After 24 years clinging to power in Syria that he inherited from his father, Hafez, who in turn took it in 1971, the president Bashar al Assad It fell this Sunday after 12 days of a dizzying offensive by a rebel Islamist coalition that claims to have “liberated” the Arab country from the clutches of a ruthless leader with every hint of opposition.
The Kremlin said on Sunday that Bashar al-Assad had “resigned from his position” and left Syria.
“Following negotiations between Bashar al-Assad and several participants in the armed conflict on the territory of Syria, decided to resign from his presidential position and left the country with instructions to carry out the transfer of power peacefully,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Until now, the whereabouts of the man who many consider a “dictator” and who has ended his days as Syrian president boarding a plane to an unknown destination after the seizure of Damascus by the Islamist alliance is unknown. Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS, or Levant Liberation Organization).
London-trained ophthalmologist
Al Asad (Damascus, 1965) studied Medicine and specialized in ophthalmology in the Syrian capital, where after finishing his studies he worked as a military doctor for a time. The young man, to whom no political aspirations were attributed, then went to London to continue his professional training.
However, two years later, in 1994, a random family tragedy would change the course of his life forever: the traffic accident that ended the life of his brother Basel, the eldest son and presumed heir to power of the then Syrian president, Hafez al Assad.
Bashar was called to Syria by his father and embarked on a five-year preparation to eventually take the lead of the country, just as the first-born had done in the years before his death, gaining experience in the military ranks and weight in public life.
The moment came in 2000 when Hafez al Assad died after almost three decades in power, which he had accessed for a coup d’état.
Although he was not initially chosen to inherit from his father, after obtaining it he clung to it tooth and nail, silencing his adversaries, quelling mass revolts and surviving more than ten years of civil war.
The Constitution was immediately amended so that Bashar, then 34 years old, met the age requirements – minimum 40 years – and a referendum was held who supported his rise to the head of state.
After four decades of governments of the Baath Partyalmost all headed by his father, Al Assad was initially seen as a hope for change and a probable instigator of democratic and open-minded reforms.
Truncated hope
However, the campaigns of arrests of activists and opponentsand, a decade later, the brutal repression of the protests that broke out in Syria against its Government within the framework of the Arab Spring.
He resisted the pressure of the streets and was one of the few leaders who continued in power since the uprisings that broke out in 2011 and overthrew the governments of several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, although at the cost of a civil war and the virtual liquidation of Syrian unity.
Its survival since 2016 was in the hands of its Russian allies and the Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi Shiite militias that allowed him to recover territory from the insurgents, at the cost of brutal devastation of the cities and territories that had rebelled.
Formally, he held power for about bulky electoral “victories”as in the last elections in 2021, where he managed to win 95% of the votes.
However, his mandate faced growing popular discontent over the serious economic crisis and shortage of basic productswhich has led the vast majority of the population to suffer food insecurity and live below the poverty line.
Added to this are 14 million internally displaced persons and refugees to other countries, most of them in the Middle East, and a whole reconstruction process ahead, something that was considered almost impossible given the international isolation of the Al Assad Government and the multiple international sanctions imposed by the West.
As soon as its main allies became involved in more acute problems than the Syrian one (mainly Ukraine and Lebanon), their weaknesses were exposed and, ultimately, paved the way for their downfall.
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