Word: assad
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bashar Assad likes to be seen. In Damascus, the Syrian President is often spotted dining at a smart restaurant with his wife Asma or driving his family to their weekend retreat in the mountains. Since succeeding his father Hafez as President in 2000, Assad has left the dirty work of running Syria's ruthless intelligence and security organs to two members of his clan--his brother Maher, 37, commander of the Presidential Guard, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, 55, chief of Syrian military intelligence. They haven't always got along. About five years ago, Maher shot Shawkat...
...fitting analogy, because like the fictional New Jersey Mob family, the Assads could be facing the end of their run. A long-awaited United Nations report last week implicated the Syrian regime in the assassination last February of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri--and specifically fingered Maher Assad and Shawkat as playing leading roles in the violent conspiracy. The report, by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, reconstructs the events that it says led up to the car-bomb murder of Hariri, including the August 2004 meeting in Damascus during which Bashar Assad threatened the billionaire Lebanese politician...
...Assad government has angrily rejected the U.N. findings as baseless, charging that they rest on the hearsay of faithless witnesses, though a Syrian spokesman has also held out the possibility of giving better cooperation to U.N. investigators in the future. But Syria's problems aren't about to go away. Mehlis says he needs two more months to complete his inquiry because of the Assad government's halfhearted cooperation. That charge gave fresh ammunition to Syria's critics in Washington and Europe, who are threatening to pursue economic sanctions against the regime if it fails to make a full accounting...
...much trouble does Assad face? Rice said last week that the U.S., while not currently contemplating using military force to overthrow Assad's regime, does expect a "change in behavior," in particular an end to Syrian meddling in Iraq and Lebanon. For Assad, the risk is that mounting international pressure, perhaps in the form of sanctions, could undermine his authority at home--a thought that has sent Syrians into a quiet frenzy of speculation. What was once imponderable--the end of the Assad family's 35-year hold on power--is suddenly being discussed as if it is a real...
Whether the country plunges into the abyss depends on how Assad handles the pressure on his government, both inside and outside the country's borders. Since coming to power, Assad, 40, has sought to cast himself as a reformer by allowing a degree of political openness and putting economic policy in the hands of free-market technocrats. "The President wants an open, prosperous, stable Syria that is fully integrated in the global economy," says Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari. But observers of the regime say Assad has been unable--or unwilling--to curb the excesses of the country's security...