Two weeks before Christmas 2010, Asma and Bashar walked through the marble lobby at Le Bristol, a luxury hotel off the Champs Élysées in Paris. News agency photographers maneuvered around severe-looking Syrian presidential guards while well-wishers from France’s Syrian community watched adoringly as the Assad couple made their way to a banquet room and took their place at the helm.
“You are the motherland’s best ambassadors,” Bashar told the carefully chosen expatriate Syrians gathered in the hotel.1
Earlier in the day Asma and Bashar had lunched at the Élysée Palace with Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, a glamorous singer and former model. During their whirlwind four-day stay in the French capital, the Assads effortlessly mixed business with pleasure. Besides talks with Sarkozy, Bashar met with influential French opinion makers and gave a prime-time TV interview. But the trip’s star was Asma, who was by then commanding her own NGO conglomerate in Syria focused on development, culture, education, and more. She delivered a polished address at the Academie Diplomatique Internationale, a prestigious think tank, and held court at Le Bristol with the Louvre Museum’s director and French government officials.
Asma was finalizing plans for a grand launch of her project to renovate the national museum and nearly thirty other smaller museums scattered across Syria, with French help. French archaeologists were also keen to explore two ancient cities believed to be buried under the desert sands in eastern Syria, potentially a more significant find than the more than four-thousand-year-old Palmyra.2
“You are a precious and indispensable interlocutor,” gushed Frédéric Mitterrand, French culture minister, as he introduced Asma at the Academie Diplomatique.3
Asma spoke about cultural revival transforming Syria and providing hope and opportunity to its youth—those under twenty-five made up 60 percent of a population of about 22 million. “The very essence of the vision we are trying to promote,” said Asma with her British accent, “is that this cultural heritage is at the heart of everything we are trying to do, not happening in parallel to economic development, education reform, and civil society expansion and participation. It’s happening at the core of these facets.”4
For the rest of their stay in Paris, Asma and Bashar were photographed strolling in Montparnasse, once the haunt of artists and intellectuals, having a cozy lunch at an art deco brasserie and catching a Monet exhibition at the Grand Palais. “Asma and Bashar al-Assad: Two Lovers in Paris,” was the headline of an interview with Asma and a photo spread of her and Bashar in Paris Match.5
The couple seemed to be at the top of their game. They wanted to be linked to glamor, reform, modernity, and the twenty-first century, and not the brutality, repression, and terror that Syria and its regime were often associated with.
Their Parisian charm offensive was a bold and dramatic statement that worked to put distance between the reigning couple and past accusations of terrorism and murder. That winter in Paris, Asma and Bashar felt they finally turned the corner and were now admired and respected young leaders from a troubled region, trying to do their best despite difficult circumstances.
“I felt the keen desire of a man and woman to no longer be pariahs,” said Claude Guéant, who was Sarkozy’s chief of staff and personal envoy to Bashar between 2007 and 2010.6 “They wanted to be recognized as ordinary heads of state.”
Bashar savored every moment of being feted by a country that had tried to destroy his regime after Hariri’s murder. But for him the real prize was not France or Europe but the United States, where a more momentous change of guard and opportunity occurred. A young senator named Barack Obama had become America’s first black president. Obama regarded Iraq’s invasion as a disastrous mistake and wanted to get out as quickly as possible. He wanted to make a clear break with Bush’s policies, to change America’s image as the world’s sheriff and a cowboy who shoots first and asks questions later. Obama had priorities beyond Middle East regime change. The way Bashar and his allies saw it, Obama seemed like a realist, someone who was not going to hector them about reform and human rights but potentially accept that each country had its particular circumstances and situation.
Well before Obama’s win in 2008, Bashar had made it clear to congressional delegations coming to Damascus that he was ready to turn the page with the United States after Bush. He played on deep divisions in the United States over the Iraq War and leveraged a bipartisan committee’s conclusions that engaging with Bashar and the Iranians was crucial to winding down the war.
Bashar reminded US officials that he had shared intelligence with the Bush administration after 9/11 and had taken in alleged terrorists to torture as part of America’s rendition program—but instead of gratitude he received orders and threats because of his position on Iraq and cooperation with “resistance movements” like Hezbollah and Hamas. “Syria wants a long-term dialogue, not one-two-three-four,” Bashar told Speaker of the House and Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi during a visit to Damascus in the spring of 2007, referring to what he characterized as Bush’s dictates.7
Bashar and Asma treated Pelosi and members of her congressional delegation to lunch al fresco in the Talisman’s courtyard. It was an old house in Damascus’s traditional Jewish quarter turned luxury boutique hotel; the courtyard’s walls were painted deep red. Lunch was followed by a tour in the bustling old city and its famous souks. Bashar wanted to impress the visiting Americans, show them that Syria was stable and prospering under his rule, and that he had his own vision for reform and change. He wanted Western leaders to deal with him as an equal. He hated Bush’s threats and Chirac’s attempts to treat him like a son.8 He wanted to pick up where Hafez had left off with Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s and later with Clinton and Albright in the 1990s.
One immediate concession that Bashar wanted from the Americans was sanctions relief. They had been ratcheted up every year since 2004, when the first of the UN resolutions were passed against the regime over Lebanon. Several of Bashar’s top mukhabarat chiefs and his cousins Rami and Hafez Makhlouf were hit with specific sanctions in 2007 and 2008.9 US exports to Syria were banned except for food, medicine, and certain waivers. International companies in power generation and other vital sectors didn’t want to deal with Syria, fearing they could get caught in violation of sanctions. Even Bashar’s French-made presidential jet was grounded because it needed repair and spare parts that were covered by US sanctions.10 For his July 2008 Paris trip, Qatar’s emir sent him a plane that was only allowed to pick him up in Damascus, take him to Paris and return him home. The plane could not remain in Syria. Bashar felt humiliated.
Then, just before the US presidential elections in 2008, American special forces launched a raid inside Syria against an Al Qaeda-linked operative they said commanded one of the main networks responsible for ferrying foreign fighters to Iraq.11 By then the United States had rallied Sunni tribes in the Iraqi border province of Anbar to its side with cash, government salaries, and promises of a say in the country’s political future. Bashar responded by shutting the American school and the Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Center. It was a rather muted reaction. Days later Obama won.
Bashar told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that he was ready to work with the new US leader—provided there was an end to Bush’s doctrine of “preemptive war” and no more regime change in the Middle East.12
Iraq was Obama’s most pressing priority. He wanted to pull out as soon as possible; it was a campaign pledge he was eager to fulfill. Iraq’s neighbors—particularly Iran and Syria—did the most to stoke the insurgency, and they were now crucial for keeping the peace after the departure of US troops. But the Saudis and Turks, who also backed sides in Iraq, especially the Sunnis, wanted to fill the void after US withdrawal and push back against Iran, which they felt had practically swallowed Iraq because of American missteps.
In January 2009, Obama appointed former senator George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy; he was expected in Syria. American diplomacy geared up for what it called reengaging with Syria. A cable from the embassy in Damascus at the end of January 2009 titled “Reengaging with Syria: The Middle East’s Unavoidable Player” offered this advice: “Whatever principles Bashar evokes in his rhetoric, his ultimate goal is to preserve his regime, which for him requires preserving all existing options without forgoing new options. The only consistency in Syria’s foreign policy is the… desire to play all sides off each other.”13
Obama wasted no time in trying to secure Bashar’s and, by extension, Iran’s cooperation in Iraq. He dispatched John Kerry to Damascus in February 2009. The gentlemanly Kerry, a longtime senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, already had one thing in common with Bashar: a towering presence. And to try to develop a personal rapport with Bashar, Kerry came with his wife, Teresa Heinz.
Kerry arrived in Damascus a month after a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel had tried for more than three weeks to destroy what it said was the “infrastructure of terror” of Hamas, the group that controlled the densely populated coastal strip of Palestinian territory on Israel’s western flank and was backed by Bashar and his ally, Iran.14 As bodies of Palestinian civilians, including many children, piled up in mortuaries and their images were transmitted across the Arab world, much of public opinion swung behind Hamas and members of the so-called axis of resistance: Hezbollah, Iran, and the Syrian regime. The indirect talks between Syria and Israel collapsed, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who was set to be the next Israeli prime minister, vowed that Israel would never return the Golan to Syria.15
Kerry and Bashar met for more than two hours in the presence of their aides at the People’s Palace on the Mezzeh plateau above Damascus. It was built in the last decade of Hafez’s rule as a modern and deconstructed version of the historic citadels and fortresses found in cities across the Levant and southern Turkey. It was a vast white stone complex with imposing entrances and cold, cavernous white-marble hallways whose walls were occasionally enlivened by contemporary Syrian art. It was not Bashar’s favorite setting. He felt more comfortable in his private study in a bungalow-like structure next to his family residence. But Kerry’s visit was official business and he had to be as presidential as possible along with the requisite protocol.
Kerry spoke about how the approach of the Obama administration was going to be different and acknowledged that the United States needed to talk “respectfully and frankly with the parties in the Middle East.” He noted “big changes” ahead in how the United States was going to be dealing with Iran, Syria, and the region as a whole.16 Bashar offered nuanced views on the situation in Iraq and the dangers of breakup along sectarian and ethnic lines. He said that Syria’s goal was not to see the United States “humiliated” in Iraq. Before the meeting with Kerry, Syria had sent signals of cooperation by announcing it had arrested 1,200 alleged Al-Qaeda fighters inside the country and shored up security at the Iraqi border.
Bashar and Kerry had a back-and-forth on credibility and trust. Kerry told him that the perception he got from regional leaders was that Bashar “says one thing and does another… or he says he’ll do something and then does not do it.”17 Bashar conceded he had been uncooperative with Bush administration officials who came to him with a list of demands. “I was stubborn. I am like George Bush this way,” mused Bashar.
Kerry asked Bashar how Hezbollah having 40,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel was going to be conducive to peace. Bashar argued that Hezbollah ultimately wanted peace, too, and that its chief, Nasrallah, was someone who could be trusted. “When he says something, he does it,” said Bashar.18
Later, Bashar invited Kerry and his wife to his private residence to meet Asma. The Asma-Bashar charm offensive was in full swing.19 The couples had dinner plans later that evening. Bashar casually asked Asma if she wanted to take her car or his. The four settled at a table next to a gurgling marble water fountain at Naranj, an upmarket Syrian-food restaurant in the old city. Waiters and waitresses in spotless white caftans served freshly baked pita bread and an assortment of appetizers.
At dinner, Bashar complained about a rise in the number of women wearing hijabs in Syria. “We want to be a secular country,” he told Kerry.20
What Bashar probably didn’t tell Kerry was that he, like his father before him, allowed mosques and Islamic schools and organizations to flourish so long as they stayed away from politics and remained under the mukhabarat’s watchful eyes. It was a way of gaining favor with large conservative segments of Syria’s Sunni majority and ensuring their loyalty to the regime. It was Bashar himself who in 2006 had officially sanctioned a previously secretive women-only Sufi order that actively preached wearing the hijab even for young schoolgirls.
Bashar’s complaints about the hijab echoed his double-dealing on almost everything. He denied that he was arming Hezbollah when he personally ordered the transfer of rockets and military hardware from Syria to Lebanon. He complained that he could not control the border with Iraq when it was he who instructed his mukhabarat to support insurgents and send suicide bombers to Iraq.21 He denied possessing chemical and biological materials, even as a military research center under his direct control was actively working to weaponize these substances. He raved about his accomplished wife but continued to have extramarital affairs because it made him feel strong.
At the end of dinner with Kerry and Heinz, Bashar signaled to his friend and Republican Guard commander Manaf Tlass to come over and greet the American visitors. Manaf had been dining with Thala at a nearby table.
“I am happy that someone like you is by the president’s [Bashar’s] side,” Kerry told Manaf.22
Toward the end of his stay in Damascus, Kerry met Michel Duclos, the French ambassador. Kerry, a fluent French speaker, said he believed he finally had a deal with Bashar on stopping the infiltration of foreign fighters to Iraq and sharing the identities of Al-Qaeda operatives. “This is a man we can do business with,” an upbeat Kerry told Duclos. Kerry was totally beguiled by Asma and Bashar, observed Duclos.23
Still, Kerry and most other American and European officials knew the nature of the regime they were dealing with and the dangers it posed. They were engaged in a high-stakes strategy of trying to pull Bashar away from the Iranians and Hezbollah. This, they believed, would stabilize Lebanon and Iraq and put Arab–Israeli peace talks back on a serious track. As for reform and change, they would come about as a result of an internal, organic, and gradual process once Bashar saw the benefits of engagement.
The underlying message to Bashar was that he could rest assured that the United States and its allies would do nothing to jeopardize his grip on power as long as he stopped using terrorism, murder, rocket supplies to Hezbollah, and a chemical-weapons program as bargaining chips.
“Bashar was like a reckless and stubborn kid carrying a crystal ball, and the Americans were gently and nicely trying to calm him down,” said Manaf.
The consistent message that Western diplomats were hearing from Manaf and others in the regime was that Bashar was not wedded to Iran and Hezbollah—they were more like mistresses—and that he would break away from them if he saw concrete rewards of engagement, like the end of US sanctions. Manaf often painted to Westerners a picture of a Bashar surrounded by bad and nasty people like his cousins, mukhabarat chiefs, and Iranian and Hezbollah operatives, but that he could free himself from their clutches if he was supported and enabled by meaningful steps from the West.
In fairness, though, Bashar himself did not hide from the Americans and Europeans the importance he attached to his relationship with Iran. “Iran supported my cause when the US was against me, when France was against me… How can I say no?” he said to late US senator Arlen Specter at the end of 2008.24
Bashar often argued that no settlement of the Middle East’s many problems was possible without the involvement of Iran and “resistance groups” like Hezbollah and Hamas.
A courtship of sorts between Bashar and the Americans followed Kerry’s 2009 visit. There were tit-for-tat concessions and rewards, progress, and lots of promise, but also some setbacks, uncertainty, and a back-and-forth over whether each side was committed enough to making things better. In response to Kerry’s prodding, the Syrians named their ambassador to Lebanon in March 2009, six months after their initial promise to the French. They allowed the American Language Center in Damascus to reopen but kept the American school (The Damascus Community School) closed. The Syrian ambassador in Washington enjoyed more access to US officials, and some export restrictions to Syria were eased, though not as far as Bashar had hoped for.
Bashar often peppered the near-constant stream of US congressional delegations and officials who flocked to Damascus to see him with statements like “Every step has a meaning,” “We need a road map for US–Syria relations,” “I won’t give it to you for free,” “We have to build from an absence of trust,”25 and “The media has not conveyed an accurate message—don’t read the facts [about Syria], see them.”
Then, in a clear snub to Washington, Bashar hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Damascus in February 2010, one week after Obama had nominated an American ambassador to Syria (something the regime constantly demanded). The Ahmadinejad-Nasrallah visit was billed as a summit, with a state dinner at the presidential palace. The militia leader, Nasrallah, had no official position in Lebanon, a country whose sovereignty Bashar had supposedly just recognized by appointing his ambassador to it, at Kerry’s urging. Bashar went further by mocking a statement by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the day before that Washington was asking Syria “to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran,” and Hezbollah. “We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed [an agreement with Iran] to cancel visas,” a laughing Bashar told reporters.26
Openly hosting Ahmadinejad, known for his highly inflammatory anti-American rhetoric, and Nasrallah, head of a group classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, could have been Bashar’s way of pressing Washington for more concessions.
Éric Chevallier, who had taken over the year before from Duclos as French ambassador to Syria, said that he interpreted the summit as perhaps the Iranians and Hezbollah trying to get Bashar back after his overtures to the Americans and Europeans. “This was exactly the triangle we were trying to break. We were worried but also feeling that if indeed they were trying to get him back then we were succeeding in some place,” said Chevallier.27
The reengagement with Bashar, though, was narrowly focused on the respective agendas of the countries involved: America mainly wanted Bashar’s help on Iraq and antiterrorism, while France’s priorities were Lebanon and business in Syria.
For its part, the regime was prepared to engage Western officials on almost everything, including how to deal with Pakistan as the Syrian foreign minister once did, but was absolutely adamant about keeping off the table the issues that ultimately mattered the most to average Syrians: launching genuine and deep reforms, breaking the dreaded mukhabarat and its unlimited powers, and fighting the scourge of corruption.
In a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde act, Bashar adopted a raft of new repressive measures at the same moment that he opened his arms to the Americans and French. On top of the long-standing state of emergency, the power to arrest without warrant, loosely worded “security provisions” in Syria’s Penal Code, torture, and forced disappearance, Bashar added more tools to the mukhabarat’s arsenal. They included a law imposing strict controls on all print material, monitoring the Internet and censoring websites, having final say on licensing NGOs, and increased use of travel bans to punish activists and dissidents. The measures were applied arbitrarily and unpredictably to keep everyone in a state of constant fear and completely at the mukhabarat’s mercy.28
In 2009, as Kerry dined with Bashar and praised him as someone he could do business with, the mukhabarat shut down the office of human rights lawyer Mazen Darwish for daring to investigate the regime’s brutal suppression of a riot at Saydnaya prison the year before, which had left at least seventy-five dead and fifty missing. Mazen found out that many Islamist prisoners felt betrayed by the regime, which rounded them up to please Washington and then started giving them harsh sentences, after having facilitated and encouraged their travel to Iraq to fight the Americans. One of Mazen’s friends and colleagues, who was sent to Saydnaya in 2005 for criticizing Bashar, was beheaded during the chaos of the rioting.29 Since 2008, Mazen himself had already been banned from traveling outside Syria, and his office had been closed once before, in 2006, after writing about the impact of Hariri’s assassination on Syria.30
Then, in the summer of 2009, came an event that forever changed how Mazen and his colleagues viewed and waged their struggle for freedom. Protests erupted in Iran over the results of the presidential elections that handed the incumbent Ahmadinejad a second term. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians, mostly supporters of reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, took to the streets in Tehran and other cities in what became known as the Green Movement. The Iranian regime’s response was swift and brutal, with dozens killed and hundreds arrested over almost a six-month period.31 With Iranian authorities banning traditional media outlets from covering the events, Iranians relied on social media, especially Twitter and YouTube, to get the news out.
“I thought so-called color revolutions were only possible in Europe, but what happened in Iran made me think it was also possible in our region ruled by police states and ideological and sectarian regimes,” said Mazen. “Iran 2009 was hugely important for a segment of Syrian youth. We started saying to each other, ‘Guys, hold on, we could do something like this, it’s not only political parties and traditional opposition.’”
While Mazen thought the moment was right to launch a grassroots movement for change in Syria, Bashar had already dismissed any possibility for political reform in his lifetime. He called activists like Mazen naïve and impressionable. “It’s like a young couple who want to get married because they think marriage is a great thing. They have strong emotions for one another, but then comes the reality shock,” he said, days before his triumphant trip to Paris in July 2008.32 It was a diplomatic version of what he often told Manaf in private: “You can only rule these people with the shoe.”
But “these people” were changing, and the tight lid that Hafez had kept on them and the country was easing, at least when it came to daily life. People walked around with cell phones, Internet cafés sprang up, satellite dishes overtook TV antennas on rooftops, and tourism blossomed. Contact with the outside world and its influences was increasing, no matter the censorship and monitoring by the country’s ever-present mukhabarat.
Still, Bashar never missed a chance to remind those asking for real change to consider Iraq’s mayhem and appreciate what he was accomplishing in Syria. New jobs were created and private investment was rising. Bashar brought them the Internet, private banks and schools, malls, hotels, and restaurants. Syria was becoming a destination. World and regional powers were clamoring to engage the young leader. Discerning tourists and famous people were coming to Syria. In 2009, Asma and Bashar met Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Damascus, and Manaf organized a tour of the country for one his favorite movie directors, Francis Ford Coppola.33 If Syrians wanted civil society and NGOs, then there were Asma’s many organizations. Religious associations? There were hundreds of state-sanctioned ones to choose from.
Change was indeed visible in big cities like Aleppo and Damascus. There were more cars, shops, and construction sites. The Agha Khan Foundation and the Germans were renovating old Aleppo, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. One could get lost all day in Aleppo’s vaulted souks with merchants selling everything from spices and local soaps to cell phones and bridal gowns. Old homes converted into charming boutique hotels with evocative names were opening every few months. In your room, you would probably find one of the many new glossy English-language magazines. The July 2008 issue of a magazine called Forward had Asma and Michele Obama on the cover with this title: “What Michele Obama Can Learn from Asma al-Assad.” In Damascus, the social scene and night life grew vibrant as new galleries, cafés, and rooftop bars opened throughout the city.
There were many Syrians who believed that their president and his wife were the best thing that ever happened to the country, and they made sure they told visitors this—but for the majority it was more making the best of the circumstances and forging ahead. Syrians in general were talented, resourceful, and incredibly adaptable, qualities that had nothing to do with Bashar and his regime.
“Two years in we realized nothing was going to change, but for Westerners they wanted to see what they wanted to see, not reality. They were saying Syria was opening up, but we would tell them this is an illusion, nothing has changed, we still have the mukhabarat on top of us and we have to pay bribes for everything,” said a Damascene businesswoman, who was among those who benefited from Bashar’s economic opening. “Experts came to fix this or that, the central bank, the government and so on—I cannot tell you how many experts came through—but the system remained the system.”34
The painter Khaled al-Khani argued with his friends over whether what they were seeing was genuine and sustainable or an “optical illusion,” as Khaled liked to call it.35 “It was our daily discussion,” said Khaled. “Many believed he had a vision and strategy—and they had a point, because something did change when he took over from Hafez. Things were changing on the surface, but in tandem there was massive mobilization through the ‘We love you’ campaign to penetrate and co-opt every segment of society: artists, actors, businessmen, and so on. The regime fully colonized society. You could say half of the Syrians worked for Rami Makhlouf, since he controlled half the economy.”
The new class of superrich crony capitalists had so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. They even rushed to buy Khaled’s abstract paintings, not recognizing that his works frequently depicted the violence and suffering inflicted by the regime. “They were fools, they just wanted to show themselves as patrons of the arts,” he said.
Beyond the image proudly presented by the regime to the world, by late 2010 there were many signs of growing discontent in Syria. A perfect storm of old grievances and new conflicts seemed to be gathering around Bashar. Most alarming was the problem posed by his cousins and business partners the Makhloufs.
Fueled by seemingly insatiable greed, they wanted to muscle in on any lucrative business opportunity, from major infrastructure projects involving big foreign companies to retail franchises. Rami Makhlouf told foreign investors that their projects would be obstructed by Syria’s notorious bureaucracy unless they worked through him.36 By the end of 2010, Rami’s companies controlled about 65 percent of the economy, according to an estimate by French ambassador Chevallier, who lunched with the magnate on occasion. Rami puffed on a Cuban cigar and did little to conceal his arrogance and pride. “He behaved like the king of the country,” said Chevallier.37
Rami always made sure Chevallier understood this message: We’re watching you and we know who you’re meeting with. Rami’s brother Hafez headed the Damascus branch of the General Intelligence Directorate, one of the mukhabarat apparatuses.
“We have the power and the money!” said Rami, banging his fist on a conference table during a meeting with some partners of Cham, the business cartel that he and Bashar had formed in late 2006. The partners were worried about the legality of a business decision that they were deliberating with Rami.
Another time, Bashar’s planning minister, Abdallah al-Dardari, a polished economist from a prominent Damascene family who had been handpicked by Bashar to market his reforms to the West, tried to convince Rami that it was wiser and ultimately more profitable in the long run if he did not seek to monopolize everything. “If you let the cake grow, your own piece will become bigger,” Dardari told him.
“I want the whole cake, Abdallah,” Rami replied.38
Bashar tried to rein in Rami and the Makhloufs on a couple of occasions, but their sway over him went beyond kinship. The Makhloufs forged a strong alliance with his ambitious wife, Asma.
“Asma loved money, and they [Makhloufs] showered her with expensive gifts,” said Manaf.39 Asma’s banking background meant that she shared Rami’s business acumen, and having Rami and the Makhloufs on her side strengthened her position in the family after the acrimonious clash with Bashar’s sister, Bushra.
With Bashar’s recipe for economic liberalization came cancer-like corruption that plagued the entire state. The attitude of civil servants, mukhabarat officers, and almost everyone connected to the state became this: Why should the president’s cousin, the big-shot businessmen, and regime officials be the only ones accumulating obscene fortunes? We deserve our cut—just crumbs compared to what these people are taking.
Discrepancies in income and living standards became staggering. Residents of the slums and rural areas around urban centers, what some called the “misery belts,” watched the newly rich inside the cities get richer and flaunt their wealth. The rich were also frantically building malls and condominium projects on the city’s outskirts, squeezing out the poor and marginalized even more. By 2009, almost 35 percent of Syria’s population of about 22 million was considered poor by the government’s own definition of poverty, an increase from previous years.40 This was hastened by a severe drought in the country’s northeast in 2006, which forced many farmers to abandon their land and flock to the cities.
Compounding the poverty and misfortune in the north was a new free-trade agreement that Bashar signed with Turkey. It made it harder for textile factories to compete with cheaper Turkish imports. Some closed and laid off workers. A fast-growing and more youthful and college-educated population, coupled with Bashar’s shift toward market-oriented policies, made it harder for the state to keep fulfilling its traditional role as the largest employer and provider of subsidized goods and services. By 2010, the real unemployment rate was estimated at 25 percent.41
“Hafez ruled Syria through a pact with the impoverished Sunni countryside. Sure, everyone was trampled on, but at least their basics were taken care of,” said Manaf.42
And even though urban Sunnis, especially families that were part of the regime’s business networks, benefited immensely, there were noneconomic sources of disgruntlement among segments of this crucial population group. By 2010, Sunnis had been pushed down to the seventh rank in terms of seniority in the army leadership, and this change had not gone unnoticed. “He did not think appearances mattered. His father would never have made this mistake,” said Manaf.
There was also bubbling resentment among Sunnis over Bashar’s open-door policy toward Iran and Hezbollah since 2005. They were not only his military and political partners, but they were also actively spreading Shiite faith in society, particularly in Damascus and remote, impoverished Sunni communities. Powerful Sunni clerics approached Western diplomats and pleaded with them to mention it to Bashar.43
Conservative Sunni Muslims also felt that the regime was waging war against them when, in 2010, it removed about 1,200 women from their teaching posts for wearing the niqab, a head-to-toe black cover that only reveals the eyes. The regime thought that its longtime pact with the Sunni clerical establishment, which hinged mainly on allowing mosques and religious schools to proliferate in return for allegiance, was enough to maintain its sway over much of the Sunni community. But people were increasingly exposed to other influences, mainly via satellite TV channels. Some saw the state-sponsored version of Islam ritualistic, unfulfilling, and too beholden to the regime. Syrians who traveled to Gulf Arab countries for work were affected by a harsh, puritanical, and overtly sectarian interpretation of Islam. And there were those who had gone to wage jihad in Iraq, often with help from the regime, only to return with a new militant take on Islam.
None of this was unique to Syria. Poverty, unemployment, injustice, corruption, and Islamic militancy infected all of the Arab world’s autocracies. But the social trauma had deeper roots in Syria, and the lid maintained by the police state was much tighter—more like a pressure cooker.
In December 2010, as Bashar and Asma were wooing the French in Paris, Mazen met with some of his friends and colleagues. After the mukhabarat closed his office in Damascus, he rented a place on the city’s outskirts where they frequently gathered. Since the 2009 protests in Iran, they had held several informal workshops on the use of social media applications like Facebook and Twitter and how to upload videos taken with a cell phone.44 Some even set up accounts with fake names on these sites and were already posting writings critical of the regime. They were absolutely fascinated by the power of these tools in reaching wider audiences.
“What are you guys doing?” asked Mazen’s wife, Yara, when she walked in that day.
“We are planning a revolution,” said Mazen.
“What! If it’s a secret, you really don’t have to tell me. But don’t tell me things like ‘We are planning a revolution,’” said Yara, visibly annoyed.
“I’m not kidding—we’re thinking how we could start a revolution,” said Mazen calmly.