This is a historic turning point: Sunday December 8, Bashar al-Assad lost power and fled Syria with his close family. His fall also leads to that of his wife, Asma, although seen as an icon. Together, the couple had three children: two boys, Hafez Bachar and Karim, and a girl, Zein.
Asma el-Assad, the “Desert Rose” who became a “war profiteer”
In 2011, just before the start of the civil conflict in Syria, she was considered an icon. The woman who had known Bashar el-Assad since childhood married him in 2000 a few months after the Syrian president's accession to power – they had then been a couple for four years. Three children were born from this union: Hafez Bachar, born in 2001, Zein, born in 2003, and Karim, born in 2004.
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During the 2000s, Asma el-Assad conveyed the image of a modern First Lady. The one who was a financial analyst in Europe is involved in the economic and political life of her country and represents the image of an active, feminist woman of power in tune with Western values. She goes to fashion shows, has many social evenings in major capitals, makes the front page of the international press: in short, she embodies the face of Syrian power beyond the borders. The American version of “Vogue” describes her as the “Desert Rose”.
But with the war that broke out in 2011 – in the wake of the “Arab Spring” movements – this image was tarnished. While the international community puts pressure on Bashar al-Assad, articles reveal that Asma al-Assad fully adheres to her husband's repressive policies. Worse, she continues to live in luxury and shop in Paris, New York or London while her regime's security forces are massacring the Syrian population. In March 2012, European Union sanctions targeted it, notably by freezing its economic assets. She is then described as a “war profiteer”.
Bashar al-Assad, however, managed to remain in power and managed to defeat the Islamic State. For her part, his wife Asma is gaining more and more influence within the Syrian ruling circle and some specialists in the country attribute recent decisions to her since the end of the 2010s. Until December 8 and the fall of the leader.
Who are the couple's three children?
Little information has filtered out about Zein and Karim, the two youngest children of the Assad couple. But we know much more about Hafez Bachar, now 23 years old. The eldest was seen as his father's natural heir, having to take over after his father's death.
Hafez Bachar – the two unified first names of his father and grandfather – grew up in Damascus, educated in a Montessori school then in a foreign language school. He has since traveled abroad, notably to the United States, where he was the target of sanctions. Indeed, because of his parentage with his father, he is no longer authorized to travel to North America or to own assets in the United States. Like his parents and the rest of his siblings, he fled this week to Moscow, Russia.
