Back Basjar al-Assad Afrikaans Baschar al-Assad ALS በሽር አል አሳድ Amharic Bashar al-Assad AMI Baixar al-Assad AN بشار الأسد Arabic ܒܫܐܪ ܐܠܐܣܕ ARC بشار الاسد ARZ Bashar al-Ásad AST Bəşər Əsəd Azerbaijani
Bashar al-Assad | |
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بشار الأسد | |
_02_(cropped).jpg) Assad in 2018 | |
| 19th President of Syria | |
| Assumed office 17 July 2000 | |
| Prime Minister | |
| Vice President | |
| Preceded by |
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| General Secretary of the National Council of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party | |
| Assumed office 18 May 2017 | |
| Deputy | |
| Preceded by | Hafez al-Assad |
| General Secretary of the Central Command of the Syrian Regional Branch | |
| Assumed office 24 June 2000 | |
| Deputy |
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| Preceded by | Hafez al-Assad |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 11 September 1965 Damascus, Syria |
| Political party | Syrian Ba'ath Party |
| Other political affiliations | National Progressive Front |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | al-Assad family |
| Children |
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| Parents |
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| Alma mater | Damascus University |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Syria |
| Branch/service | Syrian Armed Forces |
| Years of service | 1988–present |
| Rank | Field marshal |
| Unit | Republican Guard (until 2000) |
| Commands | Syrian Armed Forces |
| Battles/wars | Syrian civil war |
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Bashar al-Assad[a] (born 11 September 1965) is a Syrian politician who is the 19th and current president of Syria since 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is a son of Hafez al-Assad, who was President of Syria from 1971 to 2000.
Born and raised in Damascus, Assad graduated from the medical school of Damascus University in 1988 and began to work as a doctor in the Syrian Army. Four years later, he attended postgraduate studies at the Western Eye Hospital in London, specialising in ophthalmology. In 1994, after his elder brother Bassel al-Assad died in a car accident, Assad was recalled to Syria to take over Bassel's role as heir apparent. Assad entered the military academy, taking charge of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1998. On 17 July 2000, Assad became president, succeeding his father, who died on 10 June 2000. A series of crackdowns in 2001–02 ended the Damascus Spring, a period of cultural and political activism marked by calls for transparency and democracy.
Although Assad inherited the power structures and personality cult nurtured by his father, he lacked the loyalty received by his father, which led to rising discontent against his rule. As result, many members of the Old Guard resigned or were purged; and the inner-circle were replaced by staunch loyalists from Alawite clans. Assad's early economic liberalisation programs worsened inequalities and centralized the socio-political power of the loyalist Damascene elite of the Assad family; alienating the Syrian rural population, urban working classes, businessmen, industrialists and people from once-traditional Ba'ath strongholds. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in February 2005, triggered by the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, forced Assad to end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
Academics and analysts have characterized Assad's presidency as a highly personalist dictatorship,[b] which governs Syria as a totalitarian police state,[c] and has been characterised by numerous human rights violations and severe repression. While the Assad government describes itself as secular, various political scientists and observers note that his regime exploits sectarian tensions in the country. The first decade in power was marked by intense censorship, summary executions, forced disappearances, discrimination of ethnic minorities and extensive surveillance by the Ba'athist secret police.
In 2011, the United States, European Union, and majority of the Arab League called for Assad to resign following the crackdown on Arab Spring protesters during the events of the Syrian revolution, which led to the Syrian civil war. The civil war has killed around 580,000 people, of which a minimum of 306,000 deaths are non-combatant; according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, pro-Assad forces caused more than 90% of those civilian deaths.[7] The Assad government has perpetrated numerous war crimes during the course of the Syrian civil war,[d] and the Syrian Arab Armed Forces has also carried out several attacks with chemical weapons.[13] The deadliest chemical attack was a sarin gas strike in Ghouta on 21 August 2013, which killed between 281 to 1,729 people.
In December 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that findings from an inquiry by the UN implicated Assad in war crimes. Investigations by the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism and OPCW-UN IIT concluded that the Assad government was responsible for the 2017 Khan Shaykhun sarin attack and 2018 Douma chemical attack respectively.[e] In June 2014, the American Syrian Accountability Project included Assad on a list of war crimes indictments of government officials and sent it to the International Criminal Court. In 2023, Canada and the Netherlands filed a joint lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing the Assad government of infringing UN Convention Against Torture.[f] On 15 November 2023, France issued an arrest warrant against Assad over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.[14] Assad has categorically denied the allegations of these charges and has accused foreign countries, especially the United States, of attempting regime change.[15][16]
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Svolik, Milan. "The Politics of Authoritarian Rule". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
- ^ Weeks, Jessica (2014). Dictators at War and Peace. Cornell University Press. p. 18.
- ^ Wedeen, Lisa (2018). Authoritarian Apprehensions. Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning. University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Hinnebusch, Raymond (2012). "Syria: from 'authoritarian upgrading' to revolution?". International Affairs. 88 (1): 95–113. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2346.2012.01059.x.
- ^ Michalik, Susanne (2015). "Measuring Authoritarian Regimes with Multiparty Elections". In Michalik, Susanne (ed.). Multiparty Elections in Authoritarian Regimes: Explaining their Introduction and Effects. Studien zur Neuen Politischen Ökonomie. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 33–45. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-09511-6_3. ISBN 978-3658095116.
- ^ Geddes, Barbara; Wright, Joseph; Frantz, Erica (2018). How Dictatorships Work. Cambridge University Press. p. 233. doi:10.1017/9781316336182. ISBN 978-1-316-33618-2. S2CID 226899229.
- ^ "Civilian Death Toll". SNHR. September 2022. Archived from the original on 5 March 2022.
- ^ Robertson QC, Geoffrey (2013). "11: Justice in Demand". Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (4th ed.). New York: The New Press. pp. 560–562, 573, 595–607. ISBN 978-1-59558-860-9.
- ^ Syria Freedom Support Act; Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2011. Washington DC: Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives. 2012. pp. 221–229.
- ^ Vohra, Anchal (16 October 2020). "Assad's Horrible War Crimes Are Finally Coming to Light Under Oath". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 2 November 2020.
- ^ "German court finds Assad regime official guilty of crimes against humanity". Daily Sabah. 13 January 2022. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022.
- ^ Martina Nosakhare, Whitney (15 March 2022). "Some Hope in the Struggle for Justice in Syria: European Courts Offer Survivors a Path Toward Accountability". Human Rights Watch. Archived from the original on 5 April 2022.
- ^ *"Security Council Deems Syria's Chemical Weapon's Declaration Incomplete". United Nations: Meetings Coverage and Press Releases. 6 March 2023. Archived from the original on 14 March 2023.
- "Fifth Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention". European Union External Action. 15 May 2023. Archived from the original on 15 May 2023.
- ^ "France issues arrest warrant for Syria's President Assad - source". Reuters. 15 November 2023.
- ^ King, Esther (2 November 2016). "Assad denies responsibility for Syrian war". Politico. Retrieved 21 December 2016.
The Syrian president maintained he was fighting to preserve his country and criticized the West for intervening. "Good government or bad, it's not your mission" to change it, he said.
- ^ writer(s) (6 October 2016). "'Bombing hospitals is a war crime,' Syria's Assad says". ITV News. Retrieved 21 December 2016.
The intense bombardment of Aleppo during an army offensive that began two weeks ago has included several strikes on hospitals, residents and medical workers there have said. But Assad denied any knowledge of such attacks, saying that there were only "allegations".