True to his crafty nature, the wished bandit doubtless fled at evening.
Bashar al-Assad, reportedly along with his spouse and three grownup youngsters in tow, made a hasty escape to keep away from the stiff comeuppance he so richly deserves.
It was, in fact, the predictable coda of a coward who, having prompted a lot grief, loss, and struggling for therefore many a long time, sought refuge in a spot far-off from the scene of his lengthy listing of horrific and deadly crimes towards decency and humanity.
So, al-Assad now calls Russia, not Syria, dwelling. He’s a visitor of his welcoming patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin – fittingly, one other fugitive from justice accused of struggle crimes.
Syria’s odious man on the run introduced alongside, little doubt, a wholesome sum of looted cash or gold to finance the comfy life that he and his complicit accomplice, Asma, are accustomed to.
The pair of outlaws in designer outfits will, I believe, stay holed up in a sprawling “protected home” someplace in Russia’s huge expanse for the rest of their wretched lives.
In the meantime, exhausted Syrians – who, for the second, are celebrating a dictator’s sudden demise – will attempt, as greatest they will, to get well and rebuild within the wake of a grinding civil struggle that disfigured their beloved homeland yr after debilitating yr.
However, I believe, the al-Assads’ new life in a “overseas” land – past simply geography – will all the time be shadowed by worry and the gnawing sense of uncertainty that usually accompanies gangsters on the lam.
There, Bashar and Asma will rot – in the event that they possess even a speck of what may charitably be described as a conscience – steeped within the information of the appalling scope of distress that they’re accountable for.
They are going to by no means escape that indelible stain.
Regardless of the revisionism now on obscene show in Western capitals and newsrooms, Bashar and Asma had many – seems fair-weather – associates in those self same Western capitals and newsrooms who declare, unconvincingly, that, all of the whereas, they hoped that the “butcher” in Damascus would face the type of punishment he meted out with out hesitation or regret.
It’s the acquainted rhetorical pantomime that Western capitals and newsrooms are practiced at acting on dependable cue each time but yet another of their once-feted secure of “good man” autocrats conveniently mutates right into a “unhealthy man” pariah.
Bashar’s pop, Hafez, was thought-about a “good man” autocrat by many Western leaders and institution media regardless of a sordid historical past of brutality that his obedient son promptly adopted when he took over as Syria’s despot-in-permanent-residence in 2000.
In 1990, Hafez al-Assad – a sociopath in a well-tailored go well with who ordered the navy to annihilate 20,000 Syrian “rebels” throughout a three-week siege in 1982 – was rehabilitated by then US President George Bush senior. On the time, the caked-in-blood tyrant was seen as a helpful regional ally who may blunt Iraq’s affect.
Relations between Washington and Damascus largely remained cozy for the rest of the twentieth century and effectively into Bashar’s tenure as president within the contemporary millennium.
From the beginning, Bashar – with the keen assist of Asma, a telegenic, London-educated former banker – camouflaged his ruthlessness behind an agreeable, PR-crafted “narrative” that the couple have been symbols of a progressive, secular Syria that Western prime ministers and presidents and a number of simply duped reporters apparently discovered so beguiling.
Bashar was an authoritarian with an ingratiating smile.
All of it, each contrived facet of their staged act, was a lie meant to persuade the gullible that Bashar had damaged from his father’s ugly modus operandi and to stymie any Western “intervention” that may infringe on the brand new president’s capability to train absolute energy.
Commerce and tourism flourished. European parliamentarians made common visits to al-Assad’s palace underneath the flimsy guise that, according to 1 French senator, it was “higher to talk with Bashar than with Daesh [ISIS/ISIL]” and extolled his function because the defender of “Japanese Christians”.
In 2001, that paragon of the worldwide rules-based order, faux “socialist” British Prime Minister Tony Blair, made a pilgrimage to meet Bashar – a fellow charlatan he may clearly, to borrow a phrase, do enterprise with.
A flock of British journalists followed go well with to pen items brimming with reward and platitudes about Syria’s philanthropic first household bent on “modernising” the nation in enlightened methods earlier than – shock, shock – Bashar grew to become an unrepentant mass assassin who killed scores of Syrian youngsters, girls, and males with chemical weapons and Scud missiles.
The nadir of the embarrassing sentimentality appeared in Vogue, a US-based journal that pays groveling homage to fairly celebrities, together with Asma al-Assad.
In a infamous little bit of hagiography published in 2010, Vogue described Asma as “the freshest and most magnetic of first girls” – proving that magnificence, when mixed with a refined, articulate persona, might be leveraged even by probably the most pedestrian swindlers to cover the reality.
Vogue compounded its damage on journalism and truth by affixing the next headline to a fawning profile of Bashar’s ever-faithful right-hand lady: “A Rose within the Desert”.
I, for one, sincerely hope that that “rose” wilts in Russia’s harsh and wintery climes.
Solely a yr later, Syrians, impressed by the probabilities of the Arab Spring, took en masse to the streets in anti-government protests.
Bashar’s fraudulent masks slipped, revealing a killer who would, in due and deliberate course, outdo his repellant dad on the atrocities scale to cling to place, energy, and privilege as civil struggle loomed.
The smitten Western leaders and journalists placed on a feeble present of supposed solidarity with Bashar’s thousands and thousands of victims – imprisoned, tortured, raped, condemned, or pressured to flee as refugees in neighouring states.
Earlier this yr, the European Union (EU) was joyful to forgive and neglect the carnage and agony that Bashar al-Assad had wrought.
Italy restored diplomatic relations with Assad’s regime in July. And, in November, Michael Ohnmacht, the cost d’affaires of the EU delegation to Syria, posted a brief video on Instagram and X to commemorate his return to the sunny capital.
Ohnmacht supplied besieged and traumatised Syrians his greetings and defined that his presence amounted to tangible proof of the EU’s resolve to “assist the Syrian individuals for a greater, extra affluent and peaceable future”.
The grinning diplomat ended his introduction this fashion: “I’m trying ahead to our widespread endeavours within the coming years.”
Impeccable timing.
The EU was poised, it seems, to increase al-Assad an inviting, however certified, embrace.
Alas, he has disappeared to avoid wasting himself, leaving amnesiac European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen and not using a dance accomplice she has belatedly rebuked as “merciless”.
Hypocrisy, meet your shameless writer.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
