Will a family feud finally bring down Syria’s Assad dynasty?
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is close to winning Syria’s nine-year civil war, but a major rift has appeared among its ruling elite, said Benjamin Barthe in Le Monde (Paris). Assad has run out of cash, and is now shaking down rich tycoons under cover of a corruption crackdown. The biggest fish being targeted is his own cousin Rami Makhlouf, nicknamed “Mr Five Percent”, who before the war controlled 60% of Syria’s economy. Makhlouf is fighting back, posting a series of videos on Facebook in which he complains that his assets have been seized. The security forces, he claims, have been treating his employees in an “inhumane way”, and are “attacking the people’s freedoms”. For the two men to quarrel publicly is unheard of. Anyone else who dared to challenge Assad “would have been liquidated within the hour”. But in taking on his cousin, Makhlouf has laid bare a power struggle within the country’s minority ruling Shia Alawite sect.
The partnership that has ruled Syria for half a century could be “unravelling”, said The Economist. It began when Bashar’s father Hafez, an ambitious air force officer, married Anisa, a girl from the wealthy Makhlouf family. Hafez seized power in 1970, since when their two Alawite clans have run the country “like a family business”. Their iron grip has allowed Rami to amass a $5bn fortune – some of which has been used to bankroll the jet set lifestyle of his sons, Mohammad and Ali. But events have been turning against Makhlouf for some months. Bashar’s brother Maher covets Makhlouf’s business empire; as does his wife Asma (a Sunni with her own distinct power base). The government is now demanding that Syriatel, Makhlouf’s telecoms company, pays $185m in back taxes, said David Romano in Arab News (Riyadh). At first he refused, appealing directly to his cousin in the videos. But with many of his top employees under arrest, he may now be willing to pay up.
It’s no wonder Assad needs money, said Yusuf Erim in The Jerusalem Post. Even before the coronavirus, the civil war – along with US sanctions – had devastated Syria’s finances. And to add to Assad’s woes, there are reports his chief ally, Russia, is losing patience at his inability to reach a peace settlement. The Kremlin still backs Assad, knowing there’s no one who could realistically replace him, said Anton Mardasov on Al Jazeera (Doha). But it is impatient with him; and oligarchs close to the Kremlin are certainly muscling in on business opportunities in Syria. Russia regards the conflict between the ruling factions as an internal matter, but one that is potentially dangerous. If a row between the country’s two most powerful clans escalates further – last week the justice ministry banned Makhlouf from foreign travel – it could seriously destabilise the regime.