Iron-Fisted Assad Never Quelled the Syrian Uprising that Came Back to Topple Him

A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
TT
20

Iron-Fisted Assad Never Quelled the Syrian Uprising that Came Back to Topple Him

A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)
A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured with its frame broken, in a Syrian regime's Political Security Branch facility on the outskirts of the central city of Hama, following the capture of the area by anti-government forces, on December 7, 2024. (AFP)

Syria's Bashar al-Assad used Russian and Iranian firepower to beat back opposition forces during years of civil war but never defeated them, leaving him vulnerable to their breathtaking advance when his allies were distracted by wars elsewhere.

President for 24 years, Assad flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination early on Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters. The opposition factions declared the city "free of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad". A half-century of Assad family rule was over, army command told officers, according to a Syrian officer.

Statues of Assad's father and brother were toppled in cities taken by the opposition, while pictures of him on billboards and government offices were torn down, stamped on, burned or riddled with bullets.

Assad became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died, preserving the family's iron-fisted rule and the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and Syria's status as an Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the US.

Shaped in its early years by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, Assad's rule was defined by civil war, which spiraled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.

Branded an "animal" in 2018 by US President Donald Trump for using chemical weapons - an accusation he denied - Assad outlasted many of the foreign leaders who believed his demise was imminent in the early days of the conflict, when he lost swathes of Syria to the opposition.

Helped by Russian air strikes and Iranian-backed militias, he clawed back much of the lost territory during years of military offensives, including siege warfare condemned as "medieval" by UN investigators.

With his opponents largely confined to a corner of northwestern Syria, he presided over several years of relative calm, though large parts of the country remained out of his grasp and the economy was shackled by international sanctions.

Assad re-established ties with Arab states that once shunned him but remained a pariah to much of the world and never managed to revive the shattered Syrian state, whose armed forces swiftly retreated in the face of opposition advances.

He has not delivered any public remarks since the opposition took Aleppo a week ago but said in a call with Iran's president that the escalation sought to redraw the region for Western interests, echoing his view of the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy.

Justifying his response to the opposition in its early stages, Assad compared himself to a surgeon. "Do we say to him: 'Your hands are covered in blood?' Or do we thank him for saving the patient?" he said in 2012.

Early in the conflict, as the opposition seized town after town, Assad oozed confidence.

"We will hit them with an iron fist and Syria will return to how it was," he told soldiers after taking back the town of Maaloula in 2014.

He delivered on the first pledge, but not the second. Years later, large parts of Syria remained outside state control, cities were flattened, the death toll topped 350,000 and more than a quarter of the population had fled abroad.

RED LINES

Assad was backed by those Syrians who believed he was saving them from extremists.

As al-Qaeda-inspired opposition groups gained prominence, this fear resonated among minorities. Opposition forces sought to assure Christians, Alawites and other minorities they would be protected as they advanced this week.

Assad clung to the idea of Syria as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism even as the conflict appeared ever more sectarian. Speaking to Foreign Affairs in 2015, he said Syria's army was "made up of every color of Syrian society".

But to his opponents, he was fueling sectarianism.

The conflict's sectarian edge was hardened by the arrival of Iranian-backed Shiite fighters from across the Middle East to support Assad, and as Türkiye the opposition.

Assad's value to Iran was underscored by a senior Iranian official who declared in 2015 that his fate was a "red line" for Tehran.

While Iran stood by Assad, the United States failed to enforce its own "red line" - set by President Barack Obama in 2012 against the use of chemical weapons.

UN-backed investigations have concluded Damascus used chemical weapons.

A sarin gas attack on the opposition-held Ghouta in 2013 killed hundreds, but Moscow brokered a deal for Syria's chemical weapons to be destroyed, averting a US response. Still, poison gas continued to hit opposition areas, with a 2017 sarin attack prompting Trump to order a cruise missile response.

Assad has denied accusations the state was to blame.

He similarly denied the army had dropped barrel bombs packed with explosives that caused indiscriminate destruction. He appeared to make light of the accusation in a BBC interview in 2015, saying: "I haven't heard of the army using barrels, or maybe, cooking pots."

He also dismissed tens of thousands of photos showing torture of people in government custody as being part of a foreign plot.

As fighting died down, Assad accused Syria's enemies of economic warfare.

EYE DOCTOR

Assad often presented himself as a humble man of the people, appearing in films driving a modest family car and in photographs with his wife visiting war veterans in their homes.

He took office in 2000 after his father's death, but had not always been destined for the presidency.

Hafez had groomed another son, Bassel, to succeed him. But when Bassel died in a 1994 car crash, Bashar was transformed from an eye doctor in London - where he studied as a postgraduate - to heir apparent.

Upon becoming president, Assad seemed to adopt liberal reforms, painted optimistically as "the Damascus spring".

He released hundreds of political prisoners, made overtures to the West and opened the economy to private companies.

His marriage to British-born former investment banker Asma Akhras - with whom he had three children - helped foster hopes he could take Syria down a more reformist path.

High points of his early dalliance with Western leaders included attending a Paris summit where he was a guest of honor at the annual Bastille Day military parade.

But with the political system he inherited left intact, signs of change quickly dried up.

Dissidents were jailed and economic reforms contributed to what US diplomats described, in a 2008 embassy cable released by WikiLeaks, as "parasitic" nepotism and corruption.

While the elite did well, drought drove the poor from rural areas to slums where the revolt would blaze.

Tensions built with the West after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned the Middle Eastern power balance on its head.

The assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in Beirut in 2005 prompted Western pressure that forced Syria's withdrawal from its neighbor. An initial international probe implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese figures in the killing.

While Syria denied involvement, former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam said Assad had threatened Hariri months earlier - an accusation Assad also denied.

Fifteen years later, a UN-backed court found a member of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guilty of conspiring to kill Hariri. Hezbollah, an Assad ally, denied any role.



Residents of South Syria Fear Israeli Escalation After Strikes 

Syrians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in front of the UN headquarters in Damascus, Syria, 25 February 2025. (EPA)
Syrians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in front of the UN headquarters in Damascus, Syria, 25 February 2025. (EPA)
TT
20

Residents of South Syria Fear Israeli Escalation After Strikes 

Syrians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in front of the UN headquarters in Damascus, Syria, 25 February 2025. (EPA)
Syrians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in front of the UN headquarters in Damascus, Syria, 25 February 2025. (EPA)

In the Syrian region of Kisweh, southwest of Damascus, residents jolted awake by Israeli strikes voiced their fears Wednesday of a fresh escalation after similar attacks had appeared to taper off in recent weeks.

Israel said it had targeted military sites containing weapons in the Tuesday night raids, which came just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the demilitarization of Syria’s south.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least two people were killed at the headquarters of a military unit in Kisweh, while other raids struck military sites in Daraa province to the south.

“We heard successive strikes followed by explosions. The sky lit up, then we saw tongues of flame rising,” said Ahmed Mohammed, who works at a service station near the military site in Kisweh.

“We fear the resumption of Israeli strikes and an Israeli incursion.”

Members of the new Syrian government’s armed forces occupied the site, located in a large field.

Aerial photos taken by AFP showed 20 tanks at the site, three of them blackened by flames.

The owner of a nearby car dealership, who gave his name as Rayan, said most of the tanks had been moved there after they were abandoned by the former Syrian armed forces around the time of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

“When the missiles fell, the houses and windows shook,” he said, adding that a drone had been filming in the area about an hour beforehand.

‘Threats into action’

After the strikes, the Israeli military said that military assets in southern Syria “pose a threat to the citizens of Israel”, adding it would “continue to operate in order to remove” such threats.

The nighttime raids came hours after demonstrations in several Syrian cities in response to Netanyahu’s call on Sunday for the “complete demilitarization” of the country’s south.

Following the toppling of al-Assad in December, Israel carried out a wave of hundreds of strikes against positions formerly held by his military, while also sending troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that has separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights since 1974.

“While the strikes were previously focused on border crossings and abandoned weapons warehouses, they are now directly targeting vital military sites and strategic hills,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Netanyahu, he added, was starting “to put his threats into action”.

Syria’s new authorities have condemned Israel’s strikes in their territory, but the country’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has also said it is too exhausted by years of civil war to undertake any new conflicts.