You must stand by your dad,” Manaf told Bashar when he arrived from London.
“Yes, I want to help him get over losing Bassel,” Bashar assured him. The thin and over six-feet-tall Bashar seemed distracted. He wore a rumpled suit that was too big and a loosened tie.1
Bashar was twenty-eight and living in London, where he was finishing a residency in ophthalmology. He had grown up into a bookish, docile-looking, and shy young man who often felt awkward in public. Bashar had chosen a career in medicine. After completing compulsory army service as a medic and working at the military hospital in Damascus for a few years, in 1992 he headed to London, where a billionaire businessman of Syrian origin called Wafic Saïd asked the director of the prestigious Western Eye Hospital to accept him as a trainee.2 Syria’s ambassador to the United Kingdom solicited Saïd’s help. Notwithstanding Saïd’s intervention, Bashar worked hard. On many days he was first to show up and last to leave.
“He was a civilized person and a decent man. They loved him at the hospital,” said Saïd. “We had lunch and he thanked me for my help. Sons of presidents in our part of the world do not do that sort of thing.”
In London, Bashar kept to himself and hardly socialized with Syrian expatriates or anyone else.3 The exception was the family of Mahmoud Maarouf, a businessman close to the Assads by virtue of his kinship to Mohammad Nasif, an Alawite intelligence chief in Hafez’s innermost circle and a guardian and godfather of sorts to the Assad children. The Syrian ambassador was assigned to attend to Bashar’s every need. To protect his privacy, Bashar was sometimes introduced as Dr. Ayham from Damascus to the Syrians and Arabs he encountered casually through the Maaroufs.4
Bashar lived in a rented multilevel town house on a quiet street in affluent Belgravia. Two mukhabarat officers dispatched by Damascus lived with Bashar and occupied the lower floor. When not at the hospital or spending time with the Maaroufs, Bashar was at home studying. His guards got so bored that Bashar permitted them to venture out in the neighborhood. They became regulars at a casino in a nearby hotel.
Just before Bassel’s death, Bashar was busy studying for a board exam to be licensed to work in the United Kingdom at the end of his hospital training. He wished to remain in London.5
Bashar was impressed with life in Britain and was beginning to flourish in his own way. He wanted to chart his own trajectory after Bassel was chosen to inherit their father’s rule. He had always been shunned by his father and been in the shadow of his handsome and charismatic “golden knight” brother. Bassel was the family star, his father’s favorite, the equestrian champion and daredevil army officer who parachuted from planes.
After Bassel’s death, Bashar was forced into the spotlight. He was back in a family situation he had so happily escaped. From the moment he got off the plane in Damascus, he was expected to start behaving like the eldest son and to live up to their ideals of manhood and leadership that Bassel had so easily embodied.
Bassel’s funeral in Qurdaha was an elaborate and massive event fit for a long-reigning leader. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, and Salman bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi defense minister who later became king, were among the dignitaries who came to Qurdaha to console Hafez.
Qurdaha was a backwater town in the hills overlooking Syria’s Mediterranean coast, but at the time of Bassel’s death a construction boom was underway as extended Assad family members and newly enriched regime officials broke ground on garish mansions and apartment buildings. Hafez built a grand mosque to honor his mother, Naisa, who died two years before Bassel. At the mosque’s entrance, a large mural showed Hafez kissing the hand of Naisa, who wore a headscarf that barely concealed her hair, in the style of elderly Alawite village women. Qurdaha retained its provincial ways and ambience even after it was christened the Lion’s Den (assad is “lion” in Arabic). On market day, farmers flocked to town to sell their crops. Old men with craggy faces hawked bags of dried tobacco leaves, butchers slaughtered sheep in the open air, and women wearing black went into the white domed shrine in the main square to say a prayer. It was one of a dozen maqams, or shrines, for Alawite holy men and miracle makers dotting the rolling hills around Qurdaha. There were several hundred such shrines across Alawite land in western Syria.
“I never imagined myself standing here in this grave moment, with my brother Bassel having departed our world,” Bashar said timidly in his eulogy.6 Bashar was clean-shaven except for a trimmed mustache. He had changed his suit and his necktie was properly knotted, but he still looked ill at ease. Hafez, trying to hold back his immense rage and grief, sat stone-faced in the front row at the service, watching his second son stumble through his speech while anxiously trying to keep the sheets of paper in front of him from being blown away by the wind.
No sooner had Bassel been buried than tensions flared in the Assad family and the Alawite community. Many knew that Hafez’s health had already been in decline before Bassel’s death, and they now wondered if Bashar was replacing Bassel as heir and whether he was up to the task. Some looked to his uncle Rifaat to assume the role of successor. He had helped Hafez lead the charge against regime opponents in the late 1970s and early ’80s, after all. Rifaat was seen as a hardened and imposing leader, which appealed to average Syrians, especially the regime’s core constituency, the Alawites. Who could be more deserving?
Rifaat was still living abroad per Hafez’s payout, but the rupture was never total and tensions had eased between the brothers when Rifaat came back for their mother’s funeral in 1992.
Rifaat was once again in Qurdaha when Bassel died. He believed this was his best chance to finally grab power. Unlike his aging and sick brother Hafez, Rifaat at fifty-seven looked fit and buoyant. His neatly trimmed beard, dyed hair, and expensive tailor-made suits gave him the air of a southern European aristocrat or an Arabian prince.
Within hours of the burial and after Hafez and his family had gone home to rest, Rifaat’s supporters lifted him onto their shoulders and paraded him around Qurdaha’s main square. “With our soul, with our blood we sacrifice ourselves for you, O Abu Duraid!” they cheered, referring to him as the father of Duraid, his eldest son. Part of the Assad clan was thus signaling in no uncertain terms that it wanted Rifaat anointed Hafez’s heir. Manaf and other officers loyal to the president were in the square at that moment. Manaf pushed one of those holding Rifaat up. The chanting ended abruptly and scuffles broke out between the two sides. Guns were raised before the situation was defused.7 It was an unequivocal show of Tlass family loyalty that did not go unnoticed by Hafez and Bashar.
Next morning, hundreds of Hafez loyalists showed up at his family house in Qurdaha. “With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, O Bashar!” they chanted. Bashar came out to greet them. A couple of men in the crowd lifted him up as the chanting for Bashar, Bassel, and Hafez turned more vigorous. Bashar was paraded around holding up a placard showing a smiling Bassel in formal equestrian attire.
“To whom the horses after you, Bassel?” said the caption underneath.8
It was another way of asking: Who’s the heir after you, Bassel? The answer came quickly.
That week in Qurdaha, Hafez mourned the loss of his eldest son while holding court with Alawite clan and religious leaders to make the case for the second one. He argued that it was not only about safeguarding stability and their gains as a historically downtrodden minority but that, indeed, their very survival was at stake. Therefore, Bashar needed to assume power, because any rifts or struggles among Alawite clans could be catastrophic for the whole community. This would be a gift to their enemies.
In the back of everyone’s mind were events of the 1970s and early, ’80s, when Sunni extremists hunted down and assassinated Alawites on the streets and in the army. The Alawite leaders knew that many Sunnis in Syria still regarded them, albeit secretly, as uncouth heretics even after Hafez secured a fatwa, or religious edict, pronouncing Alawites as a subsect of Shiite Islam. They all remembered stories passed from one generation to another about centuries of isolation in the mountains and oppression by Sunnis and feudal masters, who humiliated them with slurs like kuffar (infidels). In the end, few wanted to jeopardize the security attained under Hafez for the sake of a succession war.
Another factor in Bashar’s favor was a belief by many of the superstitious and hermetic Alawites that Hafez and his progeny had a divine calling to elevate and protect the sect. The Assads had long cast themselves as protectors of Alawites and minorities in the Levant including Christians. (This idea was instrumental in mobilizing support for the regime at the start of the 2011 rebellion.)
It was decided that Bashar would give up his medical career and his dream of a quiet and orderly life in Britain. Within days of Bassel’s burial, the regime began building on the idea that the purportedly impromptu rallies in Qurdaha, at which people chanted for Bashar, were proof that the masses, especially the youth, wanted him to bear Bassel’s mantle of reform and modernization. “Bassel the role model and Bashar the hope,” became the campaign’s catchy slogan.9 While Hafez’s support was built on confronting Israel, striving to reclaim the Golan Heights, and uniting Arabs, in Bashar’s case it would be the promise of ushering Syria into the twenty-first century while maintaining the regime’s steady hand.
The first order of business, though, was to put Bashar on a fast track toward the highest military rank, a prerequisite for anyone at the Assad regime’s helm. In a society ruled with the iron fist of the army and security services, military credentials were equated with manhood, leadership, and strength. In March 1994, less than two months after Bassel’s death, Bashar joined an advanced officers’ training program at the Homs military academy, even though he lacked the prerequisite qualifications.
Bashar’s crash training as tank commander and his sleeping arrangements were all tailor-made for a dictator’s son uncomfortable in a military setting.10
He graduated at the top of the class as staff captain in November of that year in a ceremony officiated by Mustafa and the army’s top brass. Wearing his full military regalia, Mustafa looked proud as he handed Bashar an honors plaque. A few months after his stint at the academy, Bashar was promoted to staff major. The elevated rank and honors for someone with little military experience and predisposition seemed unwarranted to most Syrian army commanders. “Bashar needed to take Bassel’s place, so all rules were bent,” said Manaf.
Hafez, meanwhile, quieted any objections to his son’s appointment. When Ali Haidar, commander of the special forces, raised the idea that “it’s not mandatory for Bashar to replace Bassel,” he was swiftly arrested and confined to his village in the Alawite mountains for the rest of his life.11
Hafez enlisted a circle of trusted lieutenants to mentor and promote Bashar throughout this period, with Mustafa and his sons Firas and Manaf in the lead. Bassel’s death left a void in Manaf’s life and it was hard at first to develop the same rapport with Bashar, but transferring loyalty and friendship to the new heir was facilitated by the Tlass family’s sense of duty to Hafez and his wishes. There was self-interest, too.
The Tlasses expected their already privileged position to be strengthened significantly. Manaf would one day succeed his father as defense minister, the businessman Firas would be among the main beneficiaries of economic liberalization, and even Nahed could be rewarded with a position like Syria’s envoy to the Paris-based UNESCO.
Manaf accompanied Bashar almost everywhere he went; he barely had time for anything else. “Manaf was always on standby whenever Bashar needed him. We never saw him if Bashar was traveling. Manaf’s job was to ensure that all was in order during these trips. He wanted to become the man Bashar could trust with everything,” recalled a friend of Manaf.12
One of Bashar’s key mentors was Mohammad Nasif, the Alawite mukhabarat chief and godfather-like figure to the Assad children.13 Nasif hailed from the notable Kheirbek family and was better known as Abu Wael. A law degree and an interest in books earned him the nickname “the educated one” in mukhabarat circles. He was an imposing figure: wily, smart, and dapper, but also extremely ruthless. He headed a notorious mukhabarat branch in Damascus and personally oversaw the torture and killing of Hafez’s opponents in the 1970s and ’80s.14 Hafez valued Abu Wael and his razor-sharp instincts. He tasked him with his children’s welfare and security in addition to sensitive and high-priority briefs like relations with the United States, Iran, and its Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, as well as exiled opponents of Saddam Hussein. Hafez hosted many Iraqi dissidents, including Nouri al-Maliki, who would later become prime minister. Abu Wael was their overseer. Abu Wael was crucial in helping young Bashar gain self-confidence and grapple with the Assad regime’s complex inner workings. The bonds forged between them were like those of father and son, particularly given Bashar’s difficult relationship with his own father, who was often very exacting and critical. Bashar cherished the time he spent with Abu Wael away from Damascus.
In the family, Bashar could draw on support from his mother, Aniseh, who pushed him to be strong and close to his siblings and her relatives.15 Bashar’s youngest brother, Maher, was a rising star in the armed forces while his maternal cousins the Makhloufs were assuming prominent roles in the army, mukhabarat, and business, and were eager to demonstrate loyalty to Bashar. Bashar’s new brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat—despised by Bassel and only able to marry Bushra after his death—was another important ally. Supporting Bashar in the face of detractors such as his wife, who like many in the wider Assad clan did not find Bashar fit to inherit power, was a way for Assef to ingratiate himself to the new heir and solidify his position in the family.
In the first few years after Bassel’s death, the burden on Bashar to assert himself and prove his worthiness for leadership was immense. He had to inherit many of Bassel’s previous roles. Like Bassel before him, Bashar was cast as Mr. Clean, brought in to fight corruption, drug smuggling, and all sorts of illicit activities in which the regime and Assad family itself were deeply involved.
And there was Lebanon, a de facto Syrian colony occupied by over 30,000 soldiers and mukhabarat agents, where Bassel had been increasingly involved. There was Bassel’s computer society, his vast networks of friends, loyalists, and followers, and much more.
Compounding the pressure on Bashar was the way the regime turned Bassel, the “martyred golden knight,” into a heroic, almost mythical figure. Murals and billboards of him on a galloping horse or in aviator sunglasses were everywhere. The school the Assad and Tlass children attended, Laïque, was renamed in 1994 the Martyr Bassel al-Assad Institute. A museum paying tribute to Bassel opened there.16
The airport in Latakia, streets, hospitals, sports stadiums, and other facilities in every town and city in Syria were renamed after Bassel. Assessing Bashar in relation to both his brother Bassel and his father, Hafez, was inevitable. Bushra openly mocked Bashar within family circles. Whispers grew inside the regime that there was no hope of transforming Bashar into a leader like Bassel. “He will never be like him,” said one of Bassel’s ex-bodyguards, who was assigned to Bashar.17
One counterargument that Hafez himself promoted was that while Bashar lacked Bassel’s militaristic and rugged traits, he was actually more like his father in his youth. They were said to be similar in their intelligence, shrewdness, cold-heartedness, and resolute character. Some of the slogans conceived by another Bashar mentor and mukhabarat officer and planted in newspaper articles and editorials in Lebanon and Syria included this: “Bashar the man of clarity and purity; Bashar the man of the present and the project for the future.”18
The stress of meeting those high expectations weighed heavily on Bashar. For Bashar, the larger-than-life personas of his father, Hafez, and late brother, Bassel, were monsters he had to slay in order to prove himself. He was consumed by this inner struggle. “I want the world to forget Bassel and my dad—I can do it,” he once confided to Manaf.
Around the first anniversary of Bassel’s death in January 1995, the regime doubled down on the promotion of Bashar to quash any doubts about his suitability as future leader. The Tlasses, especially Mustafa and his eldest son Firas, hardly missed an opportunity to trumpet all the wonderful things that were about to happen in Syria under the new presumed heir. Ammar Abd Rabbo, the Franco-Syrian photographer who met Bassel a few times through Manaf, was among those contacted for a one-on-one with the “rising star,” as Bashar was described to him.19
Abd Rabbo saw a polite, soft-spoken, and somewhat shy young man who was keenly interested in cameras and photography. A few days later there was a photo session at which Bashar quizzed Abd Rabbo about his techniques and what he sought to capture.
“To be honest, some of the photos I have seen of you show someone who is shy. Maybe I can do photos that change that,” said Abd Rabbo.
“I like that,” said Bashar.
Bashar’s photo portraits accompanied a series of flattering articles that cast him as an honest and hardworking future leader attuned to the needs and aspirations of Syria’s youthful population. “His decision to move into politics did not require much thinking… He is known for his modesty, discipline, precision in life, and energy for work that fills all his waking hours,” marveled Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian reporter for a pan-Arab publication who was friendly with the Tlasses.20 Hamidi spoke about Bashar’s war on corruption, the team he assembled to receive citizen complaints and petitions, and his forays into “the Lebanese file.”
Damascenes were intrigued by this tall, blue-eyed, polite and civilized, Damascus-born and -bred young man who came back from London. He began to crack down on the excesses of regime families, who were seen by city folk as vulgar peasants enriched at the state’s expense. By Bashar’s directives, regime officials and their families had to go through airport passport control like everyone else and could no longer be met by their drivers and entourages on the runway.21
Early 1995 brought a series of meetings in Beirut and Damascus between Bashar and Lebanon’s key players, who had to demonstrate their fealty and loyalty to the new heir. The regime attached great economic, political, and national security significance to Lebanon and ran it like a province or colony of Syria. It was crucial for Bashar to begin involving himself in Lebanon’s affairs the way Bassel had done before he died.
In 1989, Saudi Arabia brokered a peace deal that formally ended Lebanon’s fifteen-year-old civil war. Saudis and other Arab monarchs had to live with Syria’s role in Lebanon, especially after Hafez joined the US-led coalition to expel Saddam from Kuwait. For the United States and Europe, accepting Syria’s presence in Lebanon was a fair price for cooperation with the Assad regime on combating international terrorism and keeping Syrians engaged in peace talks with Israel. Achieving comprehensive Middle East peace was a central objective of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. Hafez made it clear to Clinton that Syria and Lebanon were one when it came to any potential peace with Israel, and he was later angry with the Palestinian Liberation Organization for concluding the Oslo Accords with the Israelis in late 1993 and Jordan for signing its own treaty with Israel in 1994. Lebanon’s deeply sectarian and feudal system, in which power was divvied up among leaders claiming to represent the country’s religious mosaic, facilitated Syrian control. Many of these leaders were the same warlords who fueled Lebanon’s civil war. After the war, they viewed the state and its resources as well as the economy as spoils they must battle over to enrich themselves and their families and to sustain their patronage networks.
Syria’s resident mukhabarat chiefs were the Assad family’s personal representatives and enforcers in Lebanon. They were arbiters in the frequent squabbles among the Lebanese and the ones sanctioning or blocking almost everything. Suitcases of cash, business partnerships, luxury gifts, cars, apartments, and even prostitutes were the price that many Lebanese politicians and businessmen had to pay in order to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the Syrian viceroys and gain their requisite approval and protection. Humiliation, imprisonment, or death was the fate of those who challenged Syrian authority. It was not unusual for some Lebanese to kiss the hands of Syrian officials as proof of their subservience.22
Conveniently for the Assad regime, Lebanon was the destination for hundreds of thousands of disgruntled and unemployed men from Syria’s impoverished eastern and northern provinces, flocking to Lebanon as cheap labor. Lebanon’s far more liberal economy and society also served as a conduit and outlet for the Syrian elite.
In Lebanon, one man had begun to dominate the political and economic scene. Rafic Hariri was a billionaire who rose from a humble background and made a spectacular fortune in construction in Saudi Arabia. He was given Saudi citizenship and became a protégé of the Saudi monarch. With Saudi support he set out to rebuild Lebanon after the civil war. He wanted to revive the glory of the capital, Beirut, as a commercial hub and playground for the rich—the Singapore or Monaco of the Middle East. Hariri’s tastes and sensibilities in rebuilding Beirut mirrored those of his Saudi royal patrons, who were busy razing historical sites in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to replace them with skyscrapers and shopping malls.23 The vision was that prosperity and good times would heal the civil war’s wounds—no need for national reconciliation or accountability for war crimes.
Hariri realized he could do little in Lebanon without Syrian consent and so began courting the Assads in the 1980s, well before his return to Lebanon from Saudi Arabia. Hariri undertook several projects in Syria, including the Tishreen Palace, one of the president’s official residences, and a new exhibition center near Damascus Airport. In 1992, Hariri became Lebanon’s prime minister only after being interviewed at length by Hafez. Once he had passed the test, Hariri sat down in Damascus with Hafez’s vice president Abdul-Halim Khaddam to form his cabinet.24 “Each time we agreed on a minister, I called Hafez to get his approval,” said Khaddam.
By the time Bashar became the substitute heir in 1994, the regime was suspicious of Hariri and his growing power and prominence, and not just in Lebanon. Hariri was a Sunni Muslim like Syria’s majority and had developed deep ties with Sunni regime figures like Khaddam and others. Average Syrian Sunnis, many of whom still bore a grudge against Hafez for his atrocities in the 1980s, also started to notice Hariri, who had commissioned a study on fixing the Syrian economy and spoke of a Marshall-like plan for the Levant.
Hariri went out of his way to please regime officials with generous cash handouts, gifts, and sweetheart business deals, and he also put his network of regional and international relationships at the service of the Syrians.25 All of this did not quell the mistrust fueled by Lebanese rivals who felt threatened by Hariri and his agenda. There was a sense that Hariri was a free agent, powerful in his own right and eager to sever what was sometimes called Syrian guardianship over Lebanon. His friendship with leaders like France’s Jacques Chirac added to the Assad regime’s doubts. From the start there was no chemistry between Bashar and Hariri.
“Habibi, do not worry yourself about Lebanon, leave things to me,” Hariri told Bashar during their first meeting in Beirut in 1995 as he sat on the edge of his office desk. (The Lebanese overuse the word habibi, my love, and in this context it’s supposed to insinuate friendliness and warmth, but usually for ulterior motives.) Hariri often couched his swagger and confidence with affection.26 As was his wont, Bashar kept calm during the meeting, but the interaction was enough to convince him that Hariri was someone he disliked and mistrusted.
When he returned to Damascus, Bashar recounted the story to Manaf and told him that he felt insulted by Hariri. Bashar read Hariri’s protestations of affection as patronizing and not sufficiently deferential, as if Hariri did not take Bashar seriously as someone who was going to rule Syria and by extension Lebanon too, as far as the regime was concerned. Hariri was undoubtedly motivated by the desire to win some margin of independence for his government and Lebanon while assuring the regime that all dues would continue to be paid. Perhaps Hariri, who was fifty-one years old at the time, was also trying to be fatherly and helpful to the young heir. Bashar, however, did not want to be schooled by someone he considered a subordinate.
In the summer of 1995, Bashar invited friends and relatives for a weekend in Latakia, a coastal city and getaway spot for the Assads and regime elites. They stayed in a scenic bay north of the city, where the Assads had a mansion perched on a cliff with stunning views of the Mediterranean. Bashar seemed more assertive and confident, and brought a woman he was dating along for the trip.27
Manaf came with his wife, Thala Khair; they had already been married for five years. She was seventeen and he was twenty-eight when they wed; her father’s only condition was that his daughter be allowed to complete her education. The Khairs were not rich but were well respected in Damascene society. Thala’s grandfather was a member of the intelligentsia and a figure in the struggle against colonialism; he owned one of the first bookstores in Damascus. Her father tried to keep the bookstore open and also headed a musical association.28 Manaf’s marriage to Thala was typical for families of Assad regime officials who were eager to shed their humble countryside roots by having their children marry into prominent urban families. Thala’s sister later married the son of an Alawite mukhabarat chief.
Bashar and some dozen of his guests biked on trails along the coast and lounged by the mansion’s two pools.29 Many were Bassel’s friends, inherited by Bashar as part of the package of becoming Hafez’s successor. Bashar, long on the sidelines, was now the center of attention and appeared to bask in it. Everybody was deferential and eager to please him. “He walked in like a prince, everyone stood up and then sat only after he was seated, and when he told a joke nobody laughed before him,” recalled a guest.
Guests also got a peek into the mind of the young man about to inherit Syria.30
“One of the things you have to fix is education. Better educated people become better citizens,” said another guest one evening as they all gathered around before dinner.
“Education is not enough. How do you explain the behavior of someone who studies in America and then returns to Syria to marry a veiled woman he has never dated or known?” said Bashar, who seemed to ignore that arranged marriages were the norm in Syria including among Christians.
“Education is not just about math and science,” persisted the guest.
A back-and-forth ensued over how much exposure Syrians should have to historical and political narratives other than those formulated and disseminated by the regime.
Bashar concluded with this statement: “There’s no other way to govern our society except with the shoe over people’s heads.”
Everyone understood that the heir was already well schooled in the regime’s most important maxim: To stay in power you must maintain people’s fear of the state and its tools of repression, notwithstanding your promises of reform and the margins of freedom you permit.
“Bashar started to change a bit. His interactions with the military and mukhabarat began to toughen him and mold his character; it was a new chapter in his life,” said Manaf, who was forging closer personal ties to Bashar.31
Another change noticed by those around Bashar was his seemingly insatiable desire to have sex with as many women as he could. He sought out women who had previously had liaisons with Bassel.32 It did not matter whether they were single or married. A friend from childhood remembered how Bashar had “blushed whenever the topic of girls and sex was brought up” while growing up. But now the new Bashar equated sex with power. For him it was not only a source of pleasure but something that seemed to help him feel strong and confident—an aggressive manifestation of a masculinity he had previously been hesitant to embrace. Three years into his new role, many thought Bashar was making progress in filling Bassel’s shoes, even if he still seemed uneasy at public appearances.33
With his health deteriorating in the mid-1990s, Hafez made a concerted effort to clear the decks for Bashar. He tackled everything that might endanger his son’s ascension to power. Hafez pardoned thousands of prisoners, including members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. To dial down tensions with neighboring Turkey he expelled Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish separatist leader he had hosted and supported for years as Ocalan waged an insurgency against Ankara.
In 1998, Hafez stripped his brother of the symbolic title of vice president after Rifaat and his sons established a new political party along with a TV station and a magazine in Europe. Later that year, Hafez reshuffled senior officers in the army and security services; those who appeared resistant to Bashar’s eventual takeover were sent into retirement or cast aside.
In summer 1998, Hafez traveled to France, one of his rare official visits to the West. For the regime, ties with France offered leverage for improving its image—from a dictatorship associated with terrorism and gross human rights violations to a state interested in making peace with Israel, contributing to Middle East stability, and embarking on reform after the demise of its Soviet and Eastern bloc allies. There was already significant collaboration between French and Syrian intelligence services that had foiled several terror attacks in France in the 1990s. Mustafa and his Paris-based daughter Nahed also fostered relationships across France’s political spectrum, including with far-right groups, that were extremely useful to the regime.
Terrorism, Lebanon, and Syria’s border with Israel were the bargaining chips that Hafez had used to secure his regime over the decades. Now he needed to call in favors to guarantee a smooth transition of power to his son. Both French president Chirac and his close friend Hariri, the Saudi-backed Lebanese billionaire turned politician, needed Syria to further their common agenda in Lebanon. In fact, the warmth between Chirac and Hafez was in part due to Hariri’s efforts over the years.
“To secure his position, Hariri knew he needed to keep giving Hafez signs of his loyalty and usefulness outside Lebanon,” explained Ghassan Salamé, a Paris-based Lebanese academic who later became minister in one of Hariri’s governments. Salamé was at the state dinner that Chirac gave in Hafez’s honor at the Élysée Palace.34 “He reminded me of my peasant father,” said Salamé about his impressions of Hafez. “He looked frail and thin. His trousers were high up above his waist. I remember thinking to myself, ‘This man is not in good shape.’”
During Hafez’s visit, Syria signed bilateral agreements with France, and Hafez gave Chirac the impression that he was making a concession in Lebanon by giving him a say in naming the next Lebanese president, who must be Maronite Christian as per Lebanon’s confessional political system. “He [Hafez] asked me to submit to him the names of five candidates [for the Lebanese presidency], and that he [Hafez] would choose one,” said Chirac.35
All of this maneuvering had one objective for Hafez: winning Chirac and France over as an ally and supporter of his son Bashar. “Bashar is like your son and you must deal with him as such,” Hafez told Chirac.36
After his France visit, Hafez gave Bashar the green light to begin acting like president. A more assertive Bashar, by then a colonel in the Republican Guard, gave his first interviews to local and Arab media outlets. Bashar’s well-rehearsed answers made him sound scientific and detached, like an outside consultant diagnosing his country’s woes; it would become a hallmark of his public pronouncements for many years.
“We think change must be controlled, meaning there has to be a precise goal and clear path so change does not lead to chaos,” Bashar told a Saudi-owned weekly in a lengthy interview at his Damascus office, which had previously belonged to Bassel.37 A photo of a thin and mustachioed Bashar made the magazine cover.
Bashar then traveled to Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries where he met monarchs and heads of state,38 meanwhile ramping up his anticorruption crusade at home, targeting business networks of certain regime officials and their children and associates. It was a perfect way for the Assads to get rid of people who had become a liability or posed a threat to the power transfer already well underway, unbeknownst to the average Syrian. What’s more, a campaign to root out corruption was intended to endear Bashar to Syrians who blamed their economic ills and lack of progress on what regime propaganda called the avaricious old guard.
Following his decision to bequeath his rule to his eldest son, Bassel, Hafez bought the loyalty of key officials in his party, army, and security forces by allowing them and their children and protégés to move into the private sector in a bigger way than before. They soon amassed fabulous fortunes while the national economy went bust, as a private sector dominated by regime insiders and cronies was layered over a bloated and corrupt public sector. In the late 1990s, the country suffered a severe liquidity crisis, gross domestic product shrank, and unemployment reached nearly 20 percent.39 It was a repeat of the economic woes of the 1980s. The only saving grace this time was an increase in oil exports from fields in northeastern provinces bordering Iraq as well as remittances of Syrians working abroad, most notably in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, which absorbed almost a million Syrian laborers.
“We want to get rid of all the rot, open up Syria and change mentalities,” an enthusiastic Manaf kept telling Syrians at home and abroad during this period as he touted the promise of change embodied by Bashar.40
Naturally, Mustafa’s proximity and unwavering loyalty to Hafez guaranteed that Tlass family business interests were untouched by Bashar’s anticorruption crusade. But others in the Assad family’s orbit were not so lucky. Mahmoud al-Zoubi, who had served as prime minister for the regime for thirteen years and had gotten along extremely well with the late Bassel, was charged with corruption and removed from his post and from the Baath Party. He then shot himself in the mouth rather than face a military tribunal, according to the official regime story.41 Even if Zoubi was guilty as charged, it was inconceivable for him to be involved in any malfeasance without the knowledge and support of senior regime figures, including members of the Assad and Makhlouf families. Ministers, lawmakers, and judges served at the regime’s pleasure.
In early November 1999, Bashar was hosted by Chirac for lunch at the Élysée Palace. It was a rare honor for a man who was not yet officially president of Syria. Bashar’s reform vision and plans as well as Lebanon dominated the discussion. “Rafic [Hariri] organized it—he wanted to get back into Bashar’s good graces,” said Khaddam, Syria’s vice president, who was close to Hariri.42 When Bashar lunched with Chirac, Hariri had already resigned as prime minister after a dispute with the new president, Emile Lahoud, an army general staunchly loyal to Bashar. Hariri was squeezed out amid corruption allegations, precisely the same way those deemed a threat to Bashar were eliminated or let go in Syria.
While in Paris, Bashar was reminded of what it was going to take to guard the power he was about to inherit from his father.
In retaliation for his uncle Rifaat and cousin Sumar’s continued disloyalty, Bashar had ordered his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, to raid Rifaat’s properties in and around Latakia and arrest dozens of his partisans. They also shut down a private port supposedly used by Rifaat and his associates for smuggling and other illicit activities.43 The actions provoked clashes in which several people were killed and wounded, but ultimately forces loyal to Bashar and Hafez prevailed.
Tensions from the incident spilled over to the presidential palace in Damascus, where Bashar’s younger brother, Maher, got into a heated argument with Assef, who was by then a senior officer in the mukhabarat’s Military Intelligence Directorate. Assef was working closely with Bashar on purging all potential threats in the army and the mukhabarat, especially officers suspected of secret loyalty to Rifaat.44 Maher ordered Assef to stay out of the dispute with his uncle, but Assef insisted he was part of the family.45 Assef already had three children, triplets, from his marriage to Bushra. Maher, who was carving out his turf within the power structure as Hafez’s end seemed near, was also furious that one of his army loyalists was “whacked” by Assef in the Bashar-ordered purge, said Manaf.46 The argument between Assef and Maher degenerated into shouting and insults and ended with Maher shooting Assef in the stomach. Assef was rushed to the hospital in Damascus and then flown to Paris for further surgery. He was recuperating at the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris even as Bashar lunched with Chirac at the Élysée Palace.47
It was a rite of passage for Bashar and a lesson that protecting his rule was at times a bloody business that might require taking out his own if necessary. Manaf saw the incident as a reminder of his parents’ past warnings: securing his position in the Assad clan was no easy task, and like his father he, too, would be called upon to spill blood to defend the regime, despite the rosy talk of reform and a new era.
For Assef, this would not be his last perilous entanglement in the clan’s machinations.