FactualA fragmented country, an economy in tatters, a proscribed regime: the Syrian president reigns only through submission and destruction.
At the start of the uprising against the Syrian regime in spring 2011, supporters of President Bashar Al-Assad warned their opponents: “Assad or we burn the country. “ Spread on the walls, bawled in pro-regime rallies, hammered in the official media, the threat was crystal-clear: submission or destruction. It was the diktat of Damascus.
Ten years later, after a cataclysmic civil war, Bashar Al-Assad is still in place. But he reigns over a carpet of ruins. The Leonine Pact at the base of his power has created a vacuum around him. The fighting practically ceased, the regime survived, but Syria imploded. Its inhabitants are on their knees and their homeland is in tatters. It’s no more “Assad or we burn the country”, but “Assad and the charred country”. Submission and destruction.
He does not give the impression of having changed, or so little. A few wrinkles on his temples and the pair of thin glasses he wears to read his speeches attest to the passing of the years. But the 50-year-old, who came to the presidency in 2000, has retained the lean look of his debut. Quick to drop the suit and tie when he went out on the field, he still wears that affable, accessible appearance, at the origin of the reputation for modernism which had accompanied his first steps on the international scene. The exact opposite of the stiff, rigid, aged before age image of his father and predecessor, Hafez Al-Assad. On March 8, his services announced that he was a carrier of the Covid-19, as well as his wife, Asma, while specifying that the two were ” in good health “.
By the end of spring, the man will in all likelihood have won a fourth seven-year term. Neither the election schedule, expected in May-June, nor the identity of the candidates are yet known. But no observer sees Bashar Al-Assad giving up of his own accord to stand for this thinly disguised plebiscite. And, in the absence of an alternative, his Russian protector is unlikely to prevent him from competing, as annoyed as he is by his meager performance.
Hands sticky with blood
Everything converges on the re-election of this outcast with his hands sticky with blood, to whom we promised, a few years ago, a disastrous fate: exile, the dungeon or the grave. “The regime feels victorious because it thinks that the hardest part is behind it, believes a foreign diplomat who regularly visits Damascus. Between 2012 and 2014, it seemed like two-thirds of the planet was in league against him. Armed groups controlled most of the territory and appeared to be on the verge of entering the capital. We thought it was over. “
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