I met Assad and his wife in 2009, before he turned to mass murder
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.
Bashar al Assad and his wife Asma
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In a 2009 interview with Sky’s Dominic Waghorn, Bashar al Assad said he feels ‘more optimistic’ about the situation in the Middle East, adding that people ‘are more convinced’ about achieving peace in the region.
Read more: Syria latest updates
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?
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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.
Asma al Assad was brought up in West London
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.
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Toppled Assad statue dragged through streets
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.
An image of Mr Assad riddled with bullets at the provincial government office building in Hama. Pic: AP
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.
People gather in Aleppo to celebrate the fall of Mr Assad. Pic: Reuters
Syrian opposition fighters celebrate the collapse of the government in the capital Damascus. Pic: AP
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.
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Syrians react to Damascus being freed
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
US blocks Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 other officials from United Nations’ annual meeting in New York
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 other officials have been blocked from attending September’s annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has revoked the US visas of delegates from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and denied others from applying for one.
It is the latest step by Donald Trump’s administration to target Palestinians with visa restrictions, and follows the suspension of a programme to allow injured children from Gaza to receive treatment in the US.
Mahmoud Abbas addressed the general assembly in 2024, but is barred from next month’s meeting. Pic: Reuters
“It is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” a statement from the US State Department said.
It added that, to be considered partners for peace, both groups “must consistently repudiate terrorism, and end incitement to terrorism in education, as required by US law and as promised by the PLO”.
Offensive will cause ‘intolerable deaths’
Several US allies, including France, Malta, and Australia have announced plans to recognise Palestine as a state at September’s United Nations General Assembly. Canada and the UK will too, unless Israel meets certain conditions.
Israel declared Gaza’s largest city a dangerous combat zone on Friday.
The army launched a planned offensive that has drawn international condemnation.
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Thick smoke rises from Gaza City after Israeli strikes
Foreign ministers from Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovenia and Spain released a joint statement saying the military operations in Gaza City will cause “intolerable deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians”.
Gaza latest: Israel’s Gaza City offensive condemned
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in Gaza City while enduring famine.
An Israeli armoured vehicle in northern Gaza on Friday. Pic: AP
Palestinians ride a truck carrying humanitarian aid in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Riyad Mansour, said Mr Abbas had planned to lead the delegation to the UN meetings and was expected to address the general assembly at the general debate, which begins on 23 September.
He was also expected to attend a high-level meeting co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia on 22 September about a two-state solution, a broad idea involving Israel coexisting with an independent Palestinian state.
The State of Palestine is an observer member of the UN, meaning it can speak at meetings but not vote on resolutions.
The State of Palestine cannot vote on UN resolutions. Pic: AP
US decision ‘contravenes international law’
The Palestinian Authority “expressed its deep regret and astonishment” at the visa decision, calling it “a violation of US commitments” as the host of the UN, and claiming it “contravenes international law”.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the world body would be seeking clarification in the “hope that this will be resolved”.
Hundreds of diplomats left when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking at the general assembly in 2024. Pic: Reuters
The State Department said that the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UN, comprising officials who are permanently based there, would not be included in the restrictions.
Under a 1947 UN agreement, the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the UN in New York.
But Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism and foreign policy reasons.
Read more from Sky News:
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The death toll in Gaza has now risen to 63,025, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
It also reported five more malnutrition-related deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number during the war to 322, with 121 of them children.
World
Brazil implores businesses to attend major climate summit, despite ‘second thoughts’ amid Trump backlash
The Brazilian hosts of the biggest climate meeting of the year have implored businesses to attend in November, amid concerns some are backing away from the climate agenda into the shadow of Donald Trump.
In an interview with Sky News, Ana Toni, chief executive of the COP30 climate summit in November, admitted some companies were having “second thoughts” about the global switch to green economies because policymakers were creating uncertainty.
The US President Donald Trump has been attacking wind farms and waging tariff wars that could slow the transition to green energy.
Banks including HSBC and Barclays have ditched a net zero alliance set up just four years ago by Mark Carney, now the Canadian Prime Minister.
Ana Toni, Brazil’s climate secretary, is chief executive of the COP30 climate talks. Pic: Reuters
But even before Trump took office, tech companies were quietly dropping climate targets to prioritise energy-hungry AI, and other businesses were “greenhushing” their climate initiatives for fear of backlash.
In this environment, there are fears fewer business leaders will attend the annual talks, which are also being hosted in a city on the edge of the Amazon that hasn’t enough hotel rooms.
On Friday, the COP30 team wrote to business leaders urging them to “step forward, not back” and travel to Belem, despite “logistical challenges” and the “background of systemic uncertainty”.
Ana Toni told Sky News: “We are very concerned that the enabling conditions must be there so that the private sector can also deliver where they do best, which is bringing in technology, bringing innovation and accelerating the process of decarbonisation.”
In August the share price of Danish wind farm developer plummeted after the US halted its Rhode Island wind farm, while the British Tories and Reform parties are also attacking net zero.
Ana Toni met with King Charles and leaders of other COP summits at Clarence House last year. Pic: Reuters
But Ms Toni there is “nothing to panic [about], because we can see that the transition is inevitable,” citing major progress in China, India and Europe and Brazil.
Referring to the US’s withdrawal from the COP process, she said: “198 countries minus one is not zero. And we will put all our efforts of working with the 197 countries that want to go forward and want to protect their population.”
“Climate action is not only [still] cool, it is necessary,” Ms Toni said.
“We all need to face reality. We are going through a huge climate crisis… If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Companies understand that.”
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