Introducing Asma

To her many fans, she is nothing more than a brighter future for the Middle East. A bridge between two diverse cultures. The British born and educated banker is now devoted to aiding her husband as he attempts to lead Syria into the 21st century. While protests still echo around the country at Syria’s support for Islamic terrorists and the country’s alleged arming of Iraq, the image of her walking confidently beside Cherie Blair, casual in western clothes is being read as a positive symbol.

In just two years she has emerged as a most glamorous companion for her husband, a man more comfortable with books than people. As President Assad struggles to reform a nation stagnating both economically and politically, the legacy of his late father’s decades of misrule, his new wife is being portrayed as his most valuable aide.

The journey to First Lady of Syria and tea at Buckingham Palace began in the suburbs of Acton, where little Asma Akhras was born in August, 1975 to Dr Fawaz Akhras, a heart specialist and his wife, Sahar. The couple were both Syrian but had moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1950s so that Fawaz Akhras could achieve his goal of a prized British education. Although the couple would go on to build their life in Britain where Dr Akhras has excelled in his profession, their indigenous culture remained crucial to them. At home Arabic was spoken, as Asma recalled: "I didn’t realise until I was seven that they could actually speak English." While at home Asma spoke her parent’s native tongue, beyond the family’s standard semi-detached home, with its traditional white trimmed door and net curtains she was the epitome of the little English girl.

To her friends she was Emma and while raised Muslim, she attended a Church of England school, Twyford High, for two years before she began travelling to central London where she attended Queen’s College School on Harley Street. While other teenage girls frittered their time away in the pursuit of boys and make-up, "Emma" had little interest in either, instead she focused on hitting the books and devoted her leisure time to horse-riding and computing. As her old computer teacher recalled: "She was an incredibly bright and diligent girl and I have a clear memory of her staying behind after classes to do her homework." True relaxation would come during the family’s annual holidays back in Syria. Although her teachers felt she had an aptitude for the profession and even went as far as offering her a job, Asma’s goals were so much greater.

After successfully completing her A-Levels, she moved on to King’s College in London where she studied computer science before moving on to a job with Deutsche Bank. The world of international business was a strong draw to a woman who was as intelligent and determined as she was attractive and within the first few years of her new career, she swept through offices in London, Paris and New York where she worked on mergers and acquisitions for JP Morgan. Although there was no lack of prospective suitors, anxious to take her out on a date, Asma would always politely decline and it was not until she quietly left her job with the minimum of fuss before Christmas 2001 that the truth emerged.

The romance between Asma and Bashar had been slowly brewing for over twenty years since they first met as children during her annual holiday. As she recalled: "We have been friends for a very long time. I came to Syria every year since I was born. It is really through family and friends who know each other since childhood." The couple had started seeing each other in London when Bashar was training as an ophthalmologist in 1994. Yet the sudden death of his elder brother, which pushed Bashar into the role of successor, meant he had to be return to Syria to be groomed for power.

The couple were finally wed in a small low-key civil ceremony in Damascus on New Year’s Day 2001 and within a year she gave birth to their son, Hafez. Yet within the past two years any perception that she would take on the mantle propped up by previous ruler’s wives and be neither seen, nor heard was dispelled. For the first year of her husband’s presidency the couple had to keep a mandatory low profile during the traditional 12 month period of mourning. This allowed Asma to roam the country, not as the wife of a ruler, but as almost as a foreign visitor. "I wanted to meet ordinary Syrians before they met me. Before the world met me. I was able to spend the first couple of months wandering around meeting other Syrian people it was my crash course. I would just tag along with one of the many programmes being run in the rural areas. Because people had no idea who I was, I was able to see people completely honestly, I was able to see what their problems were on the ground, what people are complaining about, what the issues are. What people’s hopes and aspirations are. And seeing it first-hand means you are not seeing it through someone else’s eyes. I wasn’t to spy on them. It was really just to see who they are, what they are doing."

After decades of state oppression, ordinary Syrians would probably have had a heart attack if they had known they were inspected by the wife of their new ruler. Syria is a nation that under the previous president Hafez Assad, jailed dissidents and practised torture. President Bashar Assad has made it clear he wishes to move forward, dissidents have been freed, prisons have been shut down and access to the internet has been permitted. Critics argue other dissidents have been arrested and that those with internet accounts are still closely monitored, but if the First Lady is to have an influence, as many say she has already demonstrated, progress will be made.

At the end of one year’s mourning, Syrians were treated to their first view of the new Mrs Assad and seemed to take to the young woman with the honey-brown hair, cut in a stylish, flicked bob. The event was a state visit in March 2001 by the Bulgarian president and his wife and since then she has travelled to Tunisia and Morocco and was to have dazzled Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia during a state visit to Spain. Yet Asma has her own agenda to push and top of the list is education for women. In March this year she played host to an Arab business woman’s conference, designed to improve the training and access of women into senior business posts.

Journalists, government officials and critics of the regime all agree that Asma’s role will be a prominent one is shaping a new Syria. "It will not be revolutionary, but it will certainly be important," said one. Asma is aware of her potency. "I am British and I am an Arab. I am not one or the other. I am part of both worlds." While the success of her husband’s British visit is important to her, Asma’s greatest concern is the trouble brewing in Iraq. "It is not accurate to label the Arab world as one big block. It is not accurate to label Islam, the Islamic world, as one big block, as I’m sure that Europe is not labelled. We’re all human beings, we all wish for prosperity, we all wish for better education for our children; for better quality of life regardless of where we live, and that is what really unites us."

As the storm clouds continue to gather over the Middle East and the threat of war looms over us, there are many who hope that Asma Assad’s example, her bridge building between two diverse cultures, can bear such a load.

Asma’s growing popularity is as much to do with her familial roots as her political marriage. The Assads are members of the relatively small Alawite clan that for decades has dominated the military and political scene in Syria. Asma Akhras comes from the nation’s Sunni Muslim majority, and the marriage conveys a welcome image of sectarian impartiality.

Together the couple represent the new generation of young, powerful Arabs who understand the importance of international finance and the computer revolution. In a country with a population of more than 17 million, there are at the moment only around a few thousand internet accounts, a figure both the president and First Lady are anxious should rise.

Her new role and family has left her little time for her parents and siblings back in Britain. The sign that her allegiance has switched is that, instead of flying in to Britain using her British passport, as she is still entitled to do, she insists on sending her Syrian passport to the British embassy in Damascus for stamping.

Bridge Builders

ASMA Assad’s route from the London suburb of Acton to the presidential palace in Damascus wasn’t exactly a well-trodden one, but recent history has seen a number of western women successfully bridge the divide between Islam and the west.

King Hussein of Jordan became one of the most notable rulers to take a western bride. His first marriage, when he was 19, was to the eminently suitable Dina Abdul Hameed, the daughter of King Saud of Saudi Arabia. But following his divorce from the Saudi royal, King Hussein’s next wife was about as far removed from his first as possible. In 1961 the Jordanian heir married Ipswich-born, convent-educated Antoinette "Toni" Gardiner, who was barely 19. Despite fears over her background, the ruler decided to marry the pretty former telephonist - even ignoring the advice of the British government who feared the union could destabilise the kingdom.

The British teenager eventually converted to Islam and became Princess Muna al-Hussein, "Delight of Hussein". The couple’s marriage produced four children before foundering in 1972. In 1978 King Hussein took another western wife, American Ivy League beauty Elizabeth Halaby, above left. As well as producing four children, Queen Noor al-Hussein ("Light of Hussein") spent 20 years carving out a role for herself as a loyal Arab wife with the independent spirit of a former feminist radical. Another westerner to marry into traditional Islam is London socialite-turned-philanthropist Jemima Khan, above right, who married former Pakistan cricket captain and politician Imran Khan in 1997. The daughter of billionaire industrialist, James Goldsmith, Jemima Khan recently refuted claims that she converted to Islam under duress stating: "My decision was my own choice and in no way hurried."