The fall of the Assad family, a billion-pound fortune and blood on their hands

He doesn’t look like a dictator. Lumbering and lanky, Bashar al-Assad has an unassuming manner and, at least until he opens his mouth, does not project the masculinity of other Arab strongmen such as Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.

His wife Asma calls him “Duck”, presumably because he looks a bit like a duck – although his benighted people think he also looks like a giraffe because of his long neck.

However, when it came to massacres, he was the worst. He presided over a 13-year massacre that claimed more than 500,000 lives.

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If there is a modern ruler who embodies Hannah Arendt’s description of the “banality of evil,” it is Assad.

For a time, Iran and Russia came to the rescue, destroying large swaths of Syria’s cities until the rebels were driven out. But ultimately, it just delays the inevitable for a few years.

As the end approached, Assad’s extended family fled with dizzying speed to safety as quickly and secretly as possible, seeking refuge from any force that could seek refuge in them. Only Russia seems willing to come to the rescue.

They left without any announcement and without knowing their destination, presumably like other deposed Arab monarchs, fleeing with as much of their billion-pound fortune as they could fit into a suitcase.

The only independent confirmation that Assad is no longer in power or the country comes not from any of his officials but from his supporters in Moscow, who are utterly outraged by the irresponsible tyrant they have invested in So much money for so little return.

However, Russia may be one of Assad’s best places to go into exile – in fact, there are reports that he is in Moscow and that Russia has offered him asylum.

Russia is one of the few places where he can be sure he will not be handed over to face trial by Syria’s new government or the International Criminal Court.

Mrs. Assad, who is widely believed to be battling an aggressive form of leukemia, had arrived in Moscow with her three children days before he eventually fled.

She had been his rock, her ruthlessness tempered by a charm he had never known before.

All strongmen are ironic, but Assad rarely fits the mold of the strongman spoofed by Sacha Baron Cohen in the 2012 comedy “The Dictator.”

Instead, he’s a grumpy, thin-skinned, deeply insecure male authoritarian who gets offended by even the slightest criticism.

In early 2011, as the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Syria initially remained quiet until one night in February, a group of children in the southern town of Daraa painted graffiti on a wall. “It’s your turn next, doctor,” they wrote, mocking Assad, the ophthalmologist.

The goad angered the Assad family. The local security chief was the president’s cousin and sent people to round up and torture the children.

Crowds gathered to demand their release. Assad’s generals, and likely Asma himself, implored him to comply, apologize and defuse the crisis.

Instead, the president ordered shots fired at protesters, sparking a 13-year uprising that ultimately led to his unceremonious ouster.

Over the next few months, his reactions became more bloody and brutal.

Over the next decade, his regime killed hundreds of thousands of people, tortured more than 14,000 prisoners to death, and triggered the worst refugee crisis since World War II, with half of Syria’s population fleeing their homes.

Ironically, Assad himself cannot bear to see blood. This is why, after studying medicine in London, he first became an ophthalmologist, eschewing the grander forms of science.

Former colleagues recall that he was quite skilled at it, especially in draining cysts.

He had no intention of becoming president. His brother Basel was appointed to succeed his father Hafez, who seized power in a 1971 coup that marked the beginning of half a century of Assad’s rule.

Basel loves fast cars and faster women, as opposed to his vulgar brother, who prefers to sit quietly at home studying, listening to Phil Collins, and drinking green tea.

But then, in 1994, Bashar found himself the heir apparent after he was killed in his Mercedes on a Damascus street, and just six years later he became president.

Asma was at his side, much to the disgust of Assad’s mother, Anissa Makhlouf.

Born and raised in a modest cobbled house in Acton in 1975, and with a hint of an estuary accent despite her private school education, she was not the princess of the bay that Anissa thought her son deserved.

According to reports, in the early days of Assad’s rise to power, with the encouragement of his wife, he had the idea of ​​turning Syria into a more progressive and democratic country.

Later, during the Damascus Spring, he freed prisoners and allowed a degree of freedom of expression.

He was at the height of his popularity, and his humility helped win over many Syrians.

“He didn’t spend most of his time in a big castle,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

“He tried to eat in downtown restaurants. A lot of people liked him, especially because he was a little shy, especially since his father was a soldier and his brother was a tough guy.

“He initially seemed like a man who really cared about modernizing Syria.”

Good times don’t last long. Assad has come to realize that democracy means ending the dominance of the Alawites, a Shia sect that makes up just 10 percent of the population.

Free and fair elections would mean not only the end of Alawite rule and the handing of control to the Sunni Arab majority, but could also mean the annihilation of the Alawites themselves, and possibly even the annihilation of their Christian allies. Extinction, another minority belief.

This is not an unreasonable conclusion. To some in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which is part of the country’s Sunni Arab majority, Alawites are apostates and therefore fair game.

Assad thought maybe his father was right. In 1982, faced with a violent Islamist rebellion in Hama, Hafez ordered a carpet bombing of the city. A massacre occurred that killed an estimated 20,000 people.

According to former regime insiders, Bashar was only 16 when the incident occurred, but his memory still lingered. The lesson he learned from the massacre was: By killing thousands of people, my father spent the next three decades remained stable.

There is some truth to this. Even when Syria erupted in 2011, the Hama group remained silent and remained in the hands of the regime until last week when it fell to the opposition forces now in power.

But it has also led to hatred of the Assad name among many Syrian Sunnis.

He also alienated others. His insecurities gave him a tendency to lecture others, often in a threatening manner.

If he was in a room with economists, he would try to prove that he understood economics better than they did, according to former insiders.

Likewise, at Arab League summits, he would rebuke much older leaders for failing to uphold Arab nationalism. Soon he was as unpopular abroad as at home and a troublemaker.

Lacking his father’s natural authority, he was unable to control Syria’s client state, Lebanon, and eventually its most prominent Sunni politician, Rafik Hariri, tried to sever ties with Damascus.

In 2005, Hariri was killed in a massive car bomb attack in Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

Assad, who has threatened to “bring Lebanon over Hariri’s head,” is seen as a prime suspect, accused of using Hezbollah, the Shia militia he has long armed and financed, to carry out the operation.

That was the final straw in his relationship with the Sunni states of the Gulf, whose acceptance his father had fought hard to win.

Assad had no choice but to throw himself into the arms of Iran and soon found himself in a position of dependence that would only intensify after the uprising forced him to rely more on Tehran than ever before.

By then, his vision had narrowed. In Syria, he could only trust his closest relatives.

As the 2011 uprising spread, his murderous brother Maher was charged with crushing dissent as ruthlessly as possible, a role he relished.

Video soon emerged of Maher, wearing a leather jacket and laughing, shooting at unarmed protesters in Damascus.

Then there’s his cousin Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s richest man, who controls 60% of the country’s economy, largely thanks to his control of Syriatel, the country’s main mobile phone provider.

Makhlouf, whose fortune is estimated at between £4 billion and £8 billion, was key to propping up the Assad family – although he would eventually fall out with the president and lose many of his assets.

It is not known how much Bashar and Asma are worth, although the US State Department estimates they have personal assets of more than £1 billion.

The only tangible glimpse into the Assad family’s wealth came in 2020, when a French court charged Rifaat al-Assad, the former president’s uncle, with money laundering.

During the trial that led to a four-year prison sentence, it was revealed that Rifat owned two huge houses in Paris, one measuring 32,000 square feet, as well as a stud farm, a castle and more than 500 properties in Spain . Such is the wealth of a member of the Assad family.

During the 54 years of Assad family rule, Syria’s economy stagnated and then collapsed completely, shrinking by more than half as the country’s president sacrificed half a million lives to cling to power.

According to the United Nations, 90% of Syrians live in poverty. The Assad family is not among them.