[Series] Syria: Asma al-Assad, queen of hearts become queen of spades (1/3)

“First ladies of the Arab world” (1/3). Beautiful, elegant, educated in England, the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was the darling of the media until the war broke out in 2011. Since then, she has been said to be a wheeler-dealer and ready to do anything to ensure the future of the Assad clan.

With the sanctions that the United States adopted against her, in June and December 2020, then the investigation opened in the United Kingdom, in March 2021, for "incitement to the commission of terrorist acts", Asma al-Assad, wife of the Syrian dictator, sees her responsibility for the crimes of the regime internationally recognized.

Appearing for the first time alongside her husband, Bashar, in the early 2000s, she has long been one of those pleasantly secondary characters who make the front page of people magazines.

Read[Series] Assad, Sissi and Saïed: first ladies of the Arab world, powerful women

Over time and the articles that have been devoted to her, this 45-year-old woman ended up taking on the features of a Machiavellian highness, half-princess, half-witch, as good at playing the comedy of appearance as at handling weapons of politics.

How the model Londoner became Syria's first lady and then 'one of the most infamous profiteers of the war', as ex-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo called her ? Story in six acts.

Act I. Little Emma

From her childhood, the little Syrian girl born in Great Britain in August 1975 seems anxious to perfect her character. If Asma speaks Arabic at home, she wants to be, in society, more British than Queen Elisabeth, being called Emma by her comrades from the Church of England Primary School, then from Queen's College in London.

Chiselled later with the help of Anglo-Saxon communication experts, the legend lends her the humble and diligent youth of a princess in exile. His father, Fawaz al-Akhras, a cardiologist who, in the 1970s, preferred the English climate to the instability of his native land, managed, through hard work, to offer his family relative ease.

Thanks to the interpersonal skills of her mother, an employee of the Syrian embassy, ​​Asma, who had become a brilliant banker, met Bashar al-Assad at a party in 1992. The son of the raïs had also studied (ophthalmology) at London. Love at first sight and eternal oaths. At the end of 2000, the beauty abandoned a career already at its height to marry the chosen one of her heart, who had inherited power a few months earlier, on the death of her father, Hafez.

This account has some misleading omissions and embellishments. Certainly, Fawaz al-Akhras installed his people in a modest house, located in an unpretentious neighborhood. But, in reality, this doctor from the good Sunni bourgeoisie exercises his profession on one of the most prestigious arteries of London. Asma's mother, Sahar Otri, is no stranger to the Assad clan: her sister married a Hafez al-Assad interior minister, Adnan al-Dabbagh, whose sons, who today benefit full of the war economy, are Bashar's childhood friends.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2002, Asma confessed that she and Bashar had known each other since childhood, then asserted, in a tone both ironic and cryptic, that she had only been informed that she was going to marry him the day before. of the ceremony.

When, in 2001, their union was revealed to the public, no one seemed to have heard of their affair, supposed to have started eight years earlier. For informed observers, the marriage was undoubtedly the subject of family negotiations.

Author of an unauthorized biography of the raïs (Bachar in letters of blood, ed. Plon, 2017), the journalist Jean-Marie Quéméner nuances: “Was the marriage arranged? Yes and no. Bashar fell madly in love with her; but she, who knew who he was, was not at all charmed. It took her father – his interests well understood – pushing her for her to date [Bashar] and end up being seduced”.

Rumors circulate: Asma had to break up with a lover to submit to the family injunction; the banker had to give up the signing of an important contract, and a subsequent incentive, to leave as soon as possible to marry in Damascus...

"In the bank, she was not at a high level of responsibility", rectifies Michel Duclos, author of The Long Syrian Night (ed. of The Observatory, 2019). The one who was ambassador of France in Syria from 2006 to 2009 nevertheless recognizes the talents of communicator and businesswoman of the person concerned.

Act III. Lady Di of Arabia

Asma, who during her youth frequented many theaters in England, launched her career as First Lady on the most beautiful of her stages, Buckingham Palace, where she was received under crackling flashes in 2002.

This beauty with blonde curls and perfect English seduces the British media more than her clumsy husband. Referring to the microcredit and sustainable development NGO that she created the previous year (the embryo of the future Syria Trust for Development, a formidable engine of her prosperity and her power), the daily The Guardian noted: "It is not not a first lady hobbyhorse à la Evita [Perón]. Asma sees this as her job.”

This praise flatters her much less than the comparison with "the princess of hearts", Lady Diana, who died five years earlier. Admittedly, the Arab world does not lack photogenic highnesses (Cheikha Mozah in Qatar, Rania in Jordan, Lalla Salma in Morocco), but the glamorous, Western, free and committed figure of the late Diana fits better with the idea that Asma takes on the role of diplomatic representation that she then holds with her husband.

For the time being, in Damascus, she is the “patch”, bullied and kept away by “the Assad firm”, as Lady Di had been in Buckingham. The arranged marriage between the Assad and Akhras families, sealing a symbolic alliance between the ruling Alawite minority and the influential Sunni bourgeoisie, was not well received by the matriarch of the clan. Anissa Makhlouf, Bashar's austere and imperious mother, did not look favorably upon this beautiful, brilliant and westernized woman – her perfect antithesis – stealing her son from her.

To ReadAnissa al-Assad, the mother of crime

She makes life difficult for her daughter-in-law. "In the early 2000s, the real government in Syria was the family council," explains Michel Duclos. In addition to Bashar, there were: Anissa, his mother; Bouchra, his sister; Assef Shawkat, his brother-in-law; Maher, his brother. And the Makhlouf cousins ​​were brought in when it was a question of business. Asma had no place there. »

Certainly, but the young woman is biding her time, taking care of her image as a tireless humanitarian and giving the clan three children, including two sons, between 2001 and 2004.

In 2005, his rise began, paradoxically served by the brutality of the regime. It explodes in front of the world at the same time as the convoy of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, in Beirut. Held responsible for the assassination, Assad becomes an outcast. Two months after the attack, the couple attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome. Bashar keeps a low profile. Asma, she stands up, presenting to guests and photographers the face of a pleasant Syria.

“She plays, from 2005-2006, the role of communicator of the regime. Diplomats and journalists who follow the presidential couple during their trips to Turkey and India in 2008 note that she has even become the chief communicator, a sign that she has carved out a place for herself in the family. Fine politician, she plays the ambassador of the Assad clan abroad and advances the pawns of her own family within this clan, ”says Michel Duclos.

III. The queen of "com"

Until the death in 2016 of the stepmother Anissa, who had reserved the title of first lady, Asma was "only" akilatu al raïs ("the president's wife"). Nevertheless: in the cultural and humanitarian field, it now takes all the place. In 2006, the British public relations company Bell Pottinger sharpened an offensive communication plan for him, the most visible effect of which was his makeover. Asma turns into a fashion icon.

In the national and foreign media, it promotes the image of a household of the Syrian bourgeoisie, living without ostentation far from the presidential palace, united and close to its children.

At the same time, it strengthens its prerogatives in the field of development and humanitarian aid, the business sector being locked by the Makhlouf clan.

In 2007, it grouped all its activities in the Syria Trust for Development (STD), a "non-governmental organization with government orientation" which is above all an instrument of power. “It was not charity for charity's sake, but a way for the regime to channel the initiatives of civil society and, above all, of foreign NGOs,” summarizes Duclos.

Today, the United States sees in the “humanitarian activities” of “Asma-the-war-profiteer” a powerful lever of power. The STD employs thousands of Syrians and affects dozens of sectors (rural development, aid for the wounded and war orphans, manufacture of electronic cards for the distribution of basic necessities, etc.).

Read "Ill-gotten gains" - Rifaat al-Assad, Bashar's uncle: a Syrian novel

At the end of the 2000s, the calibrated communication implemented by Asma softened the image of Syria. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy succeeds Jacques Chirac, the friend of the late Rafic Hariri. It feeds a great project of Mediterranean union and wishes to set out again on new bases with the Arab world. Invited to Paris on the occasion of the national holiday, July 14, 2008, the Assad couple is rehabilitated.

Michel Duclos, who accompanied the first lady to the Louvre on this occasion, remembers: “When France was still angry with Syria and when I met her, in Damascus, she greeted me very coldly. However, that day I discovered an Asma who was both charming and very professional. She knew all her files inside out: a businesswoman playing perfectly with her seduction”. In Paris Match, the interested party declares that she wants to bring “a profound change” in her country.

In 2009, when Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush, American emissaries returned to Damascus. In December 2010, Bashar was again invited to France. The chief communicator sees her strategy triumph. The same Paris Match devotes a report to “two lovers in Paris” and compares Asma to the two most glamorous First ladies of the moment, Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama. A few days later, far away, in western Tunisia, a desperate vegetable vendor set himself on fire, triggering the Arab Spring conflagration, whose flames would devour Syria.

Act IV. The Marie Antoinette of the East

Released in the wake of the Parisian escapade, the report that the American edition of Vogue devoted in March 2011 to “Asma, the rose of the desert” could have passed like a perfumed letter in the post office. Missed: this more than flattering portrait appears as Bashar al-Assad's security forces machine-gun the demonstrators. Faced with the scandal, Vogue withdraws the article from its site. The world realizes that the rose has thorns and that Asma is going to start crossing the desert.

ReadSyria: Asma al-Assad, the withered rose

His advisers and collaborators, often dual nationals educated in the West, fled the country. Her communication seizes up: she becomes an Arab Marie-Antoinette, spendthrift and insensitive to popular suffering. Today, we know that the first lady lives in indecent luxury, which she shares with her family, when her country is plunged into misery. But, in 2011, she could still be compared to the futile and ingenuous highness of 1789, besieged in her palace.

Act V. Cinderella?

The raïssa is naked. She can no longer pull the strings of her brilliant "com" as the repression that falls on the rebellious Syrians is violent. She disappears from screens and magazines only to reappear in January 2012, pale and emaciated, on the occasion of a partisan rally. Some believe her to be a prisoner, like a Cinderella kidnapped by her cruel family. It is rumored that she tried to flee the country with her children.

"I'm sure she's horrified," said Ribal al-Assad, a first cousin of Bashar based in London. She has certainly not forgotten the values ​​in which she was brought up in the UK”.

Nine years later, Michel Duclos tempers: “What is striking is that she and her husband are able to synthesize cultures which , in the eyes of Westerners, would be incompatible. When Bashar received foreign delegations, his Western polish was impeccable. But, viscerally, he is an Alawite leader. Asma, she remains a Sunni bourgeois who espoused a totalitarian system”.

In March 2012, the couple's emails, hacked by Syrian activists and published by the Guardian, reveal a different story. We discover that Asma spends astronomical sums on furniture, clothing and jewelry. We read naughty exchanges between her husband and some pretty admirers. The display of her husband's infidelity bothers the mistress of the house more than the massacres perpetrated outside.

"She left him for almost a year and threatened to leave for London with the children," says Ayman Abdel Nour, a former close adviser to the raïs. Asma's father then arranged a deal: to Bashar, politics and defense; at Asma, economy and administration. However, she was only able to obtain full satisfaction when her mother-in-law died in 2016. Since then, her power has continued to grow.

VI. The "Maleficent"

In reality, Asma's horizon brightened in 2012. Her brother-in-law, Deputy Defense Minister Assef Chawkat, died in an attack, and his wife moved to Dubai, followed a year later. later by Bashar's mother.

Until then a major obstacle to the rise of the ex-banker, the economic empire of the Makhloufs lost the support of the matriarch. In 2019, Bashar's Russian and Iranian creditors demanded reimbursement. Under the pretext that they have not paid the tax authorities, the Makhloufs see their assets frozen. The most influential cousin, Rami, (who controlled, it is said, 60% of the national economy in 2011), is placed under house arrest.

“Asma understood that she could not rely on a failing state to guarantee the future of her children and that she had to put her own resources in safety. Rami, who had become too powerful, was eliminated in favor of Asma and the Akhras clan,” confirms geographer Fabrice Balanche, specialist in Syria.

To ReadRami Makhlouf, the turbulent cousin of Bashar al-Assad

In fact, in February 2021, relatives of Asma were appointed to the board of directors of Syriatel, the former flagship of the Makhlouf empire, and the first lady launched her own telephone network, Emmatel.

The war also allowed him to consolidate his humanitarian empire. His trust receives international funds intended for aid and reconstruction in areas held by the regime.

After the 2011-2012 eclipse, the first lady reappeared in the media and on social networks, opting for t-shirts and jeans, more appropriate than suits and stiletto heels to the situations in which she puts herself in the scene.

In 2018, her quickly won fight against breast cancer is cited as an example of pugnacity in the face of an internal enemy. The reality of the diagnosis leaves Ayman Abdel Nour skeptical. The former adviser to the raïs also doubts that the presidential couple has caught the Covid-19, in March 2021: "Staging to move the media, arouse compassion and divert attention", he castigates.

Ayman Abdel Nour does not doubt, however, that Asma is preparing to replace her husband: "If something were to happen to Bashar, she would ensure the transition between him and their eldest son, Hafez, who is only 19 years. Her portrait flourishes on all government buildings and, even if she does not attend meetings, she is the one who gives the orders. In recent months, she has met the caciques of the Alawite community. She devoted a lot of time and money to them. As for the security forces, the appointment of a respected Alawite to the Ministry of Defense should be enough to calm their discontent”.

Could Asma reign over Syria one day? She seems to have the ambition, but, if she succeeded, she would govern, under the control of Russian and Iranian generals, only a territory destroyed, mutilated and emptied of half of its inhabitants. In a December 2011 email, which leaked soon after, Asma wrote to Bashar: “If we are strong together, we will overcome [the ordeal] together. I love you ".

Ten years later, the solidity of the couple remains intact. “Each failure, Asma is there, in the shadows, to cheer up her husband. They ended up forming a strong, fusional, obsessive couple. Alone in their fortress, but capable of going further each time, they are like two junkies “addicted” to power, who can no longer do anything without each other,” concludes biographer Jean-Marie Quéméner.