From eye doctor to dictator – the rise and fall of Assad’s presidency
Bashar al Assad’s downfall marks an end to more than half a century of family rule, as rebel forces turned the tide in a civil war he had embraced.
The authoritarian president ruled Syria for 24 years, five years short of his father’s time in power, but the plan was never for him to take over the dynasty.
Before his political career began to take shape, Assad was based in the UK, where he had an ophthalmology practice.
Damascus ‘freed’ of Assad – live updates
A family tragedy would soon thrust him into the political fray – and his early days in Damascus stood in stark contrast to his exit.
Eye doctor and computer geek
Before Damascus, Assad was an eye doctor in London and his only official position in his home country was as head of the Syrian Computer Society.
In the UK capital, he met his future wife, Asma Akhras, a former investment banker at JPMorgan who grew up in Acton, west London.
She ditched her career for Assad after a trip together to Libya as a guest of then leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Bashar al Assad and his wife Asma in 2010. Pic: AP
In 1994, Assad’s older brother – and heir to the presidency – Bassel was killed in a car crash in Damascus.
Assad was promptly ordered back home, where he was put through military training and elevated his rank to colonel to establish his credentials for ruling.
But there was never any doubt he would take over. When his father Hafez al Assad died in 2000, parliament quickly lowered the presidential age from 40 to 34.
To top it off, his elevation was confirmed after a nationwide referendum pitted him as the only candidate.
Bashar al Assad at military training games in 2000. Pic: AP
Hopes for a young reformer
Assad began his presidency with promises to fight corruption and to open up the media. He inherited a dilapidated country and lacked support from his father’s loyalists.
Viewed as something of a geek, the lanky Assad constantly tried to prove himself despite his gentle demeanour, not least to his fearsome mother, whom the president’s wife also struggled to impress.
He had quickly freed political prisoners and allowed more open discourse. In the “Damascus Spring” – briefly sprung after his father’s death – salons for intellectuals emerged to discuss art, culture and politics.
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Bashar al Assad and his wife Asma greeted by Tony Blair outside 10 Downing Street in 2002. Pic: AP
But these were snuffed out after 1,000 intellectuals signed a public petition calling for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms in 2001.
He slowly lifted economic restrictions, let in foreign banks, made way for imports and empowered the private sector.
Syrian cities began to see shopping malls, new restaurants and consumer goods, while tourism rose.
Foreign policy blow
But abroad, he stuck to the line his father had set, based on an alliance with Iran and a policy of insisting on a full return of the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.
In 2004 the UN Security Council ordered Syria to end its long occupation of neighbouring Lebanon, leaving Assad with a choice: comply and ruin some of his father’s legacy, or ignore it.
He chose the former – this angered his family.
Syria soldiers pulling out of Lebanon in 2005. Pic: AP
Gradually, Assad started to believe the West was weak and believed the more he demonstrated strength, the more he would achieve.
In 2005, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated, killed by a bomb while driving in Beirut. The Syrian government was blamed.
Syria was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and a pro-American government came to power instead.
Syrian civil war
A few years after going against his father’s legacy, Assad would draw on his brutal tactics when protests erupted against his rule in March 2011, during the Arab Spring.
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He had until that point denied the wave of Arab uprising would spread to Syria, and even emailed a joke mocking the Egyptian leader’s refusal to step down two days after his fall.
But reality soon bit, after protesters in the southern city of Daraa were shot dead by government forces, sparking nationwide unrest.
Full-blown civil war would break out, which would become the world’s largest refugee crisis, according to the UN.
More than 14 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety, the body reports.
Atrocities
Since then, Assad’s rule has been dogged by widespread accusations of atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons such as sarin, chlorine, and mustard gas.
In 2013, a gas attack on rebel-held eastern Ghouta near Damascus killed scores of civilians.
There have also been widespread reports of rape, beheadings and torture.
Assad was propped up largely thanks to Russia – who stepped in to carry out decisive airstrikes in 2015 – and Iran, who both backed Syria militarily.
In 2020, Moscow backed a government offensive, which ended with a ceasefire with Turkey and froze most front lines.
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Assad held most territory and all main cities, appearing deeply entrenched, while rebels held the northwest and a Turkey-backed force stayed at a border strip.
Kurdish-led forces, meanwhile, controlled the northeast.
After government forces bombarded the northwest rebel-held region of Idlib in 2020 – killing civilians in the process – Assad had appeared to consolidate his iron-fist rule.
President Bashar al Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in July 2024. Pic: AP
The downfall
Few saw an end to his presidency in the near future, but just as Assad’s fortunes relied on Moscow and Tehran, so too was his fate tied to their geopolitical priorities.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lasting almost three years and Iran rocked by Israeli attacks on its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syrian government defences were exposed.
Rebel forces launched an attack on the northern city of Aleppo, which the government had held since 2016, and within days stormed through the country.
Assad had initially vowed to fight back, with the military claiming they were preparing a counter-offensive.
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Toppled Assad statue dragged through streets
But the insurgents continued to sweep their way to Damascus, where Assad had insisted he remained as recently as Saturday evening.
He has not been seen in the capital since rebels claimed full control and Russia has said he has left the country – adding he gave “instructions to transfer power peacefully”.
While Syrians took to the streets to chant for freedom and celebrated his downfall, what comes next for the country – and who governs it – remains shrouded in uncertainty.
World
Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sacked for ethics violation after leaked phone call
Thailand’s prime minister has been sacked after a leaked phone call with a senior Cambodian politician caused outrage.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was Thailand’s youngest PM, has been dismissed from office by the country’s Constitutional Court after only a year in power.
The court found Ms Shinawatra, 39, violated ethics in a leaked June telephone call, during which she appeared to kowtow to Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen as the bordering countries were on the verge of an armed conflict.
She also criticised a Thai army commander – a taboo move in a country where the military is extremely influential.
Fighting erupted weeks later and lasted five days. At least 35 people were killed and more than 260,000 were displaced.
Ms Shinawatra, who was new to politics when she took office in August last year, apologised over the call and said she was trying to avert a war. She was suspended in July.
Ms Shinawatra arriving at Government House in Bangkok ahead of the verdict on Friday. Pic: Reuters
She is now the fifth Thai PM from, or backed by, the billionaire Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or the judiciary in 17 years, amid a battle for power between the country’s warring elites.
The ruling thrusts Thailand into more political uncertainty at a time of public unease over stalled reforms and a stuttering economy.
Speaking after the court’s decision, the exiting PM said “all sides” in Thai politics now “have to work together to build political stability and to ensure that there won’t be another turning point again”.
The focus will now shift to who will replace Ms Shinawatra.
Her influential, billionaire father, Thaksin Shinawatra, who also once served as Thailand’s PM, is expected to be at the heart of a flurry of bargaining to keep the ruling Pheu Thai party in power.
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The leader of the main opposition People’s Party has called for the next prime minister to dissolve parliament once they are installed.
The deputy PM, Phumtham Wechayachai, and the current cabinet will act as government caretakers until a new leader is elected by parliament. There is no time limit on when that must take place.
After all those raised hopes of peace, Ukraine has been hit by the second-worst night of Russian air attacks since the war began.
So much for diplomacy, despite the Alaska summit, then the Washington DC meeting.
The Kremlin says it was aiming at military targets, but yet again, the pictures tell a very different story.
Follow latest: UK summons Putin’s ambassador
Firefighters work at the site of a burning building after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
One civilian building after another was hit, more than a dozen people were killed, and British Council and EU buildings were also damaged.
So what’s going on? Why is Vladimir Putin doing it?
Because he can.
The Russian president thinks he’s winning this war, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s using diplomacy to play for time while he carries on beating down the Ukrainians’ will to win.
And at the moment, no one is stopping him
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At least 14 killed in Kyiv attack
Ukraine is hitting back, particularly at Russia‘s oil installations, more of them going up in thick black smoke, after being hit by long-range Ukrainian drones.
It is taking a heavy toll on Putin’s ‘Achilles heel’, but on its own, analysts don’t expect it will be enough to persuade him to end this war.
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British Council building hit in Kyiv
The West can wring its hands in condemnation.
But it’s divided between Europe that wants a ceasefire and much more severe sanctions, and Donald Trump, who, it seems, does not – strangely always willing to sympathise with the Russians more than Ukraine.
He’s back to blaming Ukraine for starting the war, saying earlier in the week that Kyiv should not have got into a war it had no chance of winning.
It is a grotesque perversion of history. Ukraine, of course, had no choice but to fight to defend itself when it was invaded in an act of unprovoked aggression.
Every time the US president has condemned Russia for these kinds of attacks, he has never followed through and done nothing to punish them.
Rescue workers carry an injured woman after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
More worryingly for the Ukrainians, the Russians are getting the upper hand in the drones war, taking Iranian technology and souping it up into faster-moving drones that the Ukrainians are having increasing difficulty bringing down.
They expect as many as a thousand drones a night coming their way by the winter, and many, many more innocents to die.
Next week, Putin will join Chinese and North Korean leaders in a summit in Beijing, both supporting his war in Ukraine.
(L-R) Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Pics: Reuters
Read more from Dominic Waghorn:
Ukrainians warn they’re in danger of losing drone arms race
We are further away from peace now than we were two weeks ago
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A war that began as one man’s mad idea has, in three and a half years, metastasised into a titanic struggle between east and west, fought increasingly with machines in a dystopian evolution of war.
If Mr Trump is not prepared to use his power to bring this war to an end, what will another three and a half years of his presidency bring?
It is a chilling question.
World
Boy, 8, and girl, 10, killed in US Catholic school shooting named – as father brands attacker ‘a coward’
The families of two children killed in the US Catholic school shooting have said their “hearts are broken” and branded the attacker a “coward”.
Fletcher Merkel who was eight and 10-year-old Harper Moyski were killed during mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Eighteen other people were injured, including children aged between six and 15 and three adults in their 80s.
Police said Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman, opened fire with a rifle through the windows of the school’s church as children sat in pews.
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New details released of US school shooting
‘Our hearts are broken’
Harper’s parents, Michael Moyski and Jackie Flavin, remembered her as “a bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10-year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone who knew her”.
“Our hearts are broken not only as parents, but also for Harper’s sister, who adored her big sister and is grieving an unimaginable loss. As a family, we are shattered, and words cannot capture the depth of our pain,” their statement said.
They urged leaders and communities to “take meaningful steps to address gun violence and the mental health crisis in this country.”
“Change is possible, and it is necessary – so that Harper’s story does not become yet another in a long line of tragedies,” the statement added.
The family of Fletcher Merkel said there was a ‘hole in our hearts’. Pic: Family handout/AP
‘Fletcher loved his family’
In a statement reported by Sky’s US partner network NBC News, Fletcher’s father Jesse Merkel blamed the “coward” killer for why the boy’s family can’t “hold him, talk to him, play with him, and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming”.
He said: “Fletcher loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking, and any sports that he was allowed to play.
“While the hole in our hearts and lives will never be filled, I hope that in time, our family can find healing.”
Mr Merkel also praised “the swift and heroic actions of children and adults alike from inside the church”.
“Without these people and their selfless actions, this could have been a tragedy of many magnitudes more. For these people, I am thankful,” he added.
Families and loved ones reunite at the scene after the shooting. Pic: Reuters
Mayor calls for assault weapon ban
It comes after Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey called for a statewide and federal ban on assault weapons, a day after the deadly school shooting.
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Minneapolis mayor urges assault weapons ban
“Thoughts and prayers are not going to cut it. It’s on all of us to see this through,” the mayor said at a news conference. “We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons.
“We need a statewide and a federal ban on high-capacity magazines. There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload.
“We’re not talking about your father’s hunting rifle gear. We’re talking about guns that are built to pierce armour and kill people.”
Meanwhile, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara gave an update on the investigation, saying the suspect had fired 116 rifle rounds into the church.
“It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorise those innocent children,” he added, before saying the killer “fantasised” about the plans of other mass shooting attackers and wanted to “obtain notoriety”.
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Thomas Klemond, interim CEO of Minneapolis’s main trauma hospital Hennepin Healthcare, said at an earlier news conference that the hospital was treating nine patients injured in the shooting.
One child at the hospital was in a critical condition, he added.
Children’s Minnesota Hospital also said that three children remain in its care as of Thursday morning.
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