Hazhir Teimourian

He’s no Uday, but…

The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al Asad and Modern Syria

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Yale University Press 280pp £18.95 order from our bookshop

Bashar is really a nice man. He’s thoughtful and humane and wants the best for his people. As he drives to his office every morning, he watches ordinary men and women on the streets and tries to guess what goes on in their heads. He’s a family man, too. In the first year after his son’s birth, he never once missed the baby’s evening bath. Furthermore, he’s married to a beautiful young woman ‘with a classic English accent, to boot’. And if he sups with the devils of Hamas and Hezbollah, we ought to understand. The stability of Syria ought to be uppermost in our minds. Otherwise, the real devils who were his father’s henchmen and who surround him still might feel he was endangering their fiefdoms and topple him.

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