On June 21, 2012, Hassan Merhi al-Hamadah, an air force colonel, flew his Russian-made MiG-21 fighter jet from Al-Khalkhalah airbase in southern Syria and crossed the nearby border with Jordan.1 He told the Jordanians that he was defecting and asked for asylum. They allowed him to land in Al-Mafraq on their side of the border. He and his copilot got out of the plane, tore off their Syrian army insignias, and fell to the ground to pray and thank God for their safe passage. They were now part of the so-called Free Syrian Army, which said it was fighting for the people, not Bashar and his family.
The regime called Hamadah “a deserter and traitor to his homeland and military honor.” The day of his defection, about 125 people, nearly half of them from the army and security forces, were killed in fighting across the country. It was one of the bloodiest days since the start of the uprising in March 2011.2
The following day, Manaf was alone at home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus. It was the start of summer, and the squat cactus trees across from Manaf’s villa and other elegant residences were already laden with yellow and orange prickly pears, a fruit beloved by Damascenes. The cactus fields, separating the upscale quarter from a slum where people of humbler means still lived, were a reminder of Mezzeh’s past as farmland on the city’s fringe.
Manaf’s wife, Thala, and their two young boys, Hamza and Mounzer, had gone to Beirut, where the eldest son, Mustafa, attended college. Their daughter, Lamia, was at university in Montreal.
Manaf switched between news channels. Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera were still talking about the air force colonel’s defection and its significance.
“We have long called for members of the Syrian armed forces and members of the Syrian regime to defect and abandon their positions rather than be complicit in the regime’s atrocities,” said a Pentagon spokesman.3 A defected mukhabarat officer told Al Jazeera it was proof that the regime and the army were crumbling, and he urged all officers to defect as soon as possible because time was running out, as he put it.4
Manaf’s phone rang. It was his friend and fellow Republican Guard general, Talal Makhlouf, who came from the same family as Bashar’s maternal cousins (but more distantly related) and was a career military man, unlike other Makhloufs such as the mukhabarat chief Hafez and business tycoon Rami.5
“I have to see you, I have a message for you,” said Talal.
“Okay, I am home,” said Manaf. “Come by.”
Talal, stocky and clean-shaven, arrived shortly after. He was three years older than Manaf, but they were friends from their days at the military academy in Homs. Like Manaf, Talal had been part of the cadre of rising army officers around Bassel al-Assad, Bashar’s eldest brother and heir to the Assad family’s rule before he was killed in the 1994 car crash. Manaf offered his guest cardamom-flavored black tea.
“You must go see him tomorrow,” said Talal referring to Bashar as he sipped his tea, “but on condition there be no recrimination. Let bygones be bygones.”6
“What does he want?” said Manaf.
“I do not know,” responded Talal.
“Talal, tell me—what does he want?” insisted Manaf.
“He probably wants you to go on a mission to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to ask them to stop arming the rebels,” said Talal.
“Why me?” said Manaf, barely concealing his shock. “Let him send [Vice President] Farouq al-Sharaa, [Foreign Minister] Walid al-Moallem, or the defense minister.”
“You are more effective, and people will listen to you,” said Talal calmly.
“Really!” Manaf cried out. “Well, if I am more effective and people listen to me, why didn’t he take my advice and allow me to advance my peaceful solution?”
“Go,” said Talal, “go see him for your sake.”
“What do you mean?” snapped Manaf.
“Please go, I beg you,” implored Talal. “I am your friend and I am advising you to go for your sake. Think about it and give me your answer quickly. You must go see him, it’s imperative.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” responded Manaf.
What Talal did not know was that Manaf’s wife had gone to Beirut to secretly meet with French operatives and receive final instructions for their escape from Syria.7 The French had finally agreed to help Manaf get out, but it was not only about him; his wife, children, father, and in-laws all had to leave, too, and as soon as possible. No member of his immediate family could stay behind; in the eyes of the regime, all would be complicit in his defection.
There was already media speculation that the Tlasses were abandoning the Assads after his brother, Firas, and his wife, Rania, and their children left earlier in 2012 for Dubai, like many wealthy Damascenes, as international sanctions took effect and the conflict deepened.8 Firas posted a denial of his defection on his Facebook page, but talk persisted after the family patriarch, Mustafa Tlass, visited Paris in the spring of 2012 for what he said was a routine medical checkup.9
At the same time, hard-liners around Bashar, especially his brother and cousins, were ratcheting up pressure on Manaf to join “cleansing operations” that were still underway in Homs following the bloody attack on Baba Amr—or “liberation from terrorists,” as the regime put it. Bashar’s kinsmen wanted him to prove his loyalty and publicly dispel the defection rumors.10
“It’s not a choice between defeat or victory. We have to win,” said Bashar when he made a defiant televised appearance in Baba Amr around the first anniversary of the uprising, in March 2012.11
Manaf was convinced that his refusal to take part in the Homs military operation, coupled with talk of his family’s rift with the Assads, would sooner or later cost him his life. Either he had to become a killer like Bashar or be killed. He believed that the first warning shot from his enemies had come right after the Baba Amr assault, when a series of roadside bombs exploded inside his base in Damascus, wounding several of his soldiers.12 The bombs were planted on an internal road between his office and main gate.
His line to Bashar wasn’t going to offer protection for much longer, Manaf thought. It was Bashar himself, after all, who was overseeing the scorched-earth campaign against rebellious towns and cities.
While Bashar presided over the whole campaign, implementation and enforcement was the responsibility of what Manaf began to call “the trinity of hard-liners”: Bashar’s brother, Maher, his cousin Hafez Makhlouf, and Jamil Hassan, who headed the mukhabarat’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate.13 Hassan became de facto defense minister after Bashar removed Ali Habib and appointed Dawood Rajha, the chairman of the army’s joint chiefs of staff, as a figurehead defense minister in his place. Hassan, a ruthless and bloodthirsty regime veteran, mobilized forces and army equipment and resources as he, Hafez, and Maher saw fit. These men often got together at night to eat dinner and plot the next day’s killing.14
The troops increasingly resembled bands of killers rather than a conventional force.15 Those dispatched to rebellious communities were usually a mishmash of forces drawn from various army units and mukhabarat departments, as well as pro-Bashar thugs and militiamen. It was hard to distinguish who was who as they all wore the same military fatigues.
Officially, they were all called the Syrian army, but the reality was that the actual Syrian army was plagued by desertion, plummeting morale, and deep mistrust and suspicion. Pooling forces from across the army, mukhabarat, and militias and bringing them together under the army’s banner countered that. It ensured that people obeyed orders and watched one another for any hesitation or treason. Most of those sent on “cleansing missions” were Bashar loyalists who had no qualms about committing massacres in his name.
On paper, decisions on how to deal with what the regime was calling the azmeh, or “crisis,” had to be made by a committee of military, security, and mukhabarat chiefs as well as ministers and other government officials. It was called the Crisis Cell and its members included the defense minister and his deputy, Assef Shawkat, Bashar’s brother-in-law. The reality, however, was that the small circle of hard-liners under Bashar were calling the shots in close coordination with representatives of Iran and its main regional proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.16 Orders often went directly from this circle to field commanders, thus bypassing the Crisis Cell. Iran and Hezbollah weighed in on key decisions, since both had direct lines to Bashar and his tight circle.
Iran had significantly augmented the number of its advisers and operatives inside Syria and was already involved in providing training, weapons, communications, and Internet surveillance equipment as well as all forms of support to Syrian regime forces. In 2012 it was routine for Syrian commercial flights from Tehran to Damascus to transport crates of weapons and ammunition. “Iranian depots were wide open for the regime,” said a Syrian army officer sent to Iran for training.17
As Iran and Hezbollah witnessed the unraveling of the Syrian army from the inside, they worked on assembling more irregular forces and sectarian militias in Syria and they drew contingency plans for direct military intervention, if necessary, to save Bashar. “We are tens of thousands of well-equipped and trained mujahedeen fighters in Lebanon ready for martyrdom… We are a force… that will surprise every enemy,” boasted Hezbollah chief Nasrallah.18
Even with Iran and Hezbollah firmly behind him, it was still vital, domestically and internationally, for Bashar to keep up appearances that he was the president of a sovereign state with functioning institutions and laws.
In early 2012, as Bashar punished pro-opposition neighborhoods in Homs, the regime held a referendum on a new constitution that eased the ruling Baath Party’s monopoly on political life and allowed multi-candidate presidential elections, at least on paper.19 He wanted to show the world that he was in fact both “fighting terrorism” and “initiating reforms,” but on his own terms.
Ten days before the referendum, a dozen armed men decked with ammunition vests raided the office of activist and human rights lawyer Mazen Darwish. Mazen came out of his room to see assault rifles pointed at fifteen of his team members, including his wife, Yara.20 He had just been on a Skype conference call with fellow activists to discuss the launch of a new online publication titled We’ve Come Out for Freedom.
“What’s going on!” cried Mazen. “Who are you?”
“We’re from the security forces—isn’t it obvious?” said one of the gunmen.
“It’s not—what if you are terrorists? Show me your IDs,” insisted Mazen.
“We’re from the security forces and we’re here to search the office,” said the same armed man.
“Do you have a warrant?” demanded Mazen. “The president repealed the emergency law. You can’t just barge into private property without a warrant.”
“We received a tip about an imminent bomb attack on a kindergarten in the area, so we didn’t have time to get a warrant,” said the man.
“Well, you better hurry up and search the office before the bomb goes off,” said Mazen sarcastically.
A few hours later, Mazen and his team were all handcuffed and led down to the street. There were more gunmen in a convoy of vehicles that included a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted to its back. The entire neighborhood had been cordoned off. The central bank building and the Laïque, the exclusive school that Bashar and Manaf had attended, were nearby. Some neighbors and shopkeepers gathered on the opposite side of the street to watch as the manacled activists waited for regime buses to take them to prison.
Mazen found out that the arresting force was from the mukhabarat’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, headed by the dreaded Jamil Hassan, responsible for some of the most heinous crimes committed against protesters since March 2011.
Mazen and his team were taken to the Mezzeh Airbase, where men and women were separated and Mazen was held apart, blindfolded, handcuffed, and thrown onto the floor of the hallway outside the prison cells. His captors put a blanket over his head.
He was like that for almost three days before his first interrogation with an officer. The following day he was taken to what appeared, from the glimpses he managed, to be a big office. A voice instructed his guards to take off his handcuffs but keep him blindfolded. Mazen would later find out from his interrogators that he was in the presence of the notorious Jamil Hassan himself.21
“You’re Mazen?” Hassan quipped.
“Yes,” said Mazen.
“Let’s see now,” mused Hassan, “what don’t you like about Bashar al-Assad?”
“There’s really nothing personal between us,” replied Mazen, “but I don’t like presidents who are turned into Gods and eternal leaders. I want a president who is a government functionary serving a limited term and whose powers are kept in check.”
“What are you working on?” demanded Hassan.
“Freedom of press and expression and documentation,” said Mazen.
“What are you documenting? You want to take us to The Hague!” site of the International Criminal Court, shrieked Hassan.
“Why The Hague?” Mazen said calmly. “I am documenting for the transitional justice program here in Syria. It’s nothing new, I have been working on it since 2005 and you know that.”
“But aren’t you also corresponding with entities outside Syria?” persisted Hassan.
“No,” said Mazen.
“You think you’re the leader of a popular revolution, Che Guevara,” Hassan mocked. “You want to topple the regime.”
“Leader no, Guevara no, topple the regime, as in ‘change and reform,’ yes. This is something I speak and write about openly. I am for change, but you know I am absolutely against bearing arms and fighting—you know my position,” said Mazen.
“We’ll see about that,” said Hassan threateningly.
Before his arrest, Mazen had turned down an offer to leave Syria, at least momentarily, from Éric Chevallier. Chevallier was providing many activists and regime opponents, who feared arrest or worse, with laissez-passer papers permitting them to enter France, given the exceptional circumstances.22 This type of document is similar to that given to French citizens who lose their passports, and the prospect of obtaining one was a big deal for those anxious to flee Syria.
Mazen and his colleague Razan Zeitouneh had a heated argument as they tried to convince one another to accept Chevallier’s offer.23
“Leave, please! We actually need you more outside Syria,” said Razan, referring to the role Mazen could play while abroad in rallying financial and political support for their cash-strapped Local Coordination Committees.
“You’re the one who should leave,” responded Mazen. “You’re in hiding anyway.”
A month after Mazen’s arrest, Chevallier left Damascus as France and allies Britain, the Gulf Arab states, and Turkey shut their embassies and recalled their diplomats.24 Like the other ambassadors who left Damascus, including America’s Robert Ford,25 Chevallier would remain his country’s envoy for Syria but would now operate from abroad.
By early summer 2012—as Bashar’s forces committed unspeakable horrors while his allies sat on his war council and as America’s Gulf Arab allies dumped arms and cash and fueled militancy on the opposition side—the United States and its Western allies were putting their weight behind a six-point plan to be implemented by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in his capacity as a joint United Nations–Arab League envoy to Syria.
The plan called for a ceasefire by all parties and mainly committed the regime to work on a political process to meet the “legitimate aspirations” of its people, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, release detainees and political activists, respect the right to protest, and allow free access to the media.26
In tandem, the United States and its Western allies said they were doing everything they could, short of direct military intervention, to weaken Bashar and his regime. They openly encouraged defections in the army, security forces, and government. They doubled down on economic sanctions, throwing the net wider to include all those associated with the Assad family and regime. The assets of Bashar’s wife, mother, sister, and sister-in-law were frozen, and they were all banned from travel to European Union member states or even from shopping online with European firms.27 The Group of Friends of the Syrian People, composed of more than sixty countries, was created to serve as a conduit for supporting the opposition. These countries recognized the Syrian National Council as a “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.28 On top of that, the United States and its Western allies gave the nod, albeit covertly, to regional countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to boost the arming and funding of the Free Syrian Army factions fighting Bashar.29
The United States and its Western allies wanted to put sufficient pressure on Bashar through sanctions, defections, and the armed opposition building up on the ground so he would capitulate and agree to some sort of a political settlement, including his departure from the country.
This strategy assumed that the regime derived its strength from the army, government, and other institutions found in normal states, when in fact the underpinnings of this regime were the family and clan, more than two million Alawites, the mukhabarat system, the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and Iran. Tens of thousands of soldiers and officers, a prime minister, and other government officials ultimately defected, but all were peripheral to the regime. They were not part of its nerve center.
As the pressure increased on Bashar in the spring and summer of 2012, he hit back harder and more indiscriminately and viciously. He knew that nobody was going to intervene to stop him.
“This is a much more complicated situation,” reasoned President Obama in early March 2012. “The notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military, that hasn’t been true in the past and it won’t be true now. We’ve got to think through what we do through the lens of what’s going to be effective, but also what’s critical for US security interests.”30
With fresh support from regional countries in the spring and summer of 2012, groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) significantly increased the scale, intensity, and effectiveness of their guerilla assaults on regime forces, especially on the outskirts of Damascus, in Homs city and surrounding areas, and the provinces of Aleppo, Hama, and Idlib, farther north.
In response, the regime mobilized heavier weapons, including helicopter gunships and some air assets, and committed gruesome massacres against civilians in several areas where the FSA had support and sanctuary.
This had a chilling impact on the conflict dynamics, making it look increasingly like a civil war between the mostly Sunni rebels and their supporters, on one side, and on the other, the Alawite-dominated regime and its core minority constituencies.
The regime’s increased bloodiness undermined the credibility of the main opposition body, the Syrian National Council, already beset by infighting, schisms, and the conflicting agendas of regional states. For average Syrians in areas under attack, what good was a council recognized by more than sixty countries if it could not rally international support to protect them and stop the massacres? Why are not the Friends of the Syrian People saving them from the carnage?
On the last Friday of May 2012, regime forces stationed in Al-Houla, a cluster of towns northwest of Homs, opened fire on an anti-regime protest. Almost all residents were Sunni. This provoked an attack by rebels on regime positions and checkpoints in the area. Clashes followed, and then the regime began shelling the area with mortars and artillery. Several civilians were killed, and when rebels appeared to have been repulsed, pro-Bashar militias from surrounding Alawite and Shiite towns came in and went on a rampage, executing people and looting property. More than a hundred people were killed, most of them from two families known for supporting the opposition.31 It was a grim scenario that repeated itself in several other towns and villages.
Images of Houla residents shrouding their dead in white, according to Islamic tradition, and holding a mass burial reverberated across the world. Manaf and Thala could not sleep that night.
Thala called Asma in the morning.32
“Why this massacre in Houla?” demanded Thala. “Why did this happen? Lots of people were killed.”
“What massacre?” Asma shot back. “What are you talking about? I have heard nothing. More importantly, where is your husband, why is not he taking part in the battles against terrorists?”
On June 20, 2012, almost a month after the Houla massacre, Asma headed to the Al-Fayha sports complex in Damascus to spend time with youth from the country’s Paralympics team. It was a chance to make a public display of the regime’s compassion and show that she was going about her business as normal. To Syrians buckling under her husband’s bombs, she looked cruel and evil.
Asma wore bell-bottom jeans, a fashionable belt with a big buckle, high heels, and a navy T-shirt emblazoned with this slogan in white Arabic calligraphy: “You’re beautiful, my country!” She casually walked into an indoor court where she greeted the children with smiles, handshakes, and kisses. Portraits of Bashar and Hafez loomed above.33 She played badminton with two boys and cheered others as they dribbled and shot basketballs into nets. Nearby, cameramen filmed Asma and the children.
Two days later, Thala returned from Beirut, where she had met French secret service agents to discuss the plan to get Manaf and the family out of Damascus. Their two youngest children, Hamza and Mounzer, flew from Beirut to a summer camp in Switzerland, something they have done each year. The eldest son, Mustafa, stayed in Beirut for now in order not to arouse suspicion.
Manaf worried that he was endangering his wife, but she was the one who insisted on being central to the operation every step of the way. They had talked about it endlessly during many sleepless nights. She was convinced that it was the only way to protect her husband and children; they had to make the leap, there was no looking back.
“Everything is okay and I gave them the name of the man and they’ll call him,” Thala scribbled on a piece of paper as she and Manaf sat next to each other in their living room. “The departure will be within a week.”34
They assumed that the house was bugged and that all their phone conversations and e-mails were monitored. There were three mukhabarat cars watching the house—two were on their street and one was on the Mezzeh Highway near the Jala’a Stadium.
The man Thala referred to was the intermediary between her husband and the smugglers tasked by the French to get him out of Syria. All communications between Manaf and the smugglers had to be through the intermediary. He was a former army officer who had served under Manaf’s father before becoming a teacher of Arabic literature and poetry. He had remained loyal to the family.
The French instructed them to choose someone Manaf could trust but who was not a member of the family or particularly close to him.
“Someone will call you. This person is a source of security to me. Go see him and then let me know what he says,” Manaf told the intermediary without giving more details.35
Thala stayed in Damascus for three days. One night they hosted friends for dinner, and on a second night they went out to dinner at a restaurant in Damascus. They wanted to give the impression that everything was normal. Thala left again for Beirut on June 25.
The next day, Talal Makhlouf called Manaf again. He wanted to know when he was going to see Bashar.36
“Have you spoken to him?” asked Talal. “How did it go?”
“Not yet, but I will soon,” responded Manaf. The window was closing. He had to leave. It was now or never.
The following day, June 27, the intermediary came to see Manaf at home.
“I met Abu Alaa and we have to see him tomorrow,” he said. Abu Alaa was the smuggler connected to the French. He wanted to finalize plans with Manaf in person.
The next morning, Thursday, June 28, the intermediary waited for Manaf in an alleyway next to a cemetery. Manaf put on jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, pretending he was going for a morning walk. The cemetery was about ten minutes away on foot. About a thousand British soldiers were buried in the Damascus Commonwealth War Cemetery, an immaculately maintained grassy plot with rows of tombstones and large cypress trees on the perimeter. Nearly half of the soldiers had perished in a cholera and influenza epidemic that struck Damascus in October 1918.37 They were part of a contingent that entered the Syrian capital as liberators after defeating the Ottoman Turks. The British were supporting Arab tribesmen in a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was unraveling in the waning days of World War I. The two victorious European colonial powers, Britain and France, were staking their claims to Ottoman dominions, and by capturing Damascus the British hoped to beat the French and install a loyal Arab king to rule over much of the Levant. One of the masterminds of this plan was a British officer by the name of T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. He, along with British generals and the future King Faisal, were among those who marched into Damascus that fall. Eventually Britain lost Syria to France in the carve-out that ensued.
“Good morning, let’s go,” said Manaf as he jumped into the intermediary’s car parked next to the cemetery’s outer wall.38
They made their way through alleyways and got on the Al-Motahalik al-Janoubi, the flyover that ringed Damascus. This was the only spot where it seemed the mukhabarat had not posted people to watch Manaf, or so he thought.
The car sped east and then swung up north. Fifteen minutes later they were in front of Hameesh Hospital in Barzeh on the city’s northeast side.
“Okay, come back to the same spot in thirty minutes,” said Manaf as he got out.
The moment was tense for him, but residents of the capital were still going about their daily routines. There was traffic on the streets. A crowd of people lined up at a nearby bakery to buy packs of pita bread, one of the staples still subsidized by the regime.
Manaf crossed the street. He spotted a bearded man in his thirties pacing on the sidewalk and asked him, “Are you Abu Alaa?”
“Yes! How did you know? You must be Abu Nizar,” said the man, referring to Manaf by an adopted pseudonym.
“Yes, I am,” said Manaf.
“We have to leave this Sunday because my cover has been blown,” said Abu Alaa.
Abu Alaa, a native of Homs, was up until then a liaison between rebels in the city and surrounding countryside and the mukhabarat. Sometimes he interacted with the most senior figures in the mukhabarat, people like Ali Mamlouk and the ruthless Bashar loyalist Jamil Hassan. Abu Alaa passed messages between the rebels and regime. Sometimes they needed to work out temporary ceasefires or exchange detainees and bodies. Abu Alaa was the go-to fixer for these arrangements. People like him were indispensable in every war. Abu Alaa also worked for the rebels to ferry people, weapons, cash, journalists, and just about anything they needed across the porous border between the Homs countryside and Lebanon. He tried to evade the mukhabarat’s surveillance, but he’d just been summoned by them to explain why he had made a call to the city of Tripoli in Lebanon. He was convinced it was a trap and that he was going to be arrested, so he planned to skip the appointment and instead smuggle Manaf and remain on the rebel side in Homs for good.
“I cannot leave Sunday,” said Manaf, “it’s impossible.”
“Why?” asked Abu Alaa nervously.
“It’s just not possible,” said Manaf, not wanting to explain further.
Manaf had booked a seat for his father on Monday on the flight to Cyprus. The family had a summer vacation home on the eastern Mediterranean island, just across Syria’s coast. The elder Tlass spent almost every summer there, especially after his wife, Lamia, passed away in 2006. His departure was perfectly normal. But the problem was that there were only two flights a week from Damascus, Monday and Thursday. Manaf was not going to risk exposing his father to detention by the regime if he left a day earlier on Sunday. They both had to leave on the same day.
“Monday is not going to work,” said Abu Alaa.
“Okay,” said Manaf, “I am not going, then.”
A tense silence followed as they strolled along the busy road. Speeding by were ubiquitous boxy yellow taxi cars made in Iran and buses blowing out black smoke. This was one of the busiest thoroughfares in Damascus. The working-class district of Barzeh and nearby Qaboun were among the first areas in the capital to protest against Bashar.
“I guess I have no choice,” Abu Alaa said finally. “I’ll take a chance, I won’t go see the mukhabarat on Sunday.”
“Meet me further up the road across from Ibn al-Nafees Hospital on Monday at 1:00 p.m. sharp,” added Abu Alaa. “But it has to be Monday or never.”
He shook Abu Alaa’s hand and crossed the street. The intermediary was already there waiting in his blue Lada. Manaf was in a race against time.
That day an Iranian television station aired an interview with Bashar. He did his best to maintain his usual cold, detached facade, but there was also an undertone of menace. Bashar called his opponents “a mix of criminals,” “mercenaries,” and “illiterates.” He assured his Iranian patrons that he was not budging, no matter the pressure from the West and its Arab allies, and that he remained firmly anchored in Iran’s so-called axis of resistance. He said that the West was going to think twice before intervening in Syria because it knew that this could provoke a major “earthquake” in the region—another one of his favorite analogies.39
The next day, Friday, June 29, a pro-regime businessman whom Manaf called Abu Ali came to see him. Abu Ali was Alawite, from the same sect as Bashar, and had close dealings with Bashar’s maternal cousins the Makhloufs, including Rami, the businessman, and Hafez, the security chief. He was also on good terms with the Tlasses. Mustafa Tlass had often lunched with Abu Ali.
“Abu Mustafa [that is, Manaf], you must go see the Makhloufs,” Abu Ali told Manaf as they sipped coffee.40
Now, thought Manaf, they were sending him Abu Ali after Talal Makhlouf had failed to bring him around.
“Go see them,” pleaded Abu Ali, “I kiss your hand.”
“Okay, organize dinner with Abu Rami,” said Manaf, coolly referring to Bashar’s maternal uncle, Mohammad Makhlouf.
“I’ll call Hafez [Makhlouf] now,” said Abu Ali.
Abu Ali pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called Hafez Makhlouf, a man who had undermined Manaf’s conciliatory moves toward protesters every step of the way—the same man who personally killed and tortured protesters.
“I am at the general’s home, and he wants to come over for dinner,” said Abu Ali, who then gestured with his other hand toward Manaf to ask him when he wanted to do it.
“Tuesday is good,” said Manaf.
It was one day after Manaf’s planned exit.