- Title: Profile of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
- Date: 1st March 2020
- Summary: BARZAH DISTRICT, DAMASCUS, SYRIA (FILE - APRIL 14, 2018) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SMOKE RISING FROM RUBBLE OF DESTROYED BUILDINGS SAID TO BE PART OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CENTRE, VEHICLE ON STREET, DESTROYED BUILDING
- Embargoed: 15th March 2020 14:30
- Keywords: Asma Assad Assad meeting Khamenei Bashar al-Assad file Syrian conflict chemical attacks profile timeline
- Location: VARIOUS
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- Country: Various
- Topics: Government/Politics,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA021C47J0HZ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: CONTAINS GRAPHIC MATERIAL
RESTRICTION IMPOSED LOCALLY BY IRANIAN AUTHORITIES
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's accession to office at the age of 34 was not assured when his hasty grooming process was cut short by his father's sudden death in June 2000 after ruling Syria for three decades. Hafez al-Assad's heir apparent had been Bashar's elder brother Basel until he was killed in a car crash in 1994.
Within hours of Hafez al-Assad's death, the Syrian parliament amended the constitution in Bashar's favour, cutting the minimum age for the president from 40 to 34.
He was then appointed commander of the armed forces and elected secretary of the ruling Baath Party's Regional Command, the party's top policy-making body.
Following his nomination for president by parliament, Assad won overwhelming support in a single-candidate nation-wide referendum. He was formally sworn in for a seven-year term on July 17, 2000 and vowed to preserve his father's unyielding policy towards Israel alongside promises to reform the ailing economy.
He kept relatives and members of his minority Alawite faith -- an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam -- in key positions of authority around him.
Assad's first visit abroad after taking office was to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, aimed at bolstering Syria's position in the stalled peace process with Israel. He emulated his father's insistence that any peace treaty with Israel must include the return of all land captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
During a historic visit to Syria by Pope John Paul in May 2001, Assad attracted a storm of protest when he accused Jews of betraying Jesus Christ and attempting to kill the Prophet Mohammed. The remarks were widely condemned as anti-Semitic, and although Assad claimed he was misunderstood, successive controversial comments have continued to cause outrage.
In January 2001 Assad married British-born economic analyst Asma al-Akras. The Syrian first lady accompanied her husband on most state visits abroad and played an active part in promoting the role of women in business and initiating credit schemes to encourage sustainable development in rural areas.
Seeking better ties with Ankara, Assad became the first Syrian president to visit Turkey in January 2004. Decades of poor relations between the neighbouring countries had been caused by rows over territory, shared water resources and Syria's tacit support for Kurdish separatists fighting in southeast Turkey. The two countries came to the brink of war in 1998 before Damascus expelled Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Increasingly at odds with Washington, Assad urged Russia to revive its influence in the Middle East. During Assad's fist official visit to Moscow, in January 2005, Russia agreed to write off 73 percent of Syria's Soviet-era debt. The move was seen as a sign Moscow wanted to boost its Middle East role and was ready to take its relations with Syria to a new level.
Assad's toughest test since succeeding his father came in February 2005 following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Lebanese opposition figures blamed Damascus for the killing and thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to demand Syria end 30 years of military presence and political sway in their country. Assad has always insisted Damascus had no role in the killing.
Faced with mounting Arab and international pressure, Assad announced the complete pullout of the 14,000 troops who had remained in Lebanon since Syria's 1976 intervention in the country's civil war.
In May 2007 Assad was returned for a second seven year term, winning 97.6 percent of the vote in an uncontested presidential referendum.
In December 2009 Rafik al-Hariri's son Saad al-Hariri arrived in Damascus on his first official visit to Syria since forming a unity government under his leadership. The visit eased nearly five years of animosity between Damascus and Hariri's "March 14" political alliance which often clashed with Syria's allies in Lebanon, led by the powerful Iranian-backed group Hezbollah.
Six months later Saudi King Abdullah accompanied Assad on a visit to Lebanon in a dramatic attempt to avert a crisis over possible indictments of Hezbollah members in the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri. It was Assad's first visit to Beirut since Rafik al-Hariri's death.
During his years in power, Syria became Iran's closest Arab ally. Assad portrayed his country as a champion of Arab resistance to Israel, maintaining his foreign policy protected him from the public anger which swept the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya from power in 2011.
Nevertheless, protests against his rule erupted in March 2011 in conservative rural regions and spread to Damascus. Assad sought to crush the protests with a fierce security crackdown while at the same time his government approved legislation to lift nearly 50 years of emergency rule and allow parties other than the ruling Baath Party to be established.
Months of escalating violence and a mounting death toll alienated even sympathetic Arab neighbours.
Assad remained defiant and was able to rally huge crowds for a state-organised demonstration in January 2012. The following month Russia and China vetoed a resolution in the United Nations Security Council, backed by the Arab League, calling for him to step down.
In July 2012 a suicide bombing in Damascus delivered the heaviest blow yet to Assad's rule, killing his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, his Defence Minister Daoud Rajha and two senior security officials. The killings were swiftly followed by the defection to the opposition of his Prime Minister Riyad Hijab.
Assad's public appearances grew rarer as the rebellion gathered force.
Rebel factions, led by jihadists from the former al-Qaeda affiliate and also including Free Syrian Army groups, fought fiercely against government forces and took large parts of the country away from Assad's control.
But from 2015, Assad slowly regained the upper hand with the help of Russian air power and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, who helped deliver the defeat of the last rebels near the capital Damascus and the city of Homs, and allowed him to recover the southwest in a matter of weeks.
Assad has also recovered part of the frontiers with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and says he will press ahead.
However, Assad's path to a final victory in the war in Syria is strewn with diplomatic landmines that will complicate his attempt to recover "every inch" of the country and may leave big areas out of his grasp indefinitely.
Declaring the return of "normal life", his Russian allies are urging refugees to come home, saying there is nothing to fear from Assad's government, though many people continue to flee areas that are falling back under its control.
But with Russia in the ascendancy, there is no sign of the kind of negotiated political transition which the West has said is needed to unlock its support and to encourage the bulk of the millions of refugees in Europe and the Middle East to return.
Almost all of northern Syria remains outside his grasp. Hostile Turkish and U.S. backed forces have carved out separate spheres of control on Syrian territory. Assad wants Turkey, which has backed Sunni rebels, to remove its troops from Syrian territory and end its support for rebels.
As the conflict enters its eighth year, all efforts have so far failed to make progress toward a political settlement to end the eight-year civil war. The United Nations says the conflict has killed approximately 400,000 people, displaced 6.6 million internally and more than 5.6 million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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