recruit impressionable young Muslims to their cause. To this end Blair embarked on a round of shuttle diplomacy to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, with the aim of establishing a broad coalition of support in the Middle East which would enhance backing for the campaign against the Taliban while also adding renewed vigour to efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian issue, which had degenerated into the quagmire of the Second Intifada. Syrian participation was deemed to be vital if Blair’s initiative was to bear fruit. Blair and his team were keen to see whether, with a relatively new leader in power in Damascus, it might be possible to get Bashar on board. ‘We were interested, but not super-fascinated,’ recalled Powell. ‘But we thought it was worth taking a punt.’18 Bashar did his best to offer Blair a hospitable welcome. The British delegation was met at the airport and taken directly to the Presidential Palace in Damascus, where Bashar was waiting to greet them. He then invited Blair to a private meeting with no other officials present. ‘Bashar conducted the meeting with Blair all on his own,’ Powell recalled. ‘He even ordered the foreign minister out of the room. Bashar came across as being very confident, and that he was his own man.’19 Blair came away from his private conversation with Bashar believing that they had made significant progress, especially on the prospects of reviving the Middle East peace process. Bashar sought to impress his guest further by inviting Blair, a practising Christian, to visit the Umayyad Mosque, or Grand Mosque, in central Damascus to inspect the tomb reputed to contain the head of John the Baptist. Bashar drove Blair to the mosque on his own, weaving through crowds of startled onlookers in the nearby souk, while continuing the conversation they had started at the palace. Powell recalled that Bashar felt more

at ease in the car as he could speak more freely about the many difficulties he faced from the Baathist old guard over the implementation of his reform programme, without being overheard by his ever-present security detail.20 At the end of the visit Blair was confident that he had made a breakthrough, and that Bashar would support his efforts to build a broad Middle East coalition. It was a different story when the two leaders appeared a little later for a press briefing on the talks. Far from being the conciliatory figure he had appeared in private, Bashar caused Blair immense embarrassment by launching into a ferocious attack against Israel while reaffirming Syria’s right to support extremist organizations such as Hezbollah and the PFLP, insisting they had a legitimate right to fight Israel. Bashar won applause from the Syrian press corps by publicly condemning the bombing of Afghanistan by coalition forces and reaffirming his support for the resistance efforts of the anti-Israel lobby. ‘He completely stuffed us,’ said Powell. ‘We thought he would give us something after the discussions he had had with Tony, but then he reverted to old Soviet-era speak about the destruction of Israel.’ The visit became a public relations disaster for Blair, who had taken a political gamble by agreeing to visit Damascus in the belief that it was possible to bring Syria’s young leader in from the diplomatic cold. He had been led to believe that the new regime in Syria was more amenable to engaging in constructive dialogue with the West, only to discover that the hardline, uncompromising attitude that had defined the ruling Baathists’ approach for many decades remained undiminished. British officials should certainly have been aware of the potential pitfalls of seeking a Damascene conversion in Bashar’s outlook. The previous May, when Pope John Paul II had visited Damascus, Bashar had also embarrassed the pontiff by engaging in an anti-Semitic rant, accusing Israel of trying to ‘kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ’.21 Blair was sanguine about the failure of his mission, remarking that ‘you can either stay out of the dialogue, or you can try to get into it and build a bridge of understanding for the future.’22 It was an attitude that had served him well during the groundbreaking negotiations that had delivered the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland four years earlier, but made little headway against the institutional intransigence of the Assad clan. Bashar’s treatment of Blair certainly made it more difficult for Damascus to improve relations with the West. In Washington, where the Bush administration had taken a close interest in Blair’s visit, the Syrian leader’s uncompromising attitude merely confirmed suspicions that Damascus could not be treated as an

ally in its campaign against Islamist extremism. Bashar’s main contact with the Bush administration was through US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had visited Bashar prior to the 9/11 attacks to ask him to end the regime’s oilsmuggling operation with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose oil-rich nation was subjected to a United Nations embargo. The deal was worth around $2 billion a year to the Assad family, and Bashar insisted it was necessary to keep the arrangement in place to fund the Syrian economy. He agreed to comply with the UN embargo, but only on condition that Washington reimburse him for any lost revenues.23 Bashar’s belief that Washington could be persuaded to provide his regime with financial support increased after 9/11, as he argued that Syria should get support in return for helping the US with its war on terror. Bashar’s response to 9/11 certainly provided a major test of his leadership skills. As Blair discovered, he was very much his own man and appeared confident in his own ability and judgement. If anything, there was a sense during the period after 9/11 that Bashar was trying to be too clever for his own good, as he sought to exploit Syria’s unique position to his advantage. On one hand he was willing to offer Syrian backing for the global effort to tackle al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremists; on the other he wanted to maintain Damascus’s stance as Israel’s staunchest enemy, one that was prepared to support any country or group that was committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. These unreconcilable positions meant that, rather than easing decades of ostracism from the West, Bashar was merely confining Syria to further isolation from the US and its allies instead of reaping the benefits of closer cooperation. Bashar’s motivation for trying to play his game of double bluff was his desire to demonstrate that he was more clever and more accomplished than either his father or his brother in the art of global statesmanship. In doing so, he badly miscalculated Syria’s importance to the outside world. For most Western policymakers struggling with the aftermath of 9/11, Syria was little more than a sideshow. The general view in Washington and London was that it would be useful to have Syria on board, but it was of little consequence if Syrian cooperation was not forthcoming. Bashar had been given his first real chance to rehabilitate Syria in the eyes of the West, and he had blown it. The Blair government continued to engage with Damascus despite the failure of its initial engagement with Bashar. ‘We did not give up,’ said Jonathan Powell. ‘Syria was not exactly top of the list of countries we wanted to do business with, but we still thought it was worthwhile to follow up on the relationship Blair had built with Assad.’24 Contacts were maintained between

London and Damascus as coalition forces overthrew the Taliban regime in Kabul and destroyed al-Qaeda’s terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. Most of the focus was on helping the regime with its economic reform programme, as Blair and his advisers had reached the belated conclusion that political reform was not on Bashar’s agenda. The first tentative steps towards improving trade ties between London and Damascus had already been undertaken earlier in 2001 with the help of prominent Syrian businessmen such as Wafic Said. In June a lavish conference was held at the Dorchester Hotel in London under the banner ‘Syria: A New Dawn for Investment’. Several senior Syrian cabinet members were in attendance, with the keynote address being given by Farouk al-Sharaa, the country’s long-serving foreign minister and representative of the Baathist old guard. His message to those attending the gala dinner was that Syria was open for business and offered an abundance of exciting investment opportunities, even though those who ventured to test the Syrian market soon found themselves stymied by the bureaucratic incompetence and corruption that characterized the Baathist regime.25 Despite the reservations that existed on both sides of the Atlantic about Bashar’s ability to deliver, efforts continued throughout the course of 2002 to maintain a dialogue with Damascus, which culminated at the end of the year with the Syrian president and his glamorous wife Asma being invited to London for an official visit, one that included tea with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Blair’s decision to offer the Syrian leader this extraordinary privilege reflected his eagerness to maintain a dialogue with Syria irrespective of the obstacles it faced. By autumn 2002 it was abundantly clear to Blair and his entourage that the Bush administration’s focus had moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, where the White House was intent on removing Saddam Hussein, Bashar’s fellow Baathist dictator, from power. Despite sharing a common Baathist ideology, the Syrian and Iraqi regimes had been bitter rivals for many years, mainly because Hafez had always regarded Saddam as being nothing more than a gangster. Hafez would frequently warn visitors to the Presidential Palace, ‘Do not work with Saddam, he is a bad man – he is a criminal.’26 Relations between Damascus and Baghdad improved under Bashar after the signing of the oil-smuggling deal with Baghdad.27 Bashar found himself in the unique position of supporting Saddam’s illegal oil-smuggling operations while at the same time helping the US and its allies in their fight against Islamist extremists. The Assad regime even agreed to participate in the CIA’s controversial rendition programme, which resulted in a

number of al-Qaeda suspects being sent to Damascus, where they were imprisoned and tortured.28 From Blair’s perspective, Bashar’s readiness to afford this level of cooperation encouraged his belief that, with the invasion of Iraq looming, it might be possible to bring Syria into the US-led coalition preparing to overthrow the Iraqi dictator. While Blair’s backing for Bush’s military intervention in Afghanistan had received widespread political support, his intention to join Bush’s campaign to oust Saddam was proving to be more problematic, with significant opposition to the proposed Iraq war growing by the day. Persuading Bashar to back the coalition would provide Blair with a degree of political cover. The Syrian military had, after all, participated in the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait in 1991, and with Blair under intense political pressure at home, Downing Street thought it worthwhile to make another attempt to improve ties with Damascus. This policy led to the Assads’ official visit to London. An official visit to Britain is usually only offered to friendly states, especially if it includes a meeting with the monarch. Such invitations tend to be limited to close allies, such as the American president or other sympathetic heads of state. There are, of course, exceptions when, out of diplomatic necessity, Her late Majesty was required to entertain less desirable figures, such as when she was asked to host Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1978. The fact that there is no official record of the Assads’ visit to Buckingham Palace in the official list of visiting heads of state suggests that the Assads fell firmly into the latter category.29 For their part, Bashar and Asma were delighted to receive the invitation, as it played to their image of themselves as a sophisticated, glamorous couple whose presence was much sought-after by the world’s pre-eminent heads of state, even if the invitation had more to do with Blair’s political predicament. It turned out that the British prime minister was so keen to secure Syrian backing for the Iraq campaign that he even considered asking the Queen to bestow an honorary knighthood on Bashar. The suggestion received a lukewarm response from Whitehall, with the Foreign Office noting soberly, ‘In view of Syria’s human rights record and the fact that our relationship with them is not particularly cosy, we do not believe it would be particularly appropriate for an honour to be bestowed on Bashar.’ Henry Hogger, the British ambassador to Damascus, went even further, remarking acidly, ‘Why are we cosying up to this nasty dictatorship that locks up its own MPs?’ Blair nonetheless was determined that the trip should be a success, and encouraged his officials to portray Assad in a

favourable light, with particular attention being given to boosting the profile of his ‘photogenic wife’.30 Bashar’s arrival in London was the first time a Syrian president had been granted the honour since independence in 1946 and, after talks with Blair at Downing Street, the Syrian couple were driven to Buckingham Palace for their courtesy call with the Queen. It was the week before Christmas, and the streets were filled with festive illuminations as they made the short drive through St James’s Park to the royal residence. The Queen, wearing a pale blue suit and pearls, greeted the couple warmly, remarking, ‘It sounds like you have been having a very busy time since you have been here.’ Bashar, smartly dressed in a dark suit and dark blue tie, replied by joking that it made a change for him to be making a presidential visit compared with his previous experience as a doctor in London, when he had often passed by the Queen’s ‘house’ on his way to work. For her part, the British-born Asma, wearing a cream suit with a pearl belt, expressed her delight at being back home. From Buckingham Palace Bashar then made the short journey to St James’s Palace for a private meeting with Prince Charles.31 Blair’s demand that Asma’s ‘photogenic’ qualities be exploited to the full were taken on board, and much of the publicity surrounding the visit focused on the twenty-seven-year-old first lady of Syria making her first official trip to London since marrying into the Assad clan. She used the occasion to give her first major interview, which appeared in the Observer. Describing Asma as a ‘Syrian icon’, the gushing account of ‘the attractive British-born and educated young merchant banker’ noted that she did not appear to be afraid about the possibility of war taking place in neighbouring Iraq. ‘I think the Middle East has always had this feeling,’ she explained. ‘We are constantly aware of it, and we live in the situation. Am I aware of it specifically? I think it is part of our life. It exists. The question here is how long do we live with that? And how do we ensure we keep moving?’32 While Bashar busied himself talking to British officials, Asma visited an innovative initiative for start-up projects in Camden, north London, run by the Prince’s Trust, remarking that it bore similarities to an organization she had established to improve village communities in Syria.33 For all the Blair government’s attempts to put a positive spin on the Assad visit, his initiative did not attract universal support. Critics of the visit highlighted the Assad regime’s continued backing for Palestinian extremist groups and its

provision of a safe haven for Islamist militants such as Hamas. Assad’s awkward attempts to equate Palestinian terror attacks against Israel with the French Resistance fighting the Nazis during the Second World War did not win him many friends either. Then there was the thorny issue of Syria’s continued military occupation of Lebanon, where Bashar showed little inclination to bow to pressure from Washington and Paris to end Syria’s involvement in the country. Nor did his continued support for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon, which Washington and its allies viewed as a terrorist organization, help his cause. There were also lingering suspicions in Western intelligence circles that Syria, just like Iraq, had a clandestine weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme, which included the development of chemical weapons and a nascent nuclear programme. Bashar had many reasons to worry that, if the US-led coalition succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it would not be long before the influential neoconservative clique within the Bush administration turned their attention towards Damascus. Bashar’s primary consideration during the build-up to the Iraq war, therefore, was to ensure Syria survived once the military campaign to remove Saddam was over. To this end Damascus gave its backing in November to UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which had been drafted jointly by the American and British governments and offered Saddam a final opportunity to comply with the disarmament obligations he had agreed to undertake following Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War. The Syrians even tried to present the vote, which included a strong demand that Iraq agree to allow international inspectors to visit suspected WMD facilities, as a ‘Syrian diplomatic victory’ and claimed their participation in the vote had thwarted Washington’s plans to invade Iraq. In Baghdad, Syria’s support for the resolution was seen as a ‘betrayal’, but it still maintained its lucrative oil-smuggling operation with Damascus. However, Bashar thought it was essential to back the resolution if Syria was to avoid a fate similar to Iraq’s. His gesture, though, made little impression on the Bush administration, which remained wary of Bashar’s intentions and unimpressed by the Assads’ Christmas charm offensive at Buckingham Palace. Bush certainly did not share Blair’s enthusiasm for securing Syrian support and was more interested in putting pressure on Bashar to drop his ties with terrorist groups, an issue that Colin Powell had first raised when he visited Damascus in the spring of 2002. Washington wanted Bashar to rein in Hezbollah’s activities in southern Lebanon, not least because Israel was threatening to attack Hezbollah bases which it deemed a threat to its northern

border. The last thing the Bush administration needed was a new conflict erupting in the Middle East while it was preparing for its own onslaught against Saddam. Powell experienced the deteriorating security situation in the region when a female Hamas suicide bomber blew herself up in Jerusalem, killing six people, on the day he arrived in Israel for talks with Sharon. When Powell arrived in Damascus, he demanded that Bashar make more of an effort to control Hezbollah by taking measures to limit the military assistance Iran was providing to the group. Another key demand was that Bashar shut down the training camps and activities of Palestinian militants operating out of Syria, including the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who had recently set up his headquarters in Damascus. Powell’s visit had a sobering effect on Bashar, who persuaded Hezbollah to halt its attacks against Israel for a few months.34 Bashar’s attempts to maintain a dialogue with the West while retaining his Middle East strongman image achieved some success, not least in avoiding Syria’s inclusion in Bush’s list of countries deemed to form an ‘axis of evil’. This was despite the efforts of US Under Secretary of State John Bolton, a prominent administration hawk who lobbied for Syria, together with Libya and Cuba, to be added to the list of ‘rogue’ states on the grounds they were working on WMD programmes. In a speech to Washington’s Heritage Foundation think tank titled ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil’, Bolton warned that the Assad regime had a chemical warfare programme that included ‘a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin’ while research was being conducted into the ‘more toxic and persistent nerve agent VX’. In addition, Syria was able to produce small amounts of biological warfare agents and had received help from North Korea and Russia in developing missiles that could hit targets in Israel, Turkey and Jordan.35 Bolton’s concerns about Syria’s work on chemical and biological weapons were shared by other key members of the Bush administration in the autumn of 2002. In October further reports surfaced that Syria was working with Russia to develop a nuclear capability, while Powell told Congress about his own anxieties over the regime’s WMD programmes. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell provided a detailed summary of the administration’s assessment of the Assad regime: We are keeping an eye on Syria’s interest in weapons of mass destruction, and we are following the support it is giving to Hezbollah. Its cooperation in the war against terrorism does not mean that we are retracting our criticism of it for supporting terrorist organisations. They assisted us, and

we appreciate it, but this will not prevent us from arguing with and criticising them.36 It was only at the start of 2003, as it became clear the US was determined to invade Iraq, that Bashar began to show his true colours. By now he understood that most Syrians were hostile to the invasion and he calculated that, if it went ahead, there would be an opportunity for him to exploit the backlash. Washington’s insistence on using military force to deal with Saddam had caused a major rift within the Western alliance, with Chirac, having initially indicated that he would support the campaign, withdrawing French support at the last minute. The rift between Paris and Washington was one that played to Bashar’s advantage, as he was on far better terms with Chirac than he was with Bush, whom he had never met. Having maintained a delicate balancing act during the build-up to the Iraq war, Bashar finally made clear his opposition to war in Iraq, which he argued would have a devastating impact on the region, leading to economic devastation and floods of refugees. ‘We are a better judge of this because we live in the region. It is not logical that others should decide that something is or isn’t a problem for the region. I think the bigger problem is that any country should interfere in the internal affairs of another country.’37 He was openly critical of the US, which he insisted was ‘interested only in gaining control over Iraqi oil and redrawing the map of the region in keeping with its world view’. And he compared America to ‘a car speeding towards a concrete wall, but even if the power of an American car will allow it to penetrate a concrete wall, it is liable to discover on the other side of the wall there would be no bed of roses either, but it would lead to an abyss.’38 Bashar’s decision to break ranks with the US over the invasion of Iraq may have boosted his domestic credentials, but it also laid the foundations for a more problematic relationship with Washington, especially after the US-led coalition achieved its objective of removing Saddam from power in April 2003. For all the political controversy the invasion aroused, it had a salutary effect on many of the region’s other autocratic regimes. Iran, fearing that it might be the next target of the Bush administration’s campaign against so-called ‘rogue’ states, quietly stopped work on the clandestine programme it had set up to develop nuclear weapons.39 In Libya, where the regime had consistently denied any involvement in developing nuclear weapons, the Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi readily agreed to respond to an MI6 initiative to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.40

The coalition’s initial success in Iraq meant that Bashar had to tone down his verbal attacks on the US; instead he found himself under pressure to close the border to prevent high-ranking Iraqi officials from seeking refuge in Syria. Bashar’s more conciliatory tone was very much in evidence when Colin Powell made another visit to Syria in May and repeated his demand that Damascus disarm Hezbollah and end Syria’s military presence in Lebanon. Bashar responded by making a commitment to close down the offices of all the Palestinian organizations operating in Damascus. He was simply playing for time, waiting for the moment when the American intervention turned sour. He was following a tactical game, keeping the US at bay while at the same time maintaining his support for the militant groups that were part of his so-called ‘axis of resistance’. By December Bashar was so confident that his plan was working that, during a visit to Athens, he expressed certainty that Syria would not be attacked by the US, claiming, ‘Syria is not Iraq.’41 Even so, by maintaining his close association with organizations like Hezbollah, Bashar was pursuing a policy that would soon place his regime in serious jeopardy.

FIVE

First Blood All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force. George Orwell

The sound of the explosion reverberated through the streets of Beirut, as if the city had been hit by an earthquake. Viewers watching the live debate being televised from Lebanon’s parliament building in the centre of the city could see the lectern begin to shake as the speaker ran for cover. It was Valentine’s Day 2005, and a few minutes earlier Rafic Hariri, the country’s fifty-nine-year-old former prime minister, had left parliament to return to his luxurious home at the Quraitem Palace in West Beirut. Hariri, who preferred to drive himself, was at the wheel of his black S600 Mercedes, part of a six-vehicle motorcade. A few minutes into the journey, the heavily armoured convoy was about to pass the St George Hotel, close to the seafront, when a suicide bomber driving a Mitsubishi flatbed truck packed with explosives pulled alongside, detonating its deadly load. Hariri was blown out of his car by the force of the blast and killed instantly, as were most of the bodyguards accompanying him. Beirut, the glittering port on the shores of the Mediterranean once known as the ‘Paris of the Middle East’, had long become inured to the suicide bomber’s deadly trade, but the strike on Hariri’s convoy was on a scale that far exceeded similar attacks in the city’s recent turbulent past. Whoever planned the attack was taking no chances: the Mitsubishi was loaded with around 2 tons of highgrade military explosive, roughly the same amount that had been used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The force of the blast created a hole 7 metres deep outside the St George Hotel, and the blue Mediterranean sky quickly became filled with a thick cloud of dark smoke marking the spot where the bomb had gone off. Hariri’s protection team, some of whom had served him since 1975, had taken every reasonable precaution against a possible attack. The guards all carried handguns and wore radio earphones connected by a private network. Their bulletproof cars contained automatic rifles, a radio-signal jammer (to counter attacks by remote-controlled devices) and rocket-propelled grenades.1 But none of these measures was sufficient to withstand the force of

the blast, which was such that it proved almost impossible to identify some of the victims. The operation to assassinate Hariri involved a level of sophistication and organization not seen since the darkest days of the Lebanese civil war. As a prominent figure in the murderous world of Lebanese politics, Hariri was an obvious target, which is why he never travelled without an armed escort. Even so, the international team of investigators that arrived in Beirut to examine the events leading up to the bombing were surprised at the enormous effort that had been made to eliminate him. They uncovered evidence that Hariri’s movements had been closely monitored for four months prior to his killing, and on the day of the bombing itself, a network of sixty-three pay-as-you-go mobile phones used in the surveillance operation went dead within moments of the bomb being detonated, never to be activated again. The more the investigators pored over the available evidence, the more the finger of suspicion pointed to one man – Bashar al-Assad. Bashar had spent most of his political life dealing with Lebanon, which is how he first became acquainted with Hariri. From the outset, the two men had clashed over their competing visions for the country. Bashar supported the traditional Baathist view that Syria’s Mediterranean neighbour was not an independent state, but a colonial construct that had been carved from what Damascus termed Greater Syria by the perfidious French. Syria’s military intervention in Lebanon in 1976 was seen by Hafez as a first step towards reuniting these ancient Syrian lands, and the Assad regime had little desire to relinquish control of its Lebanese vassal. Hariri, who had been born into a poor Sunni family in southern Lebanon in 1944, was a proud patriot who sought to restore his country to its pre-civil war glory, which he believed could only be achieved by ending Syrian interference. Despite his humble origins, Hariri was a dynamic self-made businessman who had become extremely wealthy and increasingly powerful. He made his fortune in construction in Saudi Arabia and, as a result, he had developed close ties with that country’s ruling family. With Saudi backing, Hariri returned to Lebanon, intending to rebuild the country after the ravages of the civil war. Initially he was keen to have good relations with the Assad clan and undertook several major building projects on their behalf, including the construction of the Presidential Palace. By 1992 he had won their trust to the extent that Hafez alAssad appointed him prime minister of Lebanon.

The Assad regime, though, remained wary of Hariri, not least because, as a successful Sunni businessman and political activist, he appealed to Syrian Sunnis who were tired of their country’s endemic corruption and bureaucratic incompetence. The distrust increased as Hariri grew close to Jacques Chirac, who believed France’s diplomatic and commercial interests would be better served by a free and independent Lebanon. Bashar’s own dislike of Hariri stemmed from their first meeting in Beirut in 1995, when he felt he had been patronized by the older man. ‘Do not worry yourself about Lebanon,’ Hariri had advised him. ‘Leave things to me.’ On his return to Damascus Bashar complained that Hariri had not treated him with sufficient courtesy, and that he had failed to acknowledge that, as heir apparent, Bashar would one day have responsibility for controlling both Syria and Lebanon. Bashar’s feelings may well have led him to form an alliance with the Iranian-backed militants of Hezbollah, who also had little desire to see a Western-supported, secular-minded politician running the country. Hariri nonetheless managed to maintain cordial relations with the Assad regime and was among a prominent group of Arab dignitaries who attended Hafez’s funeral. Hafez had controlled Lebanon by making sure no single faction became a dominant force in Lebanese politics, and Hariri’s willingness to accommodate Hafez’s influence over the country enabled him to continue his ambitious reconstruction programme, restoring Beirut to its place as the commercial and cultural jewel of the Arab world. When Bashar took control, he showed less interest in maintaining this delicate power balance, with the result that Hezbollah started to become more dominant, especially after Israel completed its military withdrawal from the south of the country shortly before Hafez’s death. This allowed Hezbollah and its Iranian backers to extend their influence further throughout the country. To help consolidate Hezbollah’s power base in Lebanon, the movement formed an unlikely alliance with the proWestern Maronite Christians who had traditionally dominated the Lebanese political scene – one of the original causes of the civil war. Bashar’s insistence on maintaining a pro-Syrian puppet regime in power in Beirut with close ties to Tehran was yet another example of the increasingly anti-Western position he was adopting. He had certainly been flattered by the efforts of Chirac, Blair and Bush to establish better relations with Damascus, with the official visit to London the undoubted highlight. But there was an unmistakable change in Bashar’s attitude after the US-led coalition pressed ahead with its invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 and removed Saddam from

power. Although there was no love lost between the rival Baathist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad, the evident desire of prominent neoconservative ideologues within the Bush administration to achieve regime change in other socalled ‘rogue’ states in the Middle East caused deep consternation within the Syrian leadership, where there were understandable concerns that Damascus could find itself next in the Bush administration’s list of targets. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example, was one of the influential voices in the Bush administration who believed that removing Bashar by force was an option that deserved serious consideration.2 For the moment, though, Washington confined itself to increasing Syria’s isolation, and openly challenging its claim to control Lebanon. In December 2003, Bush signed into law the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which had the twin goals of ending Syria’s military occupation while imposing sanctions against Damascus. Rather than being intimidated, Bashar responded by flying to Tehran for a summit with Iran’s leaders. He promoted an alternative narrative where Syria, Iran and Hamas should cooperate more closely to counter US and Israeli influence in the Middle East. Bashar met with both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s president, Mohammad Khatami, and they had detailed discussions about how best to respond to the American intervention. According to official Syrian minutes of the meetings between the Iranian and Syrian leaders, the two sides agreed to collaborate to ensure the US mission ended in failure. At one point in the conversation, Khamenei told Bashar: ‘We have to make Iraq like hell for the Americans. We have to support everything that makes sure the US fails in its mission in Iraq.’3 Bashar’s summit with the Iranian leadership marked a significant shift in the balance of the relationship between Tehran and Damascus. When Hafez was president, he had tried to keep the ayatollahs at arm’s length and was willing to act against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia if it challenged his authority. ‘Hafez always made sure that Hezbollah was kept in its place, and did not overstep the mark,’ a former British diplomat who served in Damascus observed. ‘If they did, he soon made sure they knew who really was the boss in Lebanon.’4 Bashar, by contrast, was taking the relationship to an entirely new level, one where he would in future struggle to contain Iran’s expansionist ambitions in the Middle East. Soon after the Tehran summit, the regime began driving busloads of Islamic fighters from Damascus across the Syrian border to join the numerous jihadi groups, many of

them funded and equipped by Tehran, waging a deadly terrorist campaign against the Western coalition forces. In 2004 Bashar’s Lebanon policy came under intense scrutiny as the country prepared for a new round of elections. Damascus wanted Emile Lahoud, the former military chief whom the Syrians had installed as Lebanese president in 1998, to extend his term in office, even though this was in violation of the Lebanese constitution, which stipulated he should step down once his six-year term had been completed. Syria was keen on Lahoud remaining in office because he had close ties with Hezbollah. Bashar’s support for Lahoud, though, put him at odds with Hariri, whose own campaign for re-election as prime minister centred on reducing the Iran-backed militia’s involvement in Lebanon’s political affairs; if he was successful, it would diminish Syria’s stake in the country. The dispute was further complicated because Hariri was backed by Bush and Chirac, who had overcome their differences over Iraq and were united in their desire to see Syria withdraw its forces from Lebanon – which would reduce Iranian influence in the region. Bashar, though, was determined to maintain the status quo in Beirut. Keeping a pro-Iranian president in power was a bold power play designed to demonstrate Syrian supremacy in Lebanon, even if it was opposed by a significant proportion of Lebanese voters. Bashar was undeterred, and the ineffectual Lebanese parliament came under pressure from Damascus to approve the constitutional changes needed to extend Lahoud’s term. Hariri’s opposition to Bashar’s plan was a major obstacle. Many Lebanese hoped that, after Israel’s military withdrawal, Syria would follow suit, and an anti-Syrian coalition had formed, drawing together prominent Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim figures who resented Syrian interference. In early August 2004 the growing international campaign for Syrian withdrawal led to the United Nations Security Council adopting Resolution 1559, jointly drafted by Washington and Paris, which required Damascus to remove all its forces from Lebanon. Bashar was furious and suspected that Hariri had used his contacts in Paris and Washington to increase the pressure on Damascus to act. He angrily denounced the resolution, claiming that it was part of a plot to undermine the Syrian regime.5 A few days later Bashar summoned Hariri to a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Normally, such meetings could go on for hours as he

embarked loquaciously on rambling monologues about some aspect of Syrian policy. On this occasion the meeting lasted less than fifteen minutes as Bashar gave Hariri an ultimatum. The meeting began with Hariri reminding Assad that he had previously pledged not to extend Lahoud’s presidential term, to which Bashar replied that there had been a policy shift in Damascus and a decision had already been taken to keep the Lebanese president in post. He added that Lahoud should be viewed as Syria’s personal representative in Lebanon and that ‘opposing him is tantamount to opposing Assad himself’. Hariri tried to protest, but Bashar cut him short: ‘It will be Lahoud.’ And if Hariri and his ally, the veteran Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, tried to stop him, Bashar declared, ‘I will break Lebanon over your head and over Walid Jumblatt’s head. So you had better return to Beirut and arrange the matter on that basis.’6 Hariri, who was no stranger to the ruthless world of Middle East politics, was shocked by Bashar’s bluntness. Jumblatt’s politician father, Kamal, had been murdered by the Assad regime in 1977. Several other prominent Lebanese politicians who opposed Syrian meddling had also been killed over the years, including the charismatic Bashir Gemayel, the Christian president-elect, who was assassinated in 1982. Hariri left Damascus wondering if he would meet a similar fate. Even with influential American and French backers, he was in no position to resist Bashar’s demands. On his return to Beirut he joined with other Lebanese parliamentarians to pass a constitutional amendment extending Lahoud’s presidential term before announcing his own resignation as prime minister, leaving office on 20 October 2004. Bashar had made a bold attempt to assert his authority over a major political rival and won, even if subsequent events would undermine his achievement. The investigation into Hariri’s murder instigated by the UN found that the surveillance operation that resulted in his murder had begun the moment he left office. Without the protection he had received from the state security apparatus as prime minister, he became an easier target. Furthermore, Hariri’s declaration that he intended to pursue his political ambitions meant he remained a threat to Bashar’s plan to maintain the ‘Pax Syriana’ over Lebanon. Prior to the assassination, Lebanese security officials were so alarmed by the sudden upsurge in communications traffic between Damascus and Hezbollah that the country’s intelligence chief cancelled a planned visit to London. ‘There was a lot of signals intelligence coming from Damascus suggesting the Syrians were about to do

something,’ a senior Lebanese security official recalled. ‘But we never thought they would go so far as to kill Hariri.’7 The Syrians vehemently denied any involvement in Hariri’s murder, but the Assads’ collusion was inadvertently revealed when the UN published its initial report, conducted by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. A technical glitch meant that portions of the Mehlis Report that were supposed to have been redacted made their way into the public domain, with deeply embarrassing consequences for Bashar. The unredacted version (which no longer appears anywhere on the UN’s official website) of Mehlis’s findings explicitly stated that the group responsible for murdering Hariri included Bashar’s younger brother Maher and his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, who ran military intelligence. Citing the evidence of a former Syrian intelligence official, it stated that approximately two weeks after the UN adopted Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Maher and Shawkat, together with other senior Syrian security officials, ‘decided to assassinate Rafic Hariri’. Maher and Shawkat had clearly patched up their differences since the heated altercation in 1999 that had resulted in Maher drawing his gun and shooting Shawkat. Now they were involved in a joint enterprise to murder one of Lebanon’s most accomplished political operators, one who wanted to end the Assad family’s malevolent interference in his country’s affairs. The Mehlis Report further states that the group met several times in Syria to plot the crime, including at the Presidential Palace, with the last meeting taking place just ten days before the explosion. A high-ranking Syrian official is quoted as describing Hariri as a ‘big problem’ for Syria, predicting that there would soon be an ‘earthquake’ that would rewrite the history of Lebanon. Another key finding was that the Mitsubishi truck carrying the bomb that killed Hariri had travelled from the Hammana military base in Syria to Beirut on the day of the explosion.8 There was certainly little doubt within Western intelligence circles that the Assads had murdered Hariri. One hour after the explosion intelligence officials intercepted a phone call Maher made to the Presidential Palace to tell his brother the assassination had been carried out.9 Syria’s security forces were also suspected of conducting an intimidation campaign against publicly named witnesses who provided statements to the UN inquiry. Two key witnesses retracted their statements soon after the UN report was published, while a third died in a suspicious car crash.10 Under pressure from Damascus, the disobliging references to the Assad clan in the leaked version of the report were quickly removed. But the damage had been done, and

Bashar’s insistence that he had no involvement in the murder increasingly fell on deaf ears. A subsequent UN-sponsored investigation conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, a deputy police commissioner of Ireland, found that the government of Syria ‘bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the assassination’. It said Syria’s interference in Lebanon was ‘heavy-handed and inflexible’ which, combined with inept Lebanese security, was responsible for ‘political polarization’ that ‘provided the backdrop’ for the assassination.11 Hezbollah was particularly keen to distance itself from the report’s findings, even trying to blame the killing on the al-Qaeda terrorist network. A video claiming to show an al-Qaeda suicide bomber admitting responsibility was shown on a Hezbollah-run television station in Lebanon, although it later transpired he had nothing to do with the attack. The family of the alleged suspect pointed out that he could not even ride a bicycle, let alone drive a truck laden with explosives into a fast-moving security convoy.12 It was several years before the full extent of Hezbollah’s involvement in the killing was laid bare as a result of the detailed investigation conducted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, set up by the UN to conduct a more thorough inquiry. In 2011 tribunal prosecutors filed indictments against four Hezbollah members for their involvement in the killing, adding a fifth member in 2013. Even though the special tribunal spent many years investigating the killing at a cost of more than $1 billion, there was widespread dissatisfaction over its failure to make any judgement as to who organized the assassination and why. According to a British official who was involved with the investigation, the tribunal essentially dodged the question of who was ultimately responsible for the murder. The investigators preferred to concentrate on the big data issues around the bombing, such as who was using the mobile phones, rather than focusing on who arranged the killing in the first place. Political pressure was brought to bear on the tribunal from countries like Iran to ensure it avoided making judgements on these key issues. Many people who were well acquainted with the detail believed it was utterly shameful the tribunal did not blame the Assad regime directly for the killing.13 One of the key issues left unresolved was whether Hezbollah had carried out the murder on behalf of Iran or Syria – or both. The Iranian-backed militia wanted to extend its political grip over Lebanon, so had good reason for wanting Hariri

dead, as he was by far the most effective opponent of the movement’s campaign to dominate Lebanon’s political system. The Iranian regime, too, saw Hariri as a threat to its influence in the region. The murder also raised intriguing questions about just how much control Bashar exercised over the powerful Baath Party stalwarts who still exerted great influence in both Syria and Lebanon. There were suggestions that the killing had been organized by Baath Party loyalists – including his own brother – without Bashar’s knowledge, as they did not believe he had the resolve to deal with Hariri. Baath Party loyalists were constantly blamed for frustrating Bashar’s ambitious reform agenda – it was one of the complaints Bashar had raised during his private meeting with Blair in 2001 – and the possibility that they had taken matters into their own hands to secure Syria’s stranglehold over Lebanon could not be discounted. Another intriguing twist in the saga came in October 2005 with the death of a high-ranking Syrian official responsible for overseeing security in Lebanon. Major General Ghazi Kanaan was a charismatic Syrian intelligence officer who had risen through the ranks to make Lebanon his personal fiefdom. Kanaan was born close to the Assads’ home village of Qurdaha, and his influence extended far beyond the normal activities of state security. Apart from assisting Hezbollah to consolidate its hold over southern Lebanon, he was credited with helping Syria to extend its influence on the country’s political institutions by ensuring pro-Syrian parties dominated the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Lebanese elections. During the civil war in the 1980s, when he was head of military intelligence, he would occasionally meet with Western journalists and appeared friendly and affable, displaying an impressive knowledge of the factional rivalries that dominated the conflict. Kanaan’s death in highly suspicious circumstances just a few months after Hariri’s murder inevitably raised questions about his own personal involvement in the killing, as well as that of the Assad regime. The official Syrian version stated that he died from a single gunshot wound to the head, suggesting that he had killed himself. But the timing of his death, just days after he had given a statement to UN investigators, suggested otherwise, and rumours abounded in Damascus that he had been killed by not one, but three, bullets to the head, an unlikely feat for someone committing suicide.14 Kanaan himself had been concerned that his life might be in danger after giving evidence to the UN tribunal. Afterwards he told the Voice of Lebanon radio station, ‘I think this is the last statement I might give.’15 Prior to Kanaan’s death, Bashar had appointed him interior minister, and he was one of several senior Syrian officials subjected

to US sanctions in the wake of the Hariri killing. His close links to both Hezbollah and Bashar made him a person of great interest for the UN investigators, and his demise certainly made the task of identifying the perpetrators a great deal harder. There was little doubt among his family and friends in the Alawite community that Kanaan had been killed by the Syrian state. At his funeral, fellow members of his Alawite clan cried, much to the embarrassment of onlooking members of the Assad family, ‘Why did you kill him?’16 If the aim of murdering Hariri was to secure the Assad regime’s grip over Lebanon, it failed miserably. The killing proved to be a classic case of not understanding that actions have consequences. Bashar’s determination to be his own man, to set himself apart from his father and brother, was leading him to make some very questionable decisions, especially his deepening association with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. For all the denials issued by Damascus and Hezbollah that they were not to blame, they gained little credence. To the outside world, the fact that Damascus made no official offer of condolences to Hariri’s family confirmed their suspicions. The pressure from the UN and France for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon gathered momentum. Bashar’s insistence on foisting the unpopular Lahoud on the Lebanese public succeeded in uniting many Lebanese communities in opposition to his appointment, while resentment at Hezbollah’s persistent meddling in Lebanese affairs increased the organization’s unpopularity. Soon, there were waves of demonstrations across Beirut as the movement that became known as the Cedar Revolution took hold. Given Lebanon’s violent recent past, the protests were notable for their peaceful approach and their reliance on civil disobedience. Washington and Paris added to the pressure on Damascus by withdrawing their ambassadors, while the European Union suspended its efforts to improve trade ties. The deepening chasm between Damascus and the West led the Bush administration to begin exploring ways of actively funding the Syrian opposition. Before long Lebanon had become ungovernable, and Bashar had no option but to bow to the inevitable and order the withdrawal of Syrian forces, which was completed on 27 April 2005, a few weeks after Hariri’s assassination. Some 14,000 Syrian troops and intelligence officers returned home, ending Syria’s three-decade occupation. It was a humiliating setback for Bashar, who had tried,

and failed, to safeguard his father’s legacy. No amount of spin by the statecontrolled propaganda outlets could conceal the bitter truth that Bashar had gambled heavily on retaining control of Lebanon, and lost. The loss of Lebanon was a perilous moment for Bashar’s presidency. For the first time he found his leadership openly questioned by die-hard Baathist supporters who doubted whether he was up to the job. He faced accusations of bad judgement, and of being headstrong and impetuous in his dealings with Hariri. Even if, as his allies still insisted, he had not been directly responsible for the murder, the fact it had happened on his watch raised concerns about his ability to restrain the Baathist old guard. If he could not control them on such a key issue as Lebanon, what chance did he have of establishing his command over Syria? It was all very well complaining, as he had to Blair, that his reform agenda was being stymied by the old guard, but if he still was unable to exert his authority after five years in power, how could he hope to do so in the future? The first indication that Bashar’s leadership might be in serious trouble came later that summer with the resignation of Abdul Halim Khaddam, the country’s long-serving vice president and prominent member of the Baathist old guard. Among his other duties, Khaddam had been responsible for the Lebanon brief before he was replaced by Bashar, and he announced his resignation at a Baath Party conference, openly criticizing the regime’s many blunders, especially in Lebanon. Khaddam had been close to Hariri and had made a sizeable fortune from joint business ventures in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Fearing assassination, he fled into exile in Paris with his family, where he became a prominent critic of Bashar’s regime and a rallying point for various Syrian opposition groups. There were even suggestions that he was cooperating with the American and British intelligence services to remove Bashar from power. The Syrian parliament responded by voting to bring treason charges against him, but the defection of such a prominent figure, who had served as a key Hafez loyalist, was nonetheless a serious blow to Bashar’s prestige. At the same time the civil society movements that had been suppressed at the start of his presidency began to re-emerge. Campaigners for constitutional reform joined forces with human rights activists to formulate a programme known as the Damascus Declaration. Issued in October 2005, the five-page document was signed by 250 prominent Syrian opposition figures, many of whom had been participants in the Damascus Spring, and denounced the Assad

dynasty as ‘authoritarian, totalitarian and cliquish’. The regime responded in customary fashion by rounding up and jailing the most notable signatories for two and a half years. But the re-emergence of the reform movement demonstrated that the desire for political change in Syria had not abated. Bashar’s difficulties in Lebanon were compounded when Saad Hariri, the former premier’s son, became the leader of a coalition of anti-Syrian parties known as March 14. The group played a leading role in the Cedar Revolution with the campaign slogan, ‘Freedom, Sovereignty, Independence’. Hezbollah responded by creating a rival movement called March 8, and mobilized hundreds of thousands of its supporters to take to the streets of Beirut to proclaim their support for Syria. The formation of these opposing factions reflected the country’s deep political schism between the Shia supporters of Hezbollah and the rest of the country. Hezbollah wanted to lay the ground for Syria to renew its role in Lebanon, but it suffered a setback when elections were held in June, and Hariri’s anti-Syrian bloc emerged victorious, winning 72 of the 128 seats in the National Assembly. Two years later, when Emile Lahoud, Bashar’s preferred choice for president, was forced from office, Assad’s Lebanon humiliation was complete. With Syria increasingly regarded as a pariah state by the likes of the US, France and Britain, regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, which had previously adopted a benign attitude towards Bashar, toughened their stance. The Saudi royal family, many of whom had been friends with Rafic Hariri, were outraged by his murder and distanced themselves from Syria’s headstrong young leader. The evident strain between Damascus and Riyadh was a serious matter for Bashar. The Saudis had bankrolled the Syrian regime for decades and maintained good relations with the Assad administration. They had even paid for the construction of the new Presidential Palace that had been built by Hariri in the 1980s as part of his charm offensive to ingratiate himself with the Assad clan. As one former regime official explained, ‘The Saudis paid for it, and Hariri built it.’ The location of the 31,500-square-metre structure on Mount Mezzeh was especially appealing to the Assad clan as it was only accessible by a single road, making it more of a fortress than a residential complex, especially as it was surrounded by units of the ever-watchful Republican Guard. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia dispatched a delegation of senior Saudi officials to Damascus to remonstrate with Bashar about his conduct, but they found him in no mood for compromise. ‘He was very defensive,’ recalled a senior member of the Saudi delegation. ‘He seemed to be very withdrawn. He

swore that he had nothing to do with killing Hariri, but said he would not be surprised if the security system knew who was responsible. He promised to conduct a full investigation.’ The Saudis were unconvinced by Bashar’s denials, and insisted that he bring those responsible to justice. They were angered when the Syrian leader offered to cooperate, but only on condition that Maher was not treated as a suspect. ‘Ok, I agree to the inquiry, but it must not involve my brother,’17 he told the Saudis. From Bashar’s perspective, it was a matter of honour that the Assad family was not implicated in any way. Arab diplomats visiting Damascus during this period were concerned by the stories they heard from their Syrian counterparts about Bashar’s increasingly erratic behaviour. Prior to his defection, Khaddam was particularly critical of Bashar’s conduct. ‘He is like a bull in a china shop,’ Khaddam complained to a visiting Arab diplomat. ‘He may have a lot of power, but he is getting careless in the way he behaves, and that is starting to become very dangerous.’ Another official suggested that Bashar might be suffering from an inferiority complex and that, try as he might, he struggled to overcome the shadow of his father and brother: ‘It was as if the first question he asks himself in the morning is “What would Bassel do? What would my father do?”’ Bashar’s unpredictable nature made it difficult to deal with him because it was unclear whether he was the great reformer he claimed to be, or just another Baathist autocrat who had no real intention of allowing his people more freedom. ‘The problem became one of credibility because no one could believe him. He would say one thing, and then do another.’18 In autumn 2005, Bashar’s presidency had reached its lowest ebb, with widespread speculation both at home and abroad that he would not survive in office for much longer. But instead of addressing the concerns of his critics, Bashar doubled down on his ties with Iran and Hezbollah, a move that further alienated his regime from the West and Syria’s allies in the region. By the summer of 2005 the fortunes of the US-led coalition in neighbouring Iraq had taken a turn for the worse, to the extent that the military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein had degenerated into a vicious fight against the numerous Iraqi insurgent groups who had taken up arms against their Western occupiers. Foremost among them were the Islamist fighters who had travelled to Iraq from all over the Muslim world for the opportunity to fight against the Americans and their allies.

Damascus became the main clearing house for jihadi fighters travelling to Iraq, and the regime established an efficient bureaucratic system for processing them. On arrival at Damascus airport the militants were escorted to safe houses on the outskirts of the city, where their identities and affiliations were checked. Basic military training was arranged for those with no fighting experience, and instruction was provided in elementary terrorist techniques, such as making improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They were then taken to the Syrian border in buses run by a Syrian transportation company that had been established specifically for this purpose. Among those making the crossing were al-Qaeda militants. The US coalition responded by targeting the jihadists’ much-travelled route through the Euphrates Valley from Syria to Iraq. Under ‘Operation Steel Curtain’, US and British special forces began singling out known hotspots of insurgent activity, such as the town of Qaim, located just two miles from the Syrian border, as well as the city of Tal Afar. Some Western estimates suggested that up to 20,000 fighters travelled from Syria to fight in Iraq, while senior US commanders reported that as many as 70 per cent of the foreign fighters entering Iraq in any one month had travelled through Syria.19 The Assad regime’s deepening involvement in the Iraq conflict certainly contributed to the rapid increase in coalition casualties, making the task of restoring stability to the country even more difficult. ‘We were under fire from all sides,’ recalled a senior coalition commander. ‘We were under constant attack from Iranian-backed militias in the south, and from the significant numbers of jihadi fighters travelling into Iraq from Syria. We felt we were being besieged on all sides. If Bashar al-Assad’s aim was to work with Iran to defeat coalition forces in Iraq, he did a great job.’20 Bashar’s support for Islamist militant groups was not without risk to his own regime. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Damascus had helped the US with its extensive knowledge of Islamist groups, gleaned from its longrunning confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria’s cooperation was credited with securing the capture of several prominent al-Qaeda figures, including Mohammed Haydar Zammar, the recruiter of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, and Mamoun Darkazanli, Osama bin Laden’s ‘financier in Europe’.21 Syria’s willingness to cooperate with the US waned after the invasion of Iraq when US forces were involved in clashes with the Syrians as they tried to capture key figures in the former Iraqi Baathist regime. In one incident in June 2003, five Syrian soldiers were wounded in a firefight with American special forces pursuing an Iraqi convoy they believed was carrying Saddam Hussein.22

By providing support for groups like al-Qaeda, Bashar was risking the security of his own regime. Al-Qaeda’s leadership were not well disposed to the Baathists; they denounced Bashar’s administration as ‘one of the most tyrannical regimes against anything connected with Islam’.23 Syria soon found itself under attack as al-Qaeda tried to open a new front in Syria and the wider Levant. In April 2004 the diplomatic quarter in Damascus was targeted, leaving four people dead. Islamist militants conducted what was potentially a far more serious operation in September 2006, when they targeted the US Embassy in Damascus. Four gunmen stormed the embassy compound with grenades and automatic weapons before being repelled by the Syrian security forces. Three gunmen and one Syrian security guard were killed in the shoot-out, which foiled attempts by the assailants to detonate a vehicle packed with a home-made fertilizer bomb, similar to the device that had destroyed the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and which would have caused a similar death toll.24 For Bashar, the worst aspect of the attack was that his security forces, which prided themselves on their monitoring of jihadi groups, were caught off-guard. Responsibility for it was claimed by Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant), an al-Qaeda offshoot, a group the Syrian authorities knew little about. According to Sir John Jenkins, the British ambassador to Syria at the time, The attackers were operating under the radar of the Syrian security services. We knew that the regime was helping to transit jihadists to Iraq from a special holding area at Damascus airport, and we warned Bashar al-Assad’s regime that their involvement would come back to haunt them in Syria. Soon afterwards, the attack on the US Embassy took place. They had a very lucky escape.25 Allowing jihadi groups to operate on Syrian soil was to have profound implications for the survival of the Assad regime, as they later turned their attention to attacking the Syrian state. Bashar’s tolerant policy towards the jihadists also attracted the ire of American Republicans, who believed he bore responsibility for American soldiers being killed in Iraq. They made their feelings clear to Assad’s American biographer David Lesch in March 2006 when he gave a talk arguing that Washington should establish a dialogue with the Syrian leader. When Lesch finished speaking, an aide working for Vice President Dick Cheney took issue with him. Waving his finger in Lesch’s face, the aide yelled, ‘Those sons of bitches are killing our boys in Iraq.’26 These

sentiments were, by all accounts, shared by President Bush himself who, during a meeting with a high-level group of Arab diplomats to discuss the Iraq conflict, refused their entreaties to deal with Assad, declaring, ‘This guy is such an asshole.’27 Bashar’s willingness to take risks was not confined to government policy. Despite his high-profile marriage to Asma, he acquired a reputation for being a ladies’ man, and rumours abounded in Damascus of his frequent infidelities. One of the more scurrilous rumours suggested that he had a German mistress, and made frequent trips abroad to see her. As a security precaution, he gave the woman a special mobile phone she could use to call him at the Presidential Palace whenever she needed to talk to him. Eventually the CIA learned about the affair and, with the help of German intelligence, tracked down Bashar’s mistress. When they threatened to expose her affair, the woman agreed to hand over the phone details, thereby allowing them direct access to Bashar’s inner sanctum in Damascus. Before long, they had gained access to Bashar’s personal computer, where they found that, instead of attending to important affairs of state, the Syrian president spent a considerable portion of his working day surfing a variety of pornographic websites.28 Just when it seemed Bashar’s prospects were at their nadir, a reprieve, of sorts, materialized when hostilities unexpectedly erupted between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon. The fighting broke out after Hezbollah became involved in a shootout with Israeli forces close to Israel’s northern border, during which several Israeli soldiers were killed and two taken captive. Hezbollah was accused of deliberately provoking the clash to rebuild its image after the decline in political fortunes it had suffered in the wake of the Hariri killing: a military confrontation with Israel was always guaranteed to raise its standing. If this was the case, then Hezbollah’s leadership badly misjudged the Israelis, who responded by launching a major military offensive against the militia’s positions throughout Lebanon. For a three-week period in the summer of 2006, Israel and Hezbollah were involved in the most intensive fighting witnessed in Lebanon since the Israeli invasion of 1982. When the fighting ended in mid-August, the short-lived conflict had claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese and 165 Israelis. While neither side could claim to have won, Hezbollah believed it had won a moral victory because it had taken on a much more powerful adversary and fought the Israelis to a standstill.

Syria’s involvement in the conflict was peripheral, mainly safeguarding Iran’s supply lines to Hezbollah’s front line. Many of the 4,000 medium- and longrange missiles that were fired at Israel were transferred to Hezbollah through Syria, although Bashar took care that Syrian forces did not take part in a confrontation with Israel. It was estimated Syria had helped to supply 20,000 rockets to the militia; Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, praised the significant assistance Bashar’s arms supplies had made to Hezbollah’s war effort. Nasrallah thanked Bashar for his contribution and for appointing a highranking Syrian general with close links to senior commanders in Iran and Hezbollah to make sure the militia received a steady stream of supplies.29 Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the Israeli assault was hailed as a major triumph throughout the Arab world, and Bashar basked in the reflected glory of having played his part in supporting his Lebanese ally. A few days after a UN Security Council ceasefire brought the fighting to an end, Bashar gave a speech at the Syrian Journalists’ Union hoping to capitalize on his newfound popularity. As well as reaffirming his support for Hezbollah, he set out his vision for the Arab world, one that would be defined by Arab resistance, a weakened Israel, and renewed regional unity against Western hegemony. He also took issue with those Arab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that had criticized Hezbollah for provoking the conflict with Israel in the first place. Bashar denounced the ‘supposed Arab sages’ as ‘half men’ for not supporting Hezbollah in its hour of need.30 His comments provoked uproar among pro-Western Arab governments – especially the Saudi royal family, which was still seething over the Hariri assassination. They took Bashar’s comments as a personal insult, one they would not easily forgive. Despite these injudicious remarks, the 2006 Lebanon war helped to revive Bashar’s political fortunes, so that the fallout from the Hariri affair gradually began to recede. When a national referendum was held the following year on Bashar’s reappointment to serve a second presidential term, he won with the customary 99 per cent of the vote without encountering any obvious opposition from within the Baath Party hierarchy. His political rehabilitation came as a welcome relief, but it would not be long before his idiosyncratic behaviour plunged his country into yet another crisis of his own making.

SIX

Into the Abyss In the desperate hand-to-hand struggle for life, there is no element of nobility. Gertrude Bell

The Assad family looked forward to the spring of 2011 with great anticipation, hoping it would be the moment they completed their rehabilitation on the world stage. As part of a carefully calibrated campaign to rebrand their image, the Presidential Palace had arranged for Asma to do a high-profile interview with American Vogue. Previously, Asma’s engagement with the foreign media had been a low-key affair, where her contribution was essentially to promote the decent family values of her husband. In a patriarchal Arab society like Syria, women were supposed to know their place, fulfilling the traditional role of mother and homemaker. The fact that Asma was highly educated and had enjoyed her own, albeit brief, career as a City banker cut little ice in the conservative world of Damascene society. For most of Bashar’s first decade in power she had concentrated on raising her three children, who had been born in quick succession. Their son, Hafez – named after his grandfather – was born in 2001, followed by their daughter Zein in 2003 and their second son Karim in 2004. For the latter half of the decade, her domestic duties had limited Asma’s opportunities for self-promotion. Asma’s appearance on the front cover of one of the world’s most iconic magazines represented an astounding boost for the profile of Syria’s first lady as well as the dynasty she had married into. At thirty-five, she was in her prime, and the magazine made the most of her glamorous appearance, depicting her looking windswept in a red silk shawl against the backdrop of the ancient Damascus skyline. Titled ‘A Rose in the Desert’, and published in the February 2011 issue, the article was headed by a photograph of the Syrian dictator’s wife in a similar setting to the indefatigable British explorer Gertrude Bell. The author described the Assads as a ‘wildly democratic’, family-focused couple who took their vacations in Europe, fostered Christianity, were at ease with American celebrities, and whose only ambition was to make their beloved country ‘the safest in the Middle East’. The magazine’s 12 million American

readers learned that Asma was born and raised in Britain, that her parents were Syrians living and working in London and that she had built her own career in banking and dressed in the latest designer fashions. ‘Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,’ it read.1 For the Assads, the article was the culmination of a carefully calibrated public relations campaign designed to rehabilitate their image in the aftermath of Hariri’s murder. The process was set in train soon after the 2006 Lebanon war, when serious efforts were made to improve relations between Damascus and the West. Even though Syria had not been directly involved in the brief conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006, Syria remained an important player in any initiative to revive the stalled Arab–Israeli peace talks. After the Iraq war, President Bush, encouraged by Tony Blair, had launched the Roadmap for Peace, another iteration of the negotiating process that had led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. Syria, despite Bashar’s close association with Iran and the ‘axis of resistance’, was still viewed as having an important contribution to make to any future peace settlement. From the autumn of 2006 onwards, Western politicians and diplomats made frequent visits to Damascus to assess the regime’s potential interest in a new deal. Lines of communication between Damascus and Western capitals were maintained despite Syria’s alliance with Iran and militant groups like Hezbollah, in the hope that the regime might be persuaded to change tack. In late October 2006 Blair launched what was supposed to be a secret diplomatic initiative to persuade Bashar to drop his support for these radical groups. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Downing Street’s foreign policy adviser, was sent to Damascus to meet with Bashar. Sheinwald’s visit had three main objectives: to persuade Damascus to end its interference in Iraq, to encourage the Syrians to reduce their interference in Lebanon, and for Syria to adopt a more positive attitude towards Israel and the peace process. On his first morning in Damascus Sheinwald had a long meeting with Bashar before going to lunch with senior members of the Syrian regime. They took him to a restaurant where it just so happened that the highly experienced Russian diplomat Yevgeny Primakov, a veteran of many Middle East crises, was also dining. It was the Syrians’ clumsy way of demonstrating that they were not short of diplomatic suitors. After lunch Sheinwald returned to the Presidential Palace, where he had a further lengthy face-to-face meeting with the Syrian leader. ‘It began with the

president giving me a long diatribe on the iniquities of American and British policy in the region,’ Sheinwald recalled. My task was to try to persuade him that the policies he was pursuing were not in Syria’s best interests. One of our main arguments was that his own security situation would be in jeopardy if he continued associating with these extremist groups, and that he would end up being a hostage to fortune in the long term. His room for manoeuvre was limited because our view was that he was beholden to his intelligence agencies. There was, however, some progress on the Iraq issue: ‘After the meeting they did change their attitude on Iraq,’ Sheinwald said.2 But on Lebanon and Israel there was no movement whatsoever. Bashar made it clear he regarded Lebanon as being a core interest for Syria, and he remained committed to supporting extremist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas in their campaign against Israel. ‘I did not expect much in terms of a return, but it was worth a try,’ said Sheinwald. British efforts to keep the visit under wraps were completely undermined when the Syrian authorities leaked details of the initiative in a deliberate attempt to embarrass the Blair government.3 There were, though, some indications that Sheinwald’s trip had resulted in a thaw. When, the following year, Iran captured fifteen Royal Navy personnel operating in the Gulf, Damascus made representations to Tehran on Britain’s behalf to secure their release unharmed.4 As relations with Damascus continued to improve after the Sheinwald initiative, Asma and her family played their part in advocating the Syrian cause. Fawaz al-Akhras, the first lady’s father, certainly proved helpful in boosting Syria’s image by drawing on his close ties with the Assad clan to advance their cause in influential British political circles. A consultant cardiologist at one of London’s leading private hospitals, Akhras was a founding member of the British Syrian Society which was set up in 2003 to promote ties between the two countries. The organization proved to be particularly useful for Bashar as he sought to improve his standing in Western capitals. As part of his lobbying efforts, Akhras arranged a number of high-level visits to Damascus by British MPs. In May 2007 the society arranged for a group of MPs led by Jeremy Hunt, then a rising star in the Conservative Party, to travel to Damascus, where they were personally entertained by the Syrian leader.5 Nor was the charm offensive confined to Britain. Syria’s rehabilitation in the Arab world was marked by Damascus hosting the Arab League summit in March

2008. France was another European power that, after some initial hesitation, was keen to be on a more amicable footing with Syria. The departure of Jacques Chirac, who had never forgiven Bashar for the Hariri murder, from the Elysée Palace made the task of repairing relations between Paris and Damascus much easier, and the Assads found themselves once more being feted in Paris in July as guests of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with Bashar the guest of honour at a Bastille Day parade. The invitation was an attempt by Sarkozy to improve relations between Syria and Israel, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was also among the invitees. But Bashar spent the ceremony studiously avoiding Olmert’s company, even though the Israeli leader was sitting only a few seats away on the dais. Bashar was embarrassed by another incident during the celebrations, when, as part of the parade, graduates of France’s elite St-Cyr military academy decided to name their graduating class in memory of a French lieutenant who had been killed in a Hezbollah terrorist attack in Beirut in 1983.6 The jewel in the crown, though, so far as Bashar’s efforts at international rehabilitation were concerned, would be to re-establish a dialogue with the US. The Bush administration had regarded the Syrian leader with caution, even when he was cooperating with Washington after 9/11. Their suspicions had been confirmed when Bashar opened Syria’s borders to allow Islamist militants to travel to Iraq to attack coalition forces. The regime’s continued association with organizations like Hezbollah was another issue, as they were designated terrorists by Washington. The constant flow of Islamist militants across the Syrian border was especially concerning for the US, as they were a significant factor in the heavy casualties coalition forces were suffering in Iraq. When the Bush administration launched its so-called ‘surge’ military strategy in early 2007 to defeat the militants, the number of militants crossing into Iraq had risen to around 110 every month. They were drawn from all over the region – North Africa, the Gulf, Jordan and Lebanon – and primarily owed their allegiance to al-Qaeda, an indication of how far Bashar’s loyalties had shifted since the start of the Iraq conflict. US military officials responsible for mounting the surge concluded that Syria was the biggest conduit for transporting militants into Iraq, and that they were responsible for well over half of the suicide attacks carried out against coalition troops. General David Petraeus, the commander of the strategy in Iraq, was under no illusions about Bashar’s involvement in supporting the efforts of militant Islamists to cross the Syrian border and attack coalition forces. ‘Although Bashar al-Assad did not directly control it, he clearly had approved it,’ he explained.7

Although Bashar had sanctioned the creation of the militants’ ‘rat lines’ into Iraq along the Euphrates Valley, he remained keen to open a dialogue with the Americans. After his arrival in Iraq, Petraeus started to receive overtures from senior Syrian officials to see whether he might be interested in travelling to Damascus for a face-to-face meeting with their president. ‘Frankly, I was very interested in going there to have a meeting with alAssad,’ said Petraeus, because I wanted to convey to him that he was making a massive mistake by allowing Islamist extremists to transit Syria into Iraq, where many of them were blowing themselves up in attacks on US, Coalition, and Iraqi forces, as well as innocent Iraqi civilians. I wanted to say to him, ‘You know, Mr President, you are allowing poisonous snakes to have a nest in your backyard with the understanding that they will only bite your neighbours’ kids; however, sooner or later, they’re going to turn around and bite your kids and your regime.’8 In the event, the meeting did not take place because the Bush administration wanted first to engage at a lower level with the Syrian regime to explore whether it was serious about having a constructive dialogue with Washington. ‘It was only in the final months of the Bush administration that they felt comfortable having me do such a meeting, and by that time it was just too late,’ General Petraeus recalled regretfully, although he was sceptical that he could have persuaded Bashar to change tack: I must confess that, being realistic, I doubt that sort of engagement would actually have prompted him to stop those who were operating on Syrian soil, who were essentially receiving, and then moving, militants into Iraq who would then blow themselves up in an attempt to continue the violence that was being carried out by al-Qaeda. Beyond that, frankly, we had by then been able to reduce the flow of suicide bombers by some 90 per cent during the course of the Surge by a very comprehensive campaign that targeted every element of the process by which a potential suicide bomber was recruited, travelled to Syria, was received, and was moved to Iraq.9 In February 2008, Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, was killed in central Damascus by a car bomb planted by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in conjunction with the CIA. Mughniyeh had been one of the FBI’s

most-wanted men for more than two decades for organizing the 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut which had killed more than 300 American and French military personnel. He had evaded detection, mainly because he was living under the protection of the Syrian mukhabarat and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. A key facilitator of Hezbollah’s military expansion in southern Lebanon, Mughniyeh had been a constant visitor to the Syrian Presidential Palace, where he met with Bashar to discuss the latest Lebanese developments. He also oversaw Hezbollah’s relations with Iran, travelling frequently from Damascus to Tehran, working closely with Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which had responsibility for Iran’s overseas military operations. As head of the Quds Force, Soleimani was personally responsible for implementing Iran’s ambitious expansion programme in the region. In this context Syria and Lebanon were seen as vital allies, especially as both countries bordered Israel, which the ayatollahs regarded as their main adversary. Soleimani, who came from a poor farming family in south-east Iran, was a close confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to the extent that many other senior members of the Iranian regime, such as the country’s longserving foreign minister, Mohammad Zarif, were often kept in the dark about the activities Khamenei had authorized the Quds Force to implement. Soleimani first rose to prominence in the Revolutionary Guard during the Iran–Iraq war, where he earned a reputation for bravery. Later, he became a protégé of Khamenei’s and was appointed head of the Quds Force in the late 1990s, when he first began working with Mughniyeh on consolidating Hezbollah’s military strength. He spent much of the 2006 Hezbollah–Israel war in southern Lebanon, coordinating weapons supplies for the militia with Mughniyeh. A charismatic commander who took a close interest in his media profile, Soleimani first came to the attention of coalition commanders in Iraq when he controlled the Iranian militias conducting deadly attacks on coalition forces in southern Iraq. At one point in the conflict Soleimani’s position was so dominant that he sent a message to General Petraeus, the commander of the coalition forces, to the effect that, ‘If you want to deal with someone in Iran, you deal with me.’10 On another occasion a team of British special forces prepared an operation to assassinate Soleimani after intelligence officials confirmed he was orchestrating deadly attacks against British troops, but the operation was eventually called off on Petraeus’s orders. Soleimani met with Mughniyeh in Damascus on the day he was killed; the Mossad team sent to kill the Hezbollah leader, who were using a drone to

monitor his movements, briefly discussed whether they should kill the Iranian general at the same time. But after consultations with the CIA, which was also involved in the operation, the decision was taken to let Soleimani live. Mughniyeh’s main residence was a mukhabarat safe house located just behind the Iranian Embassy in central Damascus, from where he coordinated contacts between Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah security officials. After his meeting with Soleimani, Mughniyeh went to see his Lebanese mistress, who lived in a flat in the neighbourhood, having parked his car in a nearby mukhabarat car park. When he returned to the car, a bomb fitted into the driver’s headrest was detonated remotely by the Mossad team, killing him instantly.11 Mughniyeh’s killing stunned the Assad regime and prompted an unedifying blame game between the rival security services about how the attack could have taken place. Iran, too, was concerned about the loss of its key Hezbollah ally, and Khamenei ordered Soleimani to carry out his own investigation. There were suspicions that the assassins might have received assistance from disaffected Syrian security officers who resented Mughniyeh’s – and Iran’s – growing influence over the Assad clan. There was particular concern that the killing had happened so close to the heart of Syria’s security establishment, although later reports in the US revealed that the CIA and Mossad had been tracking their quarry for several months prior to carrying out the operation.12 The bitter rivalries within Syria’s intelligence establishment were said to have resulted in the death of another senior security official, General Mohammad Suleiman, the so-called ‘father’ of Syria’s nuclear programme. Suleiman was an ally of Bashar, with responsibility for highly classified military and intelligence operations, working alongside Mughniyeh on arms transfers from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. After his death in suspicious circumstances in August 2008 at his beach villa in the coastal city of Tartus, it was initially claimed he had been killed by an Israeli assassination squad. However, secret French diplomatic cables published by the WikiLeaks website revealed that he was the victim of a ‘mafia-like hit’ carried out by the Assad regime because he ‘knew too much’ about its nuclear programme and Bashar’s ties to Hezbollah.13 The wave of mysterious deaths took place at a time when the Syrian regime was still dealing with the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a nuclear reactor Bashar had authorized Suleiman to build at al-Kabir in the east of the country. Iran was the driving force behind the development, which had been under construction since 2002. The facility was modelled on North Korea’s Yongbyon

nuclear complex, which produced plutonium for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Iran had subcontracted the building of the reactor to Syria, with any plutonium it produced being made available to Tehran’s nuclear programme. Western intelligence assessments indicated the entire project was financed by Tehran, which made regular payments to Damascus for the plant’s construction. Iran even paid Damascus to rent the land upon which the reactor was being built, and its remote location was chosen deliberately to conceal its true purpose. The Israelis were quick to respond when they discovered an Iranian-owned nuclear complex was under construction so close to their own border. With American support, they launched ‘Operation Outside the Box’, a series of wellcoordinated air strikes on the reactor, completely destroying the facility and killing a number of North Korean engineers working on the site. An inspection of the area conducted by international inspectors two years later found traces of uranium and graphite, leading them to conclude that it was the location of a previously undeclared nuclear reactor.14 These blatant violations of Syrian sovereignty were deeply embarrassing for Bashar, who used the setbacks to reassert his authority over the country’s dysfunctional security apparatus. The main target of his displeasure was his elder sister’s husband Assef Shawkat, who had worked his way up the ranks to become one of the most influential figures in Bashar’s inner circle, culminating with his appointment as head of military intelligence in 2005. But while Bashar admired Shawkat’s ruthless endeavour, he was also slightly in awe of his brother-in-law, a feeling that was enhanced by his difficult relationship with Bushra. Although she had been overlooked for the presidency, Bushra remained a powerful figure within the regime, maintaining her own private office at the Presidential Palace, where she would regularly overrule instructions issued by Bashar. The presence of Bushra and her powerful husband in such close proximity fuelled Bashar’s feelings of insecurity, so much so that he used Mughniyeh’s killing as an excuse to reduce the couple’s influence. As head of military intelligence, Shawkat was personally held responsible for allowing the assassination to take place and was dismissed from his post, effectively sending him into political exile. Shawkat’s removal was not just an attempt to humiliate a powerful rival; it sent a clear message to Bushra that her meddling in state affairs was no longer welcome.

One of the main beneficiaries of Shawkat’s dramatic fall from grace was Asma al-Assad, who had never enjoyed the easiest of relations with her in-laws. There had been constant tensions with both Bashar’s mother and sister, who took exception to Asma describing herself as Syria’s ‘first lady’. In their eyes, she was simply the president’s wife. There was an understandable degree of jealousy because of the attention she generated when the couple undertook glamorous presidential visits abroad, while Bushra and her mother Anisa, who had fulfilled a similar role under Hafez, were kept firmly out of the limelight. Rumours abounded at the royal palace that relations between Bushra and Asma had deteriorated to the point that the president’s sister had slapped and insulted his wife, prompting her to flee to her family home in London. Asma’s sense of isolation in the presidential household seemed to increase the more Shawkat’s political fortunes rose. As long as Bushra remained a political force within the Presidential Palace, and her husband controlled the all-powerful intelligence establishment, Asma’s options were extremely limited. Bashar’s erratic behaviour during this period added to Asma’s unhappiness. Although in public they gave the appearance of being a happy, fashionable couple who added a much-needed sense of glamour to Damascus, their domestic life was less perfect. While Asma looked after the couple’s three young children in their modern villa in one of the city’s upmarket suburbs, it was an open secret that Bashar was still indulging in his old playboy lifestyle, frequenting nightclubs and womanizing. Bashar also had a mean streak, which manifested itself in different ways. On one occasion, for example, during a break at the family villa at Qurdaha, Bashar was walking along the beach when a female companion lost her footing and tumbled into a ditch. Instead of stopping to help her up, Bashar, an obsessive photographer, just reached for his camera and began taking pictures of the distressed woman. Another side of his spiteful nature was evident from his treatment of Wafic Said. Said was a prominent Syrian businessman and long-time friend of the Assad family, and he had helped Bashar to secure his medical position in London. He had also been close to Hariri and blamed Bashar for his friend’s murder. Bashar responded by confiscating the Said family’s properties in Damascus, his pettiness even extending to changing the name of the Damascus street that Hafez had named in Said’s honour for the many services he had fulfilled on behalf of the Syrian people.15 Concerns persisted, too, about Bashar’s unpredictable behaviour, which close friends believed was due to the inferiority complex he had from comparisons

with his father and brother. He had been in office for several years at this juncture, and yet the ghosts of Hafez and Bassel haunted him still. What would they have done in his situation? How could he demonstrate he was his own man, and be better than them? These were the questions that constantly played on Bashar’s mind, and the occasional feelings of self-doubt he had experienced since taking power had still not gone away. Western diplomats who dealt with Bashar on a regular basis suspected he was suffering from a form of depression during their meetings with the Syrian leader, noticing that he had a tendency to suddenly absent himself for several days on end, during which no one seemed to know where he was. ‘One moment he would be full of self-confidence, then, from time to time, he would just completely disappear,’ recounted a senior Western diplomat. ‘He could have a very bleak view of the world, and there would be stories of him indulging in day-long drinking bouts, and that he was sexually promiscuous.’16 Asma generally kept a low profile during this turbulent phase in Bashar’s presidency, raising their children and concentrating on her charity work. She used her business acumen to establish the Syria Trust for Development, a collection of NGOs set up to modernize Syrian society. According to the project’s marketing outline, Asma’s ambition was ‘to provide people and communities throughout Syria with the tools, the skills, the confidence and the opportunity to take charge of their lives and to benefit society’.17 Supported with funding from the European Union, its main priorities were education, rural development and culture. Asma was seen as the perfect role model for a programme that was specifically designed to enhance Syria’s image abroad. A classic example was her participation in a ‘bike ride for peace’ in April 2007, when she joined some 350 women peace campaigners on a twelve-day bicycle ride from the northern city of Aleppo to convey a message of peace and highlight the suffering of Arab women in the Middle East. In a country more used to the exercise of brute force, Asma’s gentler touch showed the regime in a more sympathetic light, her graceful, easy manner making her the quintessential exponent of soft power. Asma’s efforts to promote the more caring and considerate face of the Assad regime did not pass unnoticed by the outside world. When the American television anchor Diane Sawyer flew to Damascus in early 2007 to interview Bashar, Asma let it be known that, while she was not ready to give on-camera interviews, she would entertain the journalist at her office, where she explained her vision for the country’s exciting new future. Not prepared to appear on

camera herself, she was happy for a close friend to appear on her behalf, who eulogized to Sawyer about how Asma was an ‘amazing woman’ who was committed to reforming the country. ‘She’s working for women’s rights, she’s working on children’s rights, and culture.’18 Bashar also tried to show a more appealing side of his character in his interview with Sawyer, which mainly focused on what he claimed was the vital role Syria was playing in stabilizing Iraq. Telling Sawyer that he was ready to cooperate with the US, he revealed his passion for the music of American country singers like Faith Hill and Shania Twain.19 Bashar and Asma wanted to present themselves as the ultimate power couple: Bashar as the reform-minded leader who would make his country fit to address the challenges of the twenty-first century; Asma as the dynamic and supportive wife whose Western upbringing would help her husband to achieve these aims. Behind this highly plausible facade, though, all was not well in the Assad household. Bashar was frustrated at his inability to overcome the institutional resistance of the Baathist old guard to implement his economic reform agenda, while his wife felt suffocated by the repressive atmosphere at the Presidential Palace, especially as far as the dominant personalities of her mother-in-law and sister-in-law were concerned. She also had to contend with the constant rumours about her husband’s infidelity, as well as his unpredictable behaviour. Asma was willing to overlook these so long as she remained the country’s first lady, a status that was boosted by Shawkat’s public humiliation. While Bashar saw his brother-in-law’s removal as an opportunity to promote his reform agenda, Asma was delighted that it severely limited Bushra’s domineering interference. The removal of Bushra and her mother from positions of influence at the palace meant that Asma was the undisputed power behind the Assad throne. For many Syrians, this was the first indication that she was a woman to be reckoned with. She might exude sophistication and charisma to her Western admirers, but beneath this carefully crafted feminine veneer, Asma had steel. Nothing better illustrated the disconnect between Bashar’s vision for his country and the aspirations of ordinary Syrians than his response to the Arab Spring, the wave of anti-government protests that spread through the tired and repressive dictatorships of the Middle East. The unrest began in Tunisia in December 2010 when a young street vendor died after setting fire to himself in protest against police harassment. The incident triggered country-wide protests against

Tunisia’s authoritarian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, eventually forcing him to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia. Within weeks similar protests were taking place throughout the Middle East. The unrest affected countries stretching from Morocco on the shores of North Africa to Bahrain in the Gulf, but it was the secular dictatorships that had been in power for decades in countries such as Egypt and Libya that were hit hardest. In late January 2011 Egypt was virtually brought to a standstill as thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities. Huge crowds took control of Tahrir Square in central Cairo, demanding the removal of the country’s long-serving president, Hosni Mubarak, who was eventually forced to resign from office in mid-February after coming under intense pressure from Washington and London to stand down. In Libya, the coastal city of Benghazi, long regarded as the epicentre of opposition to the country’s long-serving dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, staged a series of anti-government protests. Gaddafi responded by pledging to hunt down the ‘rats’ opposing him and, amid mounting concern in Western capitals that Gaddafi’s forces would inflict a bloodbath against the citizens of Benghazi, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing the use of military force to implement a ceasefire. On 19 March a multinational NATO force comprising the US, Britain, France and Canada launched a military campaign that was ostensibly aimed at enforcing the ceasefire, but whose ultimate objective – certainly so far as the US and Britain were concerned – was Gaddafi’s removal from power. This was to prove controversial, as other Security Council members, notably Russia, believed that, by seeking Gaddafi’s downfall, Western leaders were exceeding the remit of the resolution they had agreed, an argument that would have serious implications for future Western involvement in Syria.20 Despite the tumult sweeping the region, Bashar seemed genuinely to believe that, even when the first anti-regime protests began in March 2011, he would be immune from the challenges affecting his regional neighbours. He would have been encouraged that the unrest in Jordan and Saudi Arabia had quickly been brought under control. But unlike Syria, these countries were subject to monarchical rule, and their royal families were more attuned to the concerns of their people. One noticeable feature of the Arab Spring, which was motivated more by economic than political concerns, was that the region’s monarchies fared a great deal better than their autocratic counterparts. Bashar seemed oblivious to this important nuance, so that, when the first protests took place in

Syria, he was insistent that his regime would not suffer the same fate that had befallen the other secular dictatorships in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Robert Ford, the American ambassador to Damascus, who had taken up his post just as the Arab Spring protests began, sensed that Bashar was in a state of denial about the challenge he faced. US President Barack Obama had decided to restore diplomatic ties with Damascus and tasked Ford with improving relations with Bashar’s regime.21 ‘He did not seem at all concerned about what was happening in Egypt,’ said Ford, whose first meeting took place with the Syrian leader at the Presidential Palace as the Egyptian protests were still taking place. Ford was the first US ambassador to be appointed to Damascus since the Hariri murder, and Bashar was delighted at the restoration of diplomatic relations with Washington as, to his mind, it was a mark of recognition for Syria’s pivotal role in the Middle East. ‘He appeared very relaxed and was very talkative,’ Ford recalled. ‘He dismissed Ben Ali and Mubarak as being tools of the West, and insisted no one could say the same about Syria, which was at the forefront of Arab resistance to Israel. The message he sought to convey was, “The Syrian people are behind me because they fully support my stand against Israel.”’22 Bashar expressed similar sentiments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal which took place at about the same time, arranged to coincide with Asma’s appearance in Vogue. Reclining on a leather sofa in his office at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, Bashar declared that he was ‘very closely linked to the beliefs of the people’. He acknowledged that Syria was experiencing serious economic difficulties, remarking, ‘we do not have many of the basic needs of the people.’ Nonetheless, he believed that his anti-American foreign policy was so in tune with popular opinion that it compensated for the regime’s domestic shortcomings.23 The profound sense of complacency that underpinned the Bashar regime’s response to the Arab Spring derived, in part, from the gradual process of rehabilitation Damascus had experienced after Obama took office in January. Although some tentative steps had been taken to improve relations with Damascus towards the end of the Bush administration, they had never come to fruition, not least because key members of the Bush team continued to harbour serious reservations about Bashar’s political outlook. As Bush neared the end of his term in office, opinions on Washington’s approach to Syria increasingly split along party lines, which resulted in Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives, visiting Damascus in 2007, directly challenging the Bush administration’s policy of isolating Syria. ‘We come in friendship,

hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,’ declared Pelosi, whom the Bush administration accused of sending ‘mixed signals’ to Damascus.24 For its part, the White House was still focused on tackling Syria’s support for the jihadi groups attacking coalition forces in Iraq, and in October 2008 Bashar was left feeling humiliated after a team of American special forces carried out a raid into Syrian territory to kill a prominent Iraqi, Abu Ghadiya, whom US officials described as the ‘most prominent’ smuggler of foreign Islamist fighters across the border into Iraq. General Petraeus, who authorized the operation, described Abu Ghadiya as ‘a very dangerous individual’ and said his death dealt a serious blow to Syria’s smuggling operations into Iraq.25 Visits by prominent Democrats increased after Obama took office as the new administration sought to redefine its relationship with the region after the many controversies that had arisen during the Bush era, mainly over the Iraq war, the campaign against al-Qaeda and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Bashar was keen to take advantage of what he called the ‘signals’ from the new American administration, which he believed ‘will be different’. He even expressed his desire ‘in principle’ to meet Obama, while conceding ‘it depends on what we discuss. I will be very happy to discuss peace.’26 Bashar made these comments in February 2009, a few days before Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arrived in Damascus with a delegation of senior American officials. An assessment drawn up by the American Embassy in Syria prior to Kerry’s visit warned that Bashar’s ‘ultimate goal is to preserve his regime . . . The only consistency in Syria’s foreign policy is the . . . desire to play all sides off each other.’27 Kerry, who was keen to demonstrate that the Obama administration wanted to adopt a new, more constructive approach to the region, was accompanied by his wife, Teresa Heinz, and the couple were later photographed having dinner with Bashar and Asma at a fashionable restaurant in the heart of Damascus’s old town. It was the first of six meetings Kerry would have with Bashar, whom he hailed as an ‘essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region’.28 Washington’s main objective was to end its military involvement in Iraq, which required improving relations with the likes of Syria and Iran. By concentrating its charm offensive on Bashar, the Obama administration hoped to encourage Damascus to scale down its association with Iran. Some Western diplomats based in the Syrian capital, though, were not impressed with Kerry’s optimistic outlook. ‘Kerry was a pompous know-it-all who believed he could detach Syria from Iran and bring it into line with Israel,’ commented a senior

Western official. ‘He completely misunderstood the Assad regime’s real priorities, which were Iran and Hezbollah, not the US.’29 The confusion among American policymakers about dealing with the Assad regime was reflected in their on–off support for Barada TV, a London-based Syrian opposition channel that was originally set up by the Bush administration in 2006. The station received funding from the State Department, and provided Bashar’s opponents with a platform to criticize his regime. 30 Then, in January 2010, as the Obama administration tried to revive peace talks between Israel and Syria, Washington ordered the channel to suspend its broadcasts. According to Malik al-Abdeh, one of the channel’s lead presenters, ‘One of the Assad regime’s key demands for participating in the talks was that the channel be closed down,’ explained Malik al-Abdeh, one of the station’s lead presenters. ‘Our broadcasts really upset the regime because they allowed the opposition to vent their criticisms in public. The regime arrested opposition leaders simply for speaking on our channel.’31 A few months later, when it became clear that Bashar was not complying with the commitments he had made to Washington, the State Department told the station to resume broadcasting, and it later became a vital mouthpiece for activists to relay their opposition to Bashar’s regime. The overtures made by Kerry and other prominent members of the Obama administration were part of a deliberate effort to rebuild relations with the region, culminating in a speech titled ‘A New Beginning’ which the president delivered at Cairo University in June 2009. By giving the speech, Obama was honouring a campaign pledge to give a major address to Muslims from a Muslim capital during his first few months as president, and he used it to call for improved mutual understanding and relations between the Islamic world and the West to counter the threat of violent extremism. With US forces still involved in major military combat campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the speech was received with a degree of scepticism in most Arab capitals. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that, under Obama’s leadership, Washington intended to pursue a more constructive engagement with the Middle East, even with countries like Syria, which the Bush administration had condemned as being a rogue state. Soon after the Cairo address, preparations began in earnest to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus, which were completed when Under Secretary of State William Burns visited Syria in 2010, where he had ‘candid’ talks with the Syrian leader.32 The Americans were under no illusions about the scale of Bashar’s double-dealing. While Burns negotiated the restoration of diplomatic relations, Bashar responded by inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the

head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, to a summit in Damascus. Like his father before him, Bashar believed playing powers like the US and Iran against each other provided Syria with greater leverage. Bashar’s preoccupation with building ties with Washington while at the same time maintaining his ‘axis of resistance’ with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas may be one reason why he underestimated so badly the impact a new wave of antigovernment protests would have on his own regime. Rather than being alerted by the signals generated by protests in other parts of the region, Bashar and his wife were focused on the slick campaign that had been devised to develop their international profile. In November 2010 the couple hired the services of an upmarket public relations company, and Asma’s Vogue interview and photo shoot were a key feature of the publicity programme.33 It was designed to introduce Asma to a sophisticated Western audience who would not normally take much interest in Syrian affairs. Bashar clearly believed that, after a challenging first decade in power, he and his wife could put their difficulties behind them and reinvigorate his presidency. It was to prove a fatal distraction, both for the Assad family and the country. With almost perverse timing, Asma’s Vogue interview hit the newsstands just as the first anti-government protests erupted in Syria in March. The catalyst for the protest movement that would quickly sweep the entire country began with a relatively innocuous incident that took place in the southern border town of Deraa. Inspired by the protest movements taking place elsewhere in the region, a group of schoolboys daubed graffiti on the wall of their school with slogans that read, ‘Doctor, your turn next’, ‘freedom’ and ‘down with the regime’. Rather than reprimanding the schoolboys, whose average age was just fifteen, the authorities reacted with their customary heavy-handed approach. The boys’ homes were raided by the security forces, and the boys were taken into detention at the local security headquarters, where they were severely beaten and tortured. ‘I was held by the political security agency for around a week in Deraa,’ one of the boys recalled. ‘I was tortured for four hours a day, during which I was investigated through intimidation and threats.’ They were beaten with cables, poked with cattle prods and subjected to continuous threats. When we received food, we would be beaten; when we went to the bathroom, we would be beaten; when we were called for interrogation, we would be beaten. There was a boy who had stomach problems; when they

heard that, they started beating him in the stomach. After one round of beating, he lost consciousness.’34 He was taken to hospital, where he was found to be suffering from internal bleeding. Eventually the boys were transferred to security headquarters in Damascus, where they were subjected to further mistreatment in a basement interrogation room. ‘After 20 days, we felt that we would die at the underground facility.’35 Bashar would have had no personal involvement in the schoolboys’ brutal treatment, as responsibility for maintaining security in Deraa was in the hands of Atef Najib, one of Bashar’s less attractive cousins. (An Alawite, Najib was related to Bashar’s mother, Anisa.)36 Known as a ruthless operator, he was head of security for the Deraa region and had personally taken responsibility for the schoolboys’ detention. When the boys’ parents complained about their treatment, the boorish Najib dismissed their concerns and told them to ‘forget about them’ and go home and have more children. He advised the menfolk that, if they were not interested in having more children, they could always send their wives to his office, and he would arrange for them to be impregnated himself. On 18 March, outraged by Najib’s conduct, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Deraa, demanding that he be sacked and punished. It was one of several protests that took place in Syria that day, but it was the only one that resulted in casualties. Najib’s security forces responded to the demonstration by shooting into the crowd of unarmed civilians, killing three people. It was the spark that lit the flame of a nationwide revolt that would ultimately result in the complete ruination of the country. Bashar was genuinely taken aback at the speed with which the protests spread throughout the country, even though they were an almost exact replica of antigovernment protest movements that had taken place elsewhere in the region. Bashar and Asma were so in thrall to their own publicity campaign that they found it hard to come to terms with the fact that they were the figureheads of a regime that so readily brutalized its own children. Much to their dismay, one of the first casualties of the regime’s brutal repression of the protests was the Vogue article itself. Within days of Asma’s article appearing, critics immediately took issue with its sycophantic description of the Syrian leader’s wife as ‘the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies’, with ‘dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace.’ It was pointed out that the article made no mention of the regime’s long record of suppressing political opposition.

Editors at the magazine initially sought to justify the article, arguing that it was ‘a way of opening a window into this world a little bit.’ But a few weeks later, the article and all references to it were removed from Vogue’s website without explanation, never to be seen again.36 The disappearance of Asma’s flattering journalistic portrait was the least of Bashar’s worries as he was forced to confront the unwelcome truth that Syria would not, after all, be immune from the dangerous currents of protest coursing through the Middle East. When news of the unrest at Deraa eventually reached him, he was unsure as to the best course of action. Part of him wanted to adopt a conciliatory tone, and to send representatives to the town to apologize and negotiate with local residents about their grievances. A team of senior Baath officials was duly dispatched to the city. But Bashar also worried that such an approach would be seen as a sign of weakness, and encourage even more protesters to take to the streets. Concern deepened at the Presidential Palace as the unrest spread to other Syrian towns and cities, with protesters taking to the streets in Damascus, Homs and Latakia. By now the crowds were chanting, ‘We are with you to the death’, suggesting that they would not relent until the Assad regime had been overthrown. A high-level delegation was sent to Damascus by Saudi King Abdullah to encourage Bashar to adopt a more conciliatory tone with the protesters. ‘We had seen what had happened to Gaddafi in Libya, and we did not want the same to happen to Assad in Syria,’ a senior Saudi official explained. When the Saudis arrived, Bashar dismissed the protests and insisted he had everything under control. He blamed the unrest on agitators working for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Assad regime’s long-standing political rivals. There was some merit to Bashar’s claim, as the Brotherhood had the backing of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supported the establishment of Islamist regimes in the Muslim world. The Brotherhood’s growing influence would eventually lead it to form a government in Egypt to replace the deposed Mubarak. ‘Turkey is causing all this trouble, and I am going to checkmate them,’ Bashar boasted to his Saudi visitors. As for the unrest in Deraa, it had been caused ‘by the stupid overreaction of the local security man’ – his cousin Najib. Bashar said he intended to make amends with the people of Deraa by funding a series of development programmes, and the Saudis offered to pay $200 million to fund the projects, with the money transferred from Riyadh a few days later. ‘Then we waited, and we waited, and we waited, until eventually we received complaints from the

local tribal leaders that nothing was happening,’ recalled a member of the Saudi delegation. ‘It soon dawned on us Assad had just taken the money for himself.’37 Any thoughts that Bashar may have entertained about a reconciliation with the people of Deraa soon faded as the regime reverted to the tried and tested tactics of state-sponsored repression that had served it so well for decades. Although Najib was relieved of his duties in Deraa, it was only for a few days before he was transferred to another wing of the Syrian security apparatus, and no official investigation was undertaken into his conduct. A presidential amnesty was offered to the schoolboys, who were eventually released from their ordeal, having been held for around forty days. These were little more than token gestures designed to placate the protesters in Deraa and elsewhere. The regime’s first priority, as had been the case since the Alawites first came to power, was its own survival. The last time it had faced a major challenge to its authority, the Muslim Brotherhood’s revolt in Hama in 1982, the Assad clan had been utterly ruthless in crushing the dissent. On that occasion Rifaat had orchestrated the military operation, which resulted in three-quarters of the city being destroyed and a death toll in excess of 20,000. As the unrest spread throughout Syria in the spring of 2011, Bashar, too, turned to members of his immediate family for support. Maher Assad, the president’s younger brother, soon emerged as a key figure as the Assad family moved quickly to restore order after the initial protests in Deraa. Prior to the unrest, Maher was generally regarded by most Syrians as a delinquent playboy who had little day-to-day influence in the running of the country, and only retained his position as commander of the elite Fourth Division and Republican Guard by dint of his family connections. ‘Maher was a drunk who was only in his office for a few hours a day,’ said a contemporary. ‘He spent most of his time playing cards or chasing girls. No one took him seriously.’38 As the protests grew, Maher was among several prominent members of the extended Assad family – all of them Alawites – whom Bashar relied upon to crush the dissent. Within days of the Deraa protests, Maher had dispatched a military force to the town – which, far from easing tensions, only exacerbated them. While senior Baath Party officials tried to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the protests with local tribal elders, Maher prepared to launch a full-scale assault on the Omari Mosque in the centre of the town, which had become the epicentre of anti-regime protest. Maher was determined to teach the protestors a lesson after the building housing the state-owned Syriatel mobile network, owned by Bashar’s businessman cousin Rami Makhlouf, was burned

down. Rami’s brother Hafez was a senior officer in the mukhabarat and, together with Maher, launched an assault against the mosque. Dozens of protesters were killed in the onslaught, with Maher’s forces chanting ‘With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, O Bashar!’ as they moved in. The regime tried to blame the violence on agitators working for Israel.39 No one in Deraa believed the government’s propaganda, though, and it was not long before Deraa had become one of the major strongholds of the anti-Assad protest movement. Bashar was in frequent contact with Maher and other commanders in Deraa throughout the military operation, belying his claim that he sought a peaceful resolution. ‘The notion that Bashar was not aware about the violent methods used by the regime to crush the protests in Deraa is laughable,’ said a prominent Syrian activist involved in the Deraa unrest. ‘He was in contact with Maher on a daily basis.’40 Maher, meanwhile, seemed to delight in the numerous epithets he attracted as ‘the most feared man in the country’, ‘the Butcher of Deraa’ or simply as the regime’s ‘enforcer’. Comparisons were inevitably made between his role in attacking the Deraa mosque and his uncle Rifaat’s infamous participation in the Hama massacre. From the earliest days of the antigovernment protests in Syria it was clear that the regime’s preferred option for responding to the unrest was to revisit the Hama playbook, with the slightest hint of dissent being brutally crushed. Bashar’s decision to resort to force, rather than trying to resolve the crisis peaceably, finally exploded the myth that his regime had any serious interest in genuine reform. Bashar’s defiant approach was clear when the Syrian leader made his first public speech about the disturbances. Opposition leaders had hoped that the protests might encourage Assad to begin implementing his longawaited reform programme. Instead, Bashar made little reference to reform, preferring to concentrate his energies on denouncing the ‘conspiracies’ that lay behind the bloodshed. Addressing the Syrian parliament – the same institution that a decade previously had rubber-stamped his appointment as president – Bashar claimed the unrest was all part of a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the Syrian government. And, just as the American intervention in Iraq had failed, so it would in Syria. ‘This project will fall,’ Bashar declared, as the state-appointed delegates rose to their feet in unison to award him a standing ovation.41

SEVEN

War Criminal I didn’t set a red line: the world set a red line. Barack Obama

It was early morning, just after 2 a.m., and most of the residents of the Damascus district of Ghouta were asleep, when a barrage of rockets laden with a deadly nerve agent crashed into the densely populated neighbourhood. The first rockets landed in the town of Zamalka in eastern Ghouta. Three hours later, just before dawn, another attack took place on Moadhamiya, a town in the west of Ghouta. The rockets, which were fired from territory controlled by the Assad regime about three miles further north, were filled with sarin, a colourless nerve gas that has no smell. The first most residents knew of the attack was when loudspeakers, some attached to the minarets of mosques, began broadcasting warnings – telling them to leave their homes and flee. For some, the announcements were too late. Hundreds of Syrians – many of them women and children – were killed by the gas as they slept in their beds. Others collapsed trying to flee their homes, their mouths foaming as the effects of the sarin took hold. ‘I saw death everywhere,’ said Braa Abdulrahman, an eyewitness who recalled finding a neighbour lying among his family’s corpses. ‘Entire families died. They put numbers on the foreheads of all the corpses until each was recognised by a relative. Some bodies were never recognised as their entire family had died.’1 The Assad regime’s chemical weapons attack on Ghouta on 21 August 2013 reflected both Bashar’s desperation to defeat the rebel forces surrounding the city and his willingness to gamble in extreme circumstances. A predominantly working-class Sunni area located just a few miles to the east and south of central Damascus, Ghouta had become an important rebel stronghold since the earliest days of the uprising, when almost the entire population sided with the antigovernment opposition. By early 2012, the rebel-held enclave had succeeded in cutting off Damascus from the surrounding countryside, thereby starving government forces of vital supplies. For more than a year government forces had launched missile attacks aimed at dislodging the rebels, while western Ghouta was subjected to a government-imposed siege from the spring of 2013. The

week the regime chose to deploy its arsenal of chemical weapons coincided with the arrival of a team of United Nations-sponsored inspectors in Syria to investigate allegations that the regime had employed chemical weapons in a previous strike. By launching the Ghouta attack while the inspectors were safely accommodated at the Four Seasons hotel in the city centre, Bashar’s regime hoped to trick the outside world into believing that it was the rebels, and not progovernment forces, who were using banned weapons as a ploy to provoke an international reaction. Bashar was taking a calculated risk, not least because the previous year US President Obama, responding to claims that the Assad regime was using chemical weapons in other parts of the country, had warned that the use of such weapons would be a ‘red line’ for his administration, one that would most likely result in action by the US.2 Syria’s association with weapons of mass destruction was a long-standing and complex issue. Its collaboration with Iran on the development of nuclear weapons had been exposed when Israel destroyed the Al-Kibar nuclear plant in 2007. International efforts to monitor Syria’s drive to acquire chemical and biological weapons were more problematic, not least because Damascus was not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in April 1997. Western intelligence agencies were aware that the regime had embarked on a chemical weapons programme after Hafez took power in the 1970s. Relying heavily on assistance from Egypt and the Soviet Union, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre had responsibility for developing toxic agents for use in war. By the mid-1980s Syria had the capacity to manufacture its own chemical weapons, to the extent that it had the world’s third-largest stockpile after the US and Russia, including the VX nerve agent and several hundred tons of sarin.3 There were even suggestions that quantities of Saddam Hussein’s stocks of chemical weapons had been shipped to Syria for safekeeping prior to the American-led invasion in 2003.4 The first official confirmation that the regime possessed such weapons came in July 2013, when Syrian officials admitted the country possessed chemical agents, stressing that they would never be used against the Syrian people, but only against ‘external aggression’. Monitoring their use, though, remained problematic as the material was stored at a variety of different locations around the country, with US officials estimating that they were kept at two dozen different sites.5 Secret diplomatic cables leaked to the American media revealed how Syria had intensified its build-up of chemical weapons after Bashar came to power,

with Iran playing a central role in the procurement process. A number of front organizations were set up in Damascus that enabled the regime to buy sophisticated equipment on the international market that it claimed was for civilian programmes, but that was in fact used in the production of chemical weapons. Despite efforts by the US and other Western powers to block the sale of so-called ‘dual use’ technology to Syria, in 2010 the European Union provided $14.6 million in technical assistance and equipment, some of it intended for chemical plants, in a deal with the Syrian Ministry of Industry. The ministry was later identified as a front for Syria’s chemical weapons programme.6 One diplomatic cable, dated 20 June 2006, detailed Iran’s significant contribution to building Syria’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction following the defence cooperation agreement Bashar had struck with Tehran in March. It set out details of a confidential presentation made by German officials to the Australia Group, an informal forum of forty nations – plus the European Commission – set up to counter the spread of chemical weapons. The cable described Syria’s cooperation with Iran on Syria’s development of new chemical weapons, noting that it was building up to five new sites producing precursors to chemical weapons. ‘Iran would provide the construction design and equipment to annually produce tens to hundreds of tons of precursors for VX, sarin, and mustard [gas],’ said the cable, written by a US diplomat. ‘Engineers from Iran’s DIO [Defense Industries Organization] were to visit Syria and survey locations for the plants, and construction was scheduled from the end of 2005–2006.’7 Suspicions that Bashar’s forces were using chemical weapons against the rebels first began to surface towards the end of 2012. As part of its efforts to weaponize its chemical arsenal, the Syrian government set up a specialist military unit, Branch 450, which developed a range of delivery mechanisms for the material. A detailed report published by French intelligence in 2013 showed the delivery systems included long-range Scud missiles, with ranges of between 200 and 300 miles, Syrian M-600 missiles (based on Iran’s Fateh-100 system) with a range of up to 200 miles, as well as aerial bombs and artillery rockets.8 At the same time the regime had managed to produce 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons.9 For the first year of the civil war, the regime had relied on conventional military forces, together with a network of pro-regime militias, to deal with the uprising. It was only when pro-Assad forces found themselves under severe pressure from the rebels that they resorted to using chemical weapons.

The first recorded use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict took place on 23 December 2012 in the Al-Bayadah suburb of Homs, which was controlled by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main rebel group fighting to overthrow the Assad regime. Seven people were said to have been killed in the attack, which involved gas bombs being dropped onto a group of starving civilians queuing for bread. Medics working for the Syrian American Medical Association (SAMS), an organization that charted atrocities committed by the Assad regime, reported that the survivors were treated for symptoms compatible with the use of chemical agents, including miosis (pinpoint pupils), nerve convulsions, loss of consciousness, eye pain and nausea.10 At first, the regime tried to deny the reports, but its efforts were undermined when the local police chief, appalled at what he had witnessed, defected to the rebels and accused the Assad regime of committing systematic murder against the Syrian people through the use of poison gas.11 Further evidence of the regime’s involvement in the attack emerged when a leaked US State Department diplomatic cable revealed that an investigation undertaken by US officials based in Turkey into the incident had concluded there was a ‘compelling case’ that the Syrian regime had used some form of nerve agent at Homs.12 The leaking of the cable was particularly sensitive for the Obama administration because, if proof emerged that Assad had used banned weapons against his own people, it constituted a clear breach of the ‘red line’ the president had set earlier that year. Obama had been in a quandary over how to respond to the Syrian conflict since it began. His election as president had been achieved to a significant extent by his commitment to end America’s military involvement in the Middle East, and he had little desire to become involved in Syria so soon after he had withdrawn US forces from Iraq. He had been a reluctant participant in the campaign to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011, which was primarily driven by Britain and France. The chaos that engulfed the country after Gaddafi’s fall confirmed Obama’s instinct that American interests would be better served by not becoming embroiled in the internal strife of dysfunctional Arab dictatorships. As a result the American president adopted a deeply cautious approach from the outset. Obama made his first explicit call for Bashar to stand down in August 2011, in a statement issued by the White House in which he said, ‘The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.’13 That Assad had lost legitimacy would be the White House’s official position on

the conflict. But while Obama repeated his demand on several occasions, such as during his meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan the following January, he remained reluctant to become directly involved, preferring instead to impose sanctions against key figures in the Assad regime – including Bashar and Maher14 – while providing funding for pro-Western rebel groups. As the conflict deepened, Obama sought to increase the pressure on Damascus. The UN officially designated the conflict a civil war in June 2012, and Obama signed a secret intelligence authorization for the CIA and other US agencies to provide support that could help the rebels overthrow Assad.15 But the assistance was to be non-lethal, as Obama remained determined to avoid direct American military action if possible. The only issue that might have forced his hand was if Damascus used chemical weapons. ‘We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus,’ Obama explained in a briefing to the White House press corps in August 2012. ‘That would change my equation . . . We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans’. He added that any use of such weapons by Assad would result in ‘enormous consequences’ for Syria, which many in Washington understood to mean military action.16 That was certainly the view of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who believed that ‘the clear implication was that if the regime crossed that line, actions, potentially including military force, would be taken.’17 Bashar was well aware of Obama’s reluctance to become too closely involved in the civil war, and this encouraged him to allow his regime to indulge in further acts of violence against the rebels, safe in the knowledge that there were unlikely to be any meaningful reprisals from Washington or its allies. The decision to start using chemical weapons seems to have been a deliberate test of the Obama administration’s resolve. If Obama was reluctant to act on the numerous atrocities the Assad regime had committed since the start of the conflict in 2011, there was a strong likelihood he would be similarly disinclined to become involved if the regime did resort to using chemical weapons. The choice of chemical used in the Homs attack, Unit 15, was not as potent as the more deadly sarin or VX nerve agents, suggesting the regime was testing the water to see how far it could go without provoking a military response. From Bashar’s perspective, being able to use such weapons on the battlefield would greatly enhance his regime’s ability to defend itself against the mounting threat it

faced from rebel forces. Another factor that contributed to the decision was that, from the autumn of 2011 onwards, the regime’s forces had been decimated by a combination of significant casualties and mass desertions, severely limiting their ability to counter the rebel offensive. Chemical weapons provided a useful tool for inflicting mass casualties on the rebels without requiring pro-regime forces to sustain further losses. ‘The Assad regime began using chemical weapons to take the pressure off its depleted forces,’ said a senior official at the US National Security Council. ‘It became a feature of the conflict that whenever the regime found itself under pressure, it resorted to even more barbaric methods to defeat the rebels.’18 Bashar’s hunch about Obama’s hesitancy on the Syria issue proved to be correct. Despite the mounting evidence that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons, the White House response was non-committal, and remained so even after the State Department cable appearing to confirm their use in Homs had been leaked. White House officials refuted the claims, commenting that it had ‘not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons programme’.19 The fact that such a sensitive document had been leaked in Washington, though, suggested that not everyone in the Obama administration was happy with the president’s prevarication, and that pressure was building within Washington for a more aggressive US policy. Syria had been subject to various forms of Western sanctions for decades, so although the imposition of new restrictions, especially the freezing of overseas assets, was an inconvenience for Bashar, it made little difference to his tactics. Moreover, Washington’s failure to react to the Homs chemical weapons attack meant that the regime began to use the weapons against other Syrian cities. Chemical weapons attacks were reported against rebel positions in the suburbs of Aleppo and Damascus in March 2013, killing twenty-five people and injuring dozens more. Responding to calls by Britain and France for the attacks to be investigated, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agreed to set up an inquiry. The following day opposition groups said the regime had dropped two more gas bombs on Aleppo, killing two people and wounding twelve. When a team of UN investigators arrived in April, the Syrian authorities refused to cooperate, while reports persisted of the Assad regime’s continued use of chemical weapons. In late April a regime helicopter dropped canisters containing a chemical agent on the town of Saraqeb. In June, France claimed the regime had used sarin in ‘multiple cases’; the same month the US National Security Council reported there was ‘high confidence’ that the Assad regime had used chemical

weapons, including sarin, against opposition forces ‘multiple times’ during the past year.20 As the evidence continued to mount about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the clamour grew for Western leaders to act. There was also pressure on Bashar to provide a credible explanation, as Damascus continued to deny the allegations that his regime was using chemical weapons against the civilian population. In August the UN announced it would send another team of inspectors to Syria to investigate the claims, and Assad indicated that he would cooperate. But Assad’s dealings with the UN bore a striking similarity to the tactics the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had employed in the run-up to the Iraq war, when he had constantly frustrated the efforts of the UN inspection teams to investigate reports that he still possessed weapons of mass destruction. Like Saddam, Bashar would initially agree to cooperate, and then change the terms of reference to foil the work of the inspectors. When the UN team arrived in Syria in mid-August to commence work, they were told they were only allowed to establish whether or not chemical weapons had been used, but not to apportion blame as to who had used them. The UN investigators had barely had a chance to check into their hotel rooms before the regime launched its attack on the residential neighbourhoods in Ghouta. It was the deadliest use of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein’s attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in the closing days of the Iran–Iraq war in 1988. By launching such an assault at a time of such heightened tension, Bashar was taking a huge risk. He was directly challenging the Obama administration and its allies to respond. The Western powers’ response to this blatant act of provocation would have a significant bearing on Bashar’s ability to survive the war. The use of chemical weapons was just one of the brutal tactics the Assad regime employed in its campaign to defeat the rebels. From the earliest days of the conflict, a key objective was to instil fear into its opponents in an attempt to discourage them from taking up arms. The regime therefore pursued a campaign of state-sponsored violence designed with the specific intention of terrorizing the rebels into submission, whether by conducting carefully targeted massacres of the civilian population in towns and cities designated as rebel strongholds, or through the systematic torture and summary executions of opposition activists. Within days of the first protests in Deraa in March 2011, Bashar personally authorized the establishment of a new organization within Syria’s existing

security apparatus that was specifically designed to coordinate the regime’s efforts to suppress the unrest. The new organization, known as the Central Crisis Management Cell (CCMC), was set up on Bashar’s direct orders on 27 March, just ten days after the first anti-government protests took place in Deraa. Its purpose was to supervise the response of the numerous intelligence, security and military organizations responsible for maintaining the regime in power. With Bashar acting as its chairman, the cell’s members included the heads of the National Security Bureau (NSB), Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, the Political Security Directorate and the General Intelligence Directorate.21 Bashar was personally responsible for appointing the members of the CCMC, which also included the ministers of interior and defence. The organization met in an office on the first floor of the Baath Party Regional Command in central Damascus, before moving to new offices the following year in the NSB building. Representatives from regional intelligence, security and Baath Party offices would attend the meetings and present briefings on the identities and activities of the main opposition leaders. At the end of each session a plan of action was agreed to deal with the insurgents, and minutes of meetings were sent by courier directly to Bashar at the Presidential Palace for authorization. Bashar would read through them carefully, making comments in the margins, before sending them back the following day by courier. He usually rubber-stamped the recommendations without making any material changes, and the orders were then returned to the CCMC for implementation. By signing off the CCMC’s recommendations, Bashar lent his personal authority to ensure that the measures agreed by the crisis cell were fully implemented.22 The creation of the CCMC was a shrewd move, as it obliged the regime’s notoriously dysfunctional security apparatus to coordinate their efforts to crush the protests. Meetings were frequent, sometimes daily, with Bashar’s ‘guidance’ helping to prioritize which areas should be targeted first. The Baathists took great pride in their meticulous record-keeping, which was designed to ensure proper coordination of the activities of the different departments of the security apparatus. If the CCMC felt that an individual or department was not performing to the required level, it would send its own representatives to make sure the instructions were carried out to Bashar’s satisfaction. Ali Mamlouk, one of Bashar’s most trusted security advisers, who had previously worked for Hafez, was frequently called upon to travel outside Damascus to check that the presidential decrees were being implemented. ‘Mamlouk would arrive at a

regional headquarters carrying a presidential decree authorizing him to take charge,’ recalled a former Syrian security official. ‘He would tell the local officials, “I am now in charge because you are not getting the job done.” If they protested, they would be sacked and replaced.’23 By 2011, the mukhabarat and other security organizations permeated every level of Syrian society. Most of these agencies traced their origins to the Hafez era and had been set up with the help of the Soviet Union and East Germany’s Stasi. They relied on a network of informers and double agents to monitor the activities of potential dissidents. Each branch of the security apparatus had its own detention cells and interrogation centres located throughout the country. After the Assads took power, most security officials were Alawites who could be trusted to preserve the regime. By 2011 there were said to be between 50,000 and 70,000 people working full-time for Syria’s various security branches, not to mention hundreds of thousands of part-time personnel and informants. Funding for the mukhabarat and other security organizations was more than $3 billion a year – around one-third of the entire Syrian defence budget – and when the protests started it was estimated there was one intelligence officer for every 240 Syrians.24 In the early phase of the conflict, disputes within the Baath Party were commonplace, especially when local officials objected to the heavy-handed measures recommended by the CCMC, which they argued, with some justification, would only inflame tensions further. ‘There was a great deal of rivalry between the regional Baath Party headquarters when the protests erupted,’ said a senior US national security official based in Damascus during this period. ‘They had little interest in helping their Baathist colleagues if they got into trouble, and just wanted to take care of their own fiefdoms.’25 Corruption was also an important issue, as local Baath officials had become wealthy by abusing their positions for personal gain. In many cases their commitment to the Baathist cause, as well as their pursuit of personal gain, meant they were out of touch with the concerns and aspirations of ordinary Syrians, which hampered their ability to muster an effective response to the protests. ‘The Baath Party structure had been set up to control the country,’ said Simon Collis, the British ambassador to Syria at the time the protests began. ‘In every town and village, you had to be a Baath Party member if you wanted a job, a home or a place at university. But over the years local Baath officials took corrupt cronyism to a completely new level, so that they completely lost touch with the grass roots.’26

The endemic corruption among Baath Party officials was undoubtedly a key factor that helped to fuel the unrest. Ordinary Syrians resented the luxurious way of life of the privileged elite who dined in fashionable restaurants in exclusive suburbs of Damascus, while the rest of the country struggled to make ends meet. In 2010 it was estimated that 30 per cent of Syrians were living below the poverty line, with 11 per cent living below subsistence levels. The plight of impoverished Syrians contrasted sharply with the high-living lifestyle espoused by Bashar and Asma, who were often to be seen in the upmarket suburbs of Damascus, where Gulf money had financed the development of new shopping malls, and where the latest designer fashions from Paris, Milan and London were on display for those who could afford them. While the presidential couple claimed to take a close interest in the lives of ordinary Syrians, nothing had better illustrated the disconnect between the Assads and their people than the opening of the new Opera House in Damascus that catered almost exclusively to the tastes of the ruling elite. Bashar’s personal oversight of the crisis cell certainly undermined claims made by his supporters that he remained genuinely interested in reform, and that he had been overruled by regime hardliners who wanted to take a tougher line with the protesters. While his friends encouraged compromise, close family members urged the opposite course of action, and wanted him to adopt a similar approach to his father’s handling of the Hama uprising in 1982. Bashar’s mother, sister and younger brother Maher all urged him to take a more stringent line, arguing that without a firm response the regime would fall. It was even suggested that Maher, as commander of the Fourth Armoured Division, treated the rebels particularly harshly in order to upstage his elder brother and demonstrate his own credentials for the presidency. Yet Bashar continued to make half-hearted attempts to placate the protesters. Soon after the protests began in March, the government offered to introduce the economic reform package Bashar had been talking about for the past decade, but had done little to achieve. A new economic package pledged to cut taxes and raise state salaries, with Bashar declaring that ‘we will start now’ to implement the reforms. In another significant concession, Bashar signed a decree in April ending the emergency rule that the Baathists had introduced when they first took power in 1963, which had effectively placed the country under martial law ever since. But the harsh treatment meted out to protesters in Deraa and elsewhere only strengthened their resolve to challenge the authorities, so that by early spring protests were taking place across the country. They continued in Deraa

long after the schoolboys whose detention had sparked the initial unrest had been released, while disturbances spread to other major towns and cities, including Hama, Homs and Banias. Widespread unhappiness at the country’s dire economic state and its repressive government were the principal drivers of the unrest, although local disputes also played their part. In the conservative coastal city of Banias, for example, demonstrators were unhappy with the regime’s introduction of restrictions on Islamic dress, such as the ban introduced the previous year on female schoolteachers wearing the niqab, a veil worn by more observant women. In the Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the country there were renewed calls for independence, while long-standing Sunni resentment at the dominance of the Alawite clique around Bashar saw a strengthening of resistance in the Sunni heartlands. The violent clashes between the protesters and government forces quickly settled into a familiar pattern. Through March and early April Deraa remained an important focus for anti-regime agitators who were not swayed by either the regime’s threats or blandishments to end the unrest, with the city becoming known as the ‘birthplace of the revolution’. Homs, the country’s third-largest city, located 100 miles north of the capital, was another settlement that quickly became the centre of anti-Assad protests. A major industrial city, it prided itself on its religious diversity, with Muslims, Christians and Alawites coexisting peaceably. It had added significance for the regime, as it was home to the Homs Military Academy where most of the key figures in the Syrian security establishment – including Bashar – had undergone their military training. Hama, located another thirty miles further north and long regarded as a breeding ground for Sunni Islamist militants, was another area that soon became a focus for resistance. Further north Aleppo, located close to the Turkish border, was a rallying point for opposition fighters who were able to smuggle weapons from Turkey, while Idlib, further west, became known for hosting Islamist opposition groups. As the violence escalated, demonstrators would take to the streets to protest about the victims who had been killed the previous day. The se-curity forces would respond with lethal force, thereby causing yet more fatalities. The next day the protesters would be back on the streets staging further demonstrations about the previous day’s bloodshed, and regime forces would repeat their familiar tactic of using tear gas to disperse the crowd before opening fire with live rounds against the suspected ringleaders. By mid-April the violence was in danger of getting out of control. In one particularly brutal encounter in Homs on

18 April, regime forces opened fire on a crowd of around 10,000 protesters, killing seventeen people. A grim milestone was reached on 22 April when 109 people were killed in a single day as protests escalated throughout the country. One important contributing factor to the rapid spread of the unrest was the protesters’ adroit use of the internet. Many of the atrocities were filmed by activists on their mobile phones and then circulated on platforms such as YouTube. The images of the regime’s brutality led to further protests, giving the anti-Assad revolution added momentum. The regime’s failure to close down the internet, or at least limit the propagation of anti-regime material, reflected the dysfunctional nature of its security forces. As the former head of the Syrian Computer Society, Bashar at least should have understood the power of the internet to frame a narrative, for good or ill. Not all the protests that took place in Syria in the spring of 2011 were against the regime. There were pro-Assad protests, too, in Damascus and other major cities as regime loyalists, especially the prosperous Sunni middle classes who had profited from the Baathists’ rule, rallied to their support. In late March, Baath Party activists organized rallies called ‘loyalty marches’ in all the main cities, including Damascus, Homs and Hama, and state-controlled television showed supporters waving the national flag and pictures of Bashar while chanting ‘God, Syria, Bashar’. Another banner, referring to Bashar’s contention that the unrest had been provoked by ‘foreign elements’, read, ‘Breaking news: the conspiracy has failed!’ Another popular chant was, ‘With our blood and our souls we protect our national unity.’ Employees and members of unions controlled by the Baath Party later conceded they had been ordered to attend the rallies, where the security forces were heavily represented.27 In its efforts to control the unrest, the regime turned to irregular militias and gangs, known as the shabiha, to intimidate the protesters, a move that ultimately proved counterproductive, as it demonstrated the regime’s utter contempt for the population’s general well-being. The shabiha were nothing more than gangs of thugs who had previously controlled Syria’s lucrative drug trade and run protection rackets; they were widely despised by most Syrians, not least by the important constituency of conservative-minded Sunni Muslims. Many members of the shabiha, a term which derives from the Arabic for ‘ghost’, came from poor Alawite families from the coastal region and were fanatically pro-Assad, as they feared persecution from the Sunnis if the regime fell. The shabiha were accused of committing massacres and systematic rapes in opposition strongholds to instil fear into the wider population. Although they were backed by pro-

regime officials, their freelance status allowed the regime a degree of deniability to their atrocities. They worked in conjunction with the mukhabarat, whose primary task was to disrupt the activities of the protest groups. In one of their more high-profile operations, security forces detained 286 men aged between 18 and 50 in the impoverished Damascus suburb of Saqba in May 2011; they were taken to one of the regime’s notorious detention facilities where torture was routine. At this stage, human rights groups estimated that 8,000 activists were languishing in these facilities, where they were beaten with sticks and cables and sometimes deprived of food. Often, detainees would be released after suffering mistreatment so they could tell others about their experience as a means of discouraging further protests. In one particularly shocking case, the body of thirteen-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb from Deraa was returned to his family in May after he had been burned, shot and castrated.28 The more the regime resorted to extreme violence to suppress the protests, the more the unrest spread throughout the country. By July a UN report concluded that 1,900 protesters had been killed, yet the unrest showed no sign of subsiding. Troops and security forces, often backed by tanks, were sent to all the main population centres. The first military assaults using helicopter gunships were reported in June in Idlib province in the north-west, prompting the first wave of Syrian refugees to seek shelter across the border in Turkey. To instil terror into the civilian population, regime loyalists continued to indulge in acts of savagery, such as the incident concerning the Hama fireman who had written and sung a song to anti-Assad protesters with the popular refrain, ‘It’s time to leave, Bashar. Freedom is near.’ In July his body was found floating in the River Orontes with his throat slit and his vocal cords cut out.29 Despite the escalating violence, Bashar refused to concede that the protesters had genuine grievances about the way their country was being run, maintaining the line that the unrest was the result of foreign interference. On 20 June, in his third major public address of the crisis, Bashar told an audience at Damascus University – his alma mater – that the protesters were ‘germs’ who, if not dealt with, would leave the country open to foreign intervention of the type recently witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. By this time Bashar was coming under considerable outside pressure, especially from neighbouring states such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to address the protesters’ concerns; he reiterated his earlier pledge to instigate his long-promised reforms, including new laws covering parliamentary elections and the formation of political parties, even holding out the prospect of a new constitution. Opposition leaders were invited

to participate in a ‘National Dialogue’, although its credibility was undermined as many would-be attendees were detained by the security forces before its first session convened on 10 July. Bashar’s schizophrenic approach to the protests – promising reform while at the same time personally supervising brutal reprisals – made it difficult for regime officials to ascertain the president’s main objectives, which only added to the sense of confusion at the heart of government. David Lesch, one of Bashar’s more sympathetic biographers, paints a picture of a leader who was anxious to seek a broad range of opinions before making up his mind, a system that inevitably caused delays to the decision-making process.30 Others regarded his inability to reach a firm conclusion as a sign of weakness, proving he lacked his father’s resolve. Bashar’s constant prevarication – former aides say he could change his mind twenty times in a single day – certainly made it harder to deal with him, as US ambassador Ford discovered when he went to remonstrate with the Syrian president for his regime’s violent response. ‘We received an approach from senior members of the regime saying they wanted us to help set up a dialogue with the opposition,’ said Ford. ‘But then we worked it out that they were just playing with us, for they were doing what we expected them to do and brutally repress the opposition.’ Like many Western diplomats in Damascus at that time, the question that was constantly in Ford’s mind was whether Bashar was completely in control, or was being subjected to pressure from regime hardliners. Ford eventually concluded that Bashar was the one calling all the shots, not his advisers. ‘I never saw one iota of evidence that Bashar was trying to rein them [the hardliners] in,’ said Ford. ‘He was not in control of the day-today tactics: he just told his senior security officials to get on with it. He would say to his advisers: “You know what you have to do.” We never got any idea that he was urging restraint.’31 By the summer of 2011 the protest movement had become a national phenomenon as activists took up arms to defend themselves from the regime’s violent attacks. The main objective was to protect their communities against the security forces, and before long the movement was formed into an organized opposition, with rebel brigades established to fight for control of towns and cities, and as self-defence forces. Their cause was helped immensely by the desertion of scores of Syrian military officers sickened by the brutality being meted out to the civilian population on a daily basis. In July this led to the formation of the FSA, which soon emerged as the main rebel group fighting to overthrow the Assad regime.

What had begun as a series of local protests at government misrule was rapidly turning into a national uprising, a development that only hardened the regime’s resolve to crush the protests. At a key meeting of Bashar’s crisis cell held on 5 August, senior security officials were highly critical of the regime’s ‘laxness’ in handling the crisis, blaming the ‘weak coordination and cooperation among security bodies’.32 The committee recommended setting up a network of Joint Investigation Committees (JICs) in governorates that were particularly affected by the unrest, or ‘hot’ as the committee described them. The JICs would be responsible for coordinating the interrogation of detained protesters, to coerce confessions and identify other suspects involved in anti-regime activity. The aim was to encourage better coordination between the rival security services, thereby improving their ability to tackle the opposition. The minutes of the CCMC’s conclusions were duly sent by courier to the Presidential Palace, and Bashar, having reviewed the measures, gave his approval for their immediate implementation.33 The August meeting of the crisis cell led to a marked increase in the regime’s repressive measures. Over the course of the next few months thousands of civilians were arrested and held at the regime’s national network of detention centres controlled by the security forces. Working in conjunction with the NSB, which was regarded as the Baath Party’s most reliable security service, Bashar’s regime launched a well-coordinated campaign to detain, arrest and murder its opponents. Official Syrian records that were smuggled out of the country by anti-government activists provide graphic details of the institutionalized brutality many of the detainees suffered. Documentation of the abuse collected by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) showed that many of the detainees were held for prolonged periods, during which they were subjected to intimidation, physical violence and torture; for some, this resulted in death. Nor did regime forces exercise restraint when conducting raids or responding to protests, with the result that scores of unarmed activists were shot, causing injury and death. The reports of survivors who were held in the regime’s detention centres during this period provide harrowing accounts of the abuse. Detainees were routinely subjected to severe beatings, electric shocks, forced stress positions and psychological abuse. Sexual violence, including rape, was a regular occurrence, involving women, men and even minors. There were occasions when detainees were forced to commit sexual acts on other detainees, or on their own immediate family while others were forced to watch. The primary aim of

the abuse was to compel them to confess that they had taken part in the protests and reveal the identities of other activists. Anyone suspected of being involved in organizing anti-regime activity was transferred to Damascus, where they were subjected to further physical and psychological abuse. Over the course of the next two years thousands of detainees died in custody in Damascus; when a defector from the Syrian military smuggled pictures of the dead detainees out of the country, their injuries were consistent with torture, starvation and suffocation. As the defector commented on the regime’s tactics, ‘They were torturing to kill.’34 As president and commander-in-chief, Bashar was responsible for this industrial-scale abuse of the Syrian people. He appointed the security chiefs who devised the tactics, and he approved the security operations to quell the unrest. He personally directed the detention operations of his four main securityintelligence services, all of which reported in excruciating detail their respective ‘successes’ in implementing Bashar’s orders. Many of those charged with executing Bashar’s orders were veteran members of the security forces, including some who had served under Hafez. Ali Mamlouk, for example, one of Bashar’s most trusted security advisers, had served with Hafez in Syria’s Air Force Intelligence, one of the country’s more ruthless organizations, before Bashar made him head of the General Security Directorate in 2005. In May 2011, Mamlouk’s enthusiasm for crushing the protests led to him being placed on the European Union’s sanctions list for being ‘involved in violence against demonstrators’.35 Hisham Ikhtiyar, another veteran of the Hafez era and head of the NSB, found himself subjected to US sanctions for his role in quelling the pro-democracy protests. After Bashar established the crisis cell, the NSB was primarily responsible for implementing Bashar’s directives, and Ikhtiyar was accused of organizing some of the regime’s worst excesses. The Assad regime’s assault on Homs was the scene of some of the worst war crimes committed by Bashar’s forces, beginning in the autumn of 2011 and continuing until February 2012. With its large Sunni population, the city was a natural centre for protesters to vent their anger at the Alawite clique running the country and, as the protests escalated, it became known as the ‘capital of the revolution’. Fearing Homs would become a national rallying point for opposition activists in the way that Cairo’s Tahrir Square had been the epicentre for antiMubarak protests in Egypt, the regime resolved to make an example of the city. Throughout July and August the crisis cell, under Bashar’s direct command, ordered local military and political leaders to carry out what it euphemistically

called ‘inspections’, which in fact amounted to raids, mass arrests and summary executions. When local officials were suspected of not being sufficiently enthusiastic in carrying out the regime’s orders, Bashar dispatched Mamlouk and other trusted Baathist officers to Homs to take personal control. By October the city was completely surrounded by the Syrian army, which then indiscriminately shelled civilian neighbourhoods deemed to be rebel enclaves, while the inhabitants were subjected to constant sniper fire. The siege of Homs culminated in a twenty-seven-day bombardment of the city that claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. Then, when the siege was lifted in early March 2012, progovernment forces and militias entered the city’s rebel-held enclaves and carried out summary executions of approximately 1,200 men, women and children, often burning their bodies beyond recognition. Regime forces committed rape and torture on a devastating scale in the same neighbourhoods. Throughout the duration of the regime’s barbaric assault on Homs, which was implemented according to the military doctrine Assad had personally approved, the CCMC met almost daily, keeping meticulous minutes of developments that were handdelivered to Assad for his feedback and approval, together with orders for subsequent operations.36 The ruthlessness of Bashar’s approach was highlighted to the outside world in February 2012 when the American journalist Marie Colvin was deliberately murdered while covering the siege of Homs. A talented and intrepid reporter, the fifty-six-year-old Colvin had made her way to Homs from Lebanon on the back of a motorcycle and attracted the attention of the regime’s security forces by giving a number of interviews to British and American television networks using a satellite phone. In her last interview for CNN, the veteran war correspondent, who had covered conflicts from the First Gulf War to Chechnya, described the bombardment of Homs as the worst she had ever experienced.37 The following morning, having located her by tracking the signal from her satellite phone, regime forces began shelling her base at an unofficial media building on the outskirts of the city and, as Colvin tried to escape, she and French photographer Remi Ochlik were struck by an improvised shell filled with nails and killed instantly. Her death caused an international outcry; the US State Department spokesman said the White House was ‘deeply saddened and troubled’ by Colvin’s death. A US court later ruled that Bashar’s regime had committed an ‘extrajudicial killing’ by authorizing her murder, and it ordered Damascus to pay Colvin’s family $302.5 million in damages for committing an ‘unconscionable

crime’.38 On the day Colvin died, sixty Syrians were also killed by the regime’s bombardment of Homs. Another region subjected to Bashar’s uncompromising tactics was Deraa, where the protests had begun. In August, concerned that the province was becoming a ‘hotspot’ for anti-regime activity, the regime launched a military offensive against the small city of Hrak, laying siege to its 20,000 residents, subjecting them to a systematic assault by missiles, barrel bombs and sniper fire. The local artillery commander reported that his units had fired 2,091 shells at Hrak. When the siege was lifted after eight days, paramilitary groups moved into the town, searching for rebels. In one account provided by eyewitnesses, a shelter crowded with civilians close to the town’s entrance was raided by regime forces. A group of men were brought out wearing blindfolds and handcuffs, and were then sorted into different groups, with the commander telling them, ‘You go to heaven, you go to hell.’ A massacre ensued, with Assad’s forces killing at least thirteen civilians with knives and blows to the head. In all, sixty-three people were reported to have been killed during the operation. When the offensive was completed, Bashar rewarded several of the commanders with promotion.39 While his forces continued their assault on rebel enclaves, Bashar refuted any suggestion that his regime was committing war crimes, claiming he was merely defending his country against foreign-sponsored extremists. Bashar insisted the conflict was the result of a ‘foreign-backed conspiracy’ designed to topple his government. ‘Many people were misled in the beginning, thinking that what is happening is a wave of excitement, a wave of the “Arab Spring” . . . But it isn’t a revolution or a spring: it is terrorist acts in the full meaning of the word.’40 Bashar’s insistence that Syria’s secular Baathists were involved in a life-anddeath struggle against jihadi militants coincided with his decision to release hundreds of Islamists from Syrian jails. The jihadis had been held at Sednaya military prison on the outskirts of Damascus, with the facility divided into separate blocks of al-Qaeda and other Islamist fighters. They were released in the expectation that they would join rebel groups, enabling the regime to claim that it was fighting a jihadist insurgency, not the secular opposition that still constituted the main opposition to Damascus. It was certainly true that by 2012 the FSA was trying to form an alliance with the numerous Islamist organizations that had flooded into Syria to take advantage of the power vacuum created by the conflict. In January 2012, a group called Jabhat al-Nusra announced itself as alQaeda’s Syrian franchise, and the following month al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-

Zawahiri called for Sunnis from around the region to join a jihad against the regime. Islamist fighters who had fought against Gaddafi’s regime in Libya arrived in Syria, as did Chechen militants. Many of these extremists had family connections in Syria, and General Petraeus’s warning that the ‘jihadi highway’ to attack coalition forces between Syria and Iraq would be reversed and used to attack the Assad regime had become a reality. The arrival of foreign fighters in Syria added a truly international dimension to the conflict, as regional powers including Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia offered to provide funding to the FSA and its Islamist affiliates. The initial effectiveness of the FSA as an opposition fighting force owed much to the calibre of the former Syrian military officers who had defected to its ranks and used their skills to carry out carefully targeted attacks against Bashar’s regime, including security buildings in Damascus. Its most deadly operation occurred on 18 July 2012 when it targeted a meeting of Bashar’s crisis cell, which now convened in the heavily guarded NSB compound in the centre of the city. A bomb exploded as the meeting was taking place, killing several senior members of Bashar’s security establishment, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat as well as Ikhtiyar, the NSB’s chief. While a group called the Brigade of Islam, which had ties with the FSA, claimed that it carried out the attack, the assassination of so many key members of Bashar’s inner circle inevitably prompted speculation that it was the result of internal rivalries. The fact that Mamlouk, who had been due to attend the meeting, was absent raised suspicions that the attackers had had inside information, especially as those who were not in attendance were later promoted to replace those who had been killed. It was even claimed the bombing had pre-empted a coup attempt against Assad, while some Syrian officials claimed Iran had carried out the attack to increase its grip over the country.41 Whatever the reasons for the attack, it struck a deadly blow to the heart of the regime, severely disrupting its efforts to counter the growing effectiveness of opposition forces. One of the Assad clan’s less edifying characteristics was that, whenever it found itself in peril, it resorted to even more extreme measures to maintain its grip on power. The bombing of the crisis cell effectively ended the organization’s role in the conflict, forcing Bashar to take an even more direct leadership role, in which he dealt with trusted acolytes like Mamlouk. Accordingly, the regime became ever more ruthless in its efforts to crush the opposition. Orders were issued from the highest leadership level ‘not to have compassion and mercy towards demonstrators’ and to dissolve public protests

‘regardless of the consequences’.42 Military commanders received written instructions to threaten communities with destruction in the event of resistance to the Assad forces. Massacres against rebel-held enclaves became more frequent. One of the more horrific instances of regime brutality took place on 16 April 2013 in the Tadamon neighbourhood of Damascus. The suburb was controlled by rebels who were preparing an assault on the city centre. Soldiers attached to Branch 227 of Syrian military intelligence, an organization that reported directly to Bashar, entered the suburb and executed forty-one people near the Othman Mosque. The victims, blindfolded with duct tape and with their hands bound behind their backs, were led to a hole that had been dug in advance in a nearby street. Eyewitnesses later claimed that regime forces had persuaded the victims that they were being taken to safety, so they went willingly, but having been led there, they were pushed into the pit one by one, and then shot dead. Once the killing was over, the soldiers tried to cover their tracks by setting the bodies on fire with burning tyres. In other operations carried out by regime forces that day, it is estimated a total of 288 civilians were murdered. Unfortunately for the perpetrators of the killings near the Othman Mosque, regime soldiers filmed the entire gruesome spectacle on a mobile phone for distribution on the internet as a warning to other rebel groups of the fate that would befall them if they persisted with their anti-Assad resistance. The footage later provoked an international outcry when it was posted on the internet by Syrian defectors.43 It was against this background that the decision was taken to launch chemical weapons on the residential neighbourhoods of Ghouta in August. Prior to the attacks, the regime had accused the FSA and its Islamist allies of carrying out massacres of the Alawite population in the mountain areas around Latakia. Hundreds of Alawites were reported to have been killed as a 2,300-strong FSA force, which included fighters from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya and Chechnya, launched a series of attacks against nineteen Alawite villages and farms, killing large numbers of the inhabitants and kidnapping others. A report widely circulated by the Syrian Human Rights Network provided graphic detail of the atrocities said to have been committed by the FSA forces: In the village of Baluta dozens were slaughtered with military bayonets and machetes, and their heads were cut off and they were buried in a ditch and mass graves. Also the terrorists cut off the limbs of some of the women and

disembowelled the pregnant women and took out the foetus and slaughtered it, in addition to raping others.44 Not surprisingly, the Alawite officer class that dominated the regime’s security forces were outraged by the attacks against their community, and – by way of revenge – responded with the chemical attacks against rebel-held positions in Ghouta. The Ghouta attack presented a major challenge to the Obama administration and its allies, being the most serious breach yet of the White House’s ‘red line’. The television footage broadcast around the world showing the victims killed by the attack meant that Washington could no longer ignore what was soon being described as the worst chemical weapons attack of the twenty-first century. Obama’s initial reaction seemed to be inclined towards launching air strikes at Syria in retaliation, a move that had backing from Britain and France. As the US administration wrestled over the likely consequences of any such action, concerns were raised about whether there was conclusive evidence that Assad’s regime really was responsible, or whether the attack had been a ‘false flag’ operation carried out by the rebels to provoke a military response. One option, advocated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a telephone conversation with the president, was to allow the UN inspectors already in Damascus more time to investigate the attacks, a move that could take weeks. The British government’s original enthusiasm for military strikes was undermined when the House of Commons narrowly voted against supporting US action after Ed Miliband, the Labour leader of the opposition, refused to back a government motion in favour of military action. This was a setback for Obama because, only a few days previously, he had been given the support of Prime Minister David Cameron for a ‘punish and deter’ attack against the Assad regime.45 Now Britain could no longer participate in military action. Although there were still some key members of the administration backing action, such as National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Obama argued that it was not just the US that had to decide whether to take action, but the international community, and he sought to distance himself from his original commitment, saying, ‘I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line.’46 Eventually Obama opted to let Congress make the final decision, a move which – given the unpopularity of Washington’s other interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – was unlikely to result in the authorization of any military action. In the event, the Congressional vote never took place. Obama had a private conversation with

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in St Petersburg, in which Putin offered to work with Obama to address the threat posed by Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. The crisis was eventually defused a few days later when Damascus agreed to comply with the joint US–Russian initiative to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal.47 Obama’s decision proved to be a watershed moment in the civil war, as it confirmed Bashar’s suspicion that, as long as Obama was president, the US would not involve itself militarily in the conflict, no matter what ‘red line’ it had drawn. Washington’s evident lack of resolve also sent a clear signal to other interested parties, such as Iran and Russia, that they could continue to support the Assad regime with impunity. Similarly, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf states felt that, in the absence of definitive American leadership, they could maintain their support for the rebel factions. It was an approach that was guaranteed to broaden the conflict well beyond Syria’s borders. Obama’s failure to uphold his red line was seen as an abject failure of leadership by many in Washington’s security establishment, who believed that it would create a power vacuum, a vacuum that would be exploited by hostile states. ‘The policy objective as stated by the president was that Bashar al-Assad should go, and he stated this on a number of occasions,’ recalled a senior official in the Obama administration. ‘But the implementation of what might have been done to achieve that policy objective never transpired because of the lack of commitment and vacillation on delivering the means to achieve that overall objective.’48 The failure of major Western powers to respond militarily to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons would certainly have profound consequences for the future course of the conflict, not least because it meant Bashar and his Baathist regime had survived the biggest crisis of his presidency.

EIGHT

Barbarians at the Gate Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity. Edward Gibbon

The defining moment of the civil war took place in the summer of 2015 when Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, travelled to Moscow for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite the brutality of the measures Bashar’s forces had used against the rebels, the tide of the conflict had turned decisively in favour of the numerous opposition groups – both secular and Islamist – that were vying to overthrow the Assads and establish a new government. Meanwhile, the arrival of an even more extremist group had added a further layer of complexity to the conflict. In 2014, an offshoot of the al-Qaeda militia that had fought against coalition forces in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Daesh, as it was more familiarly known in the region, had seized control of large areas of northern Iraq. It then extended its offensive into Syria, seizing the border town of Deir Ezzor and establishing its headquarters in the city of Raqqa. By 2015 Daesh’s Syrian offensive was so successful that its forces were closing in on the capital itself. Soleimani, who had been instrumental in coordinating Iran’s support for the Assad regime, was so alarmed by this that he concluded there was only one way to save the regime: persuade Putin to intervene. The Russian leader had kept a wary eye on the unfolding crisis, not least because Moscow wanted to maintain its two military bases in Syria: an army base on the outskirts of Latakia and a run-down naval port at Tartus, which amounted to little more than a couple of piers and some warehouses staffed by fifty Russian military personnel, but which nevertheless provided the Russian navy with its only base in the Mediterranean. The relationship between Moscow and Damascus was deep and long-standing, dating back to the Cold War when Syria’s brash form of Arab nationalism was seen by Moscow as a useful foil to Israel and its close allegiance with the US. This led to close military cooperation between the two countries, and the Soviet Union was actively involved in strengthening the Syrian military. Nearly all of the Syrian military’s heavy armour and warplanes came from Russia, as did its missile systems. In the 1980s

Syria became the second-largest recipient of Russian arms, and the relationship continued long after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although Russia had played no more than a peripheral role during the turbulence the Middle East had experienced following the Iraq war, Putin still nurtured ambitions of expanding Russia’s influence in the region. He criticized the invasion of Iraq as a ‘mistake’, while Sergei Lavrov, his combative foreign minister, went even further, claiming the American-led intervention had been a ‘total failure’. ‘We are greatly alarmed by what is happening in Iraq,’ said Lavrov as Daesh launched its offensive. ‘We warned long ago that the affair that the Americans and the Britons stirred up there wouldn’t end well.’1 While willing to criticize America’s involvement in Iraq, Moscow had few qualms about maintaining its support for the Assad regime in Syria. From 2011 onwards, Russia moved quickly to reinforce its Syrian ally, providing $960 million to upgrade its fleet of fighter aircraft, anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles and antitank weapons.2 By 2012 Syria was one of Moscow’s main arms trading partners with contracts worth an estimated $4 billion, and the frequency of Russian arms exports to Syria prompted the Kremlin to name it the ‘Syrian Express’. In addition, the Russians strengthened their own military facilities. The naval air station at Tartus, which had fallen into disrepair, was given a hasty upgrade, while Latakia became the site of Russia’s largest overseas electronic intelligence-gathering post, deepening Moscow’s operational foothold in Syria. While Moscow took a close interest in the Syrian conflict, Putin, like Obama, showed little enthusiasm for becoming directly involved, so that the only Russian military personnel deployed were sent in a training and advisory capacity. As the veteran US diplomat William J. Burns explained, Syria was important for Putin because it provided him with an opportunity to revive Russian influence overseas after the long decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union. ‘Putin used a modest military deployment to maximum political effect,’ said Burns.3 The Assad regime’s survival in power remained a national security priority for the Kremlin, even if the Russians were not completely enamoured of Bashar himself. As the protests continued to escalate, Lavrov observed that Russia was not ‘wedded to Assad, but would not push him out’, which was hardly a ringing endorsement of his leadership.4 Apart from supplying weapons, Moscow provided Bashar with diplomatic cover, vetoing UN Security Council Resolution 10534 in February 2012 that called for a ceasefire and for Assad to step down. The resolution was drafted by the US, Britain and France with the aim of supporting a plan put forward by the League of Arab States to stem the

bloodshed in Syria by calling on Bashar to step aside as part of a democratic transition process. Russia, together with China, vetoed the proposal, arguing that it violated Syrian sovereignty and could be used by the West as a pretext to launch military action, as it had done previously in Libya. Russia’s diplomatic support for Damascus during this period was motivated as much by its desire to protect a vital strategic ally as its wish to mount a sustained challenge to the Western hegemony in world affairs. There was a strong sense of resentment in the Kremlin, dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Russian concerns had been overlooked or discounted on major international issues, from the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where Moscow had had long-standing interests, to the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians were particularly incensed at the way Western powers such as Britain and France, and to a lesser extent the US, had taken advantage of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. This had been passed in March 2011 with the aim of preventing Gaddafi’s forces in Libya from massacring anti-regime protesters in Benghazi, but it was subsequently used as a pretext by London and Paris to launch a military intervention aimed at securing Gaddafi’s removal from power. Russia, together with China, had abstained on the vote, rather than vetoing it, on the assumption that it would be used to stop the fighting, not to overthrow Gaddafi. Putin felt a strong sense of betrayal at what he regarded as the West’s doubledealing, and he resolved that Moscow would never again allow itself to be misled, and that it would adopt a far more robust position at future UN deliberations.5 He declared, ‘we must not allow the “Libyan scenario” to be attempted to be reproduced in Syria.’6 For the Russian leader, who had memorably remarked that he regarded the break-up of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century’, the Syrian conflict presented an opportunity to exert Russian influence in the Middle East while at the same time undermining Western efforts to end the bloodshed. The conflict was no longer a struggle between rival factions over who controlled the country: it had become the battleground for the deepening Great Power rivalry between Washington and Moscow, with Putin determined to frustrate the efforts of the US and its allies to end the conflict, a development that would have profoundly tragic consequences for Syria’s civilian population. Another factor that contributed to Moscow’s obstructionist attitude was the deep antipathy that existed between Putin and the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who had denounced Moscow’s veto of the UN’s February resolution on Syria as

‘despicable’. ‘What more do we need to know to act decisively at the Security Council?’ Clinton demanded, adding that the Assad regime’s ‘horrific campaign’ in Homs made it imperative that the international community took action to end the ‘abhorrent brutality [of] a brutal tyrant’7. Clinton had been a vocal critic of Putin dating back to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. She had responded by pledging Washington’s commitment to support the territorial integrity of countries such as Georgia and Ukraine that felt threatened by the Kremlin’s desire to expand its influence. The diplomatic cover Russia provided for Syria during this period did not mean its support for Assad was unconditional. Despite taking an interest in Syria, Putin preferred to keep his distance from the Assad clan itself. He declined an invitation to attend Hafez’s funeral, which had taken place just a few weeks after he had been appointed president, sending the speaker of the Duma to represent Russia instead.8 He spurned Bashar’s attempts to court Moscow, such as when he publicly backed the Russian invasion of Georgia. For most of Putin’s first decade in power he regarded Syria as a sideshow that had no special place in the Kremlin’s strategic thinking. He was also wary of Bashar’s motives, quipping that he spent more time in Paris than in Moscow.9 He only began to show interest in Syria after Bashar’s regime was engulfed by the civil war, when his key motivation was to prevent any further Western military interventions in Syria along the lines of Iraq and Libya. To this end Moscow played an active role in frustrating what it regarded as US-backed diplomatic initiatives to end the bloodshed, such as the UN-sponsored efforts to find a political solution to the conflict. Moscow’s veto of Resolution 10534 was the start of that process. International efforts to end the fighting in Syria had begun in earnest in March with the appointment of Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, as the joint special envoy of the UN and League of Arab States, which were tasked with drawing up a framework for political transition. This led to Annan presenting Assad with a six-point peace plan, which was widely acknowledged as a road map for ending the conflict. There was a consensus among Western diplomats that there was little chance of the Annan plan succeeding unless Russia pressured Damascus to comply. The main sticking point for Bashar was that Annan’s plan, which became formally known as the ‘Geneva Communique’, stated that any future regime should not include ‘Syrians with blood on their hands’ – a direct reference to the Syrian leader. Annan hoped that this would encourage Moscow to convince Bashar to step down. But both Damascus and Moscow regarded the proposal as a blueprint for regime change, so had little

interest in supporting the initiative. This led the Russians to play down their influence over Damascus. ‘You overestimate what we can do with the Assad family. Do not think we can dictate terms,’ a Russian official cautioned.10 The stalemate eventually resulted in Annan resigning from his post in August, lamenting what he called the ‘destructive competition’ between the world’s leading powers. Neither Syria nor Russia had any serious interest in what they regarded as a Western-led initiative; their primary goal was to frustrate international efforts to end the fighting. Moscow initially supported Annan’s appointment and even helped to facilitate meetings with key figures in the Syrian government and opposition. But when it came to implementing Annan’s proposals, the idea of putting pressure on Bashar to respond had little appeal for the Russians. Moscow also vetoed a series of UN resolutions designed to increase the pressure on Damascus to end the conflict, while the continuing participation of Syrian negotiators was little more than a stalling tactic designed to provide the regime with more time to crush the protests. Another factor that limited Russia’s ability to act was Bashar’s close ties with Iran, which remained Syria’s most important ally – unless Tehran wanted Bashar to step down, it was never going to happen. Putin’s most important contribution to protecting the Assad regime came in the aftermath of the chemical attack on Ghouta when, in the days immediately following the atrocity, the US and Britain gave serious consideration to a military response. While Obama and Cameron weighed their options, Putin’s suggestion for UN inspectors to dismantle Syria’s WMD programme proved to be a masterstroke. It gave Obama the excuse he needed to back away from military action, and it gave Assad some respite from the intense international pressure he faced. Most UN-backed initiatives are lengthy affairs, and the regime was well versed in using stalling tactics to prolong the process. The arrival of more UN inspectors in Damascus provided the regime with muchneeded breathing space. For all the international controversy the Ghouta attack had generated, the decision to launch a chemical weapons attack on its own capital had been made out of sheer desperation. Apart from the heavy losses suffered by the Alawites around Latakia, rebel forces controlled the main supply routes to Damascus. Having thwarted numerous UN attempts to arrange a ceasefire, Russia’s backing for the mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to identify and destroy Syria’s WMD stockpiles helped to save Bashar’s regime by effectively placing it under international protection.

While the world’s leading politicians and diplomats wrestled with the challenge of ending hostilities in Syria, the Assads seemed to be living in a parallel universe, one where they were defending the rights of the Syrian people against an orchestrated effort organized by malign foreign powers to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government. Bashar spent his working day authorizing his security chiefs to undertake further acts of brutality against the Syrian people, but, away from the demands of the Presidential Palace, he and Asma tried to give the impression of leading ordinary lives. Each morning Asma would walk her children to school before spending the day at her Syria Trust, where she passed a great deal of her time shopping online for designer goods, such as designer lamps and customized furniture. While the rest of the population faced food shortages and other hardships, Asma spent £10,000 on candlesticks, tables and chandeliers from Paris and instructed an aide to place an order for a fondue set from Harrods. She was especially excited about the new designs produced by the luxury shoe designer Christian Louboutin, who had bought a mansion in Aleppo before the war and whom Asma regarded as a personal friend. A cache of emails acquired from the personal accounts used by Asma and Bashar during this period provides an intriguing insight into their mindset. The emails, which were obtained by opposition activists, came from a Dubai-based company, Al Shahba, which had a registered office in London and was used by the Assad family to conduct their private business. In addition, the Assads employed a third party with an address in the US that allowed them to evade US and EU sanctions to make online purchases. In her emails Asma signed herself ‘aaa’ – shorthand for Asma Akhras Assad – and they showed that Syria’s first lady was not shy about taking issue with any criticism she received from prominent female members of rival Arab dynasties. The ruling al-Thani clan in Qatar, for example, had been early supporters of the Islamist rebels seeking to overthrow Bashar’s regime. So when Asma received an email in December 2011 from al-Mayassa al-Thani, the daughter of Qatar’s ruling emir and a renowned global art collector, criticizing Bashar’s ‘bad policy’, she replied, ‘I don’t have a problem with frankness or honesty, in fact to me it’s like oxygen – I need it to survive. Life is not fair my friend – but ultimately there is a reality we all need to deal with!!! – take care.’11 In another exchange with the Qatari royal, Asma showed a more steely side to her nature when she joked about the popularity of the Qatari capital among Syrians after al-Mayassa suggested the Assads seek exile in the Gulf state. ‘You

may not have heard, but Doha is not a popular destination with Syrians at the moment! Too bad since you had a great opportunity to change people’s views here of the Gulf in general, but like all great opportunities, they are lost if you don’t play your cards right.’ The Qataris were lobbying for Assad to stand down so they could install the Muslim Brotherhood or some similar Islamist movement in power, as had happened in Egypt following the removal of President Mubarak. The following month al-Mayassa emailed Asma again, saying that her father was prepared to grant her, Bashar and the children asylum. ‘I only pray that you will convince the president to take this as an opportunity to exit without having to face charges,’ she wrote. Asma did not reply. 12 Asma was in similarly combative mood when Thala Manaf, the daughter-inlaw of Hafez’s defence minister, challenged her about reports of pro-regime forces committing a massacre on the outskirts of Homs. ‘What massacre?’ Asma demanded. ‘What are you talking about? I have heard nothing. More importantly, where is your husband, why is he not taking part in the battles against terrorists?’13 Another example of the Assads’ disconnection from the suffering of ordinary Syrians was evident in June 2012 when Asma made a highprofile visit to a sports complex in central Damascus to meet the country’s Paralympics youth team. Wearing bell-bottom jeans and a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘You’re beautiful, my country’, she played badminton with two boys, with giant portraits of Hafez and Bashar looming in the background, her every gesture captured by the regime’s propaganda machine.14 Bashar, meanwhile, occupied his own fantasy world, one in which he was willing to poke fun at the slaughter committed by his forces at Homs. In December 2011, when a team of Arab League monitors arrived at the city to investigate allegations of war crimes, the Syrian leader shared a video with one of his aides that lampooned the monitors for failing to spot Syrian tanks taking part in the Homs offensive. The video, which was produced by a regime sympathizer and intended to ridicule the Arab League delegation, depicts a toy car modified to look like a tank shooting at a pile of biscuits that are supposed to represent a collapsing tower block. ‘Check out this video on YouTube,’ Bashar emailed his aide, using the pseudonym ‘Sam’. ‘Hahahahahahaha, OMG!!!This is amazing!!!’ the aide replied. In another email, sent to Asma, he disparages his own reform programme, dismissing what he calls the ‘rubbish laws of parties, elections media . . .’ before signing off, ‘will be finished at 5pm – love u’. In February 2012, while his forces were killing hundreds of civilians during the assault on Homs, Bashar sent his wife the lyrics of a country and western song

written by the American singer Blake Shelton, which purported to reflect his own self-pitying state of mind: ‘I’ve been a walking heartache / I’ve made a mess of me / The person that I’ve been lately / Ain’t who I wanna be.’15 Not all the emails reflected the Syrian president’s puerile temperament. One of the more revealing communications showed how heavily Bashar relied on Iran for support. The Iranian regime had experienced its own difficulties in 2009, when the Green Movement had provided the biggest challenge to the ruling ayatollahs’ authority since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran’s security forces had succeeded in crushing the anti-regime protests, which had been provoked by allegations of vote-rigging in the presidential election, but not before thousands of Iranians had been killed or detained during the regime’s brutal crackdown. The Iranians were keen to share their own expertise in state-sponsored oppression and urged Bashar to use ‘powerful and violent’ language in his public speeches. Tehran encouraged Bashar to ‘leak more information related to our military capability’ to convince the public that it was able to withstand the challenge presented by opposition groups.16 To consolidate his own hold on power, Bashar set up a private email account that was shared only with close aides, thereby enabling him to circumvent the normal communication channels used by the country’s security apparatus. In the face of mounting international criticism over his handling of the protests, Bashar put together a media strategy team. Among those offering valuable assistance to improve the regime’s public image was Fawaz al-Akhras, Asma’s father and the founder of the British Syrian Society. Prior to the civil war, the organization had conducted routine lobbying work on behalf of Bashar’s regime, arranging for groups of politicians to travel to Damascus to acquaint themselves with the country and arranging bilateral events, such as trade exhibitions. Once the protests began, the society’s work took on a more sinister tone as it sought to play down the allegations of brutality made against the Syrian regime. Several prominent members of the society, including Sir Andrew Green, the former British ambassador to Syria, resigned in protest after emails emerged showing Akhras had advised his son-in-law how to rebut allegations that Syrian civilians were being tortured. In an email sent to Bashar and Asma on 19 December 2011, Akhras warned that the UK’s Channel 4 was planning to show footage of atrocities committed by regime forces, urging them to make sure the Syrian Embassy in London responded to the allegations. When questioned about his dealings with Damascus, Akhras described his relationship with his daughter as ‘strong . . . I talk to her often.’ He also

defended his son-in-law’s brutal actions against Homs, remarking, ‘What would you do? Just watch them killing you? You have a responsibility to ensure the security of your people.’17 Nor were Akhras’s lobbying efforts in vain. It later emerged that nine of the Conservative MPs who voted against Cameron’s crucial Commons motion to authorize military action against Syria in 2013 had been the beneficiaries of hospitality provided by the Assad regime.18 Bashar’s media team continued to work hard to defend the regime, with his aides arranging a series of interviews with Western media in which he repeated the line that he was fighting a desperate battle to prevent his country becoming a haven for Islamic terrorists. Playing on the loose affiliation between the FSA and Islamist groups, in June 2013 Bashar told the correspondent of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Europe should reconsider its plans to arm the rebels. ‘If the Europeans supply weapons, Europe’s backyard would become a terrorist haven, and Europe would pay a price for this,’ he said. By contrast, his regime upheld the values of ‘secularism’ and ‘tolerance’ for minority groups such as Christians.19 When a team of BBC journalists visited the same month, the regime staged an elaborate hoax to persuade them that Damascus had set up a scheme to deradicalize captured jihadi fighters. It later emerged that the group of so-called Tunisian jihadis the regime had arranged for Lyse Doucet to interview had in fact been living and working in Syria and had no involvement with the jihadi movement groups but had been detained by the Syrian security forces and made to confess to jihadi activities under torture.20 The efforts made by Bashar and his acolytes to portray his regime in a more favourable light made little impression on the outside world. The US and its Western allies were resolved to do everything in their power – short of direct military action – to weaken Bashar’s regime with a view to achieving regime change in Damascus. As part of the campaign to intensify the pressure on Damascus, economic sanctions were expanded to include everyone associated with the Assad family and the regime. As a result, Bashar, Asma, his mother, sister and sister-in-law all had their assets frozen, were banned from travelling to any European Union member state and prohibited from shopping online with European firms. In London, HSBC bank ended its relationship with Akhras’s British Syrian Society, while all of the British board members followed Green’s example and tendered their resignations. The regime’s growing international isolation, together with the significant defeats it had suffered on the battlefield, prompted Bashar’s mother Anisa to deliver a devasting rebuke to her errant son:

‘If your father and brother were still alive, none of this would have happened. There can be no more dithering and no more mistakes.’21 While the political support Bashar received from Russia certainly helped to keep him in power, it did little to improve the fortunes of the Syrian forces, who found themselves fighting a losing battle against the rebel groups. For the first four years of the conflict Russia’s military contribution was confined to its regular arms shipments, the bulk of the material transported by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to Syria’s Mediterranean ports. By 2014 the ‘Syrian Express’ shipments had a familiar routine, with seven ships making ten round trips a year.22 Other assistance provided by Moscow included the offer of credits and financial help, although these were limited as Moscow had concerns about the Assad regime’s ability to pay its debts. In 2005 Putin had written off Syria’s $13 billion Cold War debt so that Bashar could upgrade his military with more sophisticated Russian equipment, especially air-defence systems. Moscow had also made attempts to broker peace talks between the regime and the rebels, but without success. Syria’s armed forces and pro-regime militias such as the shabiha increasingly found themselves on the defensive. The Syrian military was mainly set up to fight wars against hostile states, not its own people and, before the war, had boasted some impressive capabilities. The air force, where Hafez had risen through the ranks as a young flying officer, was well equipped with squadrons of upgraded Russian warplanes, and the organization’s intelligence directorate was regarded as one of the more effective arms of the security services. Before the war the Syrian army had an estimated 220,000 regulars – twice the size of the British Army – with an additional 280,000 reserves, while the navy comprised a collection of vessels that were mainly equipped for coastal protection duties.23 The majority of Syrians serving in the forces were conscripts who were required to fulfil a mandatory two-year term of service. Much of the command structure was set up along sectarian lines, with members of Bashar’s Alawite clan holding many of the key positions. These included the air force and army units such as the Republican Guard, special forces and the Third and Fourth Armoured Divisions, which had special responsibility for defending the regime against internal threats. This was why Maher had been given command of both the Republican Guard and the Fourth Armoured Division.

The Syrian military suffered a significant collapse in manpower after the regime began its crackdown against the anti-government protests. A combination of desertions and casualties resulted in the military losing nearly half of its fighting force within the space of three years. Most of the conscripts were Sunnis who resisted following orders issued by Alawite commanders that involved targeting their Sunni co-religionists. From the summer of 2011 mass desertions were commonplace and included many Sunni senior officers, such as Riad alAssad (no relation to the ruling family), a senior officer in the Syrian air force who became one of the founders of the FSA. At one point the defections were taking place at such a rate that the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera television news channel had a graph on its website featuring every single Syrian defector, in the expectation that Bashar’s regime would soon have no one left to fight. The scale of the defections certainly had a devastating impact on the regime’s ability to defend itself, so that by 2012 it had just 50,000 troops at its disposal. Forces tasked with carrying out anti-opposition operations by Bashar’s crisis cell often found themselves operating at half strength. The longer the war continued, the more contested the battle space became. When the protests began, most of the demonstrators were airing long-standing grievances against the way the Assads were running the country. But as the conflict developed, new groups emerged with different agendas, especially as legions of foreign fighters began to converge on Syria. The FSA was mainly secular in outlook and supported the establishment of a government based on broad democratic principles. Islamist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar alSham, which were prominent in the early phase of the conflict, had little interest in democracy and wanted to replace Bashar’s regime with an Islamic government. Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, as it became known, was based in northern Iraq and recruited its forces from the conservative Sunni tribes in the Aleppo and Idlib regions, while Ahrar al-Sham, which had been founded by Islamist radicals released from prison by Bashar, was a more extreme movement that stood for the creation of an Islamic state based on the strict interpretation of Islamic law. In time Ahrar al-Sham became one of the more powerful movements fighting to overthrow the regime, with between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters. The situation was further complicated by the influx of an estimated 80,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries, who arrived in Syria from the summer of 2011 onwards, often forming their own independent groups.24 In Damascus alone it was estimated there were hundreds of small militias, each with a few dozen fighters, all pursuing their own particular agendas. Nationwide

there were estimated to be more than 1,000 armed opposition groups fighting the Assad regime, with between 100,000 and 150,000 fighters joining the Sunni rebellion at its peak.25 The immense complexity of the battlefield in Syria created a significant dilemma for Western leaders, who were torn between their desire to end the suffering of the Syrian people and concerns about the nature of the regime that might take power in Damascus if Assad were overthrown. This was certainly a concern for Obama as he weighed up how to respond to the Ghouta attacks. The FSA had started the conflict as the most effective opposition force, killing approximately 1,000 members of the regime’s security forces between March and June 2011.26 For a time the FSA’s leadership was prepared to coordinate its actions with Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front. But the deep rivalries between the different groups, which on occasion resulted in them fighting each other, made the US and its allies wary about providing military support. Another consideration that made Western leaders hesitant about joining the fray was their assumption that Bashar’s regime could not possibly survive: it would either be defeated on the battlefield, or else Bashar and his family would be forced into exile. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, who took a close interest in Syria, believed that the limited military resources available to Bashar could easily be defeated, boasting to his aides on one occasion, ‘All it would take is one good Israeli brigade to remove the whole crumbling edifice.’27 A similar attitude prevailed among Western leaders. ‘The West was guilty of hubris on Syria,’ a senior British national security official later said. ‘There was an international consensus that Assad was finished, and that the best way for the conflict to be resolved would be for him to disappear into exile and from public view.’28 The assumption that Bashar and his family might be forced into exile was not entirely without foundation. Senior Western intelligence officials discussed among themselves whether the Assads would be provided a safe haven by the Gulf states or by Moscow: at one point Belarus was considered a viable option.29 Lavrov added to the speculation that Bashar might be granted asylum in Russia when, during a break at the Geneva peace talks in 2012, he mused about how many members of the Assad clan the Russians would have to accommodate – would it just be Bashar’s immediate family or would his henchmen be included too?30 In Washington, meanwhile, US officials were so convinced that Assad would be deposed that the White House insisted contingency plans be drawn up for the day when he was removed from power,

including the implementation of a de-Baathification programme similar to the one that had taken place in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.31 The belief that Bashar’s regime could not survive made many Western powers reluctant to provide arms to the opposition. Obama had authorized the CIA to provide limited assistance to vetted FSA factions in 2012, but this consisted of non-lethal support, such as vehicles, communication equipment, food and medical supplies. With Russia and China constantly vetoing UN initiatives designed to end the fighting, countries interested in supporting the rebels formed the ‘Friends of Syria’ alliance, which aimed to coordinate support for the different opposition factions. During a three-day conference held in Ankara in December 2012 the alliance persuaded Syrian opposition leaders to form the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to provide a more unified command structure for the rebel war effort. This enabled the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies to provide more lethal weaponry from early 2013, which was mainly supplied from Croatia.32 Despite this welcome increase in support, the rebels were frustrated at the level of commitment Western powers such as the US and Britain were willing to provide. Their calls for the creation of no-fly zones to protect ‘liberated’ areas in the north and south of the country went unanswered, as did their pleas for the establishment of humanitarian corridors to provide relief to the victims. With the major Western powers vacillating, regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey filled the political vacuum by providing their own support, mainly to opposition groups of an Islamist persuasion. With so many competing factions vying to overthrow the Assad regime, regional powers supporting the rebels attempted to coordinate their operations to make sure they received the supplies, both military and humanitarian, they needed. Under the Saudis’ supervision, offices were established in Jordan and Turkey to coordinate the supply of arms to opposition groups. An organizing committee was set up comprising senior intelligence officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar. Intelligence officials from the US, Britain, France and Italy also participated in the meetings, which took place on a monthly basis in Istanbul, London, Paris and the UAE. The committee’s aim was to make sure military supplies, as well as other support including food, clothing and communication equipment, was evenly distributed. These coordination effort began to unravel after the appearance of groups like the Nusra Front, which many committee members regarded as an extremist movement. ‘When we saw the emergence of the

extremists we realized that we had to do something before it got out of hand,’ explained a former coalition official. ‘When the Qataris and the Turks started making their own arrangements to fund the extremist groups, the Saudis withdrew and the coordination effort collapsed.’33 Ankara, which backed the establishment of a Muslim Brotherhood-style government in Damascus, directed its support to Islamist rebel groups that supported the Brotherhood’s agenda. This was in spite of the fact the Turks were also providing support to the more secular FSA, which had based itself in Turkey to facilitate the smuggling of arms across the Syrian border. Obama’s equivocation on the Syria issue certainly boosted Bashar’s survival prospects. Without Western military support, the FSA’s ability to land a knockout blow was severely limited. Nor was Washington’s approach helped by Obama’s dismissive attitude towards the FSA, which he viewed as a collection of ‘doctors, farmers and pharmacists’, which was unfair given than most of its commanders had previously served in the Syrian military. A more pressing challenge for the FSA was to resolve the rivalries within its ranks, with local commanders preferring to concentrate their efforts on defending their local communities and territory rather than cooperating at a national level. The formation of the SMC did little to improve matters, and the FSA’s failure to unify its actions gradually undermined its effectiveness, to the extent that Islamist rebel groups like the Nusra Front assumed a more prominent role. While FSA commanders argued among themselves, Nusra’s leaders consolidated their hold over Sunni communities in the north of the country by investing in health and social programmes to improve the everyday lives of their supporters. As one FSA commander conceded, ‘Al-Nusra really took advantage of the Free Army’s failure to control territory effectively, and to help the people justly.’34 The more prominent role taken by the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups intensified the pressure on Damascus, which continued to lose critical infrastructure to the rebels, especially its airfields, which were specifically targeted to prevent them from being used to carry out indiscriminate bombing raids. Chronic manpower shortages meant the regime increasingly relied upon weapons that caused mass casualties. Apart from chemical weapons, it used barrel bombs launched from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to target population centres believed to be sympathetic to the rebels. Loaded with explosives, shrapnel, oil and chemicals, the weapons had a devastating impact. To make them even more deadly, the Syrian forces adopted the inhumane tactic

of ‘double-tap’ bombings where, having dropped one device, they would wait for the rescue services to arrive, before dropping a second bomb. The success enjoyed by Islamist rebels from the spring of 2013 proved to be counterproductive as far as Western involvement in the conflict was concerned, since the US and its allies had little interest in pursuing policies that might lead to the creation of an Islamist regime in Damascus. It was all very well calling for Assad’s removal, but what if it resulted in his replacement by polity inimical to the US, as had happened in Egypt during the Muslim Brotherhood’s short spell in government? Another concern for Western policymakers was that, with so many Islamist groups involved in the civil war, there was a very real possibility that American weapons sent to support pro-democracy groups such as the FSA could find their way into the hands of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda – the Nusra Front had been designated a terrorist organization by the White House in December 2012. Washington’s concerns about the activities of Islamist militants deepened significantly after a video appeared online showing an Islamist fighter cutting out the heart and liver of a Syrian soldier and eating it while the heart was still pumping, the rebel fighter declaring: ‘I swear to God, we will eat your hearts out, you soldiers of Bashar. You dogs. God is greater.’35 Despite the complexity of the conflict, there remained a significant body of opinion within Washington’s national security establishment that continued to argue in favour of arming the rebels, among them Hillary Clinton and General Petraeus, whom Obama had appointed CIA director. The group wanted the rebels to be supported with Western air power, as well as arms shipments. They encountered opposition from the Pentagon, which raised concerns that backing the rebels might run the risk of an escalatory war with Russia which, while not directly involved in the conflict, was supporting Assad with weapons and advisers. Senior Pentagon officers like US Admiral Sandy Winnefeld Jr, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and responsible for directing Pentagon policy, were concerned that if the US deployed its warplanes to Syria, it would first be necessary to destroy Syria’s anti-aircraft systems, which were almost exclusively Russian-made and operated by Russian ‘advisers’. As a senior national security official said: There was a very strong pushback from the Pentagon that providing air support to the rebels was not in America’s national interest. They were also concerned about provoking World War Three if they inadvertently killed any Russian personnel based in Syria. This should not have been a problem

because the Russians had no overt presence in Syria at the time. And if the US had intervened militarily at this point, it might have acted as a deterrent to Putin not to get involved.36 The failure of the US and its allies to provide adequate military support and training for anti-regime forces was regarded as a missed opportunity by advocates of a more robust American response, like Petraeus. Limited training programmes were set up by the CIA and the Pentagon, but lack of direction meant they were largely ineffectual, so that a $500 million Pentagon programme to build a force of 15,000 Syrian rebels over three years was eventually cancelled after it managed to produce only a few dozen fighters.37 Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, provided funds to train their own rebel forces and, at one point in 2012, claimed to have a fully equipped force of 20,000 men based in Jordan primed to move into Syria and overrun the capital. ‘It was all ready to go, and then we got a message from Obama to call it off,’ said a senior Saudi security official. ‘It was all very frustrating.’38 Petraeus felt similarly thwarted by the White House’s temporization on the Syria issue. ‘There were very significant elements within the Syrian opposition who were prepared to take on Bashar al-Assad, and they were quite moderate at the outset,’ recalled Petraeus: But we did not take the actions to provide support to the moderate opposition, which at the time represented the majority of the country. There was never approval of the kind of coherent, cohesive effort that might have been crafted had the US made the decision to do so and coordinated its support with that of other countries that were willing to assist and to follow US leadership. This ultimately meant that the opposition started gravitating to less moderate, more extremist elements in the Sunni Arab community, as those elements increasingly were getting the resources to fight Bashar. Nor was the CIA under any illusions about Assad’s personal involvement in the atrocities committed against the Syrian people. Petraeus said: He was personally involved. The dirty work was being done by others, but he was certainly aware of what was being done and, at the very least, he tacitly or actively approved very barbaric tactics, like the use of barrel bombs and double tapping and taking out hospitals. This was really brutal,

and the word barbaric is not misplaced in terms of what the regime was doing and what he was doing. Petraeus felt strongly that the US and its allies should have done more to provide safe havens to protect the Syrian population: If you are not going to support those who are trying to topple the regime then at least you could establish no-fly and no-drive zones to protect the civilians. In essence, of course, that is what we ultimately did in northeastern Syria – and what we continue to do to this day, in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces whom we support with a modest US military force on the ground.39 The debate among Western leaders over military intervention became even more complex in the summer of 2013 after the arrival of Daesh, whose ruthless tactics were deemed to be so extreme by al-Qaeda’s leadership that it officially severed ties with the group in early 2014. But Daesh’s move into Syria took the pressure off Bashar, as it meant the US and its allies became more focused on tackling the Islamic militants than they were with confronting the Assad regime. Damascus was no longer the priority for Western policymakers, especially after Daesh seized control of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, in the summer of 2014 and began persecuting local Yazidi citizens. At one point Daesh forces came close to taking control of Baghdad until the US succeeded in helping the Iraqi forces to regroup and launch a counter-attack. The group responded by murdering two journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, who were beheaded, with videos of their murders posted on the internet. A similarly gruesome fate befell British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning. This prompted Obama to authorize air strikes against Daesh strongholds, first in Iraq and then, in September, in Syria. American warplanes were belatedly being sent to conduct combat operations in Syria, but their target was Daesh, not the Assad regime. Although Daesh’s takeover of northern Syria inadvertently directed attention away from Bashar, it did not make his life any easier. As Daesh gradually lost ground in Iraq, it responded by expanding its presence in Syria. In April 2015 Daesh seized control of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, giving it an important base from which to attack pro-regime forces in the city centre. This was followed the next month when it seized the ancient city of Palmyra, as well as the Shaer gas field. Daesh marked its capture of

Palmyra by ransacking the town and destroying its ancient Roman ruins. Daesh’s advance was punctuated with appalling acts of violence against those deemed to be infidels. Khaled al-Asaad, the eighty-two-year-old head of antiquities at Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was publicly beheaded after refusing to disclose the location of valuable artefacts to the militants, while a group of British jihadis, known collectively as ‘The Beatles’ because of their northern accents, carried out similar atrocities. Confronted with the Islamists’ swift advance towards Damascus, the Assad regime found itself in dire straits. The barbarians, albeit those of a distinctly Islamist persuasion, were advancing on the gates of the ancient Syrian capital. The perilous position in which Assad found himself in summer 2015 was of particular concern to Iran. Iran’s alliance with Damascus was more practical than ideological – the Baathists’ secular ideology was completely at odds with the Iranian regime’s conservative Islamic principles – but it was essential to Tehran’s long-held ambition of creating a Shia crescent from Iran to the Mediterranean. This was the reason that Qassem Soleimani had become such a pivotal figure. He was responsible for providing support for the Assad regime, not only in terms of the flow of weapons but also by drawing on Hezbollah forces from Lebanon, and the deployment of advisers and equipment from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. As a close confidant of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Soleimani exercised enormous influence, effectively running Iranian policy in the region. Before his involvement in Syria he had been in command of the Iraqi Shia militias fighting against the US-led coalition in Iraq. According to David Petraeus, Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of more than 650 Americans in Iraq killed by the lethal and powerful EFPs (explosively formed projectiles) provided by the Quds Force (QF) to Shia militia in Iraq. Many others were killed by other weapons provided by the Quds Force to the militia. Soleimani’s frequent presence in Damascus was deemed essential to keeping the Assad regime in power. ‘It was the Quds Force and Iranian support (including in the form of the QF-supported Lebanese Hezbollah elements that fought on the front lines in Syria) that enabled Bashar al-Assad to survive during Bashar’s early, most difficult years,’ said Petraeus.40 The Quds Force commander’s importance to the Assad regime’s war effort meant he spent at least half the week in the Syrian capital, where he met frequently with Bashar at the Presidential Palace and with other senior Baath Party commanders. ‘He spent

so much time in Damascus that we thought he must be having an affair,’ said a senior Western intelligence officer. ‘We followed his movements closely because, wherever Soleimani went, things usually started to happen.’41 Soleimani oversaw the thousands of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters who were drafted into Syria to support Assad, with the first detachment arriving in September 2011. By mid-2012, the Iranians were training pro-Assad militias that were incorporated into Syria’s National Defence Force, a predominantly Alawite paramilitary group the Assad regime had set up to coordinate the actions of Syrian forces with allies such as Hezbollah and Iran. ‘The Iranians could not have undertaken their operations without the support they received from Hezbollah,’ said a senior member of Western intelligence. ‘Iran was the brain, and Hezbollah was the brawn.’42 Soleimani was responsible for setting up the counter-insurgency operations to hunt down the Syrian rebels, with the plans then handed over to Hezbollah, acting with its Syrian allies, to implement. Many of these operations were conducted without any input from Bashar or senior regime officials. Iran also saw its involvement in Syria as a means of generating funds to support the activities of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian commanders demanded a share in profitable Syrian companies, such as the mobile phone network controlled by the Assad family, as well as setting up property portfolios in Syria. ‘The Iranians made it clear to the Syrians that they could not survive without Iranian support, and that the Iranians wanted to be rewarded for their contribution.’ The Iranians’ attitude caused friction with their counterparts in Syrian intelligence, who were used to exploiting the Syrian system for their own financial benefit. ‘You had all these Iranian Shia telling local Syrian commanders what to do – it caused a great deal of resentment.’43 Hezbollah suffered its first casualty in October, when a senior commander was killed following an ambush by FSA forces on the outskirts of Homs.44 From 2013 onwards Iran expanded its recruitment drive to include its Shia allies in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, and recruits were flown to Tehran in Iranian transport aircraft. In addition, Tehran dispatched Revolutionary Guard units to Syria, with the first 4,000-strong contingent arriving in the summer of 2013. In June the Iranian forces, working together with Hezbollah and the Shia militias, succeeded in capturing the FSA-held city of al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border, which had served as an important supply route for the rebels.45 Iran’s increased involvement resulted in Bashar playing a more peripheral role as Soleimani and other Iranian commanders assumed responsibility for battlefield operations. ‘It had got to the point where Soleimani would go to see

Assad to tell him what was going on as a matter of courtesy,’ said a senior Western national security official. ‘But Bashar had little option but to comply with Soleimani’s recommendations.’46 This left the Syrian forces in the humiliating position of playing a support role to the Iranian and Hezbollah forces under Soleimani’s command. The emergence of Daesh as a major adversary changed the course of the conflict as its brutal advance through Syria meant that even Soleimani’s forces struggled to cope. The regime suffered further losses in the west as the Nusra Front and US-backed opposition groups moved further south from their strongholds in Idlib and Aleppo, threatening Russia’s base at Tartus. By 2015 the losses sustained during four years of conflict meant the regime now controlled only one-fifth of the country and faced the very real prospect of defeat. Bashar and Soleimani concluded the only way to save the regime from annihilation was to persuade Russia to intervene militarily. The decision to approach the Kremlin was a calculated gamble, as Moscow had previously shown little interest in becoming directly involved. Putin had, however, demonstrated a willingness to pursue a more aggressive policy overseas following Obama’s failure to act over his ‘red line’ ultimatum. Six months after the White House rowed back from its threat of military action, Putin authorized Russian forces to launch an offensive against Ukraine, resulting in Russia’s occupation of Crimea and significant areas of eastern Ukraine. Buoyed by the knowledge that he would encounter no significant opposition from the West, Putin regarded Obama’s unwillingness to act as an opportunity for Moscow to expand its influence in areas where Washington’s standing was in decline. Putin had long sought to increase Russia’s presence in the Middle East; Obama’s determination not to involve the US in any more ‘dumb’ wars in the region provided Moscow with the opportunity it had been waiting for. It was an indication of Bashar’s waning authority that the initiative to persuade Russia to become more actively involved came from Tehran, not Damascus. In January 2015 Khamenei sent former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati to Moscow for detailed talks with Putin and Russian officials about the deteriorating security situation in Syria. The Russians were concerned about their two military bases, in which they had invested heavily since the start of the war. Further talks between Russian and Iranian officials, this time including Soleimani, took place later in the summer. In the interim Bashar made a clumsy appeal to the Russians for support, inviting a group of Russian television and newspaper journalists to Damascus to interview him. ‘Russian

presence in different parts of the world, including the eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus, is extremely important to create a balance that the world lost after the break-up of the Soviet Union more than twenty years ago,’ Bashar declared. ‘We most certainly welcome any expansion of the Russian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, specifically on Syrian shores.’47 Soleimani’s participation in the negotiations with the Kremlin was crucial to persuading the Russians to increase their involvement. He arrived in Moscow at Putin’s personal request after the Russian leader had told Velayati, ‘Okay, we will intervene. Send Qassem Soleimani.’48 The Iranian commander began the meeting with his Russian counterparts by unfurling a map of Syria and explaining how, with Russian air support, it was possible to reverse the tide of the conflict in the regime’s favour. There was a very real prospect, Soleimani added, that without Russian support the regime would collapse and Russia would lose its military bases, dealing a serious blow to Moscow’s standing in the region. Putin was determined to hold on to the bases and had no desire to see Syria become a jihadi state. Moscow faced its own challenges from Islamist militants and, with an estimated 2,400 Russian citizens enrolled in Daesh’s ranks, keeping Bashar in power would address Moscow’s own national security interests. By the time Soleimani boarded his flight back to Tehran on 27 July, the outline of a Russo-Iranian cooperation pact had been agreed, one that would turn the tide of the war decisively in Assad’s favour. With the agreement in place, Putin launched a carefully choreographed diplomatic offensive to lay the groundwork for Moscow’s military intervention. For the first time in ten years he attended the annual summit of the UN General Assembly, delivering a speech in which he called for an international coalition to fight global terrorism, comparing the campaign to defeat Daesh to global efforts to defeat the Nazis during the Second World War. Setting out Russia’s counterterrorism strategy, Putin called for air strikes against Daesh and other ‘terrorists’ and proposed a peace process to restore order and stability in Syria, with Assad remaining in power. On his return to Moscow, Putin summoned a meeting of his senior military and security personnel to inform them Russia had received an official request from Bashar to intervene militarily in Syria to fight terrorism. Putin then requested authorization from the Duma – a constitutional requirement – to deploy Russian forces beyond the country’s borders. The resolution passed unanimously, and Russia launched its first air strikes in Syria on 30 September – only the missiles and bombs were not, as the Kremlin claimed, aimed against Daesh, but against the US-backed forces fighting to overthrow the Assad regime.

NINE

The Russian Playbook The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. Joseph Stalin

There is nothing subtle about the Russian way of war. From the Soviet era to the modern age, the Russian military’s preferred tactic has been to apply brute force to achieve its objectives, irrespective of the destruction and misery it may cause. During the Russian campaign in Chechnya, the Russian military subjected Grozny, the Chechen capital, to an intensive artillery and air bombardment that made large areas of the city uninhabitable. At the height of the offensive, Russian commanders reported that they were firing in excess of 4,000 artillery shells and missiles a day.1 The Russian approach achieved its objectives, but at enormous cost to the city’s civilian population. It was estimated that between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed during the bombardment, while a further 40,000 were forced to flee their homes.2 The latter stages of the Russian assault resulted in bitter close-quarters combat as the rebels desperately fought to defend their enclaves. There were between 2,000 and 3,000 combat fatalities during the assault, and some front-line units saw a quarter of their number killed or wounded, an outcome that persuaded Russian commanders to avoid combat operations whenever possible. Many of the tactics employed by the Russians during their assault on Grozny were replicated in Syria. Vladimir Putin’s appetite for launching military campaigns had grown steadily from his inauguration on 7 May 2000, when he had celebrated Russia’s capture of the Chechen capital. During his early years in power, the Russian leader gave mixed messages about his intentions towards the West. He was quick to condemn the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and even offered to cooperate with the US-led coalition’s intervention in Afghanistan. But from the outset, his real passion was to reassert Russia’s status as a major power in world affairs, and his initial engagement with Western leaders was aimed more at assessing their strengths and weaknesses than making any genuine effort to forge closer ties.

As America and its allies became more deeply embroiled in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Putin concluded that they were in no position to challenge his vision of re-establishing Russian influence over territories it historically regarded as the ‘near abroad’. In the summer of 2008, while coalition forces were fully committed to fighting two counter-insurgency campaigns, Putin launched Europe’s first twenty-first-century war by undertaking a limited military invasion of Georgia, a former Soviet state that had indicated its intention to seek closer ties with the West by joining NATO and the EU.3 The Russian performance in Georgia left much to be desired. The military communication systems malfunctioned, and a large number of military vehicles did not even make it to the Georgian border because they would not start or broke down. Even so, Putin could draw comfort from the fact that he had succeeded in Georgia without encountering any meaningful opposition from the West. As the Russians looked to modernize their military operations after the shortcomings exposed by the Georgia campaign, they took a close interest in the West’s military intervention in Libya in 2011. After Iraq and Afghanistan, Western leaders were reluctant to authorize large-scale ground operations, which had proved to be highly controversial and ran the risk of incurring heavy casualties. Instead commanders were encouraged to devise a new strategy where they provided the military firepower, but left the actual fighting on the ground to local, indigenous forces. Once Britain and France, and to a lesser extent the US, had resolved to remove the Gaddafi regime, a new form of military intervention was adopted, whereby the American and European forces provided sophisticated weaponry, such as air power and missiles, while the ground offensive to defeat Gaddafi’s forces was mainly conducted by local tribal militias, with support provided by elite special forces such as Britain’s SAS. This new style of staging military interventions against rogue regimes was applauded by Western politicians, who believed it provided an effective means of achieving their objectives without the risk of the controversies that had surrounded the larger ground deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, remarked after the allied campaign had succeeded in defeating Gaddafi’s forces, ‘This campaign provided the perfect paradigm for future military interventions. We succeeded in achieving all of our goals without the need to deploy boots on the ground and without incurring any British casualties.’4

Moscow had watched carefully what was essentially a Franco-British military campaign to remove Gaddafi, with Russian commanders keen to learn if the new strategy of combining Western firepower with local militias could achieve the desired results. Like Western leaders after Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russians were wary of committing ground forces unless it was absolutely necessary. The bitter experience of the Soviet Union’s decade-long intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which had resulted in 15,000 combat fatalities, together with the heavy battlefield casualties incurred during the Chechen war, had led the Russian military to explore more effective ways of conducting combat operations. Some of the lessons gleaned from the allied intervention in Libya were incorporated into Russian military thinking under proposals set out by General Valery Gerasimov, the head of Russia’s armed forces, in 2013. In what became known as the Gerasimov doctrine,5 Russia sought to embrace the principles of hybrid warfare, where conventional military force is combined with a range of other activities, such as cyber warfare and the use of proxies, such as militias, to achieve a stated target. Gerasimov’s primary objective was to make the Russian military better prepared to engage in state-on-state conflict; only a few of the options outlined in the doctrine were relevant to Libya. ‘The Russians took a very close interest in our military intervention in Libya,’ explained Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who commanded Britain’s air campaign in Libya. ‘They appear to have closely examined the strategy we implemented, and later adapted it for their own military purposes when they began their military operations in Syria.’6 The first major test of Russia’s new approach to warfare was provided by Putin’s decision to invade and annex Crimea in 2014. Another important element of the Gerasimov doctrine, one that was later applied to Syria, was the concept of undertaking military operations in so-called ‘grey zones’: areas that lie beyond the control of recognized authorities. In these circumstances commanders are encouraged to rely on irregular forces, such as militias. The Russian advance into Crimea was preceded by the appearance of groups of armed men, referred to as ‘little green men’ by Western officials, who bore no official insignia but were clearly acting in Russia’s interests, taking control of Ukrainian military bases and communication centres. Their presence enabled Putin to deny any Russian military involvement in Ukraine until the peninsula was firmly under Moscow’s control, by which time the Russian takeover was a fait accompli.

Putin’s success in Ukraine encouraged him in the belief that he could continue with his quest to build a new Russian empire without encountering any significant resistance from other major powers. The invasion of Crimea, as well as Russia’s occupation of large tracts of territory in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, had been accomplished with minimal casualties, not least because the ill-prepared Ukrainian forces offered little resistance. For Putin, the campaign provided confirmation of two important points: that the Western powers, certainly while Obama remained in power, had no appetite to oppose his plans to restore Russia to its former glory, and that his radical reform programme for the Russian military was paying dividends. The confidence the Russian leader derived from his Crimean adventure was a key factor in his decision to send Russian forces to Syria, even if the move posed a great deal more risk than the military operations he had authorized in Georgia and Ukraine, which are both within striking distance of the Russian homeland. It was a different proposition entirely for Moscow to deploy its forces more than 3,000 miles away in a foreign country, one that presented an entirely new set of challenges. The Russian military had scant experience of such operations. ‘It was a bold move by the Russians, because it took them well away from their comfort zone of conducting military operations close to what they viewed as their “near abroad”,’ said Major General Rupert Jones, a senior British commander in coalition operations in Syria. ‘It was a significant challenge for them to send a large-scale expeditionary force so far from home, one that was not without its risks.’7 The arrival of Russian forces in Syria in the autumn of 2015 made Bashar look even more impotent. From 2013 onwards, as Soleimani had assumed control of operations to defend the regime, Bashar had had little direct control over the prosecution of the war. ‘There was never any suggestion that Assad would tell Soleimani what to do,’ said a former Syrian intelligence officer. ‘Soleimani would travel around having meetings in Iran and with Hezbollah and then, when he got back to Damascus, he would tell Assad what had to be done.’8 A similar pattern was established after the Russians arrived and established their operational headquarters at the Bassel al-Assad air base to the south-east of Latakia, which the Russians immediately renamed the Hmeimim air base. ‘From the moment they arrived the Russians dictated their terms,’ the Syrian officer explained. ‘Russian commanders had no interest in informing Assad what was going on. After they arrived at Latakia they made it clear the air base was now their base, and their message to the Assad regime was: “Get out of the way and

let us get on with it.”’9 Bashar may have been in power, but he was not in control. The Russians’ contemptuous attitude towards Bashar was informed to a significant extent by Putin’s own lack of regard for the Syrian leader. The Kremlin had always been non-committal as to whether Assad should remain in office or be replaced by a more effective representative of the Alawite clan. Putin’s personal view of Bashar, which he confided to his close aides, was that he was weak and incapable of running a challenging country like Syria in times of peace, let alone during a bitter civil war. ‘Putin thought Assad was a complete idiot,’ recalled a former Arab intelligence chief who met regularly with the Russia leader to discuss the Syrian crisis. ‘Often when they met, Putin would simply ignore him and just talk to his own officials.’10 On the few occasions that the two leaders did interact, Putin indulged in mind games to demonstrate who was in charge. During a visit to the Hmeimim air base shortly after the Russian intervention had begun, the Russian leader insisted on inviting Brigadier General Suhail al-Hassan, the commander of Syria’s Twenty-Fifth Special Missions Division, to attend a planning meeting. This was a deliberate attempt to undermine Bashar, who still believed he was in charge of Syrian operations; by inviting the officer Putin was sending a clear signal that there were alternative Syrian leaders available if Bashar would not play ball. ‘There is no way that Bashar would have wanted him sitting at the same table,’ said a senior US national intelligence officer. ‘It was Putin’s clumsy way of showing who called the shots.’11 Bashar will not have mourned when, in September 2022, Hassan was killed by a car bomb placed outside his home.12 From the start of their operation, Russian officials and officers took over the Syrian defence ministry, with Syrian ministers and commanders often being reduced to the status of observers. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu played a key role in directing operations, as did the senior Russian commanders deployed to Syria. The Russians became part of the Syrian regime to the extent that they were issuing orders and moving Syrian units around the country without bothering to inform their Syrian counterparts. The Syrian forces were required to conduct operations under strict Russian supervision. From Putin’s perspective, Assad was in no position to challenge Moscow’s conduct of the campaign, which meant the military could focus on the task of saving the regime from imminent collapse. As Gerasimov explained in a statement justifying Russia’s actions, ‘If we had not intervened in Syria, what would have happened? Look, in 2015 just over 10 per cent of the territory remained under government

control. A month or two more, by the end of 2015, and Syria would have been completely under ISIS (Daesh).’13 Russian commanders regarded their presence in Syria as an opportunity to make money. From an early stage in the intervention senior officers made it plain that they expected to be compensated financially for helping the Assad regime to stay in power. They insisted on being given shares in key Syrian assets, such as factories, property and profitable business concerns. ‘Putin was clear that he was not prepared to subsidize Syria – the Syrians had to pay their own way,’ said a former senior Syrian intelligence officer. ‘So senior Russian officers would demand a share in a mine or some lucrative part of the Syrian infrastructure, and Assad would be powerless to resist.’ The practice became so widespread that the Russian general staff came to see a posting to Syria as a means of boosting their military pension. ‘Every time a new Russian officer arrived there would be a “shake down” to see what financial recompense they could negotiate in return for keeping the Assad regime in power.’14 Despite the constant humiliations Bashar suffered at the hands of his Iranian and Russian allies, he still did his best to give the appearance he was in control, even if his regime only held a small amount of the territory he had inherited when he became president. To maintain the pretence of power, presidential elections were held in June 2014 which resulted in Bashar winning re-election by a landslide to serve another seven-year term as president. At the time the elections were held, the civil war had claimed an estimated 200,000 lives, while the official number of refugees registered by the UN and neighbouring countries had reached around three million, with millions more displaced inside Syria itself.15 Seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him, Bashar marked the event by holding a lavish ceremony at the Presidential Palace, closely modelled on the grand inauguration ceremony Putin had held at the Kremlin to mark his reelection as president in 2012. Although Putin had nothing but contempt for Assad, the Syrian leader professed himself to be a huge fan of the Russian president and drew parallels between the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West and his own predicament. After taking the oath of office, Bashar made a rambling address to the nation lasting for more than an hour in which he referred to his supporters as ‘honourable Syrians’ compared with the ‘dishonourable’ rebels who sought to remove him from power. While Bashar took the oath of office, his right hand on the Quran, rebel forces marked the event by firing five mortar shells that landed close to Umayyed Square in central Damascus, killing

four people. Describing the rebels as ‘terrorists’, Bashar called on the opposition to ‘drop their weapons because we won’t stop fighting terrorism and striking it wherever it exists in Syria. They wanted it to be a revolution, but you have been the real revolutionaries. Congratulations for your victory.’16 The sense that Bashar was in a state of denial about the calamity facing his country was evident in his rare interviews with the Western media, in which he continued to portray himself as a victim in the country’s brutal conflict. In a BBC interview in February 2015, he categorically denied that his regime had indiscriminately dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held areas, or that his forces were systematically preventing aid agencies from accessing besieged neighbourhoods, even though there was abundant evidence to support both claims.17 In an interview with the American network CBS the following month, Bashar even held out the prospect of engaging in peace talks with Washington to resolve the conflict: ‘In Syria we could say that every dialogue is a positive thing, and we are going to be open to any dialogue with anyone, including the United States, regarding anything based on mutual respect.’18 The reality, though, was that, had it not been for the backing of Russia and Iran, it was unlikely Bashar would have been in power and able to grant interviews to Western journalists from the safety of his heavily fortified palace. At this time, Daesh’s operations were concentrated in the eastern desert, with the city of Raqqa on the north-east bank of the Euphrates river acting as its capital, and the Nusra Front had established its stronghold in northern Syria, where from 2014 onwards it was frequently involved in clashes with the FSA. Western support for the FSA, though limited, continued to be provided from bases in Turkey, with the Turkish government also funding a number of Islamist groups, including the Nusra Front. ‘The Turks wanted the FSA to fail because they wanted to put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Damascus,’ a senior coalition commander explained.19 With the coalition keeping a close eye on the deepening complexity of the Syrian battlespace, the first priority of its Operation Inherent Resolve remained tackling Daesh forces in Iraq. Once that had been achieved the coalition would intensify its campaign against Daesh positions in Syria, targeting the Islamists’ capital in Raqqa, a move that ran the risk of provoking a direct confrontation between the Russians and the US-led coalition. ‘Putin agreed to act in Syria because he assumed that he would not be opposed by the US and the Russians could fill the void left by Obama,’ the coalition commander said. ‘But once coalition forces began to increase their activity against Daesh in Syria there was

a very strong likelihood that the US and its allies would eventually come up against the Russians.’20 Prior to launching military operations the Russians had quietly built up their fleet of warplanes based at Hmeimim, with combat aircraft regularly flying from Russia to Syria through Syrian and Iranian air space. By late September a total of thirty-three fighter aircraft had arrived at the base, including twelve Su-24 bombers, twelve Su-25 ground attack aircraft, four Su-34 bombers, and four S30 multi-role fighters, together with reconnaissance and transport aircraft. Twelve helicopter gunships were also made available. Russian warships were deployed in the eastern Mediterranean to provide air cover for the base. They included the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which was sunk in April 2022 during the Ukrainian conflict. A small number of ground troops, including special forces, were sent to protect the air base, but Moscow was insistent that, as with the allied campaign to remove Gaddafi in Libya, none of its ground forces would be deployed in operations in Syria. As Sergei Shoigu explained on the eve of the campaign, Russia was not sending ground forces to Syria, but would only use its air force ‘in order to support the Syrian government forces against the Islamic State (Daesh).’21 With one eye to the future, the Russians also insisted on negotiating an agreement with Bashar that gave them control of Hmeimim in perpetuity. One of Putin’s main justifications for entering the conflict was to protect Russia’s modest military outposts in Syria and he was determined to use Russia’s presence in the region to develop those bases into a long-term strategic asset. Apart from allowing Russia to use the base free of charge, the agreement granted diplomatic immunity to all Russian military personnel and their families, who were housed in specially constructed air-conditioned accommodation blocks. There were also schools, medical facilities and cafeterias, with the new base designed to accommodate a permanent staff of around 1,000 personnel. The Russians built their own military airstrip, control tower and a signals intelligence station to monitor the eastern Mediterranean. When construction was completed, the Russians had established a military base to rival the British military’s establishment in Cyprus. In 2017 Moscow announced it had set up ‘a permanent grouping’ at Hmeimim and its naval facility at nearby Tartus.22 The Russians’ primary objective once combat operations began was to demonstrate their military might while providing reassurance to their Syrian

allies that they could defeat the opposition. On the first day of air strikes the Russians flew twenty combat sorties, hitting both FSA and Daesh positions in northern and central Syria. For the next few days Russian warplanes maintained their assault against the opposition groups that posed the most direct threat to the Assad regime. The Russians even launched a brief assault on the capital of Daesh’s so-called caliphate at Raqqa, firing Kalibr missiles from Russian warships based in the eastern Mediterranean as well as maintaining a constant stream of air strikes. More than 200 Daesh fighters were reportedly killed during the attack, including two of the movement’s commanders. The intense tempo of the Russians’ air assault was designed to demonstrate to all the participants in the conflict that they meant business although, as the campaign wore on, the focus of Russian air operations was directed more against Western-backed moderate opposition groups, not the Islamist militants Putin had used to justify his intervention. Moderate groups like the FSA, which had been abandoned by their erstwhile American allies, found themselves under attack from both the Russians and Islamist extremists fighting with the Nusra Front. If the Syrian conflict provided Moscow with a platform to demonstrate the sophistication and firepower of its new weapons systems, it also revealed that Russia’s battlefield tactics had hardly evolved since its involvement in the Chechen conflict two decades previously. As was the case with the Russian assault on Grozny, the defining characteristic of its military operations in Syria was the indiscriminate use of powerful bombs and missiles at predominantly civilian population centres with the express intention of terrorizing rebel-held enclaves. In December 2015, for example, reports issued by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International confirmed Russia had used cluster bombs that had devastated communities and killed scores of civilians. The Russian media outlet Sputnik showed photographs of cluster bombs attached to the wings of warplanes on the tarmac at Hmeimim, with stockpiles of cluster munitions on the runway waiting to be loaded. Russian warplanes targeted mosques, hospitals and water treatment plants, and even attacked the headquarters of the international aid group Médecins Sans Frontiers in Idlib and Aleppo, a blatant violation of international law. Within the space of a few weeks, the sheer ferocity of Russia’s assault began to turn the balance of the conflict in the Assad regime’s favour. But it came at a terrible cost to the Syrian people, as the Russians’ military strategy was simply to pummel the opposition forces into submission through indiscriminate bombing. They took little interest in whether their bombs fell on rebel positions

or civilian areas: the more death and destruction they caused, the more likely the rebels were to lose interest and give up their fight to overthrow the regime. ‘They used high explosive bombs because they had no interest in precision or accuracy,’ said a senior coalition commander. ‘Their aim was to wage a form of psychological war against the Syrian people.’23 There was certainly a notable distinction between the Russians’ approach and the US-led coalition’s air campaign against Daesh, where great emphasis was placed on using targeted air strikes to take out the leadership of Daesh and alQaeda. Russian commanders had the same technology at their disposal but chose not to use it. Before the intervention in Syria, there had been only one recorded instance during Putin’s time in office of the Russians conducting a precision missile strike, and that had been during the Chechnya conflict. But so far as Syria was concerned, they made little or no effort to differentiate between enemy combatants and civilians. The Russians had come to Syria to secure the Assad regime and demonstrate their ability to project their military power far from the Russian homeland and, in order to do so, Russian commanders readily ignored the internationally recognized rules of war. The Russians’ lack of interest in precision bombing meant that they regularly hit hospitals, aid convoys and other humanitarian sites that were supposed to be afforded immunity under international law. Bombing hospitals and medical centres, a policy pro-regime loyalists had pursued since the start of the conflict, became a central feature of Russia’s approach. During the autumn of 2015 there were more than 300 attacks on medical facilities by Syrian and Russian forces. Hospitals in Aleppo, the base for several opposition groups, were particularly badly hit, and the Russians displayed their complete disregard for the welfare of Syrian civilians when they bombed a children’s hospital and a school sheltering refugees in Azaz, close to the Turkish border, in February 2016, killing fourteen people.24 Coalition officials concluded there was a malign logic to the Russians’ practice of deliberately targeting medical facilities. ‘If you have a hospital and you are injured, there is a chance you might survive if you can receive medical treatment,’ a coalition official explained. ‘But if the hospital is destroyed, then all that is going to happen if you get injured is you are going to die.’25 Although air strikes formed the main thrust of Russian operations, commanders also required ground forces to capture and hold territory vacated by the opposition forces. As the Kremlin had no desire to send Russian troops to Syria, they copied the strategy allied forces had used in Libya by using proxies to fight the ground war. Experienced mercenaries were recruited to fight

alongside pro-regime Syrian forces and Iran-backed militias, such as Hezbollah. The Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization used by Putin as his private army, recruited the mercenaries, which gave the Russian president the option of denying any involvement with them. Wagner mercenaries had been involved in Russia’s capture of Ukrainian territory in the Donbas region in 2014 and were reported to have been active in Libya, where Moscow was keen to exploit the political vacuum caused by Gaddafi’s removal. Hundreds of Wagner combatants were flown to Syria in Russian transport aircraft as military operations commenced, enabling Russian commanders to exercise a degree of control over the unruly alliance of regime combat units and Iranian-backed militias. The mercenaries included significant numbers of pro-Russian Chechens and were deemed essential to restoring the morale of Syrian forces, which had been badly depleted by mass desertions and battlefield casualties. Prior to the Russians’ arrival, regime forces had suffered several public humiliations, such as at Raqqa in the summer of 2014, when Syrian officers had abandoned their posts during a Daesh offensive. As a result, hundreds of Syrian soldiers were captured, paraded in their underwear, and then executed.26 The Russians had such a low opinion of the Syrian forces that they regularly referred to them as ‘chickens’; the Wagner mercenaries acted as shock troops to instil a degree of discipline and purpose in the Syrian ranks.27 With the main opposition groups beset by rivalries and infighting, Putin’s campaign soon achieved solid gains. Having halted Daesh’s advance on Damascus, the Russians concentrated their efforts on recapturing as much regime territory as possible. Another important priority was to secure the main north–south route between Damascus and the Alawite heartlands on the Syrian coast. The joint Russian–Syrian fightback was also helped by the growing unpopularity of Daesh militants, especially after they made Raqqa their capital in 2014. They implemented a savage regime, with regular floggings and public executions of those deemed to have flouted their strict Islamic code. Daesh’s takeover of Raqqa and the establishment of its caliphate also exacerbated the Syrian refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the country. Daesh was viewed by many as an Iraqi creation, an organization of violent interlopers, prompting many moderate Syrians to conclude that perhaps keeping the Assad regime in power was not a bad idea after all. Given the choice between Daesh or Bashar, few Syrians were willing to throw in their lot with the fanatical Islamists.

By the spring of 2016 the combination of the Russian bombing campaign and the ground offensive conducted by the Syrian army, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian mercenaries, had advanced to within fifteen miles of the Turkish border, a remarkable turnaround given Bashar’s desperate plight the previous summer. The Russian intervention had ensured that he was no longer in danger of losing the war. The question now was, how much territory could the regime recapture from the various opposition groups? Its fortunes were significantly enhanced in March when the Syrian army succeeded in retaking the ancient city of Palmyra from Daesh. The operation relied heavily on Russian air support and the assistance of Wagner mercenaries, who helped to direct operations. They incurred significant casualties in the process, with thirty-two Wagner operatives reported killed during intense close-quarters fighting with Daesh militants. During its occupation, Daesh had blown up Palmyra’s temples, ransacked its museum and carried out executions in its amphitheatre. After its recapture the bodies of twenty-four civilians and eighteen soldiers were found in a mass grave. They did not include the body of Khaled al-Asaad, the archaeologist beheaded by Daesh: his remains would only be located five years later in a grave to the east of the city.28 Apart from reclaiming possession of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the recapture of Palmyra had strategic value as it meant that the Assad regime could disrupt Daesh’s supply routes through eastern Syria. The impressive gains made during the first six months of the Russian–Syrian offensive created a mood of cautious optimism in Damascus, even though the war was far from won. Putin was so impressed by his forces’ achievements that he announced Russia had achieved all its objectives and would withdraw, allowing the regime to retake control of the campaign: ‘With participation by Russian troops and Russian military grouping, the Syrian troops and Syrian patriotic forces, we were able to radically change the situation in fighting international terrorism and take the initiative in nearly all areas to create the conditions for the start of a peace process.’29 To mark Russia’s success, Putin arranged for his favourite maestro, Valery Gergiev, to conduct the Mariinsky Theatre orchestra in a surprise concert in the Palmyra amphitheatre. Addressing the audience by video link from his Russian Black Sea holiday residence in Sochi, Putin praised them for the ‘great strength and personal courage’ they had shown during the conflict, while Gergiev described the concert as a protest against the barbarism and violence Daesh had exhibited during its reign of terror.30

The change in mood was evident, too, in Bashar and Asma as they welcomed a high-level French delegation to Damascus, where the thirty-strong party was hosted at an Ottoman-era mansion that had been painstakingly renovated at great expense under Asma’s supervision. Although the French delegation mainly included conservative lawmakers and representatives of Christian associations, its presence in Damascus highlighted the subtle change in attitudes to the Assad regime that was taking place in the outside world. ‘Would you rather to talk to Daesh or Bashar al-Assad?’ a female member of the delegation snapped when challenged by a French news channel about making contact with a leader accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own people and making millions homeless. In Britain Boris Johnson, the London mayor who would later serve as foreign secretary and prime minister, argued in his regular newspaper column that it was time for the British government to engage with both Putin and Assad, proclaiming, ‘Let’s deal with the devil: we should work with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad.’31 Despite the new mood of optimism, Syria’s brutal civil war was far from over. While the Russian orchestra played Bach among the Roman ruins, and the Assads entertained their distinguished French guests, Daesh militants continued to run their repressive caliphate from Raqqa, with significant areas of the country remaining under the control of competing opposition groups. In the spring of 2016, the estimated death toll of five years of conflict neared the halfmillion mark, making the Syrian civil war the deadliest conflict of the twentyfirst century.32 The majority of those killed had perished at the hands of proregime forces and their allies, not the various opposition groups or the Daesh fanatics. Meanwhile more than five million Syrians had become refugees, creating a major humanitarian crisis as many tried to make their way to Europe to begin new lives far removed from the horrors of their homeland. The scale of this tragedy was graphically brought home to Europeans in September 2015 when the body of a two-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, was washed up on the shores of a Greek island. He had drowned with his mother and brother while trying to cross the Mediterranean to seek refuge. By now, Western leaders were more concerned with defeating Daesh than ending the suffering of the Syrian people, an attitude that was reflected when the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution in December 2015 calling for a ceasefire in the Syrian conflict. The resolution specifically excluded groups such as Daesh and the Nusra Front from any ceasefire agreement, as well as ‘other terrorist groups’, which Bashar and the Russians took to mean any other

groups that opposed the Assad regime.33 This encouraged pro-regime forces and their Russian backers to maintain their offensive throughout the country, bombing homes, hospitals, schools and markets in opposition areas. Apart from relying on the barrel bombs and chlorine bombs that the regime had used since the start of the conflict, cluster bombs and other incendiary munitions now inflicted terrible burns on their victims.34 Russian forces remained fully committed to the Syrian campaign despite Putin’s announcement that they would withdraw. From the spring of 2016 onwards, the main thrust of the regime’s campaign focused on recapturing as much territory as it could, especially the major cities which, once restored to government control, would help to justify Bashar’s claim that Syria was once more a viable state. Confident in the knowledge that Western leaders would not hold it to account for committing war crimes, the Russian–Syrian–Iranian alliance intensified its assault on what it designated ‘terrorist’ enclaves. The northern city of Aleppo, which since the start of the uprising had been the base for several rebel groups, was the focus of a particularly bloody campaign which began in the summer and lasted for several months. Russian aircraft led the aerial bombardment; combat operations on the ground were led by Iranian officers commanding Iranian volunteers, Hezbollah and Shia militia fighters from Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. The offensive was concentrated on the rebel-held area of eastern Aleppo, where 8,000 fighters – 900 of them linked to the Nusra Front – were based among a population of more than 200,000 people. The Russians and their Syrian allies acted with their customary disregard for the well-being of Aleppo’s civilian population, 3,500 of whom were killed between June and December. The regime’s callous indifference to civilian casualties was highlighted in September, when its forces destroyed an aid convoy delivering humanitarian supplies to the besieged city. In what UN officials later described as a ‘meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out’ attack, helicopter gunships dropped several barrel bombs on the complex, followed by Russian warplanes bombing and strafing the area, killing twenty civilians.35 The intensification of regime operations against the rebels raised concerns that, with so many nations operating in the area, an inadvertent clash between coalition and Russian forces might provoke a direct confrontation between Moscow and the West. The dangers of Syria’s congested air space, where Russian, Turkish, Syrian, Israeli, US and British warplanes were active, were made apparent when the Turks shot down a Russian warplane that they claimed

had violated Turkish airspace. To avoid a similar incident taking place between Russian and American forces, the Pentagon set up a deconfliction hotline with the Russian defence ministry. The possibility of a military confrontation between the Americans and Russians on the ground became a real concern. As the northern city of Raqqa, the caliphate’s capital, became the main target of the coalition’s campaign to destroy Daesh, so the possibility of Russian and American forces running into each other became ever more likely. It was an eventuality that was not in the interest of either party. A tacit understanding was reached whereby the US-led coalition confined its activities to targeting Daesh militants at their base in northern Syria, while the Russians, together with their Syrian and Iranian allies, would suffer no interference in their relentless assault against opposition forces. As for the country’s war-ravaged civilians, they were simply abandoned to their fate. The coalition’s escalation in Syria further complicated the conflict as they looked for new partners to help them defeat Daesh. Having reduced ties with the FSA, which had been the West’s preferred rebel group at the start of the conflict, the US forged an alliance with Kurdish separatists in northern Syria who formed the backbone of a new force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which also contained some FSA elements. The SDF’s main leadership contingent was provided by the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Units (YPG), which had demonstrated their value when they won a major victory over Daesh during the siege of Kobani in 2015, preventing the Islamists from expanding their caliphate into Kurdish villages along the Syrian border. The YPG succeeded in recapturing the city of Kobani and much of the surrounding area with the help of coalition airstrikes and the support of American and British special forces. The YPG’s success encouraged Washington to give the organization a prominent role in the SDF, which was founded in October 2015 with the declared mission of creating a secular, democratic and federalized Syria. The SDF, whose primary objective was to help coalition forces defeat Daesh, acted as a bulwark against the Russo-Iranian alliance formed to keep the Assad regime in power. A further complication in Syria’s increasingly complex battlespace was that Turkey was deeply opposed to the Kurds’ long-term ambitions of creating an independent homeland in northern Syria. This led the Turks to liaise with remnants of the FSA to prevent Kurdish groups seizing control of Syrian territory, giving rise to frequent clashes between the rival camps. The result was an immensely complex battlefield of competing armies and factions, all seeking to pursue their different agendas within a very confined space. This was

particularly true around the northern city of Manbij, which from 2016 onwards became an important centre for the coalition campaign against Daesh after it had been recaptured from the militants in 2016 by SDF forces. ‘It got to the point where we could all eyeball each other from our respective hilltops,’ recalled Major General Rupert Jones, who served as deputy commander of the US-led coalition against Daesh. ‘It was a very congested battlespace where everyone was having very different conversations.’36 As coalition commanders concentrated their efforts on liberating Raqqa from Daesh’s control, they maintained regular contact with their Russian opposite numbers to avoid any unintended clashes between their respective forces. From 2017 onwards this meant dealing with Russian General Sergey Surovikin, a veteran of the Chechen conflict who quickly acquired the nickname ‘General Armageddon’ for the brutal tactics he employed against Syrian civilians. A detailed report compiled by Human Rights Watch later concluded that under his direction, Russian forces regularly struck Syrian ‘homes, schools, healthcare facilities and markets – the places where people live, work and study’.37 Surovikin, who would employ the same tactics in Ukraine after Putin gave him command of Russian forces in October 2022, argued that he was acting in defence of the Russian people. ‘When performing combat missions in Syria, not for a minute did we forget that we were defending Russia,’ he later explained.38 Surovikin had first attracted criticism during the failed attempt by Communist hardliners in 1991 to stage a coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev, when he ordered soldiers to shoot protesters, killing three of them himself. Four years after the shootings, he was found guilty of stealing and selling weapons and imprisoned for six months, although he was released following allegations that he had been framed.39 Despite his ruthless approach, coalition commanders found Surovikin and other Russian commanders highly professional in their dealings with them, and ready to cooperate on deconfliction issues. ‘Surovikin behaved himself when he was dealing with the Americans and British,’ said a senior coalition commander.40 After the liberation of Palmyra, the Russian-led advance of pro-regime forces further north meant they were in close proximity to coalition forces, with the Euphrates river providing a natural barrier between coalition forces operating to the east and the Russians to the west. There were a few anomalies, such as the coalition’s base at Manbij on the western side and the Russians occupying two blocs of territory in close proximity. At one point it looked as though the Russians might even launch their own assault to retake Raqqa, but in the end

they concentrated their efforts on capturing major cities such as Aleppo. Efforts to avoid conflict between the Russians and Americans were conducted at the highest level, with General Joseph Dunford, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, maintaining regular contact with his opposite number Valery Gerasimov using long-established communication channels between Washington and Moscow. ‘We knew that Gerasimov could dictate terms to Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies,’ said a senior coalition commander. ‘The Russians were generally a moderating force. When Dunford was dealing with the Russians he knew he was dealing with a fellow military professional. They would tell the Syrians what they could and could not do, and that greatly helped to avoid any unnecessary confrontations between the two sides.’41 American commanders on the ground established a hotline with their Russian opposite numbers to coordinate their operations. As US forces had no direct contact with either the regime or the Iranians, they relied on the Russians to inform them about proposed operations. ‘We never knew whether the messages got through or not to the Iranians and the regime,’ said a senior coalition commander. ‘But there were occasions when we ran up against the Iranians and regime forces and the Russians would tell us we were attacking their allies and ask us to stop.’ The potential for direct clashes between the opposing forces was ever present. In June 2017 the Americans shot down a Russian-made Syrian Su-22 warplane after it attacked US-backed SDF positions close to Raqqa. One of the more serious stand-offs between the Americans and Russians took place earlier the same month at Al-Tanf, a coalition base located in southern Syria close to the Jordanian border. Surovikin was in Moscow on annual leave, and in his absence Russian commanders failed to intervene when Soleimani assembled a force to attack the American garrison at Al-Tanf. The base was strategically important because it was located close to the Baghdad–Damascus highway, which Iran was keen to control as it would give it direct access to its bases in Syria and Lebanon. The US base mainly consisted of military trainers, who were working alongside Syrian and Kurdish recruits, and US special forces targeting Daesh insurgents in eastern Syria. Soleimani had assembled a combined force of Iranians, Hezbollah and Syrians to drive the Americans out of the base, which would give him undisputed control of the highway. US General Stephen Townsend, the commander of the coalition’s Combined Joint Task Force in Baghdad, established a fifty-five-mile perimeter around the base to deter attacks from either pro-regime forces or Daesh militants, who had launched a failed attack against the base in April.42 A veteran of the conflicts in

Afghanistan and Iraq, Townsend was an experienced and charismatic military leader who viewed the Syrian war within the context of a broader geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West. ‘He believed strongly that the US had given up too much ground in the Middle East, and that the Russians were seeking to exploit any perceived American weakness,’ recalled a senior coalition officer. ‘He was determined not to give any more ground to the Russians and their allies.’43 Tensions between coalition commanders and the Russians intensified in late May when a Syrian warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb close to the garrison, and Iranian drones were used in several other attacks. Under the memorandum of understanding the Russians and Americans had agreed on the conduct of operations in Syria, the Russians were supposed to make sure pro-regime forces did not take provocative action against American positions. But with Surovikin absent, Russian commanders were unwilling to intervene in the stand-off between Soleimani’s forces and the Al-Tanf garrison. Indeed, rather than trying to calm tensions, the Russians increased the pressure on the American garrison by ordering them to leave Al-Tanf ‘or face destruction’, as Townsend later recalled. As the US special forces contingent dispersed into the surrounding desert as a precautionary measure, Townsend used the deconfliction hotline to send the Russians an ultimatum: ‘Are we talking or are we fighting?’ Townsend demanded of Russian Colonel General Zarodnitskiy, who was standing in as Surovikin’s deputy while the latter was on leave. ‘Because, if we are fighting, I am hanging up right now.’ There was a brief silence as the Russians weighed up their options. Then the reply came back: ‘We are talking.’ In the space of a few seconds a crisis that had threatened to escalate into a major confrontation between the Russians and Americans had been resolved peacefully. As he ended the call, Townsend could not hide his delight that he had forced the Russians to back down. ‘My Russian friend just blinked,’ he informed his coalition colleagues.44 For Townsend, his refusal to give way in the face of blatant Russian intimidation put down an important marker in terms of the Americans’ dealings with the Russians. ‘The Russians never got away with provocative action against the US while we were operating in Syria,’ said Townsend. ‘We always stood up to them when they came too close or tried to pressure us.’45 Another intriguing aspect of Russia’s involvement in the conflict was its relationship with Iran. The two countries had very different agendas: Russia’s was to keep Assad in power, while Iran wanted to consolidate its presence in the eastern Mediterranean and

establish its land bridge between Tehran and Beirut. While the Russians and Iranians coordinated their efforts to reclaim territory on behalf of the regime, the Iranians would also mount their own operations, such as the assault on Al-Tanf. There were several occasions when the Russians, despite manning sophisticated air-defence systems, felt they were under no obligation to defend their Iranian allies. This was most pronounced when Israeli warplanes attacked Iranian bases that Israel believed posed a threat to its own security. On those occasions Russia’s air-defence systems would remain inactive, allowing the Israelis to conduct their missions with impunity. The successful resolution of tensions between the coalition and pro-regime forces took place as the coalition and its allies mounted their final assault to recapture Raqqa and destroy Daesh. The campaign had made steady progress from the start of the year when the SDF, backed by US air strikes, succeeded in recapturing the Russian-built Euphrates Dam from Daesh. The operation involved dropping SDF fighters onto the banks of the Euphrates, which risked violating the understanding between the Americans and Russians, but the SDF’s Kurdish leadership was keen to prevent pro-regime forces from claiming credit for taking Raqqa, and the operation was designed to prevent pro-regime forces from attacking the city from the west. Coalition operations against Daesh from 2017 onwards were greatly helped by the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House, whose administration allowed coalition commanders on the ground greater flexibility in conducting operations. Under Obama, commanders were required to refer all requests to conduct operations back to Washington for approval, but during the last year of Obama’s administration the president was overly cautious, and the requests rarely received an answer. After Trump entered the White House, commanders were given more freedom to act on their own initiative, which resulted in the anti-Daesh campaign gaining momentum. Capturing the capital of Daesh’s caliphate was no easy task. Daesh’s strength had been boosted by the large numbers of Islamist fighters who had made their way to Raqqa after the coalition had helped Iraqi forces to recapture the northern city of Mosul in the summer of 2017. The militants were also street smart and had learned how to prevent the Americans and their allies from following their movements. All mobile phones were banned, and the main streets were covered with awnings to prevent spy satellites tracking their activities. ‘For a long time Raqqa was a communications black hole,’ recalled a coalition official. ‘When planning the assault on the city, we were working in the dark for most of the time.’46 Even so, when D-Day came for Raqqa on 6 June 2017, the coalition’s

three-pronged assault proved successful, and over the course of the next four months coalition forces gradually fought their way to the city centre, with the SDF finally declaring victory on 20 October. The destruction of Daesh’s caliphate in Syria, together with the large tracts of territory that had been brought back under government control because of the Russian offensive, meant that the main challenge to the Assads’ rule was at an end. While much of the country had been destroyed, and the lives of millions of Syrians devastated, the main priority for Bashar and Asma was to re-establish their image as the unfortunate targets of a global campaign to undermine their regime. The Assads had begun preparing the ground for their international rehabilitation long before Daesh had been routed, and the Russian intervention had saved the regime from certain defeat. Seemingly oblivious to the misery and suffering they had inflicted on the country, the couple gave a series of interviews in which they sought to portray themselves as the victims, not the perpetrators, of brutality. Asma featured in a Russian-made documentary in October 2016 in which she spoke of her ‘pain and sadness’ when she met those injured and widowed by the conflict in her country and offered to help. With her hair carefully styled and wearing flawless make-up, she talked about her commitment to providing support to the conflict’s victims. In what was clearly a public relations exercise, Asma hoped to resume her role as the country’s sophisticated first lady. But rather than feting her as Syria’s ‘desert rose’, many Western publications took to calling her the ‘first lady of hell’.47 Bashar, too, tried to present himself as the victim of a US-led conspiracy to destroy his country. The death of his mother Anisa in February had come as a great relief for a leader who seemed incapable of overcoming his deep sense of inadequacy. Having scolded her son for failing to maintain the same ruthless control as Hafez, Anisa had relocated to Dubai to be with her daughter, who had lived in exile since her husband’s assassination in 2012. Without having to deal with his mother’s constant criticisms, Bashar could be more himself. Addressing a gathering of journalists and analysts invited to Damascus by the British Syrian Society run by his father-in-law, Bashar chuckled and smiled as he sought to blame everyone but himself for his country’s plight. ‘I’m just a headline – the bad president, the bad guy, who is killing the good guys,’ he insisted. ‘You know this narrative. The real reason is toppling the government. This government doesn’t fit the criteria of the United States.

‘Let’s suppose that these allegations are correct and this president has killed his own people, and the free world and the West are helping the Syrian people,’ he continued. ‘After five years and a half, who supported me? How can I be a president and my people don’t support me?’ He gave a small giggle and added, ‘This is not realistic story.’48 If Bashar had one unique quality, it was his ability to distance himself from the chaos developing all around him. Like Asma, he made no mention of the vital role the Russians and other allies had played in keeping them in power. For the Assads, all that mattered was that they had survived.

EPILOGUE

The Reckoning Justice delayed is justice denied. William Gladstone

There were no winners in Syria’s brutal civil war. Bashar’s main achievement was that he had survived in power, but in every sense it was a hollow victory. His regime’s survival was achieved only through the intervention of Iran and Russia, and for much of the latter stages he had been reduced to the status of an impotent onlooker as the Iranians took control of the regime’s military campaign before being superseded by the even more assertive Russians. While Syria’s allies achieved their primary objective of keeping the Assad regime in power, they did so at a terrible cost for the Syrian people. By the time the main thrust of combat operations began to wind down towards the end of 2017, some 500,000 Syrians had perished and millions more had been forced to flee their homes. On the tenth anniversary of the start of the conflict the UN estimated that 15.3 million Syrians – more than half the pre-war population – needed humanitarian assistance either within Syria or in the sprawling refugee camps set up in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.1 Nor did Bashar’s regime control the whole country. The counter-insurgency campaign conducted by Iran and Russia had succeeded in recapturing all of the main cities, yet the regime only controlled about 60 per cent of the territory, with the remainder occupied by anti-regime forces, especially in northern Syria where Western-backed Kurdish forces ran their autonomous enclave along the Turkish border. Even so, the mere fact that Bashar had managed to survive in power was itself a significant achievement, especially given the fate that befell many other leaders affected by the wave of protests that swept the region during the Arab Spring. Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen: in each case the tired dictatorships that, to varying degrees, had been in power for decades were overthrown, with mixed results for the individual countries involved. Tunisia, where the protests originated, was one of the few countries where the uprisings led to a tangible improvement, with the removal of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime giving rise to a new government committing itself to a genuine process of democratization. Elsewhere the outcomes were less positive. The removal of

Hosni Mubarak in Egypt paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood to take power, producing a turbulent era in Egyptian politics that ultimately resulted in the Brotherhood being forcibly removed in 2013 in a coup d’état that led to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi taking power. The Brotherhood’s brief chaotic rule, which saw Cairo forge closer ties with Iran and an upsurge in sectarian violence against Christian minorities, served as a warning to Western leaders not to support Turkey’s efforts to replace the Assad regime with a similarly Islamistinspired regime in Damascus. As for Libya and Yemen, the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh respectively resulted in the countries’ precipitate decline into all-out civil war. That the Assad regime should emerge as the only survivor – albeit in a much reduced state – from the tumult of the Arab Spring was a testament both to the resilience of its security apparatus and the vital support of its allies. Bashar acknowledged Moscow’s contribution to keeping his regime in power when he flew to Russia for a summit with Putin in November 2017. It was only the second time he had left Syria since the conflict began, with Moscow being the destination on both occasions. Bashar was effusive in his tributes to Putin for providing the military support that had kept his regime in power. ‘I conveyed to [Putin], and on his behalf all Russian people, our greetings and gratitude for all of the efforts that Russia made to save our country,’ Assad said. He praised the Russian air force for helping Syrian troops in the fight against insurgents, claiming it had allowed many Syrians to return to their homes. ‘In the name of the Syrian people, I greet you and thank you all, every Russian officer, fighter and pilot that took part in this war.’2 Putin’s comments were more to the point: ‘Regarding our joint operation to fight terrorists in Syria, this military operation is indeed coming to an end.’3 Bashar’s visit to Moscow was in response to a summons from Putin, who wanted to outline his thoughts on negotiating an end to the conflict, an initiative the Russian leader had launched without bothering to consult his Syrian ally. The meeting took place at Putin’s palace at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and lasted for three hours as the Russian leader set out his thinking ahead of a summit between Russia, Turkey and Iran. The so-called ‘Astana Process’ had begun the previous January as an alternative to the failed Geneva talks and was named after the capital of Kazakhstan as both Russia and Turkey agreed that it was a suitably neutral location to conduct the talks. The Russian proposals for a new Syrian constitution far exceeded anything Syria’s Baathist rulers were likely to accept, and even suggested changing the regime’s name from the ‘Syrian

Arab Republic’ to the ‘Republic of Syria’, which would be run along federal lines while strengthening the role of parliament at the expense of the presidency. In seeking to limit the president’s authority, Putin’s ambivalence about Bashar remaining as Syria’s leader resurfaced, to the extent that his official spokesman, when asked whether Assad should stand down, drily remarked that ‘possible options for a political settlement have been discussed’.4 The main stumbling block to progress was Turkey’s refusal to accept the autonomous Kurdish territory in northern Syria that the SDF had created following its success in defeating Daesh in Raqqa. Meanwhile the Assad regime, not rejecting the Russian plan out of hand, insisted that there must first be the ‘immediate and unconditional withdrawal of foreign forces from Syrian territory’, meaning Turkish and US forces, not the Russians and Iranians who had kept him in power. With the Turks unwilling to vacate the buffer zone they had created in northern Syria against the autonomous Kurdish region, and Washington maintaining its support for the SDF, there was little prospect of the Syrian demands being met. Putin’s willingness to support a new Syrian peace initiative stemmed from his belief that Russia’s military intervention had been a success. Visiting the Hmeimim air base the following month, he declared that Russian forces had achieved their objectives and would return home. ‘Friends, the motherland is waiting for you,’ Putin told the Russian garrison. ‘You are coming back home with victory.’5 From Moscow’s perspective, the intervention had certainly achieved most of its aims while raising Russia’s military profile. As with the West’s military effort in Libya in 2011, the mission objectives had been accomplished with minimum casualties, the official number of Russian combat casualties estimated at just over 100. Russian air power had enabled regime forces to recapture significant amounts of territory, even if Moscow’s claim that it was fighting Daesh militants was a deliberate distortion of the truth, as the main thrust of the Russian operation was to recapture positions held by rebel forces, not Daesh. And while the Russians could justifiably claim they had kept the Assad regime in power, their lack of military discipline, such as the constant use of indiscriminate bombing against civilian targets, would come back to haunt them the next time they launched a major military offensive with the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Russian forces encountered a better-equipped and more professional adversary. If Russia’s successful military campaign in Ukraine in 2014 encouraged Putin to intervene in Syria, the success of the Syrian mission strengthened his belief

that he could launch another invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and overthrow the country’s democratically elected government. This grave miscalculation, which resulted in the Russians suffering a series of humiliating defeats during the first year of the conflict, was based on the assumption that the Russian military simply had to replicate the tactics that had been used in Syria to achieve victory. Indeed, many of the Russian generals, such as Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded Russian forces in Syria, were given responsibility for prosecuting the Russian campaign in Ukraine. This would certainly explain the Russians’ use of indiscriminate air and rocket attacks against Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure with the specific aim, as was the case in Syria, of terrorizing the population into submission. The significant difference, though, between the Russian campaigns in Syria and Ukraine was that, while in Syria the Russians were mainly fighting against ill-equipped militias, in Ukraine they found themselves fighting against a well-prepared military force supplied with highquality Western weaponry. ‘The Russian military learned all the wrong lessons from its intervention in Syria,’ said a senior officer in the US-led coalition conducting operations in Syria. ‘They assumed they could resort to the same tactics they used in Syria to achieve their goals in Ukraine. This led them to completely misjudge the Ukrainians’ ability to defend their country.’6 The scale of Putin’s calamitous misjudgement was evident when Moscow was forced to withdraw its forces from Syria in the summer of 2022 to bolster its war effort in Ukraine.7 The scaling down of Russia’s combat operations in Syria did not mean the war had ended. While the overthrow of Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Raqqa had ended its reign of terror, the campaign to round up fleeing Islamist militants continued, with the US warning the organization had as many as 10,000 militants still based in Syria and Iraq.8 Thousands more were held in makeshift prison camps in SDF-controlled territory in northern Syria, including high-profile detainees such as Shamima Begum, a British-born jihadi who had fled to Syria to join the caliphate at the age of fifteen. Backed by the US-led coalition, the SDF pursued its offensive against pockets of Daesh resistance, which was mainly based along the Syria–Iraq border. The continuing US military presence in Syria meant the prospect of clashes with Russian-backed pro-Syrian forces remained, with the two sides being involved in a four-hour battle on the outskirts of the border city of Deir el-Zour in February 2018 when a pro-regime force, backed by Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, attacked a small SDF outpost, which also contained a small number of US special forces.

Between 200 and 300 Wagner mercenaries and regime soldiers were killed as the US launched an intensive air and ground assault against the attacking force in what became known as the Battle of Khasham.9 By the end of 2018 the liberation of Daesh’s remaining enclaves in eastern and northern Syria enabled US President Trump, who believed his more robust approach to defeating Daesh had been responsible for the movement’s destruction, to announce his intention to withdraw 2,000 US forces from Syria. ‘After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home,’ the president tweeted. Trump was handed another public relations victory in October 2019 with confirmation that Daesh leader Abu al-Baghdadi had been killed during a raid by US special forces against his Idlib hideout. Trump’s handling of the Syrian issue, though, was not always sure-footed. In the same month he was accused of betraying the SDF, who had done the lion’s share of the fighting to defeat Daesh, by ordering the withdrawal of US forces supporting the organization, prompting concerns that the move would leave them vulnerable to attack from Turkey.10 The reduction of combat operations also saw Iran and its Hezbollah allies redefine their objectives. Hezbollah, whose forces had been at the forefront of the campaign to keep the Assad regime in power in the early stages of the conflict, began withdrawing its forces back to Lebanon in early 2018. During five years of fighting, it was estimated that around 2,000 Hezbollah fighters had been killed and 8,000 injured. Contrary to its past practice, the organization had resorted to recruiting combatants as young as sixteen, and many of these teenagers had perished through lack of training. Iran, too, suffered significant battlefield casualties, with the Revolutionary Guard, which was responsible for coordinating ground operations, losing more than 2,300 soldiers, many of them senior commanders directing front-line missions. At the height of the conflict it was estimated that Qassem Soleimani’s Quds Force had an 80,000-strong contingent operating in Syria commanded by 2,000 Revolutionary Guard commanders.11 Thousands of Afghans, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Pakistanis and other militia fighters who were drafted in to fight with Iranian-backed para-military organizations also perished. Many of the Afghans who fought were recruited largely from displaced Hazara communities based in Iran. After its significant investment in keeping Bashar in power, Tehran believed it was entitled to establish a network of permanent bases in Syria for Quds Force personnel and foreign Shia militias under its command. The Iranian installations included a general headquarters, regional command

posts and missile and drone bases that were designed to enhance Iran’s ability to threaten neighbouring Israel. The pace of Iran’s military expansion suffered a significant setback, though, when Soleimani, the mastermind of the project, was killed at Baghdad airport in January 2020 in a US drone strike undertaken on President Trump’s orders. The important contribution Soleimani had made to the joint Iranian–Russian campaign to keep Assad in power was highlighted when, immediately after his assassination, Putin flew to Damascus to offer Bashar his condolences. Iran’s attempts to expand its military infrastructure in Syria prompted Israel to launch air strikes against the bases, which were conducted without interference from Russian air defences. ‘Israel had little interest in Syria’s internal politics, but it took a close interest in Iranian activity in Syria as it had a direct bearing on Israel’s own security,’ said a senior US national security official.12 Israel’s ability to attack Iranian positions in Syria was enhanced by the constructive relationship Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed with Putin. Following a summit in Moscow in July 2018, Putin agreed to restrain Iran’s military activities in Syria in return for Israel not opposing Russian efforts to assist the Assad regime regain control over all of Syria. The pact between the two leaders was renewed in February 2023 when they agreed to avoid any military confrontation in Syrian airspace. ‘We don’t interfere with your actions in Syria; you leave us alone,’ was Netanyahu’s succinct summary of his pact with Putin.13 Netanyahu accused Tehran of seeking to establish an army on the Syrian border to threaten Israel, and the Israelis’ determination to counter the Iranian threat saw Israeli warplanes continue to attack Iran’s operations, including an attack on Damascus International Airport in January 2023 which killed four people. Although hostilities had not concluded, it was clear that, so long as Bashar enjoyed the support of Russia and Iran, his regime would survive in power, even if it controlled little more than half the territory it had governed at the start of the conflict. With other regional issues, such as the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme, taking priority, a succession of Arab states began to re-engage with Bashar in a process he hoped would lead to his eventual rehabilitation in world affairs. In October 2021 King Abdullah II of Jordan received a call from Assad – the first time the two leaders had spoken since hostilities commenced – to discuss improving border cooperation arrangements. In December the United Arab Emirates, one of the Gulf states most at risk from the Iranian nuclear threat, formally restored ties by reopening its embassy in Damascus, with Bahrain and Egypt following suit. There were even attempts, encouraged by Moscow, to

readmit Syria into the Arab fold by extending an invitation to Damascus to participate in the Arab League summit in Algiers in 2022, although the invitation was withdrawn because of objections from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.14 Undeterred, Damascus continued to assert its presence in world affairs, most notably after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Syria joined North Korea, Belarus and Eritrea in voting against a UN motion condemning Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine. As the stalemate in the Syrian conflict deepened, Bashar was in the same state of denial that had characterized his attitude throughout the civil war. He continued to deny any involvement in committing war crimes even when challenged about a detailed report by Amnesty International about the atrocities committed by his regime.15 ‘You can forge anything these days,’ Bashar blithely remarked when questioned about the report. ‘We are living in a fake news era,’ claiming that photographs of the corpses of prisoners piled up in a Damascus hospital were a ‘photo-shop’. In 2018 Bashar was even talking about the longdelayed reform programme that he had announced at the start of his presidency. ‘We still have a long way to go because it is a process . . . we have to wait for the next generation to bring this reform.’16 Other members of his immediate family were encouraged to make positive noises about his qualities. In the summer of 2018, his eldest son Hafez, then aged sixteen, gave a spirited defence of his father in an interview with the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today. ‘I know what kind of man my father is. As president people say a lot of things about [Bashar] . . . this isn’t reality.’ The following year Asma reappeared in public to reveal she had been treated successfully for breast cancer, paying tribute to the excellent medical care she had received from Syrian cancer specialists. Asma’s efforts to distance herself from the atrocities committed by her husband’s regime were undermined in 2021 when British police confirmed they had opened an investigation into her involvement in war crimes which, if proven, would result in her standing trial and losing her British citizenship.17 There were also efforts to reunite the extended Assad clan. Arguably the most eye-catching development occurred in October 2021 when Rifaat al-Assad, the disgraced uncle who had tried to claim the presidency for himself, was allowed to return home after nearly four decades in exile. Bashar authorized his return after a French court had sentenced Rifaat to four years in prison on embezzlement charges.18 There were also efforts to repair relations with his estranged sister Bushra, who had been living in exile in Dubai after her husband

was killed in the attack on the Syrian defence ministry in 2012. Bushra became a frequent visitor to Damascus, where her brother continued to fund her lavish lifestyle.19 Despite his efforts to present a ‘business as normal’ image, Bashar’s presidency was little more than a sham. In 2021 a detailed examination of the break-up of the country that had occurred as a result of the civil war showed that the Syrian regime controlled just 15 per cent of its borders. Syria’s border with Lebanon was almost entirely controlled by Hezbollah and its Iranian backers, while most of the border with Iraq was run by Iranian-backed Shia militias. Almost the entire northern border was controlled by Turkey, which constructed a security fence to prevent infiltration by so-called Kurdish ‘terrorists’, as well as blocking the flow of additional Syrian refugees seeking to join the estimated 3.6 million Syrians living in Turkish refugee camps. The limitations of Bashar’s control over his own country was graphically exposed following the devastating earthquake that struck northern Syria and Turkey in February 2023, killing tens of thousands of Syrians and Turks. The Assad regime proved incapable of providing even the most basic assistance to the Syrians affected by the disaster. Bashar and Asma tried to use the earthquake as a public relations exercise, with official state media publishing photographs of them visiting survivors at a hospital in northern Aleppo. But their presence was bitterly resented by those who been subjected to the horrors of the Russian-led assault to recapture the city, with one activist commenting the earthquake ‘did what the Assad regime and Russians wanted to do to us all along’.20 It was a measure of the Assad regime’s desperate plight that charity workers complained that international aid collected for victims of the earthquake was being diverted to support Bashar’s private projects.21 With the Syrian economy in ruins, the Assads developed new revenue streams by taking control of the Middle East drugs trade. Captagon, a highly addictive amphetamine which is banned in most countries, was first introduced to the Middle East by Bulgarian and Turkish gangs using long-established drugsmuggling routes through Lebanon and Syria. During the civil war, reports emerged of fighters on both sides using the drug on the battlefield. Syria’s security establishment, as well as Hezbollah, had long been suspected of involvement in the region’s lucrative drugs trade. As the regime looked for new ways to supplement its income, the Assad clan took control of the main supply chain, to the extent that an office was set up in the Presidential Palace to supervise the operation. US officials estimated that Syria’s control of the

Captagon smuggling trade was worth $5.7 billion in 2022, more than sufficient to fill the Assads’ depleted coffers. Most of the drugs, which were manufactured in Assad-controlled areas of the country, were traded in the Middle East, with Syrian drug-smuggling networks distributing them to Iraq, Jordan and the Gulf states. Having survived the civil war, Bashar’s response had been to turn his country into a Mexican-style narco state.22 Even though the US drafted legislation in late 2022 aimed at dismantling Assad’s drugs cartel, the disinclination of Western leaders to confront the Syrian regime meant that there was little prospect of Bashar being held to account for either his involvement in the drugs trade or his part in the heinous war crimes of the civil war. Despite the enormous body of evidence accumulated by opposition and human rights groups that directly implicated Bashar in the commission and execution of some of the worst war crimes of the modern era, there was little appetite for bringing Assad and his supporters to justice. So long as Damascus enjoyed the diplomatic backing of Russia and China at the UN Security Council, there was no chance of the UN authorizing the International Criminal Court to convene a war crimes tribunal for Syria, even though the death toll from the Syrian conflict was comparable to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s. Similarly, efforts to establish an ad hoc tribunal, like the judicial body established for Rwanda, were thwarted by the reluctance of the major Western powers to initiate any action that would further alienate countries such as Russia and Iran. And as long as the world’s leading powers refused to address the war crimes Bashar and his regime had committed during more than a decade of brutal conflict, the Syrian people were denied the justice they richly deserved.

Acknowledgements Researching and writing a book on the Assad regime presents many challenges, especially when interviewing those who still retain family or other connections with Syria that leave them vulnerable to reprisals. In these cases, I have observed their request for anonymity. Wafic Said offered his unique insights into Syria’s post-independence political development, as well as suggesting key areas of research. I am particularly grateful to Rihab Massoud, Saudi Arabia’s former deputy national security secretary general, for taking the time to explain the geopolitical challenges the Assad regime presented. The redoubtable Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud was enormously generous with his time when we met in Riyadh, and I would like to thank his son, HRH Prince Khalid bin Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK, for helping to arrange my meeting with his father. Bahaa Hariri spoke about his father’s assassination in Lebanon, and Dr Nawaf Obaid gave me important guidance on the vital work being undertaken by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability to hold the Assad regime accountable for war crimes. Ibrahim Hamidi recounted his close association with Bashar before he was imprisoned by the Syrian leader, Issam alRayyes explained the ties between the Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies, Khaled Yacoub Oweis outlined the key players in the Syrian opposition and Malik al-Abdeh shared his childhood reminiscences of Asma al-Akhras, Bashar’s future wife, in the west London suburb of Acton. There were several government representatives in the UK and US who agreed to be interviewed on a non-attributable basis. In Britain I am grateful to Sir John Jenkins and Simon Collis for sharing their recollections of serving as British ambassadors to Syria. Daniel Tarshish set out the dynamics of the Assad regime’s relationship with its Russian and Iranian allies, while Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, shed light on the Blair government’s diplomatic overtures towards Damascus. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Blair’s former foreign policy and defence adviser, recalled his mission to Damascus in 2006.

Colonel Debi Lomax, former special adviser to the UK’s chief of the defence staff, helped to arrange interviews with key British military personnel involved in the Syria conflict, and I am grateful for the enormously helpful contributions made by Air Marshal Edward Stringer, former assistant chief of the defence staff (operations), Air Vice-Marshal Mike Hart and Major General Rupert Jones, former deputy commander of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve. In the US I am particularly indebted to General David Petraeus for taking the time to explain his numerous encounters with the Assad regime while serving as a coalition commander in Iraq and as director of the CIA. Ambassador John Bolton, former US national security adviser, provided a detailed explanation of Washington’s assessment of the Assad regime over several decades. Colonel Joel Rayburn, former US special envoy for Syria, shared his own distinctive analysis of the Syrian conflict. Ambassador Robert Ford gave a frank account of his term as US ambassador to Syria and Mary Kissel, former senior adviser to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, explained the background to US policy on the Syrian issue. General Stephen Townsend, former commander Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve – told me about the challenges of conducting highly complex military operations in Syria. At Macmillan I would like to give a special thank you to Georgina Morley for her support, encouragement and wise counsel throughout the course of this demanding project, and to the editorial team for their remarkable professionalism. Jon Wood at Rogers, Coleridge & White, the literary agency that has nurtured my writing endeavours for more than three decades, provided valuable guidance. My biggest thanks, though, goes to my wonderful wife Katherine who, apart from reading and editing the manuscript, made many useful research contributions. To her, I offer my deepest love and admiration.

Select Bibliography Alamuddin, Baria, Militia State (Nomad Publishing, 2022). Albright, Madeleine, Madame Secretary (Macmillan, 2003). Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (Hamish Hamilton, 1938). Armanazi, Ghayth, The Story of Syria (Gilgamesh Publishing, 2016). Blair, Tony, A Journey (Hutchinson, 2010). Bolton, John, The Room Where It Happened (Simon & Schuster, 2020). Burke, Jason, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (I.B. Tauris, 2004). Burns, William J., The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal (Random House, 2019). Cameron, David, For The Record (William Collins, 2019). Clinton, Bill, My Life (Knopf, 2004). Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Hard Choices (Simon & Schuster, 2014). Cockburn, Patrick, The Rise of Islamic State (Verso, 2015). Dagher, Sam, Assad or We Burn the Country (Little, Brown, 2019). Darke, Diana, My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution (Haus, 2014). Galeotti, Mark, Putin’s Wars (Osprey, 2022). Goodarzi, Jubin, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2009). Goldsmith, Leon T., Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace (Hurst, 2015). Hilsum, Lindsey, In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin (Chatto & Windus, 2018). Hokayem, Emile, Syria’s Uprising and the Fracturing of the Levant (Routledge, 2013). Lefteri, Christy, The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Zaffre, 2019). Lesch, David, Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (Yale University Press, 2012). Leverett, Flynt, Inheriting Syria (Brookings Institute Press, 2005). Lister, Charles, The Syria Jihad (Hurst, 2015). Longrigg, Stephen Hemsley, Syria and Lebanon Under French Mandate (Royal Institute for International Affairs, 1958). Phillips, Christopher, The Battle for Syria (Yale University Press, 2016). Phillips, David L., Frontline Syria: From Revolution to Proxy War (I.B. Tauris, 2021). Rice, Condoleeza, No Higher Honor (Simon & Schuster, 2011). Seale, Patrick, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 1988). Van Dam, Nikolaos, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria (I.B. Tauris, 2017). Wright, Robin, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (Penguin, 2008). Zisser, Eyal, Commanding Syria (I.B. Tauris, 2007).

Notes 1. A Doctor Calls 1 Author’s interview, January 2022. 2 Majid died aged forty-three in December 2009 of a suspected drugs overdose. 3 Author’s interview, November 2021. 4 Author’s interview, January 2022. 5 ‘Massacre of Hama (February 1982) Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity’, Syrian Human Rights Committee, 2005. 6 Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (Penguin, 2008), pp. 243–4. 7 Statement by US deputy press secretary Larry Speakes, 21 July 1983. 8 Patrick Seale, Assad: The Struggle for Syria (University of California Press, 1988), p. 434. 9 Ibid., pp. 328–9. 10 Ghayth Armanazi, The Story of Syria (Gilgamesh Publishing, 2016), p. 35. 11 Seale, p. 6. 12 David Lesch, Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (Yale University Press, 2012), p. 2. 13 Seale, p. 11. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 36. 16 Ibid., p. 33. 17 Armanazi, p. 138.

2. The Velvet Glove 1 Sam Dagher, Assad or We Burn the Country (Little, Brown, 2019), p. 32. 2 Najib Ghadbian, ‘The New Assad: Dynamics of Continuity and Change in Syria’, Middle East Journal, vol. 55, no. 4 (Autumn 2001), pp. 624–41. 3 Armanazi, pp. 235–6. 4 Author’s interview, January 2022. 5 Ibid. 6 Dagher, p. 96. 7 ‘Syrian Heir Disputed by Uncle in Exile’, The Guardian, 13 June 2000. 8 ‘Mourners Say Goodbye to Syria’s “Lion”’, Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2000. 9 John Julius Norwich, Sicily (John Murray, 2015), p. 25. 10 Author’s interview, January 2022. 11 Dagher, p. 43. 12 Ibid., p. 44.

13 Ibid., p. 43. 14 Ibid., p. 48. 15 BBC, A Dangerous Dynasty: The House of Assad, episode 1 (2018). 16 Ibid. 17 ‘The Enigma of Assad’, Quartz, 21 April 2017. 18 Author’s interview, January 2022. 19 BBC, A Dangerous Dynasty, episode 1. 20 ‘“Gentle and Weak”: UK Trainee Eye Surgeon Who Became Syrian Tyrant’, Mail Online, 31 August 2013. 21 BBC, A Dangerous Dynasty, episode 1. 22 ‘“Gentle and Weak”’, Mail Online.

3. Lost Hope 1 https://al-bab.com/documents-section/president-bashar-al-assad-inaugural-address 2 A Wasted Decade, Human Rights Watch, 16 July 2010. 3 Interview with Rifaat al-Assad, Sky News Arabia, 9 September 2016. 4 Dagher, p. 101. 5 Author’s interview, January 2022. 6 Bahjat Suleiman, ‘Why is Bassel the Role Model and Bashar the Hope?’, Aleppo Economics Magazine, 1 January 1997. 7 Author’s interview, July 2022. 8 Author’s interview, January 2022. 9 Dagher, p. 105. 10 Author’s interview, October 2022. 11 Ibid. 12 New York Times, 28 March 2000. 13 Madeleine Albright, Madame Secretary (Macmillan, 2003), p. 481. 14 Bill Clinton, My Life (Knopf, 2004), p. 909. 15 Author’s interview, January 2022. 16 Ibid. 17 Author’s interview, July 2022. 18 Author’s interview, October 2022. 19 ‘From schoolgirl Emma to Asma, the Syrian icon’, The Observer, 15 December 2002. 20 BBC, A Dangerous Dynasty, episode 1. 21 ‘From schoolgirl Emma to Asma, the Syrian icon’, The Observer. 22 ‘Interview with Bashar al-Assad’, Asharq al-Awsat, 6 February 2001. 23 ‘Interview with Syria’s President’, Al Hayat, 1 January 2001. 24 ‘Who’s who – Riad al-Turk’, The Syrian Observer, 21 June 2013. 25 Wright, p. 218. 26 ‘Special report: A collapsing economy and a family feud pile pressure on Syria’s Assad’, Reuters, 13 August 2020. 27 Wright, p. 227. 28 ‘Syrian dissident jailed for five years’, BBC, 4 April 2002. 29 BBC, A Dangerous Dynasty, episode 1. 30 Author’s interview, November 2021. 31 Author’s interview, January 2022.

4. The Tyrant and the Crown 1 ‘Lockerbie: The Question That Has Not Been Asked’, The Herald (Glasgow), 23 April 1994. 2 US Department of State, ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’, www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/ 3 UPI, ‘Britain Braces for Terrorism, Seeks European Support’, 20 October 1986. 4 Council on Foreign Relations, ‘What is Hezbollah?’, 25 May 2022. 5 The other contributing nations were Britain, France and Italy. 6 ‘Judge: Iran Behind ’83 Beirut Bombing’, The Washington Post, 31 May 2003. 7 Con Coughlin, Hostage: The Complete Story of the Lebanon Captives (Little, Brown, 1992), pp. 33–6. 8 Jubin Goodarzi, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 87–8. 9 ‘Hezbollah Fighters Mourn Assad’, UPI, 15 June 2000. 10 Author’s interview, July 2022. 11 ‘The Syria Bet’, The New Yorker, 20 July 2003. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Author’s interview, August 2022. 15 Ibid. 16 ‘Revealed: Tony Blair’s Extraordinary Efforts to Court Syria’s Dictators’, Declassified UK, 29 October 2021. 17 ‘Israeli Minister Assassinated’, The Guardian, 17 October 2001. 18 Author’s interview, July 2022. 19 Ibid. 20 Jonathan Powell, The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World (Bodley Head, 2010), p. 275. 21 ‘Thousands Greet Pope in Syrian Visit’, BBC News, 7 May 2001. 22 Author’s interview, July 2022. 23 ‘Syria Vows Sanctions Compliance’, CBS News, 26 February 2001. 24 Author’s interview, July 2022. 25 Armanazi, pp. 238–9. 26 Author’s interview, January 2022. 27 ‘Mr Assad Goes to London’, The Economist, 12 December 2002. 28 ‘The Case of Maher Arar’, Amnesty International, 6 March 2017. 29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_visits_received_by_Elizabeth_II 30 ‘Assad Close to Being Knighted under Blair’, The Sunday Times, 1 July 2012. 31 www.youtube.com/watch?v=W318ph5i6hw 32 ‘From schoolgirl Emma to Asma, the Syrian icon’, The Observer, 15 December 2002. 33 ‘Syrian President Meets the Queen’, The Daily Telegraph, 17 December 2002. 34 ‘Clashes on Border Drive Israeli Fears’, The Washington Post, 2 November 2002. 35 ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Heritage Foundation, 6 May 2002. 36 Eyal Zisser, Commanding Syria (I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 137. 37 ‘Assad Offers Gloomy Prognosis that War with Iraq will Create Fertile Soil for Terrorism’, The Times, 13 December 2002. 38 Zisser, p. 141. 39 ‘U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work’, The New York Times, 3 December 2007. 40 ‘Should MI6 Have Come in from the Cold?’, The Daily Telegraph, 5 September 2011. 41 Zisser, p. 143.

5. First Blood 1 ‘The Hezbollah Connection’, The New York Times Magazine, 10 February 2015. 2 Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria (Brookings Institute Press, 2005), pp. 126–7. 3 Author’s interview, September 2022. 4 Author’s interview, March 2022. 5 Armanazi, p. 249. 6 Quoted in witness statements made to the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the murder of Rafic Hariri, 20 October 2005. 7 Author’s interview, March 2022. 8 Detlev Mehlis (The Mehlis Report), Report of the International Independent Investigation Commission Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1595 (2005) (UNIIIC, 20 October 2005), p. 29. 9 Author’s interview, January 2023. 10 ‘Syria Attacks Evidence as U.N. Case Turns More Bizarre’, The New York Times, 7 December 2005. 11 ‘Report of the Fact-finding Mission to Lebanon Inquiring into the Causes, Circumstances and Consequences of the Assassination of Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’, 25 February–24 March 2005. 12 ‘The Hezbollah Connection’, The New York Times Magazine. 13 Author’s interview, March 2022. 14 Author’s interview, March 2022. 15 ‘Syrian Minister Commits Suicide’, BBC News, 12 October 2005. 16 ‘Syrian Minister Commits Suicide’, CNN, 13 October 2005. 17 Author’s interview, January 2022. 18 Author’s interview, January 2022. 19 ‘Doubts Linger as Syria Shows Iraq Border Security’, Reuters, 18 November 2007. 20 Author’s interview, August 2022. 21 ‘Al Qaeda Recruiter Reportedly Tortured: Ex-Inmate in Syria Cites Other Accounts’, The Washington Post, 31 January 2003. 22 ‘US Hands Over 5 Syrian Soldiers’, UPI, 30 June 2003. 23 James J. F. Forest (ed.), ‘Syrian Web Site Calls for Experienced Mujahideen, as Aleppo Becomes Key Point of Departure for Iraq’, Terrorism Focus, vol. 2, no. 13 (July 2005). 24 ‘Gunmen in Syria Hit US Embassy: 3 Attackers Die’, The New York Times, 13 September 2006. 25 Author’s interview, August 2022. 26 Lesch, p. 9. 27 Author’s interview, January 2022. 28 Ibid. 29 ‘Nasrallah: Our Rockets That Hit Haifa Were Made in Syria’, Al Akhbar, 19 July 2012. 30 ‘Arab Media Slam Syrian President’, The Jerusalem Post, 19 August 2006.

6. Into the Abyss 1 ‘A Rose in the Desert’, Vogue (February 2011). 2 Author’s interview, July 2022. 3 ‘Blair’s Syrian Peace Initiative Fails to Impress’, The Guardian, 2 November 2006. 4 Author’s interview, July 2022. 5 ‘British Parliamentary Delegation Reviews Ties with Syria’, Kuwait News Agency, 30 May 2007. 6 ‘In France, Syria Stirs Tensions’, The New York Times, 15 July 2008. 7 Author’s interview, September 2022. 8 Ibid.

9 Ibid. 10 Author’s interview, September 2022. 11 ‘US Had Chance to Kill Iran’s Soleimani with Mughniyeh in 2008’, Al Arabiya News, 28 April 2020. 12 ‘CIA and Mossad Killed Senior Hezbollah Figure in Car Bombing’, The Washington Post, 30 January 2015. 13 ‘WikiLeaks: France Said Syrian General Killed in Regime Feud’, Naharnet (Beirut), 25 August 2011. 14 ‘IAEA Finds Graphite, Further Uranium at Syria Site’, Reuters, 19 February 2009. 15 Author’s interview, November 2021. 16 Author’s interview, August 2022. 17 Anna Lindh Foundation, ‘The Cultural Project of the Syria Trust of Development – Rawafed’. 18 ‘Syria’s First Lady Wants New Conversation with West’, ABC News, 6 February 2007. 19 Interview with Bashar al-Assad by Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America (ABC), 5 February 2007. 20 ‘The Big Lie About the Libyan War’, Foreign Policy, 22 March 2016. 21 ‘First Ambassador for Six Years Takes Up Post in Syria’, Associated Press, 16 January 2011. 22 Author’s interview, October 2022. 23 ‘A New Era is Emerging in the Arab World’, The Wall Street Journal, 31 January 2011. 24 ‘Pelosi Challenges Bush Policy by Visiting Syria’, The Guardian, 5 April 2007. 25 Author’s interview, September 2022. 26 ‘Syria’s Strongman Ready to Woo Obama with Both Fists Unclenched’, The Guardian, 17 February 2009. 27 US State Department cable, ‘Reengaging with Syria: The Middle East’s Unavoidable Player’, 28 January 2009 (released by WikiLeaks). 28 ‘John Kerry and Bashar al-Assad Dined in Damascus’, The Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2013. 29 Author’s interview, August 2022. 30 ‘U.S. Secretly Backed Syrian Opposition Groups, Cables Released by Wikileaks Show’, The Washington Post, 17 April 2011. 31 Author’s interview, October 2022. 32 ‘US Envoy William Burns Says Syria Talks Were Candid’, BBC News, 17 February 2010. 33 ‘PR Firm Worked with Syria on Controversial Photo Shoot’, The Hill, 3 August 2011. 34 ‘The Syrian Schoolboys who Sparked a Revolution’, The National (Abu Dhabi), 30 March 2012. 35 ‘One of the Deraa Children who Sparked Syria Revolt Recounts to Asharq Al-Awsat His Journey of the Past Ten Years’, Asharq Al-Awsat, 31 August 2021. 36 ‘The Only Remaining Online Copy of Vogue’s Asma al-Assad Profile’, The Atlantic, 3 January 2012. 37 Author’s interview, January 2022. 38 Author’s interview, January 2022. 39 ‘“Protesters Killed” at Omari Mosque’, BBC News, 23 March 2011. 40 Author’s interview, October 2022. 41 ‘President Assad’s Defiant Speech Stuns Syrians who Call for More Protests’, Christian Science Monitor, 30 March 2011.

7. War Criminal 1 ‘I Saw Death Everywhere’, The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2015. 2 ‘Obama Threatens Force Against Syria’, The New York Times, 20 August 2012. 3 ‘French Intelligence Dossier Blames Assad for Chemical Attack’, The Guardian, 2 September 2013. 4 ‘Saddam’s WMD Hidden in Syria, Says Iraq Survey Chief’, The Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2004. 5 ‘Syria Threatens Chemical Attack on Foreign Force’, The New York Times, 23 July 2012.

6 ‘Syria Has Expanded Chemical Weapons Supply with Iran’s Help, Documents Show’, The Washington Post, 27 July 2012. 7 Australia Group, 2006 Information Exchange, 20 June 2006 (released by WikiLeaks). 8 ‘Synthèse nationale de renseignement déclassifié: Programme chimique syrien’, République Française, 21 August 2013. 9 ‘Inspectors Find 1,300 Tons of Chemical Weapons’, The Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2013. 10 ‘A New Normal: Ongoing Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria’, Syrian American Medical Society, February 2016. 11 ‘“Chemical Weapons Were Used on Homs”: Syria’s Military Police Defector Tells of Nerve Gas Attack’, The Independent, 26 December 2012. 12 ‘Secret State Department Cable: Chemical Weapons Used in Syria’, Foreign Policy, 15 January 2013. 13 ‘Statement by President Obama on the Situation in Syria’, White House, 18 August 2011. 14 ‘Obama Orders Sanctions on Syria, Targeting Assad Relatives and Intelligence Agency’, Al-Arabiya News, 29 April 2011. 15 ‘Obama Authorises Secret Support for Syrian Rebels’, Reuters, 2 August 2012. 16 White House, Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps, 20 August 2012. 17 Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hard Choices (Simon & Schuster, 2014), p. 393. 18 Author’s interview, November 2022. 19 ‘US plays down media report that Syria used chemical weapons’, Reuters, 16 January 2013. 20 ‘Red Line Crossed: US Officials Confirm Syrian Chemical-Weapons Use’, Time, 13 June 2013. 21 ‘The Assad Files’, The New Yorker, 18 April 2016. 22 Author’s interview, October 2022. 23 Author’s interview, November 2022. 24 Lesch, p. 65. 25 Author’s interview, December 2022. 26 Author’s interview, March 2022. 27 ‘Syria Mobilises Thousands for Pro-Assad Marches’, Reuters, 29 March 2011. 28 ‘Syria Arrests Scores in House-to-House Roundup’, The New York Times, 5 May 2011. 29 ‘Secret Journey Around a Nation in Revolt Finds Protesters Are Not Flagging’, The Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2011. 30 Lesch, p. 74. 31 Author’s interview, October 2022. 32 ‘The Assad Files’, The New Yorker. 33 ‘The Case Against Assad’, Hoover Institution, 6 September 2022. 34 ‘“They Were Torturing to Kill”: Inside Syria’s Death Machine’, The Guardian, 1 October 2015. 35 ‘List of Natural and Legal Persons’, Official Journal of the EU, 19 January 2012. 36 ‘The Case Against Assad’, Hoover Institution. 37 ‘Marie Colvin’s Last Call to CNN’, CNN, 22 February 2012. 38 ‘Syrian Government Found Liable for US Reporter’s Death’, BBC News, 31 January 2019. 39 ‘The Case Against Assad’, Hoover Institution. 40 ‘President Bashar al-Assad Interview’, Addounia TV, 29 August 2012. 41 ‘The Crisis Cell Bombing that Changed the Course of Syria’, The Syrian Observer, 22 July 2022. 42 Author’s interview, October 2022. 43 ‘How a Massacre of Nearly 300 in Syria Was Revealed’, New Lines Magazine, 27 April 2022. 44 Aymenn Jawad Al-Tammi, ‘The Latakia Massacres of 2013’, blog, 3 September 2020, https://aymennjawad.org/2020/09/the-latakia-massacres-of-2013 45 Cameron, David, For the Record (William Collins, 2019), p. 460. 46 ‘President Obama and the “Red Line” on Syria’s Chemical Weapons’, The Washington Post, 6 September 2013. 47 ‘Inside the White House During the Syrian “Red Line” Crisis’, The Atlantic, 3 June 2018.

48 Author’s interview, September 2022.

8. Barbarians at the Gate 1 ‘Russia on Iraq: We Told You So’, The Washington Post, 12 June 2014. 2 ‘$6 bn in Weapons Sales a Factor in Syria’, The Moscow Times, 1 February 2012. 3 William J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal (Random House, 2019), p. 333. 4 Ibid., p. 325. 5 ‘The Mythical Alliance: Russia’s Syria Policy’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 12 February 2013. 6 Roland Dannreuther, ‘Russia and the Arab Spring’, Journal for European Integration, vol. 37, no. 1 (2015), pp. 77–94. 7 ‘The Syria Wedge between the US and Russia’, The Atlantic, 6 February 2012. 8 ‘Putin Won’t Attend Assad Funeral’, UPI, 11 June 2000. 9 Christopher Phillips, The Battle for Syria (Yale University Press, 2016). 10 David L. Phillips, Frontline Syria: From Revolution to Proxy War (I.B. Tauris, 2021), p. 81. 11 ‘The Assad Emails’, The Guardian, 14 March 2012. 12 Ibid. 13 Dagher, p. 294. 14 ‘Mrs Asma al-Assad with the Paralympic Team at the Fayha’, YouTube, 21 June 2012. 15 ‘The Assad Emails’, The Guardian. 16 Ibid. 17 ‘Assad’s Father-in-Law Compares Syrian Uprising to London Riots’, The Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2012. 18 ‘Nine Tory MPs Who Did Not Back Syria Strike Received Assad’s Hospitality’, The Guardian, 3 September 2013. 19 ‘Europe’s Backyard Would Become a Terrorist Haven’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 June 2013. 20 ‘Syrian Angst over Foreign Rebel Fighters’, BBC News, 17 June 2013. 21 Author’s interview, January 2022. 22 Mark Galeotti, Putin’s Wars (Osprey, 2022), p. 204. 23 International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (IISS, 2011), p. 330. 24 Phillips, Frontline Syria, p. 41. 25 Ibid. 26 Charles Lister, ‘The Free Syrian Army: A Decentralized Insurgent Brand’, Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, Analysis Paper 26, November 2016, p. 6. 27 Author’s interview, May 2011. 28 Author’s interview, November 2021. 29 Ibid. 30 Dagher, p. 300. 31 Phillips, Frontline Syria, p. 54. 32 Lister, ‘The Free Syrian Army’, p. 8. 33 Author’s interview, December 2022. 34 Lister, ‘The Free Syrian Army’, p. 9. 35 ‘Syrian Rebel Cuts Out Soldier’s Heart, Eats It’, CNN, 15 May 2013. 36 Author’s interview, November 2022. 37 ‘Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria’, The New York Times, 2 August 2017.

38 Author’s interview, January 2022. 39 Author’s interview, September 2022. 40 Author’s interview, December 2022. 41 Ibid. 42 Author’s interview, January 2023. 43 Author’s interview, December 2022. 44 ‘Hezbollah Chief “Killed in Syria”’, The Guardian, 2 October 2012. 45 ‘Syrian Forces Capture Final Rebel Stronghold in Qusair Region’, Reuters, 9 June 2013. 46 Author’s interview, December 2022. 47 ‘Bashar al-Assad, Interview by Russian Media Outlets’, Syrian Arab News Agency, 27 March 2015. 48 ‘How Iranian General Plotted Out Syrian Assault in Moscow’, Reuters, 6 October 2015.

9. The Russian Playbook 1 Galeotti, p. 95. 2 ‘Russia Pounded Grozny into Oblivion in the 1990s – Just as it is Doing Today in Ukraine’, The Sunday Times, 26 March 2022. 3 ‘Georgia Pays Price for its NATO Ambitions’, The Daily Telegraph, 8 August 2008. 4 Author’s interview, March 2013. 5 ‘Understanding Russia’s Concept for Total War in Europe’, The Heritage Foundation, 12 September 2016. 6 Author’s interview, November 2022. 7 Author’s interview, December 2022. 8 Author’s interview, January 2023. 9 Ibid. 10 Author’s interview, December 2022. 11 Author’s interview, January 2023. 12 ‘Senior 25th Division Commander Killed in Mysterious Circumstances’, The Syrian Observer, 30 September 2022. 13 Galeotti, p. 204. 14 Author’s interview, December 2022. 15 ‘More than 191,000 People Killed in Syria with “No End in Sight”’, UN News website, 22 August 2014. 16 ‘Assad Begins a Third Term in Syria, Vowing to Look After its People’, The New York Times, 16 July 2014. 17 ‘Syria Conflict: BBC Exclusive Interview with President Bashar al-Assad’, BBC News, 10 February 2015. 18 ‘Bashar al-Assad Says He’s “Open” to Dialogue with US’, CBS News, 26 March 2015. 19 Author’s interview, December 2022. 20 Ibid. 21 ‘Russian Parliament Approves Military Intervention in Syria’, Associated Press, 30 September 2015. 22 ‘Russia Establishing Permanent Presence at its Syrian Bases’, Reuters, 26 December 2017. 23 Author’s interview, December 2022. 24 ‘Missiles in Syria Kill 50 as Schools, Hospitals Hit’, Reuters, 15 February 2016. 25 Author’s interview, December 2022. 26 ‘Islamic State Militants Kill Scores of Syrian Troops’, The Wall Street Journal, 28 August 2014. 27 ‘Russia’s “Secret Syria Mercenaries”’, Sky News, 10 August 2016. 28 ‘Syria “Finds Body of Archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad Beheaded by IS”’, BBC News, 8 February 2021. 29 Phillips, Frontline Syria.

30 ‘Russia Orchestra, Putin’s Friends, Play Syria’s Palmyra’, Reuters, 5 May 2016. 31 ‘Let’s Deal with the Devil: We Should Work with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad of Syria’, The Daily Telegraph, 6 December 2015. 32 ‘Death Toll from War in Syria Now 470,000, Group Finds’, The New York Times, 11 February 2016. 33 United Nations Security Council, Resolution 2254, 18 December 2015. 34 ‘Amnesty: Russia May Have Committed War Crimes by Killing Civilians in Syria’, Associated Press, 23 December 2015. 35 ‘This is How Russia Bombed the UN Convoy’, Daily Beast, 21 September 2017. 36 Author’s interview, December 2022. 37 ‘Syria/Russia: Strategy Targeted Civilian Infrastructure’, Human Rights Watch, 15 October 2020. 38 ‘Sergei Surovikin: The “General Armageddon” Now in Charge of Russia’s War’, The Guardian, 10 October 2022. 39 ‘Vladimir Putin Makes “Brutal and Corrupt” General New Military Chief’, The Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2022. 40 Author’s interview, November 2022. 41 Ibid. 42 ‘Islamic State Launches Two Suicide Attacks on US-backed Syrian Rebels’, Reuters, 9 April 2017. 43 Author’s interview, December 2022. 44 Ibid. 45 Author’s interview, January 2023. 46 Author’s interview, December 2022. 47 ‘Asma al-Assad: From Syria’s “Desert Rose” to “First Lady of Hell”’, The Guardian, 22 October 2022. 48 ‘Assad in Person: Confident, Friendly, No Regrets’, The New York Times, 1 November 2016.

Epilogue: The Reckoning 1 ‘Syrian Arab Republic: 2023 Humanitarian Needs Overview’, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 22 December 2022. 2 ‘Bashar al-Assad thanks Putin for “saving our country” as Russian leader prepares for talks on ending Syrian war’, The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2017. 3 ‘Putin to Speak with Trump after Assad Meeting’, Associated Press, 21 November 2017. 4 Ibid. 5 ‘Vladimir Putin Makes Triumphant Visit to Syria Airbase’, The Guardian, 11 December 2017. 6 Author’s interview, December 2022. 7 ‘Russia Shrinks Forces in Syria’, The New York Times, 19 October 2022. 8 ‘Experts Warn ISIS Still Has up to 10,000 Loyalists in Syria, Iraq: Report’, The Hill, 22 January 2018. 9 ‘How a 4-hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and US Commandos Unfolded in Syria’, The New York Times, 24 May 2018. 10 ‘Removing US Troops from Syria a “Betrayal”’, Forces Net, 8 October 2019. 11 ‘Iran Role in Syria Key Item at Trump–Putin Summit’, Associated Press, 13 July 2018. 12 Author’s interview, January 2023. 13 ‘New Israeli–Russian Agreement on Syria’, The Syrian Observer, 6 February 2023. 14 ‘The Hopeless Summit of Arab Countries’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 20 October 2022. 15 ‘Justice for Syria’, Amnesty International, 2018. 16 ‘WSJ Interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’, The Wall Street Journal, 31 January 2018. 17 ‘Syrian first lady faces prosecution and loss of UK citizenship as Met Police investigate terror allegations’, The Independent, 14 March 2021.

18 ‘Bashar’s Billionaire Uncle Returns to Syria’, The National, 29 October 2021. 19 ‘Assad Family Cash Frozen after Dictator’s Niece Found Living in London’, Evening Standard, 18 April 2019. 20 ‘In Syria, the Earthquake “Did What the Assad Regime and Russians Wanted to Do to Us All Along”’, Atlantic Council, 9 February 2023. 21 ‘The Butcher’s Bill’, The Times, 6 March 2023. 22 ‘Is the Syrian Regime the World’s Biggest Drug Dealer?’, Vice, 14 December 2022.

1. The Assad clan in early 1994. Bassel died in a car crash in January that year, sparking a bitter rivalry among the siblings. Hafez al-Assad and his wife, Anisa Makhlouf, pictured with their children on the back row, from left to right: Maher, Bashar, Bassel, Majid, and Bushra.

2. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (right) with youngest brother Rifaat (left) taken at a formal reception in 1986.

3. Mandate for Syria and Lebanon 1922.

4. Maher al-Assad (left), Bashar’s younger brother, who became known as the regime’s ‘enforcer’ for his ruthless suppression of anti-regime protests.

5. Syrian officers carry the coffin of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in Damascus, 13 June 2000. In the background is Assad’s son and heir apparent, Bashar.

6. Bashar al-Assad (left) training as an eye surgeon in London in 1992.

7. Clinton and Hafez meet in Geneva in January 1994 at the start of their protracted negotiations over the future status of the Golan Heights, which ultimately ended in failure.

8. Getting to know you. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright takes time to meet with Bashar al-Assad while visiting Damascus to attend his father’s funeral.

9. The future status of the Golan Heights, which had been captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, was the major stumbling block in efforts to agree a peace deal between the Assad regime and Israel.

10. The truck bomb used to assassinate Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was similar in size to that used in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995.

11. Bashar al-Assad shows British Prime Minister Tony Blair around the Grand Mosque in Damascus during his ill-fated trip to Syria in October 2001.

12. Asma and Bashar meet Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace in late December 2002 as part of the Blair government’s charm offensive to befriend the Syrian leader.

13. Syrian Major General Ghazi Kanaan, whose suspicious death in October 2005 fuelled further rumours about the Assad regime’s involvement in the Hariri assassination.

14. Many of the rockets fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon against Israel were supplied by the Assad regime in Syria.

15. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria (left) summoned Prime Minister Rafic Hariri of Lebanon to Damascus on 26 August 2004, amid a dispute over Syria’s role in Lebanon.

16. The Presidential Palace, which dominates the Damascus skyline, was donated as a goodwill gesture by Saudi Arabia, and constructed by Lebanese entrepreneur Rafic Hariri.

17. Imad Mughniyeh, the veteran Hezbollah terrorist, who was assassinated in Damascus in February 2008 by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.

18. Before and after images of Syria’s al-Kabir nuclear reactor, an exact replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon complex, after it was destroyed by Israeli war planes in September 2007.

19. Asma al-Assad leading a ‘bike ride for peace’ in Syria in April 2007.

20. A fatally injured man lies in the back of a vehicle as he is rushed to a hospital in Deraa, the city south of Damascus where the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.

21. Bashar and his wife Asma attend the opening of Syria’s first opera house at the inauguration of the Assad House for Culture and Arts in 2004.

22. Graphic photographs of dead Syrian torture victims taken by a Syrian defector were exhibited at the United Nations in New York.

23. The romantic couple: Bashar and Asma taking a stroll in Paris in 2010 before the outbreak of the civil war.

24. Qassem Soleimani (left), the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, commanding Iranian forces in Syria in March 2015.

25. Khaled al-Asaad, the Director of Antiquities and Museum in Palmyra who was murdered by Daesh in August 2015, poses in front of a rare sarcophagus depicting two priests dating from the first century.

26. Putin and his senior military commanders inform Bashar of their plans for saving his regime in late 2015.

27. Bashar addresses his supporters after winning the 2014 presidential election by a predictable landslide.

28. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Theatre orchestra at the Palmyra amphitheatre to celebrate its recapture from Daesh militants.

29. Sergey Surovikin (left) with Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, Bashar al-Assad and Syrian Defence Minister Ali Ayyoub in 2017.

30. Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma meeting an earthquake victim in Latakia.

About the Author

CON COUGHLIN is a distinguished journalist and the author of three critically acclaimed books. A specialist on the Middle East and international terrorism, he is Defence and Security Editor of The Daily Telegraph and also writes for The Spectator and other periodicals. In addition, he is a regular commentator on world affairs for BBC news programmes and Sky News. He lives in Sussex.

Also by Con Coughlin Hostage: The Complete Story of the Lebanon Captives A Golden Basin Full of Scorpions Saddam: The Secret Life American Ally Khomeini’s Ghost Churchill’s First War

First published 2023 by Picador This electronic edition first published 2023 by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR EU representative: Macmillan Publishers Ireland Ltd, 1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117–126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 YC43 Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-1-5290-7490-1 Copyright © Con Coughlin 2023 Cover Design: Stuart Wilson, Picador Art Department Cover Images © LOUAI BESHARA/Contributor/Getty Images Author photograph by courtesy of the author The right of Con Coughlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The lyrics quoted here are from Blake Shelton’s song ‘God Gave Me You’, which appears on his album Red River Blue (Warner Bros., 2011). You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Visit www.picador.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.