President Bashar al-Assad inclined Russian and Iranian firepower to ward off rebel forces all over years of civil battle but never defeated them, leaving him susceptible when his allies were distracted by wars in a quantity of areas and his enemies went on the march.
The rebels’ lightning scheme thru western Syria marks one of the well-known foremost threats to half of a century of Assad household rule in Damascus, and a seismic moment for the Center East.
Statues of Assad’s father and brother were toppled in cities taken by the rebels, while pictures of him on billboards and authorities offices had been torn down, stamped on, burned or riddled with bullets.
The Syrian presidency issued a assertion on Saturday denying Assad had left the nation and asserting he turned into carrying out his tasks in Damascus.
Assad was president in 2000 after his father Hafez died, preserving the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority nation and Syria’s web page online as an Iranian ally adverse to Israel and the U.S.
Formed in its early years by the Iraq battle and disaster in Lebanon, his rule has been outlined by the civil battle which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians disturbing democracy took to the streets, to be met with lethal power.
Branded an “animal” in 2018 by US President Donald Trump for the exercise of chemical weapons – an accusation he denied – Assad has outlasted many of the foreign leaders who believed his death turned into coming near in the early days of the battle, when he lost swathes of Syria to rebels.
Helped by Russian air strikes and Iranian-backed militias, he clawed serve well-known of the lost territory all over years of military offensives, including siege battle condemned as “medieval” by U.N. investigators.
Alongside with his opponents largely confined to a nook of northwestern Syria, he presided over a few years of relative peaceable though posthaste-witted substances of the nation remained out of his design terminate and the financial system turned into shackled by sanctions.
He re-established ties with Arab states that after shunned him but remained a pariah to well-known of the arena.
Assad has now not delivered any public remarks since insurgents took Aleppo a week in the past but acknowledged in a call with Iran’s president that the escalation sought to redraw the advise for Western interests, echoing his stare of the rebel as a foreign-backed conspiracy.
Justifying his response to the insurgency in its early stages, Assad when put next himself to a surgeon. “Can we divulge to him: ‘your hands are covered in blood?’ Or will we thank him for saving the patient?” he acknowledged in 2012.
Early in the battle, as rebels seized city after city, he oozed self belief.
“We can hit them with an iron fist and Syria will return to the way it turned into,” Assad told troopers after taking serve town of Maaloula in 2014.
He delivered on the predominant pledge, but now not the 2nd. Years later, posthaste-witted substances of Syria remained outside advise support a watch on, cities were flattened, the death toll topped 350,000, and higher than a quarter of the inhabitants had fled out of the nation.
RED LINES
Assad has been backed by these Syrians who believed he turned into saving them from hardline Sunni Islamists.
As al Qaeda-inspired insurgent groups received prominence, this apprehension resonated amongst minorities despite the incontrovertible truth that the rebels went out of their skill to reassure them this week that they’d be protected.
Assad clung to the postulate of Syria as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism even because the battle seemed ever more sectarian. Talking to International Affairs in 2015, he acknowledged Syria’s navy turned into “made up of each and every coloration of Syrian society”.
But to his opponents, he turned into fuelling sectarianism.
The battle’s sectarian edge turned into hardened by the arrival of Iranian-backed Shi’ite opponents from all around the Center East to toughen Assad, and as Sunni Muslim-led states including Turkey and Qatar backed the rebels.
Assad’s value to Iran turned into underscored by a senior Iranian reputable who declared in 2015 that his fate turned into a “red line” for Tehran.
While Iran stood by Assad, the United States failed to implement its personal “red line” – bother by President Barack Obama in 2012 against the exercise of chemical weapons.
UN-backed investigations pick up concluded Damascus inclined chemical weapons.
A sarin gas assault on the rebel-held Ghouta in 2013 killed a total bunch but Moscow brokered a deal for Syria’s chemical weapons to be destroyed, fending off a U.S. response.
Level-headed poison gas persisted to hit rebel areas, with a 2017 sarin assault prompting Trump to mumble a cruise missile response.
Assad has denied accusations the advise turned into responsible.
He equally denied the navy had dropped barrel bombs filled with explosives that introduced about indiscriminate destruction. He looked as if it would make gentle of the accusation in a BBC interview in 2015, asserting: “I haven’t heard of the navy the exercise of barrels, or even, cooking pots.”
He also brushed off tens of thousands of photos showing torture of other folks in authorities custody as portion of a Qatar-funded situation.
As combating died down, Assad accused Syria’s enemies of business battle.
But while Assad remained a pariah to the West, some Arab states which once backed his opponents started opening doors to him. A beaming Assad turned into greeted by leaders of the United Arab Emirates all over a focus on to there in 2022.
EYE DOCTOR
Assad repeatedly presented himself as a humble man of the opposite folks, showing in motion pictures riding a modest household automotive and in photos along with his wife visiting battle veterans of their homes.
He took web page online of work in 2000 after his father’s death, but had now not continuously been destined for the presidency.
Hafez had groomed one other son, Bassel, to prevail him. But when Bassel died in a 1994 automotive break, Bashar turned into transformed from an learn about doctor in London – the assign he studied as a postgraduate – to heir apparent.
Upon turning into president, Assad looked as if it would adopt liberal reforms, painted optimistically as “the Damascus spring”.
He launched a total bunch of political prisoners, made overtures to the West, and opened the financial system to interior most corporations.
His marriage to British-born dilapidated investment banker Asma Akhras – with whom he had three kids – helped foster hopes he might steal Syria down a more reformist course.
Excessive capabilities of his early dalliance with Western leaders integrated attendance at a Paris summit the assign he turned into a customer of honour on the annual 14 july military parade.
But with the political system he inherited left intact, indicators of trade posthaste dried up.
Dissidents were jailed and economic reforms contributed to what US diplomats described, in a 2008 embassy cable launched by WikiLeaks, as “parasitic” nepotism and corruption.
While the elite did successfully, drought drove the dejected from rural areas to slums the assign the rebel would blaze.
Tensions constructed with the West after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned the Center Eastern strength steadiness on its head.
The assassination of Lebanon’s Rafik al-Hariri in Beirut in 2005 introduced about Western strain that compelled Syria’s withdrawal from its neighbour. An initial world probe implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese figures in the killing.
While Syria denied involvement, dilapidated vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam acknowledged Assad had threatened Hariri months earlier – an accusation Assad also denied.
Fifteen years later, a UN-backed court docket found a member of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah responsible of conspiring to waste Hariri. Hezbollah, an Assad ally, denied any characteristic.
