The Rise and Fall of Asma al-Assad, Syrian Dictator’s Wife Fighting to Live

Cliche has it that behind every great man stands a woman—and as it happens, the same also applies to murderous dictators. 

Syria’s fallen tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, fled to friendly Moscow after his regime was toppled by rebels two weeks ago. Waiting for him in Russia, according to close aides, was his wife, Asma. The pair were granted asylum after the rebel coalition took control of Damascus.

Earlier this week, the Kremlin denied reports in Turkish media that Asma wanted a divorce and was determined to leave Russia for the United Kingdom, where she was born and raised. The truth, her father later told the Daily Beast in a statement, was that Asma was struggling with leukemia and wished to return to London because “her health condition cannot be adequately monitored in Moscow.” 

On Thursday, a report from The Daily Telegraph revealed that the situation was dire; Asma wa dying, fighting a “50/50” battle with the cancer, with which she was diagnosed in May, over the past few weeks. 

This dark twist in Asma’s story is just the latest in a string of surprising turns in her life; from her days as a girl in London, to her time as Syria’s “desert rose” of a first lady, to her fall from grace during the civil war. 

A Girl Called Emma

Born in west London in 1975, Asma’s early life was more characteristic of a typical British youngster than what one would expect for the future wife of a Syrian dictator, according to a profile in The Economist. 

At her Church of England primary school, she went by the name, “Emma.” After attending high school at a storied girls’ school, Queen’s College, she earned a degree in computer science from King’s College London. She landed an investment banking job at JPMorgan—by all appearances on the fast track to a western life of corporate wealth. 

Although her family were conservative Sunni Muslims who took her on trips to Syria, according to The Economist, people close to the family don’t recall her showing a particular interest in the Middle East. “She was very English and seemed to want to have nothing to do with Syria,” a friend of the family told The Economist. 

Dating the Tyrant’s Son

It was Asma’s mother, Sahar—whose great-uncle had helped Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, seize power in Syria in the ’70s—who first angled for a union between the two, The Economist reported. Bashar and Asma met several times in the ’90s, while he was studying in London to be an ophthalmologist, but they reconnected in 2000 and married in secret later that year, according to The Guardian. 

Bashar was never supposed to become Syria’s president. His older brother Bassel was the heir apparent—that is, until his untimely death in a car accident in 1996, per The Economist. Four years later, Hafez died. After a few months and a phony election, Bashar took the reins.

It was in the brief period between his father’s death and Bashar’s accession that his relationship with Asma apparently solidified. The Economist reported that Asma disappeared from her job for three weeks without notice, eventually quitting with the explanation that she had been swept off her feet and had suddenly married in Syria, where she would now live. She also gave up her spot in Harvard’s next MBA class. 

The Rose and the Thorns

With Asma—an attractive, elegant Londoner—at his side, there was hope that Bashar’s reign would be, unlike his father’s, one of reform and openness, according to The Guardian. 

It was a charming image that Asma helped to cultivate. According to The Economist, she shined in interviews with Western media, holding a softer touch than her husband. She would pick up her kids herself from their Montessori school and cook dinner for guests at their humble three-story home—intentionally not a sprawling palace. 

The couple’s three children—Hafez, Zein, and Karim—have been a part of their parents’ gentle family-oriented image. In a Facebook post from the early days of the Syrian Civil War, Asma bragged that “Hafez, 14, shares his mother’s love for technology and computing, and has become as tall as his father. He is learning Russian.”

“Karim, 11, is as active as his mother and is the house sports star. He is learning Chinese,” she added, according to The Independent. “Zein, 12, is learning Spanish. She has a strong, confident and warm personality. Just like her parents.”

The effort at image control initially proved a success, as evidenced by a now-infamous flattering 2011 profile of Asma in Vogue. Its headline declared her “A Rose In the Desert,” and described her as “the very freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” according to The Guardian. 

But, already, that facade was beginning to crack.

First Lady Macbeth

Between Asma’s interview for the Vogue piece in late 2010 and its publication in February 2011, the protests of the first Arab Spring had begun and the Syrian Civil War was soon to begin. Its brutality is now well-known—like the fact that Bashar’s regime would bomb, gas, and torture its own civilians. The fawning Vogue profile was eventually deleted.

Through it all, though, Asma remained by his side. 

In the early days of the war, some called for the dictator’s ostensibly liberal and compassionate wife to come out against the brutality. For one, in April 2012, the wives of the British and German ambassadors to the United Nations made a video demanding that she condemn her husband’s violence. 

“We are asking Asma Assad to take a risk, too, and to say openly: stop the bloodshed, stop it right now,” the two women said in the video, which showed pictures of the war’s victims, including children. “One day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed. What will your answer be, Asma?”

Asma’s manicured image was finally smashed by a report detailing her spending habits as her people suffered. 

Private emails downloaded from Asma and Bashar’s accounts and obtained by The Guardian in March 2012 showed that she spent tens of thousands of dollars on jewelry, designer clothes, and handmade furniture. Meanwhile, many Syrians struggled to survive. 

Her unwavering support for her husband’s actions over the course of the Civil War, which lasted for more than a decade, led some to conclude that she, too, was culpable. She has been targeted with sanctions from the U.S. and the U.K., and in 2020 was investigated by Britain’s Metropolitan Police over whether she was culpable in Bashar’s war crimes, according to The Guardian. 

Midnight Plane to Moscow

On Dec. 8, the Assad regime was toppled when rebels breached Damascus, after nearly 14 years of war. When the outcome had become clear, Assad fled Syria on a Russian military plane with his son Hafez, meeting Asma and his other children in Moscow, where they had been granted asylum, according to The Financial Times. 

Although he was visiting Syria, Hafez, now 23, was studying math at Moscow State University, where he recently completed his thesis, The Financial Times reported. Zein, their daughter, came from Abu Dhabi, where she was studying at the Sorbonne. 

Syria had announced in 2018 that Asma was diagnosed with breast cancer, but in 2019 gave an interview with state media saying that she was cancer-free, according to the Associated Press. In May of this year, however, Bashar’s office revealed that she was being treated for leukemia, and would not appear at public events as a result, per Reuters. 

Her condition seems to have taken a turn since her arrival in Russia, as she is now fighting for her life, The Daily Telegraph of London reported, claiming she is “severely ill” from acute myeloid leukemia

While her father told the Daily Beast that she would receive better medical care in London, England’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said she is not welcome to return, being a “sanctioned individual,” The London Evening Standard reported.

It seems Asma will remain a Russian refugee—in isolation from her husband and children, to prevent infection, per The Telegraph—for whatever time she has left.