Who must go?^note I must go...

Bashar Hafez al-Assad (born 11 September 1965) was the president of Syria from 2000 until rebel forces managed to take over the country at the end of 2024. Assad's rule is notoriously controversial, especially since the country was engulfed in a bloody civil war from 2011 until his ouster, constituting more than half of his rule of the country.

Bashar is the second son of Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad, who led a series of coups in the 1960s that radically changed Syria. The first coup brought the Syrian branch of the Ba'ath Party to power, while the second purged the party of its Sunni Muslim and Christian leaders, leaving only the minority Alawites, of whom Hafez and his family belong to. Hafez ruled Syria as president for 29 years, installing a Cult of Personality revolving around his family. Bashar became Hafez's heir apparent in 1994, when his older brother, Bassel, died in a car accident. He was described as being a shy boy, uninterested in politics and the military, much unlike his brothers. Bashar assumed office in 2000, after Hafez's death, and allied his country with the United States during the War on Terror. In the beginning of his term, he was considered a "reformer" who would fix the issues left by his father such as the military intervention of Lebanon, democratization of their country and the hostility with Israel to normalize relationships with the Western world. However, the political system remained the same as Bashar continued to centralize his authority, silence the opposition and place family members in high position in the government.

Nevertheless, he remained a relatively quiet and unassuming figure in Middle-East politics during the 2000s. This changed in 2011, when The Arab Spring came along. As noted above, the Alawites basically controlled Syria as their fiefdom even though they constituted less than 15% of the population. Protests, led by Sunni Muslims who formed over 75% of the population, began to erupt, with the reasons provided being disaffection over high unemployment and lack of political representation. However, Assad was having none of that and cracked down hard on dissenters. The violent repression drew criticism from Western nations who pressured him to step down via sanctions, but when it became clear that Assad would not comply, the unrest in Syria soon turned into insurgency as armed rebel groups rose up to overthrow his regime, beginning the Syrian Civil War.

By 2014, it seemed his regime was about to collapse as his forces broke down against the rise of the Islamist groups who also sought to overthrow Assad; they regarded him as not being a true Muslim for being an Alawite.^note In 1979, his father dealt with an Islamist uprising when he changed the constitution allowing non-Muslims to become presidents of Syria. This outraged radical Sunnis who tried to assassinate Hafez, but he crushed them in a brutal crackdown that targeted not just the radicals, but people who happened to live close to them. Independent estimates counted that up to 40,000 people were killed within the span of a month.
Regarding Alawites being considered non-Muslims, that is, in fact, how most Muslims viewed Alawites until as late as the 20th century. At best, mainstream Muslims considered Alawites as something of a cult, since they're secretive even among the most mystical side of Sufis. The fact that their belief system goes against many traditional Islamic tenets (incorporating many seemingly Christian-inspired doctrines and rituals such as belief in a Holy Trinity and the practice of something like a Catholic Mass, as well as stranger beliefs like reincarnation) just adds to their status as heretics. It wasn't until Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a prominent Palestinian activist, issued a fatwa in the 1930s recognizing the Alawites as Muslims (specifically, Shia Muslims) that the idea that they are even Muslims at all was seriously considered, and it's shaky at best. The identification of Alawites as Shia Muslims was commonly seen as an act of political pragmatism to support the alliance between Syria and Iran, rather than a reflection of theological reality. With the fall of the Assad regime and creation of a Sunni-led government, who knows how things will develop in the future. After decades of state propaganda telling the Muslim world (and Alawites themselves) that Alawites are Shia Muslims, many Alawites today, who never knew anything else (being born in the second half of the 20th century), genuinely feel and will say they are Shias and Muslims, even if Alawite theological beliefs can still be quite distinct. The most infamous of these was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who managed to conquer large swathes of land and became a threat not just to Assad, but other rebels and even other jihadists. This lead to an international intervention by several foreign superpowers to curb Islamic State with Russia and Iran directly supporting Assad whereas the West partially changed the policy about Assad, choosing to ignore him to focus on the fundamentalists, since ISIS was launching terrorists attacks in Europe that would kill hundreds, while still covertly supporting the Syrian opposition.

After the Islamic State was (mostly) dealt with, however, Assad's luck began to turn. With the help of Russia and Iran, the Syrian government slowly chipped away at the rebels. Homs, a strategic city located between the country's capital, Damascus, and the largest city, Aleppo, was captured in 2015, followed by Aleppo itself in 2016. In 2018, the government recaptured the southern governorates of Daraa and Quneitra, the "cradle of the revolution", as they were the first areas to rebel against the government. The rebels were forced to either stay and live under his rule, which would mean mandatory conscription and punishment to various degrees, or flee to the northwest, chiefly Idlib Governorate, the last zone still free of the Syrian government's reach. Assad's government would besiege the opposition-held northwest, though its movement was checked by Turkey, the self-proclaimed protector of the revolution, which was worried that the collapse of the rebellion would trigger a massive humanitarian crisis, with millions of Syrians potentially crossing its borders.

All in all, Bashar al-Assad managed to survive 14 years of civil war that killed up to 580,000 people, uprooted 7.6 million people from their homes, forced 5.1 million people to flee the country, overwhelmed Syria's neighbors, caused a refugee crisis in Europe, and created a period of terror that briefly encaptured the world. He was even welcomed back into the Arab League, attending its summit and shaking hands with other Arab rulers in 2023. His rule seemed secure... until late November 2024. With his sponsors Iran, Hezbollah and Russia all distracted by other wars, rebels launched a surprise offensive out of Idlib and Afrin. The Syrian army, left on its own, instantly disintegrated. The rebels swept through the country in less than two weeks, essentially unopposed, and toppled Assad's regime in early December. Assad and his family fled to Russia.

Attitudes and opinions held towards Assad shifted greatly in part to how the war was conducted. His critics accuse him of several war crimes like using chemical weapons on civilians, jailing opponents and torturing them in vicious manners, facilitating the rise of Islamic State by releasing jihadists from prison and escalating the conflict because of his refusal to hand over power. On the other side, he has supporters who, despite (or perhaps precisely because of) his authoritarian practices, view him as a stabilizing force against jihadists and fear of Syria collapsing into anarchy just like what happened to its neighbor Iraq after Saddam Hussein's removal. (This is of course a bit hypocritical, considering that Syria is basically a hellhole at this point, in a condition far worse than what Iraq endured after the 2003 American invasion. Even in its worst, the Iraq War didn't cause 5 million people to flee the country, overwhelming its neighbors.) Nevertheless, the West would constantly criticize him, with various sanctions applied to him, his family, government, and the country in general, and blockades imposed by countries bordering Syria, choking the economy (though by 2019, most have opened their borders; only Turkey and Israel — the latter of which never had any relations with Syria anyway — have yet to do so).

On the other hand, it appears that Assad had largely become a figurehead in the larger war since Iran and especially Russia came to support his country directly from 2015 onward. While his government is no doubt responsible for a slew of human rights abuses, most of the American and Israeli criticisms and retaliatory attacks nowadays are targeted at the Iran-backed militias who are residing in Syria, while Turkey made a point to bypass Syria entirely in favor of talking to Russia regarding ceasefire and peace talks.

Tropes pertaining to Bashar al-Assad's portrayals in media:

• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In the Last Men in Aleppo documentary, his Syrian Arab Army retakes Aleppo from the rebels.
  • By 2020, Assad succeeded in recapturing most of the country and was entering negotiation talks with the Kurds to get them surrender to him (and Turkey regularly attacks the Kurds, besides). The rebels, who at their strongest controlled more territory than Assad, had been reduced to a small corner in Syria's northwest, where they endured daily bombings and artillery attacks by the government. It appeared to Syria's revolutionaries that The Bad Guy really does win (or was close to winning).
  • Subverted in late 2024, when the Rebels launched a surprise offensive that quickly toppled the Assad regime and forced him to flee Damascus in a matter of days.
• Better the Devil You Know: Those more reluctant to support Assad consider him a less bad alternative to the rebels and jihadists.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He has been characterized as a soft-spoken and stoic figure in contrast to other Arab leaders, but also portrayed as extremely ruthless. In fact, this was what made Syria's brutal, world-affecting civil war even more astonishing. Western media was used to dealing with Large Ham Arab leaders like Iraq's Saddam Hussein or Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, which was why those men and their countries got all the attention, while Syria was almost unknown before the civil war erupted.
• Deadly Doctor: An ophthalmologist by training, Assad became one of the most brutal dictators of the 21st century.
• Dirty Coward: He went AWOL in the days leading up to Damascus' fall, making no appearances to rally his supporters or reassure the public. When he did show up in Moscow, having left many members of his inner circle to fend for themselves, he still had a Never My Fault attitude regarding the whole debacle. Afterwards, many of his followers denounced him as a coward even as some of them remained loyal to the Ba'athist ideals.
• Foil: He and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Both were dictators who have ruled their respective countries for years, but their personalities couldn't be any different. Gaddafi was bombastic and very theatrical, while Assad is soft-spoken and largely content staying out of the public eye. Their fates post-Arab Spring are also opposed: Gaddafi died the same year Libya's civil war erupted, while Assad is still alive and managed to keep his position for thirteen years after the eruption of the Syrian civil war, only losing power in December 2024.
• Glorious Leader: According to his more hardcore supporters and media sympathetic of him.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist for 24 years. During his reign, he turned the country into a (further) totalitarian dystopia, facilitated regional ethno-religious divides, brutally cracked down on protesters to his rule, waged a violent civil war in his country where he deliberately attacked civilians and used illegal chemical weapons, etc. Yet against all odds (with lots of Russian and Iranian support) he managed to maintain his position, and by the 2020s it seemed that Assad would continue to rule Syria. But all that changed in late 2024 when the Syrian Opposition launched a massive offensive against Government forces. In the span of just two weeks, nearly all of Syria fell to opposition control, the government and military collapsed, and Assad was forced to abandon his presidency and flee to Russia.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Notably averted. Bashar has very distinctive blue eyes, which are often noted in Western media. They are actually not that uncommon in the Middle East, but the stereotype of Arabs as a big group of people with brown skin and eyes in popular media makes this rather remarkable.
• President Evil: In negative portrayals, obviously, though his position was inherited like a monarchy rather than voted into power.
• Spare to the Throne: His brother Bassel was expected to become President, undertaking military and political training while Bashar became a doctor instead. When he died in a car crash, the presidency passed to him.
• Villainous Mother-Son Duo: Before her death in 2016, Bashar was reportedly close to his mother, Anisa Makhlouf, whom he regularly consulted on political matters. Reportedly, she was the one who advised him to brutally crack down on protesters during the 2011 uprising, which resulted in the civil war.
• We Used to Be Friends: Before the civil war, he and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were close as far as politicians go. After that, the relationship soured greatly, since Syria and Turkey became the fiercest enemies of the war. Among foreign enemies, Assad has particularly singled out Erdoğan for his support of "terrorists".

Assad is featured/referenced in the following works:

• France: The second war zone in which the eponymous Intrepid Journalist ventures is not named, but several things bring Syria to mind, chiefly the fact that the locals speak Arabic and that "the regime" (like al-Assad's) has no qualms bombarding its own population.
• Les Guignols de l'Info: This puppet show portrayed him as a casually murderous President for Life who loves Deadly Euphemisms.
• Messiah opens with Damascus being besieged by Islamic State and Assad is arguably conspicuous by his absence. However, a vandalized poster of his is shown during the prologue indicating that something unpleasant happened to him.
• Paladin of Shadows: He cameos in the first book alongside Osama bin Laden.
• The Pianist from Syria - A Memoir:
  …Assad died, and his son Bashar came to power. The dictatorship was just as brutal as before, and the torture chambers were as full as they'd ever been.
• Tyrant (2014) follows a heavily dramatized version of Bashar al-Assad as Bassam "Barry" Al-Fayeed, a pediatrician who is forced to assume the role of dictator after his father's passing.