I met Assad and his wife in 2009, before he turned to mass murder

Published

6 months ago

December 8, 2024

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Bashar al Assad started out as a doctor and ended up a mass murdering tyrant now on the run.

The man who trained to save lives in Damascus and London would go on to take them in their hundreds of thousands, bombing hospitals and gassing his own people.

He was a strangely unimpressive man to meet. Tall, slightly gauche, with a lisp and thin tufty moustache.

Christopher Hitchens called him the human toothbrush. The writer recalled Hannah Arendt’s phrase the “banality of evil” when he remembered meeting another dictator, Argentina’s General Videla. But it applied equally well to Mr Assad.

He was ordinary, more oddball than evil, with a high-pitched awkward laugh.

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It was a very different time in a very different Syria when Mr Assad and his wife invited Sky News to Damascus. We went on a walkabout with them on a warm spring evening in 2009.

Barack Obama had just been inaugurated president in America. In his reedy voice, Mr Assad said he would like to invite the young president to Syria, via Sky News. He almost giggled as he said it. His British-born wife beamed at his side.

Back then everything seemed possible but just two years later Syria erupted in protest caught up in the contagion of the Arab Spring. Mr Assad would respond with brutal force. That fateful decision put Syria on the path to a devastating civil war.

Mr Assad had become president unexpectedly and it seemed reluctantly.

His elder brother Bassel had been groomed for the job. He was everything Bashar wasn’t, good looking and confident, a special forces soldier, his father’s favourite. But Bassel died in a car crash.

Did Mr Assad’s ruthlessness later spring partly from sibling resentment? Was he needing to prove himself to his domineering dead father to be as strong as his brother? Did the weaker, overlooked Bashar overcompensate for his inadequacies with the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands?

Take the Roys of Succession and add weapons

The Assads were quite the family. Take the Roys of Succession and add weapons, both chemical and biological.

Hafez, the cold calculating patriarch whose achievement of seizing power in Syria and dominating it for decades was threatened by his scheming, weaker children.

Bashar, the brooding heir, and Maher, his psychotic, deranged brother who has personally overseen much of the regime’s reign of terror.

When his father died in 2000, Mr Assad was called back from London, cutting short his career as an eye doctor to succeed him. At first he promised reform. The country seemed to be opening up.

Assad’s wife was part of the act

Mr Assad’s telegenic wife, Asma, brought up in West London by Syrian parents, was part of the act, presenting a modernising future. She was much better at it than her husband, a natural in front of the cameras.

She told me she had travelled the country incognito after her husband took power, to help him understand its needs.

They were a normal middle-class couple she said, who loved nothing better than surprising Damascenes by popping up in restaurants on date nights in the capital.

Vogue magazine was pilloried later for calling Ms Assad Syria’s “Desert Rose” but it was not the only one taken in. There was in those days a genuine sense Syria was on a new path. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Assad believed it too.

But in the background, repression and corruption never went away.

Mr Assad was handing out lucrative privatisation contracts to cronies and family. The Assads’ secret police were stifling dissent as brutally as before.

The eruption of civil war

Two years after that invitation to Mr Obama, Mr Assad was forced to choose between a new way forward and the repressive ways of his father.

Children had been arrested in the southern city of Deraa for protests inspired by the Arab Spring sweeping the region. The police tortured them, killed them and returned their mutilated bodies.

Protests engulfed the south. The Assad regime seemed uncertain at first how to respond. If there was an attempt at conciliation, it was shortlived.

Mr Assad returned to old family tactics. In 1982, his father Hafez had slaughtered thousands in the city of Hama after an uprising there.

Peaceful protests erupted across the country. Mr Assad ordered his security forces to crush them, opening fire on peaceful unarmed crowds. His brother Maher was filmed doing so personally.

Ultimately, Syrians had little choice but to resort to arming themselves. The uprising mutated into armed rebellion. Then outside powers joined in, turning the conflict into both a proxy and civil war.

Assad could never afford to lose

Mr Assad was all in. From the minority Alawite sect, he could never afford to lose.

Desperate to prevail, he resorted to more and more desperate methods. Thousands of barrel bombs were dropped from helicopters. And then chemical weapons; chlorine gas, sarin and mustard.

Opponents disappeared in their tens of thousands into jails, where torture, sexual abuse and mass hangings were commonplace.

Mr Assad could never have held on without his allies. Russia in the air and Iran on the ground. Their support swung the war in his favour, the rebels kettled into the northwest of the country, a killing zone in the province of Idlib.

Assad’s rotten and hollow regime has folded

The conflict seemed frozen for years but Mr Assad’s enemies have used the time to re-arm and learn new tactics and discipline.

His allies were distracted, Russia in Ukraine and Iran was weakened by events in Lebanon.

Mr Assad, the young eye doctor with the glamorous British wife, had become an evil murderous despot, perverted and corrupted utterly by power.

His rule lost all legitimacy years ago. Rotten and hollow, without external support, his regime has folded, a lesson to others, not least his allies, in Moscow and Tehran.

It has taken years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives but Syrians have finally overthrown their hated dictator. The dynasty Mr Assad’s father thought he was building has collapsed.

Mr and Mrs Assad may find refuge abroad, but the fate of the rest of their dreadful family remains unknown.

World

Former UN chief’s labelling of Gaza war as ‘genocide’ marks extraordinary shift

Published

15 hours ago

May 30, 2025

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Former UN chief's labelling of Gaza war as 'genocide' marks extraordinary shift

In a stark and direct intervention, Martin Griffiths, the former UN humanitarian chief, has described the situation in Gaza as genocide.

The statement, made during an interview I conducted with Griffiths on The World, marks one of the most pointed accusations yet from a figure known to be deeply embedded in the world of international politics and diplomacy.

“I think now we’ve got to the point this is unequivocal. Of course it is genocide. Just as it is weaponising aid.

“We don’t need to look behind ourselves to see that’s the case. That should encourage us even more because we, of course, all doubted whether it would come to that level of definition.

“We all doubted whether famine is actually there. I think starvation is killing people. That’s bad enough. We don’t have to worry about famine, which is obviously there lurking in the shadows.

“Also, genocide… of course that’s what has happened. We only need to look at the statements made. Prime Minister Netanyahu has the virtue of being very clear about his objectives.”

His choice of words is extraordinary – not just for its gravity, but because it’s Griffiths who is saying it.

A veteran diplomat with decades of experience navigating complex international crises, Griffiths is known for his calm and thoughtful demeanour – not for inflammatory language.

For him to use the term “genocide” in a television interview signals a significant shift in how some within the international system are now interpreting events on the ground in Gaza – 20 months since Israel launched its war.

The timing is also noteworthy.

Just weeks earlier, Tom Fletcher, another respected former British ambassador and current UN humanitarian chief, came close to using the phrase during a UN Security Council session.

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He said: “What more evidence do you need now? Will you act decisively to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? Or will you say instead: ‘we did all we could?'”

Whilst he stopped short, his tone showed a clear change in how leading international figures now view the direction of Israeli military operations in Gaza; staggering civilian deaths, and the statements made by Israeli officials prosecuting this war.

Griffiths’ remarks now go a step further.

It comes as the British government continues to grapple with public anger over the mounting civilian toll – and faces growing scrutiny over its continued arms exports to Israel.

This latest statement by Griffiths doesn’t just reflect humanitarian concern.

As a former ambassador, he knows the weight his words carry.

And with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsening, his warning challenges Israel’s allies to ask deeply uncomfortable questions.

Lawyers representing Israel against accusations brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice last year – accusing its actions in Gaza of amounting to genocide – called the claims “unfounded”, “absurd” and amounting to “libel”.

They went on to say Israel respected international law and had a right to defend itself.

World

More than 40% of Europe slides into drought, including pockets of Greece, southern Italy and Spain

Published

15 hours ago

May 30, 2025

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More than 40% of Europe slides into drought, including pockets of Greece, southern Italy and Spain

Well over a third of Europe, including parts of holiday destinations like Spain, Greece and Italy, are now in drought.

March was Europe’s warmest on record – a trend driven by climate change – and also saw below average rain across large parts of the north and east of the continent.

Now 41.2% of Europe finds itself in some form of drought, according to the latest update from the EU’s European Drought Observatory, which covers 11 to 20 May.

It is most acute in pockets of south-eastern Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Albania, where the strongest “alert” category has been issued, as well as parts of Poland and Ukraine.

But broad stretches of northern and eastern Europe through France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine also drying up, sowing concerns about crop yields.

On Thursday, the UK’s Environment Agency officially declared a drought in North West England after river and reservoir levels were licked away by a dry spring.

Greece tourism is ‘unsustainable’

In Greece, “overtourism” from millions flocking to its beaches adds further pressure to water supplies, said Nikitas Mylopoulos, professor of water resource management at Thessaly University.

“The tourist sector is unsustainable and there is no planning… leading to a tremendous rise in water demand in summer,” he told Sky News.

“The islands have an intense problem of drought and water scarcity.”

Islands like Santorini and Mykonos are now forced to ship in water from Athens or desalination plants to provide for showers and swimming pools. In the past, many residents could make do with local methods like rainwater harvesting.

But agriculture is a far bigger drain on the country’s water, with waste rife and policies lacking, said Prof Mylopoulos.

Wildfire season could be ‘particularly difficult’

This year’s hot and dry conditions are also fuelling the risk of yet another fierce wildfire season in Greece.

Last week civil protection minister Ioannis Kefalogiannis warned of a “particularly difficult” summer.

He said a record 18,000 firefighters have been deployed and the drone fleet almost doubled in a bid to combat fires being fuelled by a hotter climate.

Droughts and their causes are more complicated, but scientists at World Weather Attribution say global warming is exacerbating drought in some parts of the world, including around the Mediterranean.

They found the drought of 2022, which spread across the Northern Hemisphere, was made 20 times more likely by climate change.

The International Hydropower Association said drought and intense rain in Europe are pushing power plants to “operate at the limits of their existing equipment”.

Extreme weather costs the EU about €28.3bn (£23.8bn) in lost crops and livestock per year, according to insurance firm Howden.

Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University, said: “With global warming, we expect more prolonged and intense droughts and heatwaves punctuated by more intense rainfall, possibly causing flash floods.

“In recent years, we have experienced more of these atmospheric blocks, causing record heat and persistent drought, as well as severe flooding in other locations in Europe.

“Recent months have been no different, with prolonged dry conditions and heatwaves in northern Europe and floods in southern Europe.”

World

Nigeria floods: At least 117 dead as heavy flooding submerges thousands of houses

Published

17 hours ago

May 30, 2025

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Nigeria floods: At least 117 dead as heavy flooding submerges thousands of houses

At least 117 people have died and others are still missing after heavy flooding in Nigeria, an emergency official said.

Authorities initially said 21 people had died but this figure has today risen significantly.

Media reports quoting local government officials said a dam collapse has worsened the situation.

Ibrahim Hussaini, head of Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said some 3,000 houses were underwater in two communities.

Videos posted on social media show floodwater sweeping through neighbourhoods, with rooftops barely visible above the brown currents. One clip shows a tanker floating through a town.

The chairman of the Mokwa local government area suggested poor infrastructure has worsened the impact of the flooding.

Jibril Muregi has appealed to the government to start “long overdue” construction of waterways in the area under a climate resilience project.

In a similar occurrence last September, torrential rains and a dam collapse in Nigeria’s northeastern Maiduguri caused severe flooding, leaving at least 30 people dead and displacing millions.

Nigeria is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April – and flooding is becoming more common and extreme as the climate warms.

Hotter air is thirstier and can hold more moisture – about 7% more for every 1C warmer – meaning it unleashes heavier flooding when it rains.

Violent rain, which killed hundreds of people in Nigeria during 2022, was made at least 80 times more likely and 20% more intense by climate change, analysis by World Weather Attribution found.