Stephen McGinty: Nation bleeds as Assad fights on

Published on Thursday 31 March 2011 18:42

Syria's president will cling to his hereditary dictatorship, no matter what the cost to his people, writes Stephen McGinty

THE image was of modern domestic bliss, a snapshot of a couple in love, contentedly juggling the demands of a busy work schedule with the delights of raising three young children. She was dressed in jeans, suede stiletto boots and a T-shirt on whose back read: 'Happiness'. He, too, was in riveted denim and a casual top. In the tri-plex apartment with the massive floor to ceiling windows, little, Zein, seven, was watching Alice in Wonderland on the iMac, while his brother, Karim, six, built a shark out of Lego and the eldest, Hafez, nine, serenaded the ensemble with a new electric violin. Looking over them, Asma al-Assad said: "We all vote on what we want, and where." Pointing to the chandelier that hangs over the dining table and which is constructed from cut-out comic books, she said: "They outvoted us three to two on that."

I wonder how the population of Syria feel about the news that the president's children enjoy a democratic right denied to the adults of the nation he rules. For as the bullets rip through flesh and bone, batons rain down on bare heads and hundreds are huckled off into police wagons and prison, the comments of Mrs al-Assad, the British beauty with the sharp brains, could yet see her cast as the Marie Antoinette of the Middle East. While she never said: "Let them eat cake" (then again, neither did poor Marie, and that didn't stop the mob), her interview in this month's edition of American Vogue has plenty of lines that now viewed through the sharp lens of current events, appear deeply ironic. In December, when the interview was conducted, she extolled the work of her youth charity, Massar, which encourages "active citizenship". She explained: "It's about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it." Or, as the evidence makes clear, it will be what her husband decides it should be: a hereditary dictatorship, where the "law" is enforced by the butt of the gun, where all communications are monitored, the press gagged, and the writ of the secret police runs large and, where in the shadows can be heard the screams of the tortured. What Mrs al-Assad had in mind when she spoke of the youth moving the country forward was surely not the largest protests in the nation's history: Hasan Al Akleh, who doused himself with petrol and burned himself in what was described as "a protest against the Syrian government" or the 1,500 who gathered to chant "the Syrian people will not be humiliated" after a shopkeeper was beaten up by police in Damascus. To date, at least 75 demonstrators have been killed after the security forces used live ammunition against protesters in Daraa.

Looking back, you can see why, back in December, the president's media and political advisers thought it would be a good idea to open the presidential apartment to one of the world's biggest-selling, glossiest magazines. After all, they thought they had a lot to sell: wasn't Syria known to be the safest country in the Middle East, untouched by bombings, civil unrest and the spectre of the kidnapper's hood? Sure, it had its share of shady alliances with Hamas and Hezbollah, but what trouble they wished to export was never unpacked within her borders. And wasn't there now the hint of change in the air, the secret talks with Israel, through Turkey, and the arrival in 2005 of the first American ambassador? Then there was Asma, herself, a graduate of computer science and the acquisitions and mergers desk of JP Morgan. She may have been born and educated in London, the daughter of a Syrian cardiologist who worked in Harley Street and his wife, a diplomat, who were both Sunni Muslims, but she appeared to epitomise Syria, a secular nation that doesn't condemn its women to a life under the black burqa.

It might have worked. Had we read, two months ago, of her long days, driving her plain SUV, with her Syrian silk Louboutin tote bag by her side, from youth centre to centre where five to 21-year-olds are taught civic responsibility, we might have been more impressed. Two months ago, when she spoke of Syria's phenomenal history and the need to share it with the world, we might have paid more attention. Damascus, after all, is the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth, a cradle of civilisation from which rose up the wheel, writing and musical notation. As she explained: "For us, it's about the accumulation of culture, traditions, values, customs. It's the difference between hardware and software; the artefacts are the hardware, but the software makes all the difference, the customs and spirit of openness. We have to make sure we don't lose that." Back then, when she spoke of "openness" it was of the warmth of personal hospitality, but now we can't help but think of the shutdown nature of Syria's state control, of the restriction on internet, the ban on political parties or NGOs. At the moment, for her husband what matters most is his own political survival, and he will justify himself that whatever actions he carries out are for the good of the nation, lest it collapse into the sectarian strife of neighbouring Iraq. Yet the problem is that such blatant self-interest casts his wife's work in a dark shade. One cannot help but think of Marie Antoinette traipsing off each day to tend her sheep at the Petit Trianon, imagining herself a little closer to the people.

Yet all the words were spoken and the pictures of the president on his knees fixing his son's Lego truck were taken before the Arab Spring in which liberty has begun to bloom, or, at least, pushed up through the earth, in an arc of nations from Libya to Syria. (In fact, last month Syria was still shipping arms and SUVs to Colonel Gaddafi.) The result of this spring is a shimmer in the air, so we see the interview and photographs in a different light.

In January Asma al-Assad said the government "wanted to open more space for civil society to work". Yet this is clearly not going to happen any time soon. After two weeks of the worst protests in decades, her husband gave a speech on Thursday in which it had been hoped he would announce the lifting of the "state of emergency" that has been in place since 1963, and which for 47 years had granted his father, and now him, dictatorial powers. Yet there was no specifics, just a platitude about his general support for reform.

Perhaps an answer to the reason why can be found back at home in the apartment in Malki, where there is a blackboard on which a grid is drawn with ticks and crosses. As Asma explained to American Vogue: "We were having trouble with politeness, so we made a chart: ticks for when they spoke as they should, and cross if they didn't." The Syrian protesters have clearly not enough ticks and too many crosses to earn the right to make their own mark at the ballot box.