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Foreign Policy
The War Has Arrived Inside the Assad Family
Syria’s dictator crushed an uprising—but the ground may be crumbling
beneath his feet.
BY ANCHAL VOHRA | JUNE 15, 2020, 4:23 PM
In the 1920s, Ali Sulayman al-Wahhish earned the nickname Al-Assad, or
The Lion, for entreating the French to protect the minority sect of
Alawites in a Syria dominated by Sunni Muslims. “Al-Assad” had a ring to
it, so Ali made it his last name. Little did he know that his progeny
would not only rule the country but one day squabble over the spoils of
a state lying in ruins.
The rift was visible in the early 1980s as Ali’s son Rifaat allegedly
tried to dethrone his elder brother and then-president, Hafez al-Assad,
who himself had usurped power in a coup a decade earlier. Hafez
successfully sidelined Rifaat and taught his son Bashar al-Assad how to
stop rebellions—familial and otherwise—in their tracks. Bashar paid
close attention, as attested by his bombing of cities across Syria and
the killing and displacing of millions who stood against him in the
uprising that began in 2011. He also kept a tight grip on his dozens of
cousins through a combination of monetary incentives and an ever-lurking
threat to their lives.
Last month, however, the unthinkable happened. Rami Makhlouf, Bashar’s
maternal cousin and one of the family’s richest members, challenged the
president’s decision to charge him $230 million in back taxes, shredding
the frail veneer of family solidarity. Since then, several Assad cousins
have publicly questioned the efficacy of Bashar’s government, indirectly
taking aim at him. Makhlouf’s criticism seems to be an inflection point
for the Bashar regime. If Bashar loses the loyalty of his family and
other co-religionists, it’s fair to wonder whether he can survive in
power at all.
While Makhlouf seems to have interpreted the imposition of back taxes as
a provocation, Bashar may have seen it as a demand for reciprocity.
Makhlouf is estimated today to be worth $5 billion, wealth he only
acquired because his businesses—which include Syriatel, the country’s
biggest telecom company—had the blessing of the regime. Now that the
Syrian state has been plunged into crisis by economic sanctions—the
Syrian pound devalued from 50 pounds per U.S. dollar in 2011 to more
than 3,000 pounds per U.S. dollar in 2020, and 90 percent of people are
believed to be living in dire poverty—it wants Makhlouf’s assistance to
keep it afloat. But that rationale has not proved persuasive for Makhlouf.
In May, Makhlouf published several amateur video clips online that,
while wrapped in courtesies, warned Bashar that he risked losing the
support of the broad swathe of Alawites—including militiamen—on the
tycoon’s payroll. Makhlouf exploited old sectarian tensions as he
insinuated that the fault lied with the president’s Sunni wife, Asma,
who he alluded was trying to steal Alawite money, thus casting doubt on
Bashar’s own commitment to his sectarian group.
The dispute has given fresh hope to Bashar’s challengers within the
regime. They hope that Makhlouf may have weakened him irreparably among
Alawites and opened space for challenging his role atop the regime, even
as it is widely taken for granted that Bashar would violently resist any
direct opposition from within his family.
Indeed, that has been a consistent pattern. Ribal al-Assad, the
45-year-old first cousin of the president and his uncle Rifaat’s son, is
one of those who have been at the receiving end of Bashar’s ire. In
1994, outside the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, Bashar called him names
and the altercation turned ugly. Frightened, Ribal’s father booked him a
flight and asked him to leave. At the airport, gun-toting presidential
guards fired shots and hung around for two and a half hours to arrest
Ribal. He was apprehended but let go after Rifaat threatened Hafez
al-Assad that he would fight in every street in Damascus “if a hair on
his son’s body was harmed,” Ribal told Foreign Policy.
Ribal now lives in Spain in self-imposed exile and was at home in
lockdown when he got a text with Makhlouf’s first video clip. He
described it as a “menacing gimmick” and said he laughed when he first
saw it. “I personally know Rami; he is a coward. He won’t go against the
regime. He is nothing without Bashar,” Ribal said. “You can lose your
life for much less, let alone challenging Bashar on social media. This
is just a show. Bashar is using Rami to tell the Russians that he will
lose support among the Alawites and that it would affect their interests
in the coastal area where the Russians have their naval base and airport.”
Ribal recounted the events on Oct. 20, 1999, when his family home on the
shores in Latakia came under attack by soldiers of the regime to ensure
that Bashar—and not Ribal’s father, Rifaat—succeeded Hafez as national
leader. “My uncle, Hafez, was ill, and succession was a matter of time.
The regime wanted to pass the baton to Bashar and make sure there was no
opposition to his ascendency and that they would crush anyone who would
oppose it. That is why they attacked our house and supporters.”
Many of Rifaat’s children swore allegiance to Bashar and continued to
live in Syria but still nurse grievances. One of them, Douraid al-Assad,
was known to toe the regime line and sing Bashar’s praises—until
recently. In a scathing tweet May 7, soon after Makhlouf released his
videos, Douraid asked Bashar to meet the hundreds of relatives who share
his last name but have not enjoyed his privileged life. “They say Syria
is ruled by the Assad family,” Douraid tweeted. “I have a request. 100
to 200 members of the family have never met you and they want to see
you. Many of them have grown up, had children but only seen you on TV.”
Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat now based in the United
States, said Douraid’s newfound courage has an ulterior motive. “Such
brazenness was never tolerated,” Barabandi said. “Now Douraid is
challenging Bashar openly to present his father, Rifaat al-Assad, as an
alternative. If Douraid did not feel the community was angry at Bashar,
he would not dare say this.”
Ribal and Douraid’s opposition is partly motivated by their family’s
claim to political power. But other family members, including cousin
Gen. Adnan al-Assad simply feel left out of the family business and
deprived of the wealth it has brought to the likes of Makhlouf. Adnan
ran a militia and fought on the side of Hafez against the Muslim
Brotherhood in 1982 in what has come to be known as the Hama massacre,
in which thousands of brothers and civilians were killed. But in a
letter he wrote to Makhlouf recently, he suggested that he felt
inadequately compensated for his loyalty.
While he opposed the tycoon for crying wolf and described him as “the
blue whale among the whales of money,” he painted himself as the real
victim of a corrupt regime and took a careful dig at his cousin the
president. “I have been selling my properties to meet the needs of my
family, as my salary is just about $50 after 42 years of military
service,” the letter said. It read like a sycophantic ode interspersed
with a litany of complaints of how he had repeatedly been taken
advantage of by the regime.
Back in October, Arab media reported on a more open challenge to
Bashar’s government by the family of his aunt Bahija. Her son Ghaydaq
fought for Bashar in Deir Ezzor during the uprising and yet was killed
afterward in Latakia in clashes with a regime soldier who had come to
arrest him on obscure criminal charges. Ghaydaq’s family vowed revenge
in a Facebook post, but fearing repercussions, they later deleted it.
As the economy tumbles, average Assad supporters are beginning to wonder
if their sacrifices have been worth it. Loyalists have paid for Bashar’s
survival in blood, losing hundreds and thousands of men during the
uprising. At the end of the war, they expected to reap some material
profit—more jobs, promotions, or preferential treatment in
government-awarded business contracts. Instead, the bankrupt government
has left them poorer and hungry. Barabandi, the former Syrian diplomat,
said that the Alawites are flabbergasted at the Makhlouf-Bashar saga.
“They think they lost so much and there was no reward in the end,”
Barabandi said. “They are fuming when they see these two cousins fight
over billions as the common man struggles for pennies.”
Several Syrian experts told Foreign Policy that there is no doubt that
Bashar al-Assad is losing support among Alawites. But they also say that
the regime continues to control the country with an iron fist and it is
premature to count on Bashar’s vulnerability. It is no secret that Ribal
and Douraid al-Assad wished that their father, Rifaat, and not Bashar,
had succeeded Hafez. But the old man’s past is stained with allegations
of participation in the Hama massacre and, now at 82 years old, it is
likely too late for him to fight his way down a bloody road to Damascus.
Ribal, however, is young and admits he would like to be active in Syrian
politics. “I want to, of course, but as opposition and not be part of
any government at this stage,” he told Foreign Policy.
The other family that has been itching to make a comeback is that of
Mustafa Tlass, long-time regime loyalists who defected during the
uprising. Tlass’s son Manaf was in Bashar’s inner circle and a top
military commander. Now based in Paris, Manaf has suggested in Russian
media that there are alternatives to Bashar if Russia was interested in
backing them. Manaf’s brother, Firas Tlass, who is a Syrian businessman
currently based in the United Arab Emirates, thinks that Manaf is an
alternative to Bashar and wants to play a role in Syrian politics, but
he would return to Syria “only when Bashar leaves.”
For now, Russia seems more interested in controlling rather than
replacing Bashar al-Assad. Going forward, he will find it harder to
control the country—but it will be easier than ever for Russia to
control him.
Anchal Vohra is a freelance correspondent for Al Jazeera and regularly
writes for Foreign Policy. She is a Beirut-based journalist covering
the Middle East and South Asia. Twitter: @anchalvohra
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