The Assads of Syria: Part 3 — Bashar’s rise and fall

Bashar al-Assad was not his father’s first choice as his successor. His older brother Basil had been earmarked to succeed Hafez al-Assad, until his untimely death in a car accident in 1994 put paid to this eventuality.

Afterwards, Bashar was called back to Damascus from London, where he’d been studying ophthalmology with the kind of anonymity afforded the lesser sons in a dynastic line, to be groomed for leadership in his brother’s stead.

When his father died in 2000 Bashar al-Assad was 34 years age, making him staggeringly young to become leader of any state, much less one that sits in the eye of the geopolitical storm that is the Middle East. Moreover, where his father’s character had been molded against a background of poverty, struggle, and political violence, forging him into the formidable leader and political operator he became, Bashar had known only known privilege and affluence.

It meant that while his father possessed the strength and ability to govern in his own right, his son did not. Surrounding him were figures from his father’s inner circle — family members and close allies — who had a significant say in how things were done. It was government by clique and inner circle rather than one man, with Bashar al-Assad more a figurehead at the apex of the country’s power structure than the…