This is Part 4 of a four-part series by Shahira Salloum, managing editor of Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, reflecting on her January trip to Syria following the Assad regime’s collapse, where she spoke with locals about the dramatic changes underway in the country.
Click here for the rest of the series.
It is said that a fearless young man from one of Qardaha’s peasant families once took down a boastful Turkish wrestler who had been swaggering through the village, effortlessly throwing its young men to the ground one by one, with no one able to defeat him.
This was in the early 20th century, and that bold, rugged young man was Sulayman al-Wahhish.
Sulayman’s son, Ali, was just as impressive as his father. He could stick a cigarette paper to the trunk of a tree and shoot it with unerring precision.
Ali had a son with Na’isa — Hafez, an intrepid and diligent boy, who seized the opportunity for education and excelled beyond his peers.
Since ‘al-Wahhish’ (meaning ‘the Beast’) didn’t suit a family that produced such outstanding men, the villagers decided to give them a more fitting title. They went together to Sulayman and told him, “You are not a beast, you are a lion.”
Thus, in 1927, they changed the family name from al-Wahhish to al-Assad (meaning ‘the Lion’).
This fantastical tale is the origin story that Syria’s 18th president, Hafez al-Assad, born in 1930 and also known as Assad Sr, proudly promoted through journalist Patrick Seale to showcase his family’s legacy.
Rising from poverty
When Hafez was born, his village, Qardaha, consisted of around 100 earthen or stone houses. All the villagers in Qardaha were peasants, similar to other villages on the Syrian coast.
Hafez was raised in a poor household, and education was the only path available to him to ascend the social ladder. He was said to be the first from his village to leave for Latakia to get an education, as there were no schools in Qardaha.
While he aspired to become a doctor, this was impossible due to financial constraints. So instead, he joined the military, enrolling as an air force cadet at the Homs Military Academy, where he met his friend Mustafa Tlass, who would stand loyally by him throughout his rise to power.
Intellectually, Hafez was mentored by Dr Wahib al-Ghanim, a disciple of Syrian philosopher Zaki al-Arsuzi and co-founder of the Ba’ath Party.
Under Dr Wahib’s influence, Hafez embraced secular Arab nationalism, with Dr Wahib once describing him as “one of our fedayeen.”
At this time, Zaki – another poor son of Qardaha, whom we met in Damascus – was born, while Hafez was already battling rivals within the Ba’ath Party. He had joined the party early on, railing against class divisions and poverty: a soldier fighting with the peasants against the landowners.
Hafez worked secretly with five comrades, all from impoverished minority backgrounds (most notably Salah Jadid and Muhammad Umran), striving for an ideal where injustices would be addressed and wealth redistributed. They orchestrated two military coups – the first failed, but the second was successful.
However, the former co-conspirators soon turned on one another, and it was ultimately Hafez who triumphed through his cunning, caution, and patience.
Upon his appointment as defence minister in 1966, Hafez tightened his grip on every section of the military, aided by his friend Mustafa.
His final coup took place after the Ba’ath Party’s Emergency National Congress in October 1970, during which heated debates took place between Assad and others who accused him of adopting a capitulatory position towards Israel.
Following the congress, he arrested all his opponents, including Salah, who was imprisoned in Mezzeh Prison until his death in 1993.
After seizing power, Hafez abandoned his political past and the class struggle, shifting his focus to courting the urban middle classes, businessmen, and traders. In turn, these groups would start benefitting from their proximity to the regime.
While Hafez’s inner circle included non-Alawites, he firmly concentrated the regime’s security apparatus in the hands of the Alawite minority.
After the 1973 war, the intertwining of commerce and government reached its peak. Partnerships formed between businessmen and top officials, and lucrative clientelist networks flourished. A new class of wealthy elites emerged, along with a sectarian elite. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this wealth was Hafez’s brother Rifaat al-Assad.
While Hafez was preoccupied with consolidating his power and narrowing his inner circle, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few.
When Hafez fell ill in the 1980s, perceiving a threat, he began sidelining rivals within his immediate family, which led to a conflict with Rifaat. This culminated in the ‘war of the brothers’, during which Hafez famously declared, “You want to overthrow the regime? Here I am. I am the regime!”
At that time, Zaki — whom we mentioned earlier — was fleeing the poverty of Qardaha with his family, heading to Damascus to look for work. Some of his cousins and uncles remained behind in Qardaha.
Today, Zaki works as a technician at the Syrian Ministry of Communications, earning a salary of 280,000 Syrian pounds (around $22). In the afternoons, he drives a taxi in Damascus, where we met him at the start of the third week after the fall of the Assad dynasty’s rule.
It was the first time he had left his house since the opposition fighters entered the city, he said, glancing nervously from side to side and visibly uneasy.
Was he optimistic? He simply replied that the Syrian people were exhausted from the war and that what mattered most was for things to calm down.
Zaki wasn’t among the few beneficiaries of the previous regime, despite hailing from the same village and sect. He said the situation in Qardaha was no better than anywhere else. One of his cousins worked as a gardener at a villa belonging to a member of the Assad family, although he refused to specify which.
He was visibly reluctant to talk about the Assad regime and seemed anxious when asked about his family, saying only that he was alone in Damascus. Then, hurriedly changing the topic, he started lamenting the high levels of youth unemployment and sorrowfully spoke of his daughter, who had graduated with an engineering degree but had no job prospects.
Qardaha was the first place the opposition factions headed for, just 24 hours after entering Damascus. An opposition delegation met with prominent Alawite figures there and returned with a statement of support from them. This was their first exploratory step towards possible inter-communal peace after the fall of the regime.
When asked about the regime’s crimes, specifically those we had witnessed in the prisons, Zaki fell silent, then said: “I’ve heard of worse prisons, where horrific crimes are committed,” naming a number of Arab countries, seemingly at random.
The comparison seemed aimed primarily at easing his own feelings. He fell silent again, before uttering: “The President (referring to Bashar al-Assad) and his men destroyed us.”
There are numerous accounts detailing Bashar’s character and behaviour. For instance, while Hafez lay on his deathbed, Bashar reportedly visited him every morning to conduct personal medical checks. During this time, he would slip papers into his father’s hands for signatures — including documents facilitating the transfer of power.
One morning, Bashar entered the room to find his father had passed away. He allegedly locked the door, left, and told his mother that Hafez had requested not to be disturbed as he wanted to rest. He then hurried to his office, locked himself in, and called Mustafa, a close family ally.
Upon hearing the news, Mustafa ordered three military units to deploy at key locations in the capital, while Bashar’s brother, Maher, positioned his forces in a fourth strategic area. Only then did Bashar return to his mother and inform her of his father’s death.
Bashar was neither his father’s first nor second choice to inherit power. Bassel was the first but died. Then came Bushra, his father’s favourite, whom he considered clever and pragmatic.
After taking power, Bashar revealed a previously unseen side of himself. The shy, reserved persona disappeared — though his reputation as a womaniser remained. He attempted to project reckless strength, particularly when comparisons were drawn between him, his father, and his late brother, Bassel. In the early years of his rule, he gave the impression of openness to reform, allowing a brief period of relative freedom known as the ‘Damascus Spring’.
However, this lasted no more than a year. Ultimately, Bashar adopted an even harsher and more authoritarian approach than his father, marked by capriciousness and detachment — traits that would define his response to the Syrian uprising and its protests.
Syria’s coastal poor as fodder for the war
In 1994 — the year Bassel died — Zarda Khaddour arrived in Damascus from the village of Tayr Jubbah, near Masyaf, a religiously diverse city in Hama province. She came to work as a cook at a children’s hospital.
That same year, her father passed away in a Damascus hospital, but she could not afford the cost of transporting his body back home for burial.
Zarda worked at the hospital for 30 years before retiring, hoping her pension would allow her to start a small business — perhaps a shop or raising goats — in her hometown.
However, her pension of 280,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $22) was insufficient to support her family, forcing her to take a job as a waitress in a café, where we met her.
With undisguised emotion, Zarda insisted we visit Masyaf to witness firsthand the deprivation of its people, who lack electricity, water, and basic services.
“We were suffocated. We couldn’t talk about it. We were scared to say we were hungry. If we did, they would have killed or jailed us. Today, I’m no longer afraid. I was born poor, I lived poor, and I will die poor,” she said.
She turns to a colleague at the café and said, “This is my brother; we don’t know sectarianism.” She is Alawite, while he belongs to a different sect.
She asserts that her townspeople’s conditions are no better than hers — most are poor. As for the few wealthy individuals, she says, “We only saw them on TV.”
Zarda represents a large segment of Masyaf’s diverse population — impoverished people exploited by the regime as fodder for its war against its own citizens.
Rami Makhlouf’s Al-Bustan Association was active in Masyaf and the surrounding villages, recruiting impoverished Alawites from the coastal region for years to send them into war. Iran-backed militias also operated in the area.
Last September, Israel claimed to have carried out a ‘special’ operation in Masyaf involving 100 soldiers, dismantling what it said was an Iran-funded missile factory linked to the regime.
Like other impoverished towns, Masyaf became a major source of recruits for the regime’s Shabiha — the paramilitary gangs created and financed by Assad’s inner circle to kill, terrorise, and fuel sectarian divisions.
In the weeks after the regime’s collapse, angry protests erupted in Masyaf following reports that an Alawite shrine had been burned in Aleppo (that of Sheikh Abu Abdullah al-Hussein al-Khasibi).
These protests were part of a larger wave of demonstrations that broke out in various areas of the coastal region, Homs, and Hama, with sectarian slogans brandished and spread across social media.
The final struggle
We couldn’t visit Masyaf with Zarda, but a few days later, we were in Homs near Hadara Street, where a pro-regime demonstration had taken place the night before.
Fights had broken out between civilians, with sectarian chants from both sides. The area was now witnessing a massive deployment of armed fighters from the ‘Deterrence of Aggression’ group, who had stationed themselves along the ring road separating the two mixed areas.
They gave an ultimatum to ex-soldiers and members of the former regime’s paramilitary gangs, who had sought refuge among the neighbourhood’s residents, demanding they surrender themselves and their weapons.
A young man injured in the clashes the night before told us that the protestors had marched from Hadara Street towards the ring road in the city centre, chanting sectarian slogans, before throwing stones at the opposition fighters’ cars.
At that point, residents from the opposite street attacked the march, causing it to retreat. He says he struck one of the march participants, then Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters intervened to break up the clashes by firing into the air.
He starts telling us, almost instinctively, about the crimes committed against the residents of his neighbourhood by regime gangs entrenched in the opposite neighbourhood.
“We used to hide from them in the water tanks,” he recalls.
Another young local describes the area, currently under siege, as a stronghold of the ousted regime, which, over the recent period, had turned into an impenetrable fortress for its affiliated gangs.
Listening to the two young men, while observing the tense and heightened security situation, as well as video clips we were being sent, showing similar clashes, insults, and abusive chants, suggested a sectarian tension that could easily evolve into something more dangerous.
This friction appears to be more prominent in mixed areas like Homs than in areas considered strongholds of the former regime, like Latakia, which we couldn’t access due to security concerns.
However, we received reports from residents of that province that the situation had calmed, and that HTS troops had stationed themselves in front of the homes of wanted individuals, giving them ultimatums to surrender themselves and their weapons.
According to reports and leaks, the four main destinations to which members of the toppled regime are known to have fled are being monitored. These are Russia, where Bashar’s immediate family fled via the Hmeimim airbase; Iraq, where thousands of soldiers and officers escaped; and Lebanon and the UAE, where figures from the second tier of the regime sought refuge.
As for others involved in the massacre of Syrians, many “took refuge among the people in areas considered regime strongholds, where they are working to agitate and spread discord,” says an eyewitness who observed the sectarian clashes near the Homs ring road.
The death rattle of Iran’s influence
The death throes of the half-century-long Assad dynasty’s rule are accompanied by the death rattle of Iranian influence in the country, manifested by a wooden rhetoric lacking conviction, mechanically repeating promises of ‘the birth of a new resistance’ (against whom?).
This reflects the final withdrawal of Iranian influence from Syria, after a relationship lasting over 45 years.
The first contact between Hafez’s regime and Khomeini’s Iran dates back to the 1970s, when the Lebanese-Iranian cleric Musa al-Sadr played a key role in bringing his friend Hafez into contact with Khomeini. After the Iranian revolution triumphed, Assad congratulated Khomeini by gifting him a Quran decorated with golden letters.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Syria – under Assad – stood by non-Arab Iran, provoking the other Arab states, and Syria’s relationship with Iran evolved into a strategic alliance. However, Hafez was skillful in playing on Arab-Iranian relations.
Assad Sr’s decision to foster relations with Iran after the victory of its Islamic revolution was driven by his hatred for the Shah, who was allied with Israel, as well as his need to shore up external support in the context of his long-standing struggle against the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organisation in Syria, which he brought to a brutal close through the Hama massacre in February 1982.
As for the following era of Bashar’s relationship with Tehran, it reached new heights, with the country ultimately transformed into a strategic base for Iran and its militias.
At the beginning of his reign, Bashar showed more openness to dealing with foreign powers than his father, and they reciprocated, especially in light of the reformist tone he adopted.
The September 11 attacks of 2001 opened the door for him to engage in the global war on terror – he opened Syria’s prisons to US intelligence to carry out its infamous policy of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorist suspects were sent for interrogation to countries that used torture, including Syria. His antipathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood was a driving force behind this partnership.
Then came the US-led invasion of Iraq, which reinvigorated his alliance with Iran and saw Syria transform into a supplier of fighters by facilitating the movement of both Syrians and non-Syrians to fight alongside extremist groups in Iraq. Among these young fighters was the current leader of the Syrian interim administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani).
Rafic Hariri’s assassination in 2005 isolated Bashar internationally and regionally, while Iran deepened its control over Syria.
At the start of the Syrian revolution, Iran swiftly dispatched its forces to rescue its ally. However, as these efforts floundered, Bashar called on Russia’s help in 2015 – in exchange for military bases.
From there, it was just a matter of time before all the remaining strongholds of Syrian sovereignty fell like dominoes, and the country was violated from all sides by foreign mercenaries, armies, and intelligence agencies, while Israel rampaged unopposed through Syria’s skies in broad daylight.
Assad tried to play all sides until his allies rejected him even before his enemies, and he fled ignominiously into a wintry Damascene night, taking with him the final vestiges of Iranian influence that had penetrated his country so deeply.
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.
This article is taken from our Arabic sister publication, Al-Araby Al Jadeed and mirrors the source’s original editorial guidelines and reporting policies. Any requests for correction or comment will be forwarded to the original authors and editors
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