One can only hope Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who trained for a life as an ophthalmologist, is regretting his self-inflicted myopia 10 years ago this month. When al-Assad decided to crush the widespread protests demanding political reforms, including a new leader, the ramifications for Syria were disastrous.
The demonstrators had taken their cue from the Arab Spring and those in Tunisia who had forced their longtime president to flee. But, as the students were to discover, Assad was made of far more brutal stuff. No way was he about to surrender control of the country after 40 years of his family being in charge.
His decision proved a tragedy for Syria of catastrophic proportions. His report card of the consequences makes grim reading: a civil war; loss of territory; millions of Syrians displaced; tens of thousands killed; cities reduced to rubble; chemical warfare; terrifying barrel bombs; accusations of war crimes; documented torture; territory taken over by Islamic State, the Kurds and Turkey; Iran and Russia moving in; US sanctions; a worthless currency; chronic food shortages; the impoverishment of the middle class; an economy heading into the abyss; and the list goes on.
Is there any good news? The best is that the civil war is over except Assad controls only two thirds of the country than he did before. But who’s going to pay to rebuild the cities, infrastructure and the economy? Assad himself has no idea. His wealthy Arab brothers have not been forthcoming. His two main foreign patrons, Iran and Russia, supported Assad to win the civil war for their own geopolitical interests, but have enough economic problems of their own to be able to bail him out.
Easing US sanctions might help. But that is unlikely when they are US-led and Assad depends in part on Iran to prop him up. He might want to remind Washington that he once allowed the CIA to use Syria’s experienced interrogators for deep rendition of terrorist suspects detained by the US.
Bashar al-Assad was never expected to succeed his father as president. He was due to lead a quiet life helping Syrians improve their eyesight. But when his dashing older brother and heir apparent was killed in a car crash, he was summoned home from post-graduate studies in London and prepared for life at the top, starting with a crash course at a military academy and then as Syria’s gauleiter in neighbouring Lebanon.
He made a promising start as president with talk of modernising Syria. But changes did not come soon enough for the restless students who took to the streets. Assad took his cue from his father in dealing with dissent. His purge of Islamists in the city of Hama in 1982 caused thousands of deaths.
The crackdown of the students 10 years ago led to fractures throughout the country as opponents and their proxies moved in to fill the growing vacuum. The ensuing civil war left the country in a state of destruction: half a million killed, half the population displaced and five million now refugees overseas, according to a UN report this month. One wonders how Assad can sleep at night with those statistics on his conscience due to his own actions.
What to do? Assad has no idea when most of Syria’s main source of wealth, its oilfields, are in the hands of US-led Kurdish forces. Much of its prime agricultural land also is outside territory controlled by the government. ‘I know, I know,’ Assad said when reminded of the food shortages. He did suggest TV channels drop cooking shows so as not to taunt viewers with unattainable food, according to the New York Times.
He urged Syrians who had fled abroad to come home and bring their money with them. The response was minimal because the majority did not trust him or feared for their safety or savings. Many Syrians had stashed their money in Lebanese banks only for them to collapse last year.
Needless to say, Assad did not admit any blame. It was all due to ‘the brutality of world capitalism’ and ‘brainwashing by the social media’. He has virtually ignored UN-sponsored talks to reach a political settlement with the opposition.
Yet, despite all the agony and upheaval Assad has inflicted on his country, he is expected to win the coming presidential election. It is widely regarded as a sham. If nothing else, it will give the Assad family firm the accomplishment of 50 years in power in November.
Indeed, Bashar al-Assad hopes this also will convince all concerned, including foes, to accept him as the country’s long-term leader. Based on his 21-year report card as president, why would they?
John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.
Comments
20 responses to “The unlikely despot of Damascus”
John with respect, along with many others who have commented on your article about Syria. I think that you need to read more about the war in Syria than just US propaganda
While the Assad government is far from perfect, it should be realised that the greatest problem in Syria was the fact that the US and some of its western allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar were giving military and propaganda support to the Islamic terrorist invaders of Syria.
When he was US Vice President , Joe Biden caused a kerfuffle in the US admitted to a meeting with university students that the US had also been supporting ISIS..
Whatever problems the US and its allies might have had with the Syrian and Russian governments, tit must be realised that Assad and Putin at least targetted the major enemy of Syria at thetime which were the Islamic terrorist groups. that had a common goal of defeating the popularly elected Syrian government – which has about 80% support – and converting it into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Mother Agnes Mariam, a Palestinian/Lebanese Catholic nun has worked in Syria since 1992 where she is the mother superior of the monastery of St James the Mutilated in Syria. She campaigned against US strategies there because of the consequences it had for all Syrians – especially the Christians and other minorities who strongly support the Assad government because of its tolerant policies She visited the US and Australia in 2013 to give an alterntive view to the US propaganda about what was happening in Syria t
Her order in Syria has been providing aid and support to those who have suffered as a result of the hostilities that occurred.
I’m with you John Tulloh!
Any leader that kills his own citizens has blood on his hands no matter what happened afterwards. It was sad and shocking for all the people that fled the country and ended up on leaky boats in the Mediterranean. Many refugees(including children) drowned.
C’mon, now. Syria has produced refugees because of the attacks my Islamic terrorists, bombings by other countries, and sanctions from the US.
As to ‘any leader that kills his own citizens has blood on his hands no matter what …’ – do you apply the same dictum to Barack Obama? He has engaged in cold-blooded assassination of US citizens by drone; there are always collateral deaths when there’s a drone attack. And what of the millions who have died in countries far, far from the US, which the US has invaded in order to forward some dubious foreign policy. The deaths in Syria alone which are directly due to US intervention far outnumber those attributed to Assad.
John Tulloh certainly got a well-deserved and well-informed caning from respondents here.. i won’t repeat this, I will say two things:.
1. As an example of the sheer nastiness of the Western disinformation assault on Syrian sovereignty, The Economist has just put out a particularly nasty personal attack on the First Lady of Syria – a heroic physically vulnerable woman who spends most of her life going out comforting her suffering people. it’s called ‘Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad’ . It is paywalled.
2. Looking forward: the renewed US undeclared military offensive in Syria using proxies and ‘controlled’ border post bombings is doomed to fail . Russia will only let it go so far, then they will again wind up their military activity in Syria in support of the Syrian government, and the US will turn tail and run. It happened before and if necessary it will happen again. This is because Syria involves vital Russian national security interests – it is their near abroad, and Russia cannot allow it to fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists. Syria does not engage any vital American security interests. Israel wants America to destroy Assad, and their Washington lobby is strong, but America will only be led by Israel to a certain point of stupidity. Both Putin and Biden know this. .
Tony Kevin
The comments point out the history of the situation in Syria accurately, so I won’t add to them. I’m curious why Pearls and Irritations would publish such a shallow piece of propaganda. ‘Balance’ is all well and good, but authors should at least address the obvious rebuttals of their view, and also offer something new that we haven’t had from government propaganda before.
John is surely aware that the West has had Syria in its sights for decades. John Bolton added Syria to the USA’s Axis of
Evil in 2002. General Wesley Clark talked of taking out seven countries in five years, including Syria. Hilary Clinton’s leaked emails talk of her desire for covert intervention in Syria. John might benefit from reading some of Seymour Hersh’s articles, such as ‘Military to Military’.
Once the conflict began, the West, together with several nations in the region, showered arms and money on the Opposition
groups. No matter that the leading groups were extremist jihadis, not the claimed ‘moderate opposition’. While the West was working for the overthrow of the Syrian Government, it made no plans for what might take its place; in other words it would be left to the jihadis, with their slogan of ‘Alawites to the grave, Christians to Beirut’. How moral is that?
Not so well known are the major propaganda efforts undertaken by the West. The USA, UK, and France have been busy trying to manufacture consent for their actions in Syria. Opposition groups have been funded to establish media operations that provide material to western media, presenting Al-Qaeda-linked groups like Hayat Tahrir As-Sham as ‘moderate’ .
Western nations have also invested in managing their own media, with apparently independent journalists being secretly organized to run the government’s preferred line on Syria and other issues. The UK Government’s ‘Integrity Initiative’ is a great example.
US officials have confirmed that the US policy in Syria is to ‘turn it into a quagmire for the Russians’. Hence the crippling sanctions, hence the continued occupation based on the flimsy excuse of combating an almost defunct ISIS, hence the denial of food and petroleum from these areas to the rest of Syria’s population. How can John ignore this?
While the Ba’athists have much to answer for, the absence of the international aspects of the Syrian conflict from John’s article suggest he is either woefully ignorant or propagandizing.
Another version of the 2011 protests
https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/
As Cameron Leckie notes – it’s hard to know where to start, after ten years of NATO propaganda and the loss of several hundred thousand patriotic Syrians in the effort to defend their country from armies of foreign backed terrorists and armies of foreign journalists, none of whom have actually been in Damascus. Currently the US and its local Kurdish allies are occupying all of Syria east of the Euphrates, and actively defending it – as in Biden’s recent attack on the border town of Al Bukamal. Meanwhile the US in their base in Al Tanf continues to support IS terrorists to destablise the areas W of the Euphrates .
But central to it all is the character assassination of Bashar al Assad and his wife Asma, who have stayed the course and gained the support of the whole population, despite the incredible deprivations from US and European sanctions. To see the recent talk from global charities about the “humanitarian crisis for children” which there governments are entirely responsible for, while only attending to the refugee camps in the foreign occupied corners of Syria – is galling. Adding this ill-informed and destructive comment is intolerable.
Aaron Mate’s articles are excellent, but the author might take a look also at Vanessa Beeley’s output on her blog “The Wall will fall”, as she remains resident in Damascus, seeing out the fuel and food and Coronavirus crisis with her Syrian cousins.
Hey David, How do you know all this stuff? I am trying to find good news sources that don’t shove propaganda down my throat. Any recommendations where I can get good essays and news about current events around the world (pearls and irritations is pretty good but would love some more sources)? Ill check out Vanessa’s blog as well.
I can’t answer that in a short sentence, but my knowledge has built over the last decade from reading Alastair Crooke’s early articles on ‘the Great Game” to learning from investigative journalists like Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. Perhaps it also helps to say that I also visited Douma in May 2018, a week or two after Robert Fisk, and saw the steel reinforced tunnel system JAI had built under Douma hospital that extended for kms to other suburbs of Damascus. Much comes back to the White Helmets, who are a UK-US funded propaganda organisation making videos and helping to stage chemical attacks on civilians, assisted closely by UK intel agents. There is a good report on the GrayZone about the UK’s support for the armed opposition’s propaganda, funded to the tune of tens of millions of pounds, in addition to the $100 odd million they provide to the White Helmets.
But I’m afraid that this article, and others like it, indicate that the divide between the Syrian reality and the Western version of it is terminal. The only thing that survives is the absolute resolve of Syrians to resist the onslaught, that they have fought off with the loss of so many fathers, brothers and sons – at least 100,000 killed by foreign-backed terrorists. And they support their mild-mannered and unostentatious president, who has grown in stature from sticking with his people – all the more for the mindless and ill-informed character assassination from Western powers and their media.
Syria
Someone mentioned Stephen Gowans further down.
There are a couple (maybe 3 when I last looked) of youtube vids of his book (on the origins of the conflict) launches from 2016 where he talks ~ 30min that are worth watching. He also encourages people to download and read US national security statements.
Alastair Crooke appears in strategic-culture.org (I tend to read only him there)
On the more specific question of chemical weapons usage WGSPM (working group on syria propaganda and media) website has good “historical” documents, they made all the early running, with argument seemingly now more on twitter.
Moon of Alabama is a good general “anti-Imperium narrative”
The great difficulty, in finding alternative sources, is affording the time to trawl through what is often a lot of dross. It helps if you are retired and interested.
One can only hope that history will record that Syria is where the Brzezinski doctrine (creating, arming and funding Islamist terrorist armies as Western proxies to overthrow secular independent governments in the Muslim world) finally came crashing to earth. It worked in Afghanistan; in Libya it would have failed but for massive NATO bombing in support of the jihadists. The army and people of Syria have suffered grievously, but with Russian help (130,000 takfiri cutthroats eliminated and their underground concrete fortifications wrecked by the Russian aviation) but they have come through the worst. This article is an utter disgrace.
The elephant in the room in the saga surrounding the destruction of Syria is the quest for a Greater Israel. To that end, Assad is demonized, Syria is partitioned, Syrian refugees face hurdles in returning home and any rebuilding of Syria faces threats not least of which are economic. sanctions.
Turkey is trying hard to pinch Syrian territory, as it did in the province of Hatay. The US is pinching the oil. Get those two out of there, and Syria stands every chance of reestablishing itself as an independent nation.
Netanyahu will do everything in his power to stop either from happening – the elephant in the room.
John… you only have yourself to blame for the almost total ignorance you have displayed over Assad and Syria.
One of the most inaccurate articles I have read to date in Pearls.
Bill, it would be helpful if you could list the inaccuracies.
Hi John, thanks for the opportunity to reply. I have re-read your article and can see you are writing from your own myopic prism – that is pro-western, pro-Zionist capitalism. For a start, Syria is at war, not a civil war, but an imposed war of attrition where the darkest forces available to the west were that of radical Islam.. Try being a journalist in ISIS hands. The ‘Arab Spring’ I would contest, never occurred in Syria. The student protests you mention had more police killed and injured than students.
Chemical weapons… where to start… perhaps the late Robert Fisk? On a more mundane and pedantic point. Barrel bombs. ALL bombs come in barrels, you could even argue that bullets come in barrels. I concede they are terrifying to those on the receiving end.
John, we are so far apart we could go on forever citing differences and inaccuracies. I enjoy reading journalism from a neutral point of view. I abhor bias and naked propagandising.
Wow, that has to be the most one sided and misleading articles on Syria that I have read for a while.
It is hard to know where to start. Laying the blame on Assad for the proxy (not civil) war in Syria might be a start. As documented in Aaron Mate’s excellent analysis (https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/05/tulsi-gabbard-calls-out-the-us-dirty-war-on-syria-that-biden-aides-admit-to/), using the words of US officials, it is clear that it is countries such as the US, UK and the Gulf States which have turned Syria into the destroyed country that it is today.
By ignoring the funnelling of thousands of fighters, billions in weapons and ammunition and coordinating a global PSYOPS campaign against Syria (as the Anonymous leaks of UK FCO documents last year proved) the author is either ignorant or being deceptive. Without the Syrian Arab Army along with Iranian and Russian support there is the very real possibility that ISIS would be controlling Syria. Is that preferable to Assad? Surely not.
Rather than rail against Assad, perhaps pressure should be put on the US to withdraw its forces from Syria. The US occupation is illegal (not authorised by the UN) with a primary aim of starving the Syrian people and its economy to achieve regime change (also contrary to the UN Charter). At least the Syrian’s could then start on the slow path to rebuilding.
One wonders how May, Johnson, Obama, Trump and now Biden sleep at night.
Please note that the UN envoy heading the mission to try to find a political settlement on Syria’s future has complained of the lack of cooperation by Damascus.
Oh dear the poor innocent UN Envoy! if I was Assad I’d boot the hypocritical war mongering bastards right out of the country. Then they would have something to complain about.
FYI Syria is a democracy with a democratically elected president. Before the so called Arab Spring, they were a thriving democratic nation much like Australia with a similar population and with excellent free healthcare and education and a high standard of living. Since the US And Allies brought” democracy” to Syria all of this has been destroyed. It’s a war crime.
The only political solution that actually upholds International Law is for foreign troops to get out of their country and stop the illegal occupation.
It seems that you have no idea of the actual situation in Syria or of the malevolence of US foreign policy masquerading as “liberation for the sake of democracy”.
There are an awful lot of dead “free” people in the countries that America is currently bombing in the name of peace.
Fortunately more and more people are waking up to the reality of the world beyond the constant propagandising from media and western governments.
“They were a thriving democratic nation much like Australia with a similar population and with excellent free healthcare and education”
Democratic Australia where 5% of the vote (National Party) allows you to run the country.
Where excellent free healthcare, is slowly but surely being undermined
Where free education (public) also being undermined and note the last increase in university fees.
Where a high standard of living, again being slowly but surely being eroded with inequality is rife.
“Fortunately more and more people are waking up to the reality of the world beyond the constant propagandizing from media and western governments”.
One hopes you are correct however check out Kevin Rudds National Press Club address, it would appear he has reservations.
Kevin Rudd joins calls for independent inquiry into Porter claims | National Press Club – YouTube
We may not, as yet, have the structural devastation but we have in power those who seek to debase all social contracts with regard to our humanity.
These are evil people.