Book a visit. Diana Darke. Charities are useful fronts for all sorts of activities in Syria, but above all perhaps, they are vehicles of control.
The Assads have long understood that the biggest danger to their rule comes from within, from a civil society that rejects their governance β never more so than today. Such initiatives in Syria are subject to strict legal supervision, requiring the approval of the security services. An NGO worker is assumed to be a spy. Today her discreet power is on the rise, undaunted, maybe even enhanced, by her year battling breast cancer.
Her full recovery was announced in August and she now appears more determined than ever to secure her legacy. If her son, Hafez, now 19, is to inherit the country ruled by his namesake grandfather for 30 years and by his father for 20 years, she must tighten the Assad grip and see off all challengers, of whom the latest is erstwhile family ally, her cousin by marriage Rami Makhlouf.
Asma, who worked for top banks like Deutsche and JP Morgan, is a shrewd operator. An accomplished financier, she was about to embark on a Harvard MBA before she married Bashar in , the year he became president. On a trip to Syria in April organized by a British clergyman, I saw first-hand how some of this money has been spent in Aleppo.
Our group was given tours of two new Syria Trust centers, surreal pockets of ultra-modern, high-tech installations amid the devastated wasteland, by immaculate young Assad loyalists fitted out in spanking new uniforms. The women were bussed out as soon as we left. Before the war Syria Trust employees β beautiful children of the elite β roamed the villages in shiny 4WDs dispensing computers. A Latakia-based charity ostensibly to help support the families of Alawi martyrs, it even had its own military wing, closed down by the regime last year.
