Bashar al Assad was not meant to be president, but a twist of fate forced the former eye doctor – and his London-raised wife – to head back to Syria to continue a family dynasty.
Bashar al Assad’s downfall marks an end to more than half a century of family rule, as rebel forces turned the tide in a civil war he had embraced.
The authoritarian president ruled Syria for 24 years, five years short of his father’s time in power, but the plan was never for him to take over the dynasty.
Before his political career began to take shape, Assad was based in the UK, where he had an ophthalmology practice.
A family tragedy would soon thrust him into the political fray – and his early days in Damascus stood in stark contrast to his exit.
Eye doctor and computer geek
Before Damascus, Assad was an eye doctor in London and his only official position in his home country was as head of the Syrian Computer Society.
In the UK capital, he met his future wife, Asma Akhras, a former investment banker at JPMorgan who grew up in Acton, west London.
She ditched her career for Assad after a trip together to Libya as a guest of then leader Muammar Gaddafi.
In 1994, Assad’s older brother – and heir to the presidency – Bassel was killed in a car crash in Damascus.
Assad was promptly ordered back home, where he was put through military training and elevated his rank to colonel to establish his credentials for ruling.
But there was never any doubt he would take over. When his father Hafez al Assad died in 2000, parliament quickly lowered the presidential age from 40 to 34.
To top it off, his elevation was confirmed after a nationwide referendum pitted him as the only candidate.
Hopes for a young reformer
Assad began his presidency with promises to fight corruption and to open up the media. He inherited a dilapidated country and lacked support from his father’s loyalists.
Viewed as something of a geek, the lanky Assad constantly tried to prove himself despite his gentle demeanour, not least to his fearsome mother, whom the president’s wife also struggled to impress.
He had quickly freed political prisoners and allowed more open discourse. In the “Damascus Spring” – briefly sprung after his father’s death – salons for intellectuals emerged to discuss art, culture and politics.
But these were snuffed out after 1,000 intellectuals signed a public petition calling for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms in 2001.
He slowly lifted economic restrictions, let in foreign banks, made way for imports and empowered the private sector.
Syrian cities began to see shopping malls, new restaurants and consumer goods, while tourism rose.
Foreign policy blow
But abroad, he stuck to the line his father had set, based on an alliance with Iran and a policy of insisting on a full return of the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.
In 2004 the UN Security Council ordered Syria to end its long occupation of neighbouring Lebanon, leaving Assad with a choice: comply and ruin some of his father’s legacy, or ignore it.
He chose the former – this angered his family.
Gradually, Assad started to believe the West was weak and believed the more he demonstrated strength, the more he would achieve.
In 2005, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated, killed by a bomb while driving in Beirut. The Syrian government was blamed.
Syria was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and a pro-American government came to power instead.
Syrian civil war
A few years after going against his father’s legacy, Assad would draw on his brutal tactics when protests erupted against his rule in March 2011, during the Arab Spring.
He had until that point denied the wave of Arab uprising would spread to Syria, and even emailed a joke mocking the Egyptian leader’s refusal to step down two days after his fall.
But reality soon bit, after protesters in the southern city of Daraa were shot dead by government forces, sparking nationwide unrest.
Full-blown civil war would break out, which would become the world’s largest refugee crisis, according to the UN.
More than 14 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety, the body reports.
Atrocities
Since then, Assad’s rule has been dogged by widespread accusations of atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons such as sarin, chlorine, and mustard gas.
In 2013, a gas attack on rebel-held eastern Ghouta near Damascus killed scores of civilians.
There have also been widespread reports of rape, beheadings and torture.
Assad was propped up largely thanks to Russia – who stepped in to carry out decisive airstrikes in 2015 – and Iran, who both backed Syria militarily.
In 2020, Moscow backed a government offensive, which ended with a ceasefire with Turkey and froze most front lines.
Assad held most territory and all main cities, appearing deeply entrenched, while rebels held the northwest and a Turkey-backed force stayed at a border strip.
Kurdish-led forces, meanwhile, controlled the northeast.
After government forces bombarded the northwest rebel-held region of Idlib in 2020 – killing civilians in the process – Assad had appeared to consolidate his iron-fist rule.
The downfall
Few saw an end to his presidency in the near future, but just as Assad’s fortunes relied on Moscow and Tehran, so too was his fate tied to their geopolitical priorities.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lasting almost three years and Iran rocked by Israeli attacks on its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syrian government defences were exposed.
Rebel forces launched an attack on the northern city of Aleppo, which the government had held since 2016, and within days stormed through the country.
Assad had initially vowed to fight back, with the military claiming they were preparing a counter-offensive.