> The atmosphere at the palace was not conducive to clear thinking. Assad was spending much of his time playing Candy Crush and other video games on his phone, according to the former Hezbollah operative I spoke with. He had sidelined the éminences grises of his father’s day and relied instead on a small circle of younger figures with dubious credentials. One of them, a former Al Jazeera journalist named Luna al-Shibl, doubled as Assad’s lover and also procured other women for him to have sex with, including the wives of high-ranking Syrian officers, according to former palace insiders and the former Israeli official.
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> Shibl, who was married to a regime insider, seems to have encouraged Assad’s palace-born habit of looking down on ordinary citizens. In a recording that surfaced this past December, Assad and Shibl can be heard laughing dismissively about the pretensions of Hezbollah and mocking the soldiers who salute them as they drive through a Damascus suburb. Assad, who is at the wheel, says at one point of the Syrians they pass in the street: “They spend money on mosques, but they don’t have enough to eat.”
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> To understand the obscenity of Assad’s comment, you need to know that he was amassing an enormous personal fortune, mostly from drug smuggling, even as many Syrians were at the point of starvation….
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> Assad and his family maintained their own living standards by turning Syria into a narco-state, with Bashar’s brother Maher overseeing the manufacture and smuggling of immense quantities of Captagon, an illegal amphetamine. The drug trade earned Assad billions of dollars, but it also fueled an addiction crisis in the Gulf states and Jordan, angering their leaders.
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> Assad’s megalomania seems to have taken a strange new turn in these past few years. According to Ahmad, Assad had concluded that he needed “monarchy tools” like those of Putin and the Gulf rulers, including cash reserves large enough to subsidize militias and reorient the economy. Assad’s comments to a Russian interviewer during his final months in power betray a hint of this idea of royal powers. Asked about the downsides of democracy, Assad said, with a contemptuous grin: “In the West, the presidents, especially in the United States, are the executive directors, but they’re not the owners.”
Interesting to learn he had his lover murdered – I’d never heard that before. One of the worst dictatorial regimes ever, run by one of the most incompetent dictators. Xi and Putin, in contrast, are both smart and talented at staying in power. Assad seems to be a genuine moron in many ways.
Ganesha811 on
Submission statement: an in-depth piece with new reporting about the fall of Assad, a topic of geopolitical interest to /r/neoliberal.
2 Comments
> The atmosphere at the palace was not conducive to clear thinking. Assad was spending much of his time playing Candy Crush and other video games on his phone, according to the former Hezbollah operative I spoke with. He had sidelined the éminences grises of his father’s day and relied instead on a small circle of younger figures with dubious credentials. One of them, a former Al Jazeera journalist named Luna al-Shibl, doubled as Assad’s lover and also procured other women for him to have sex with, including the wives of high-ranking Syrian officers, according to former palace insiders and the former Israeli official.
>
> Shibl, who was married to a regime insider, seems to have encouraged Assad’s palace-born habit of looking down on ordinary citizens. In a recording that surfaced this past December, Assad and Shibl can be heard laughing dismissively about the pretensions of Hezbollah and mocking the soldiers who salute them as they drive through a Damascus suburb. Assad, who is at the wheel, says at one point of the Syrians they pass in the street: “They spend money on mosques, but they don’t have enough to eat.”
>
> To understand the obscenity of Assad’s comment, you need to know that he was amassing an enormous personal fortune, mostly from drug smuggling, even as many Syrians were at the point of starvation….
>
>
> Assad and his family maintained their own living standards by turning Syria into a narco-state, with Bashar’s brother Maher overseeing the manufacture and smuggling of immense quantities of Captagon, an illegal amphetamine. The drug trade earned Assad billions of dollars, but it also fueled an addiction crisis in the Gulf states and Jordan, angering their leaders.
>
> Assad’s megalomania seems to have taken a strange new turn in these past few years. According to Ahmad, Assad had concluded that he needed “monarchy tools” like those of Putin and the Gulf rulers, including cash reserves large enough to subsidize militias and reorient the economy. Assad’s comments to a Russian interviewer during his final months in power betray a hint of this idea of royal powers. Asked about the downsides of democracy, Assad said, with a contemptuous grin: “In the West, the presidents, especially in the United States, are the executive directors, but they’re not the owners.”
Interesting to learn he had his lover murdered – I’d never heard that before. One of the worst dictatorial regimes ever, run by one of the most incompetent dictators. Xi and Putin, in contrast, are both smart and talented at staying in power. Assad seems to be a genuine moron in many ways.
Submission statement: an in-depth piece with new reporting about the fall of Assad, a topic of geopolitical interest to /r/neoliberal.