Forever is Over

On the Fall of Bashar Al-Assad

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Upon entering Syria you are ‘welcomed’ with one of the most recognisable sentences associated with the Assad regime: “our leader forever, Hafez al-Assad.”¹

This politics of eternity was an inherent component of the Assad dynasty, which ruled over Syria for over five decades - until yesterday. Eternity, it turns out, isn't so eternal.

The Assads, first father and then son, heavily invested in projecting an image of eternity. It was to make it virtually impossible to even conceive of a Syria without them. As far as they were concerned, Syria starts and ends with Assad. This is why his shabbiha loyalists would graffity “Assad or we burn the country”² on the walls of besieged cities. It was a particula…