大象传媒

Bashar al-Assad took over as President of Syria after his father, known to Syrians as the immortal one, died of a heart attack in 2000. The Assads have been in control of Syria for the last 42 years, since Bashar's father Hafez took over in a coup, which he referred to as a "Corrective Movement."
So how has this family survived in power so long? And why has Bashar al-Assad been so determined to hold onto power while other states have seen their leaders swept away by the Arab Spring?
Using archive and new interviews, Owen Bennett Jones examines the nature of the House of Assad and its grip over Syria. Now the regime faces its stiffest test yet.
Bashar al-Assad had maintained that he had no interest in politics but he became heir-apparent when his elder brother died in a car crash in 1994. That cut short Bashar's ophthalmology training in London and he returned to Damascus. He married his British-born Syrian wife, Asma, shortly after taking over as President.
Initially Bashar al-Assad signalled that his would be a more liberal regime than his father's, in a period known as the Damascus Spring. Those promises, however, were soon snuffed out. Now many regard his hardline stance against demonstrators, which has led to the violence now embroiling the country, is simply business as usual for the Assads. They point to the brutal put down of opposition in the town of Hama, in 1982, when Hafez al-Assad ruthlessly stamped out an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, at a cost of anything between ten to forty thousand lives.
Owen Bennett Jones speaks to those who have known father and son and asks what is it about the Assads that has made them so durable?