Just because someone is not present doesn’t mean that they cannot suffer. The grave does not shield the leader from the tumult in his country. His corpse could be dealt several blows, mocked, insulted humiliated. The grave could panic, become embarrassed and fearful, and try to escape the ire of the people and the judgement of history.
This happened a year ago. His office manager, Abou Salim, hesitated whether he should wake him up, but he did. It is a disaster. He read a terrible headline on television: “Assad flees”. Hafez could not believe his eyes. How could a lion (“Assad” is Arabic for “lion”) be the one escaping? Minutes later, the headlines said a plane from Russia flew Mr. President and his family to the land of snow and oblivion.
Abou Salim rushed to hand him a glass of water. The news is too much for him to bear. What a great loss. How will Saddam Hussein react to this should they meet in the afterlife? He imagines Saddam waking up to the news with a gloating smile on his face. He would hear him say: “This is the school of Hafez al-Assad. I had repeatedly told you, but you didn’t believe me. This is the school of those who crave power, not one that champions a cause.” He imagines he would also tell him: “My sons and grandchildren fought the Americans until they ran out of ammunition. They fought and were killed after Assad’s Syria expelled them from its territory and served them on a platter to the occupiers.”
Anything but Saddam’s gloating. He mutters to himself. He reluctantly recognizes that the ruler of Baghdad was good at embellishing his story. George W. Bush asked him to leave Iraq with his family, but he opted to remain on Iraqi soil. He was eventually captured, but he defied his jailors. The noose would eventually wrap around his neck as he watched his executioners with contempt. Saddam was a major perpetrator, but he knew how to shape his story so that it would be recalled along the banks of the Tigris or by his supporters, no matter how much their numbers dwindle.
He is racked by pain. This is Assad’s Syria. Its master’s choices are clear: either the palace or the grave. How could the one entrusted to it instead choose safety? The same choice taken by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He is overcome with embarrassment. Ali Abdullah Saleh died in a hail of Houthi bullets. He refused the humiliation of exile and opted to salvage his reputation as a formidable ruler, choosing to die in the ring. Moammar al-Gaddafi also refused to yield to the storm and was eventually killed, while his family has been broken apart. Hosni Mubarak could have taken a plane to exile, but he worried about what history would say about him. He was imprisoned and put on trial and eventually died on Egyptian soil.
The only consolation for the loser is for him to write his own story through his force of will and arrogance. A short life is better than a long humiliating one.
The storm in Syria took the master of the palace and “forever” party by surprise. They believed that the man fortified in Idlib would meet a painful end. Assad’s intelligence and Putin's jets were searching for him. Even analysts believed that the man formerly known as Abou Mohammed al-Golani and who was once jailed in Baghdad would meet the fate of his comrades. They were wrong.
It was a long, bitter year. Ahmed al-Sharaa sat at the Assads’ presidential palace. The doors in front of him were suddenly flung open. It was as if the world was waiting for the opportunity to take revenge against Assad’s Syria because it was tired of its wars, maneuvers and alliances. Then came Donald Trump to extend his hand to Sharaa in Riyadh.
The barriers would then come down and Sharaa was warmly welcomed in the White House. He would also visit the Kremlin where he would meet the czar who granted Bashar asylum on humanitarian grounds. Europe would also jump at the opportunity to give the new president a chance. Sharaa would display unusual shrewdness and give moderate and persuasive statements. Syria would busy itself with tending to its wounds. Syria first. It won’t be a threat to its neighbors, including Israel. Netanyahu’s provocations and violations will not lure him away from his agenda.
Abou Salim awakens him again a year later. Bashar’s secrets are being aired out on Al Arabiya. In a car headed towards al-Ghouta, he has a candid conversation with his media advisor Luna al-Shibl that exposes his approach and confusion. His blunt statements are difficult to hear and scary. They help us understand the major collapse that took place in the Assads’ Syria.
I recalled statements I heard as the Syrian opposition was closing in on Bashar. I met with late Lebanese former foreign minister Jean Obeid. Knowing his reservations about Bashar, I asked him to comment about him, and he replied: “God rest his father’s soul.” He then added: “Unfortunately, the legacy is greater than the man inheriting it. Bashar inherited a Syria that was a player, and it transformed into a playground under his rule.”
At that time, Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt recalled what Hafez al-Assad's chief of staff Hikmat al-Shihabi once told him: “This Bashar is crazy. He will lead Syria to civil war and division.” Jumblatt added: “He gave me a detailed account of what officer Atef Najib did to the children in Daraa; how he ripped off their fingernails and summoned the tribe leaders to threaten them.” Jumblatt once asked Bashar why he did not punish Najib, to which Bashar replied: “No one had filed a complaint against him.” This is Bashar.
Bashar fled a year ago and with him collapsed the Assad regime. The “Resistance Axis” collapsed and sizes of regional players changed. The region shifted from the Al-Aqsa Flood to demanding the removal of weapons in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran’s borders in the region also changed and one must go through the White House in order to rein in Netanyahu’s violations of maps and borders.
Hafez al-Assad watches the developments in Syria from his grave. He watches the leaked videos of his son. Bashar was in power for a quarter of a century. Syria’s pain flooded the country and poured into Lebanon. A sea of sorrow and endless funerals. The Assads will now face the judgement of history. The inheritor gambled with his country’s legacy and lost. How difficult it is to turn back the hands of time, but regardless, Bashar was here.
