Bashar al-Assad: How he managed to escape with lies and deception

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s escape was hasty. Apparently with the help of Russian intelligence, he took a plane to Moscow on Sunday, December 8th. His wife Asma, sons Hafiz and Karim and daughter Zein were waiting for him there. They had apparently fled earlier, reports the Reuters news agency. She spoke to 14 sources from Assad’s immediate environment and to involved diplomats to shed more light on the circumstances of the wild departure. In the end, the ruler was probably only able to use lies and deception to save himself from the approaching insurgents.

Before the final days of his rule finally began, Assad tried to ask Russia and Iran for military help. In 2015, Putin helped his ally in the civil war with a massive and brutal military operation. This time, however, Russia refused support. The Russian military has enough to do with the war in Ukraine.

According to Reuters, Assad was still in Moscow on November 28, a day after the insurgents attacked Aleppo. In the Russian capital it was made clear to him that he should not expect any military help. According to Hadi al-Bahra, head of the opposition movement outside Syria, the dictator is not informing officers and advisers in Damascus about the situation. “After his trip to Moscow, he told his commanders and staff that military support would be coming,” Bahra added. “He lied to them. The news he received from Moscow was negative.”

Four days later, on December 2nd, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in the Syrian capital. The insurgents around the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have now taken Aleppo and are advancing southward at high speed. Witnesses say Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting with Araghchi and acknowledged that his army was too weakened to offer effective resistance. That’s what a senior Iranian diplomat tells Reuters. But Assad did not ask for Iranian troops because he knew full well that the mullahs would not provide troops in Syria for fear of a direct confrontation with Israel.

Assad ultimately has no choice – his rule collapses within a few days. It is now clear at the latest: The Assads must leave the country as quickly as possible; the insurgents around the HTS are almost on the verge of Damascus. According to witnesses, the initial target is the United Arab Emirates, but they refuse to give the dictator and his family refuge, probably out of fear of international criticism.

So Moscow. The Assad family owns numerous luxury apartments there. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used all diplomatic channels to enable the family to leave the country safely. He establishes contacts with the HTS via Turkey and Qatar to guarantee that the plane or planes with the Assads on board will not be shot down.

Until the very end, the dictator left those around him in the dark about his escape plans. He probably fears that his plan could be thwarted. Maybe even from your own people. He doesn’t even tell his brother Maher, the powerful commander of the presidential guard and the 4th division of the Syrian army. Maher ultimately has to fly directly to Russia in a helicopter. It is also known that Assad’s cousins ​​Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf were on their own. The insurgents intercepted them in their BWM and riddled them with bullets as they made their way to Beirut. Ehab Maklouf died, his brother survived, seriously injured, it is said.

Assad even lies to his own officers in these dramatic moments. Hours before his departure for Moscow, he is said to have assured them at a meeting at the Defense Ministry that Russian military support was on the way. He is said to have urged his own ground troops to hold on, reports Reuters.

On Saturday evening at 10:30 p.m. Assad spoke to Prime Minister Mohammed al-Jalali for the last time: “In our last phone call I told him how difficult the situation is and that a lot of people are fleeing from Homs to Latakia […] and that there is panic and terror on the streets,” he told the Saudi television station Al Arabiya TV. Assad replied: “Tomorrow we will see.” And: “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’ was the last thing he said to me .” At dawn on Sunday he tried to call Assad again, but he received no answer.

Assad was probably already sitting in a plane that had turned off the transponder to avoid being located. He is said to have finally transferred to a Russian plane at a Russian military airfield near Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.