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‘A Doctor’s Oath, A Dictator’s Rule: The Making of Bashar Al-Assad’  

Sakeenah Waqas Butt, Associate News Editor

The fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s 24-year rule in Syria has led to widespread celebration in Damascus and in the homes of the Syrian diaspora. Following a 13-year civil war between Assad and opposition forces, the leader fled on the 8th of December 2024. Before his rule, Assad was on a shockingly different trajectory – an eye doctor in London. 

Before presidency, Bashar was described to be in the shadow of his extroverted older brother, Bassel Al-Assad, as people perceived Bashar as more reserved. Bashar graduated in 1988 from the University of Damascus with a degree in medicine. He then decided to pursue his residency at the Tishreen military hospital before he travelled to the UK to work. Despite his family’s involvement in politics, Bashar was not intending to follow in his father’s footsteps. 

Assad was ordered to return home when his father passed away and his older brother, who was meant to inherit the presidency, died in a car crash. The training ophthalmologist was consequently thrusted into the political sphere. Although this article focuses on Bashar Al-Assad’s authoritarian rule, it is important to note that Syria was already suffering under the tyrannical rule of his father, Hafez Al-Assad.

Hafez Al-Assad safeguarded his own authoritarian regime by setting up reporting lines across Syria, in other words building a police state full of espionage and clandestine operations. Bashar’s rise to presidency was almost inevitable as his father’s pervasive secret police were integral in bolstering the reign of the Assads. It was also very convenient that the Majilis al-Shaab, the Syrian parliament decreased the presidential age from 40 to 34, Bashar’s age. 

With the young and well-educated Assad in power, there was a glimmer of hope for a more liberalised approach to his rule. Fresh into his role and in need to demonstrate a changing Syria to the west, Assad freed political prisoners and allowed for more open discourse. Measures were taken to encourage economic change such as the privatisation of state monopolies however, the elite who were involved with the regime benefitted the most. Syria’s GDP strengthened during the first few years of Bashar’s rule and the economy seemed to recover. However, poverty and unemployment grew significantly, heightening inequality amongst different social classes. Hopes of an improved state diminished as Assad’s government began to clamp down on those who expressed opposition to the state, resembling his father’s tyrannical tendencies. 

In December 2010, the Arab Spring began with a series of protests in Tunisia, but this did not seem to frighten Assad as he believed that he could contain Syria. However, when protesters in Daraa were killed by state forces, similar demonstrations caught fire which transformed into a revolution. Civil war broke out which, according to the UN, created the world’s largest refugee crisis with millions of Syrians forced to flee. 

Assad’s opposers were met with brute force and belligerence. The regime conducted horrific and unlawful acts against its people. The UN found that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on civilian populations repeatedly, violating the medical ethics Assad once stood for and swore his oath under. Health-care workers found themselves criminalised and labelled as enemies of the state for providing medical care to those who were considered opponents of the regime. Public health was weaponised by the government with attacks being targeted on health-care infrastructure and medical staff killed from either torture or execution. Moreover, within Assad’s rhetoric, he weaponised his medical knowledge through dehumanising language such as equating opposition to pathogens that needed to be expunged.

On the 8th of December, Bashar was evacuated by Russian forces after the collapse of his authoritarian rule, with the Syrian rebel forces capturing the capital Damascus, after succeeding in their offensive in Idlib, Aleppo, Hama and Homs. Many families have been reunited, refugees returned, and political prisoners freed. Long live a liberated Syria.

Photo by Shvan Harki on Unsplash