Bashar al Assad : The Syrian government collapsed on Sunday morning and effectively ending the Assad’s family 50 years in power after the rebels advance rapidly across the government controlled parts into the Capital city of Damascus.
As stated by Syrian state television yesterday, the government of president Bashar al-Assad was removed and all political prisoners in jails were released; AP news reported.
The statement was issued few hours after a Syrian opposition war monitor threatened that Assad has left the country for an unknown destination, while Syria’s Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali stated that he had no idea about the whereabouts of Bashar Assad and his minister for defense since last night. He also stated that the country should hold free elections so the people would be able to vote for whoever they wish – as cited by Reuters.
Who is Bashar al Assad ? Who are the Assads?
The Assad family held power in Syria for over half a century; Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez Al-Assad, depended on the security forces of the nation. As for their family, they had ruled the country since 1971, when Hafez took a coup d’état, and ousted all the opposers by means of a broad network of prisons and police supervision, The Guardian added.
Still, one of the episodes that took place during Hafez’s rule is considered to be the extermination of the Muslim Brotherhood by Syria’s army in the city of Hama in the same year 1982.
Forwarding to the present, in the capital’s central square, people Sunday stood on top of a tank and shouted, joyfully stomping on a statue of Hafez that has been felled, according to The Guardian referring to AFPTV images.
Bashar al-Assad assumes power in 2000
Bashar al-Assad, who was an ophthalmologist by training, had trained in London for approximately 18 month, succeeded his father in 2000, after the later died from chronic heart attack.
BBC News pointed out that after Bashar al-Assad came to power the west expected him to open Syria to them. In fact, the transformation that was led by his government was not significant at all. There were oppressive assaults that had remained Hafez’s effects on power continued even under Bashar, and the uprising of 2011 known as the Arab spring to mean Syria joined the wave of protests.
Furthermore, during Bashar’s rule, the state bourgeoisie declined as the hold of the Ba’ath family over Syria was threatened, and conflicts arose throughout the nation. Others include his brother Maher, sister Bushra, brother-in-law Assef Shakwat, BBC news added after the phase of his family members contributing to the regime’s security apparatus.
When his father died in June 2000, only 46 members of the Syrian parliament sat and changed the constitution to decrease the presidential age from 40 to 34 to allow Assad to become president after opposition-less elections the following month.
For many people in Europe and the United States, the incoming president appeared to be the new young man that might bring a new more liberal and moderate policy.
Such view of Bashar al-Assad was supported by his wife, Asma al-Assad, whom he married in 2000, a former investment banker of Syrian origin, raised in London.
However, the West leaped at the idea of having a more moderate Syria; the new leader quickly extended the support of the Syria’s relationships with militant movements like Hamas and Hezbollah. They then became self-exiled critics of the regime, a position they assumed after he violently cracked down on the 2011 pro-democracy uprising.
As Obama himself stressed in May 2011, when the Syrian regime headed by Assad embarked on the policy of mass killings and arrest of democratic activists, Assad “has made his choice, the choice of murder and mass arrests of his citizens” and Obama urged Assad to step aside and lead a transition “or get out of the way.”
The head of state, Bashar al-Assad, has been reelected by overwhelming majorities every seven years and in most recent election held earlier this year in June, the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy declared the election inefficient and a fraud.
“Bashar felt that any reform, any questioning of his way of things was a sign that he wasn’t respected,” said dissident Abdul hamid adding he may have suffered from low self-esteem or inferiority complex. “‘Like his father, he would not accept that he should be treated in any way, They arrested my father,” Joel’s mother said in an interview with BBC News.
Syrians started to protest against Bashra’s totalitarian regime in 2011 through the nonviolent way, but the situation escalated to a civil war, and according to The Guardian, there are over 300,000 human casualties of that war in the last ten years. The war has also bring out opportunities where jihadist groups can launch attacks across the world.
According to the report in The Guardian, Assad then unleashed the full force of the state on its people in order to keep power; in particular the dictator proceeded to bombard the population with airstrikes and used chemical weapons including the lethal nerve toxin sarin.
Assad’s forces further surrendered some areas of the largest city, Aleppo, while his opposition fighters advanced near the Capital city of Damascus. At the time, he was saved by Russia and long-time friend Iran which, with the help of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia, helped Assad forces recapture Aleppo, and turn the war in their favour, AP news reported.
SANA/AP/File
HTS, a Syria’s most potent rebel group comes back
Bashar’s reign in Syria was just unavoidable, before, HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate, the group that was once thought of as the rebels’ most virulent factions returned to wreak havoc on his administration.
In 2016, the HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani aimed to recreate the group’s image after severing its link with the Al-Qaeda, dismissing the radical tended officials, and promising the end of excluding non-Sunni sects and other religious minorities in Syria, as reported by the AP news.
The group has dominated much of northwest Syria and also administered a “salvation government” since 2017 to govern the affairs of the area. Its goal now is to achieve fundamentalist Islamic rule in Syria and not a larger part of it that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) attempted and failed to do so – BBC said.
He run away from Syria Bashar al Assad
Bashar al-Assad is an iron-fisted ruler of Syria, who forms the second generation of an autocratic family that dominated a key Middle Eastern country for over 50 years and whose sudden absence during a rebel blitzkrieg is stunning.
SANA/AP
Bashar al-Assad is accused of being responsible for a cruel rule over Syria, a state that since 2011 has experienced civil war, the war that destroyed the country, that turned it into a nest for the terrorist organization ISIS and initiate an international conflict provoking refugee crisis that forced millions of people out of their homes.
War started when in Spring of that year Assad’s regime failed to accept the demands for democracy during the Arab Spring and instead tried to suppress the movement ruthlessly – shooting and arresting thousands within the initial months.
The regime of Assad has been later blamed for even worse human rights abuses and striking civilians relentlessly during the conflict, which is now in its 13th year, using chemical weapons on its own population. Before the war all the four main parties namely the United States, Jordan, Turkey and the European Union demanded for Assad to resign from office.
However the now heavily Western-sanctioned and otherwise internationally isolated regime has been able to hang on to power until now with the support of powerful backers Russia and Iran, as well as its brutal repression of the opposition.
Evidence of the horror of that regime was seen in scenes of celebration as rebels captured Syrian cities. Videos geolocated in Homs revealed citizens who remove and destroy pictures of Assad and his father in actions reminiscent of the symbolism of 2011.
For more updates follow: https://thenewzzy.com/
