Syrian rebel groups meeting in Turkey elected a 30-member unified command on Friday at talks attended by security officials from international powers, delegates said.

The 30 included many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, and excluded the most senior officers who had defected from President Bashar al-Assad’s military, they said.

“The command has been organized into several fronts. We are now in the process of electing a military leader and a political liaison officer for each region,” said one of the delegates who did not want to be named, speaking from the coastal city of Antalya, where the meeting is being held.

Another delegate said that two-thirds of the leadership had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or were politically allied with the group, a composition which resembles that of the civilian opposition leadership coalition created under Western and Arab auspices in Qatar last month.

“We are witnessing the result of the Qatari and Turkish creations,” the delegate said, adding that the 30 are a mix of officers who had defected from the military, which is dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect, and civilians-turned rebels.

Security officials from the United States, Britain, France, the Gulf and Jordan have been attending the talks, which come days before a conference for the Friends of Syria, a grouping of dozens of countries that have mostly pledged non-military aid to rebels fighting to oust Assad.

The new military leadership includes Jamal Marouf, an Islamist commander and Ahmad al-Issa from al-Zawiya region in Idlib, as well as Colonel Abdelbasset al-Tawil, who has links with Salafists in the province.

At least two figures representing the adjacent province of Aleppo were Salafists. They were joined by Colonel Abdelqader Saleh, a non-ideological professional officer, sources at the meeting said.

Absent from the group is Colonel Riad al-Asaad, founder of the Syrian Free Army and Brigadier Mustafa al-Sheikh, a senior officer known for his opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Asaad and Sheikh were not part of the 263-man meeting in Antalia. Also excluded was general Hussein Haj Ali, the highest ranking officer to defect from the military since the uprising erupted in March last year.

AMMAN | Fri Dec 7, 2012 11:39am EST

7 Nov 2012 #Syria  #TheGreatestHomsiDescovery In Homs we expect 1 of the candidates will win US  #elections. Either Obama or Romney will win !!!

Homsi humour via @samersniper thanks samer :)

Russia’s non-intervention stance on Syria remained unchanged on Saturday as G8 leaders looked to hammer out a joint declaration to put greater pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“There cannot be any change of regime through force,” the Kremlin’s Africa envoy, Mikhail Margelov said, adding that G8 leaders meeting at Camp David had yet to agree on the Syria part of their final summit declaration.

“One has to give an opportunity to the Syrians to sort out their affairs themselves,” Margelov told reporters in Washington.

“You cannot use an ax to shear your way through the Syrian crisis, you have to use a pair of pincers to somehow sort it out.”

Despite refusing to budge from their principle of non-intervention on Syria — a thorn in the side of Western efforts to stop Assad’s year-long crackdown on dissent — the Russian envoy was critical of the regime, saying it had not come up with “any really creative ideas” to resolve the crisis.

“It is clear that the latest elections did not put an end to the Syria political crisis,” Margelov said, referring to May 7 legislative polls. “In my opinion, reaching that end will take a long time.”

Clashes across Syria continue despite an April 12 truce brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the Syrian uprising against Assad began in March 2011, including more than 900 killed since the putative truce came into effect, rights activists say.

Western powers have repeatedly called on Assad to step down but Margelov expressed wariness about what could follow.

“The anti-Bashar, anti-Assad opposition does not represent a single entity,” he said. “If the current leadership leaves, who will come to take over?”

A long-standing ally of Damascus, Moscow drew international criticism for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions against Assad.

The Kremlin, which cautions against intervention in domestic affairs of conflict-ridden countries like Syria and Libya, is at odds with the rest of the G8, which also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

Russia’s non-intervention stance on Syria remained unchanged on Saturday as G8 leaders looked to hammer out a joint declaration to put greater pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“There cannot be any change of regime through force,” the Kremlin’s Africa envoy, Mikhail Margelov said, adding that G8 leaders meeting at Camp David had yet to agree on the Syria part of their final summit declaration.

“One has to give an opportunity to the Syrians to sort out their affairs themselves,” Margelov told reporters in Washington.

“You cannot use an ax to shear your way through the Syrian crisis, you have to use a pair of pincers to somehow sort it out.”

Despite refusing to budge from their principle of non-intervention on Syria — a thorn in the side of Western efforts to stop Assad’s year-long crackdown on dissent — the Russian envoy was critical of the regime, saying it had not come up with “any really creative ideas” to resolve the crisis.

“It is clear that the latest elections did not put an end to the Syria political crisis,” Margelov said, referring to May 7 legislative polls. “In my opinion, reaching that end will take a long time.”

Clashes across Syria continue despite an April 12 truce brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the Syrian uprising against Assad began in March 2011, including more than 900 killed since the putative truce came into effect, rights activists say.

Western powers have repeatedly called on Assad to step down but Margelov expressed wariness about what could follow.

“The anti-Bashar, anti-Assad opposition does not represent a single entity,” he said. “If the current leadership leaves, who will come to take over?”

A long-standing ally of Damascus, Moscow drew international criticism for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions against Assad.

The Kremlin, which cautions against intervention in domestic affairs of conflict-ridden countries like Syria and Libya, is at odds with the rest of the G8, which also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

Russia’s non-intervention stance on Syria remained unchanged on Saturday as G8 leaders looked to hammer out a joint declaration to put greater pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“There cannot be any change of regime through force,” the Kremlin’s Africa envoy, Mikhail Margelov said, adding that G8 leaders meeting at Camp David had yet to agree on the Syria part of their final summit declaration.

“One has to give an opportunity to the Syrians to sort out their affairs themselves,” Margelov told reporters in Washington.

“You cannot use an ax to shear your way through the Syrian crisis, you have to use a pair of pincers to somehow sort it out.”

Despite refusing to budge from their principle of non-intervention on Syria — a thorn in the side of Western efforts to stop Assad’s year-long crackdown on dissent — the Russian envoy was critical of the regime, saying it had not come up with “any really creative ideas” to resolve the crisis.

“It is clear that the latest elections did not put an end to the Syria political crisis,” Margelov said, referring to May 7 legislative polls. “In my opinion, reaching that end will take a long time.”

Clashes across Syria continue despite an April 12 truce brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the Syrian uprising against Assad began in March 2011, including more than 900 killed since the putative truce came into effect, rights activists say.

Western powers have repeatedly called on Assad to step down but Margelov expressed wariness about what could follow.

“The anti-Bashar, anti-Assad opposition does not represent a single entity,” he said. “If the current leadership leaves, who will come to take over?”

A long-standing ally of Damascus, Moscow drew international criticism for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions against Assad.

The Kremlin, which cautions against intervention in domestic affairs of conflict-ridden countries like Syria and Libya, is at odds with the rest of the G8, which also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

If the “ghost of security” is a new visitor to the Syrian capital — accompanying the proliferation of bombings and assassinations — the other guest is the unusual level of political mobility that has been expanding since the beginning of the crisis. The effects of this mobility are apparent. 

Psychological barriers have been broken and politics has emerged onto the Syrian scene like a genie from a bottle. As a result, Syrians have been divided between supporters of the regime and its opponents, with heated and noisy discussions between these two groups now commonplace. The regime’s opponents have regained their “voice,” and some no longer hesitate to vocalize their “revolutionary” ideas in a loud and piercing manner, all the while sipping a cup of coffee within close proximity of a building housing the country’s intelligence apparatus.

Concrete blocks surround the headquarters of the security and intelligence services, which look like miniature fortresses. The streets are scattered with both fixed and makeshift checkpoints, which control vehicles traveling through the area. Covert patrol cars with tinted windows also survey the scene. Car bombs or smaller explosions have almost become the norm, to the extent that their impact can only be discerned in the locales in which they occur, while life elsewhere continues on normally.

The debates raging in the Syrian capital on the partisan and popular levels reveal that, domestically speaking, there exist various points of view regarding what is taking place in Syria.

The first point of view is that of those who support the “rational opposition,” which takes on a more realistic approach to the crisis than “other [opposition] branches.” Their presence explains why the capital has relatively remained free of large-scale, bloody confrontations. The activists that identify with this  particular opposition movement assert that they are indeed for regime change and the departure of Bashar al-Assad. However, they stress that they espouse peaceful and democratic means to attain this, rejecting violence and bloodshed. In this regard, they stress that there is a substantial difference between “changing” the regime — as they call it — and “overthrowing” it, as others are trying to do.

This group does not see the regime as capable of reform, and they acknowledge that a new atmosphere has come to prevail since the beginning of the protests — what they are able to now voice loudly, they never dared to tell even themselves in the past. What is striking is their criticism of what they call “personal grudges held by some Lebanese leaders against Bashar al-Assad.” They note that they deeply resent these grudges, despite the fact that they are also strongly opposed to the Assad regime.

This group of Damascene dissidents sees the current political orientation of the Syrian people as follows:

• One-third of Syrians support the regime and Assad for personal interests, sectarian reasons, or fear of the future and the unknown.
• One-third support the opposition in all its forms — including armed opposition.
• One-third of the Syrian population is neutral and silent, and cannot be counted on either side. This part of the people has so far refrained from taking action or having a final say on anything. However, it may eventually be up to those from this segment to resolve things once they determine their final choice and the direction they want the country to take.

Damascenes, who are characterized by their dissident spirit, hold Assad responsible for the current impasse. They are disappointed in Assad due to his inability to fix the situation as well as his perceived lack of desire, and his failure, to confront his corrupt environment. He allowed an influential group to monopolize the country’s wealth “while the intelligence and security services were left to suppress the citizens, who now seek to regain their dignity before anything else.”

This group believes that pro-regime demonstrations are not spontaneous. They claim that the majority of participants are public sector employees who know that they would lose their jobs if they do not respond to calls to demonstrate. There are also those who are associated with, and benefit from, the regime’s network of influence, who support the regime to preserve their own gains. “In this context, parliamentary elections would have no impact, and would be a mere joke. The current circumstances do not allow for the holding of free and fair elections. The Syrians, at the moment, are mostly concerned about restoring their dignity and freedom rather than choosing deputies who will only be pawns on the authority’s chessboard.” [unattributed quotation]

On the other hand, the “pro-regime Damascenes” have another point of view. As evidenced through their interactions on the street and within political circles, they still have the ability to polarize public opinion. Government loyalists argue that the regime has been cornered and left with no choice but to fight back by any means necessary, whether or not it wants to. They compare this situation to the [2006 Lebanese] July war, in which they say Hezbollah had no choice but to fight the war that was imposed on it by Israel, regardless of the possible outcome and the existing balance of power.

The regime’s zealots add: “We find that we have been left with no other choice but to fight a battle of life or death. We are not fighting for the regime but for the State, whose existence and continuity are on the line. We are well aware that this confrontation may drag on for a long time. We have prepared ourselves for all possibilities and worst-case scenarios, including the assumption that the crisis will continue past 2015, or possibly longer.”

“The Damascene zealots” believe that it is Syria as an entity that is facing imminent danger. They are skeptical of the many alleged attempts to atomize the country and divide it into sectarian enclaves.

A prominent official from one Baath party institution said that he was surprised when his daughter returned from school one day and reprimanded him for having hidden her confessional identity from her. He told her that he did not do so intentionally; he did not think that there was a need for her to interact with others on such grounds. The Baathist leader added that his house, which was supposedly located in a safe area, was attacked amidst the heat of the revolution. He says that he then realized that the crisis was an attempt to awaken sectarian strife among Syrians, and push them toward chaos at the expense of their citizenship.

The regime’s supporters acknowledge that the prevailing system has committed mistakes. However, they emphasize that the crisis’ current direction is not the solution. They believe that countries are not test tubes for new political systems, and that reform on the part of the current regime is far better than what is being proposed by a deeply divided opposition.

The regime’s supporters called on Syrians to adopt a realistic approach for the upcoming legislative elections, and claim that these elections remain the best possible option for Syria, even if they may not be held in the best of conditions. Legislative elections will serve as an exercise for democratic and pluralistic politics now that a new constitution is in effect. Some claim that they will be a training session for the Baath Party, which will help it adapt to the new realities it faces. They will also allow emerging political parties to gain electoral experience. 

05/07/12 #Syria Full and free elections in the Aleppo countryside …

Syrian man taps on a window of the vehicle used by U.N. observers to try and talk to them during their field visit to the Madaya area, near Damascus (KHALED AL-HARIRI, REUTERS / May 6, 2012)

Kofi Annan’s plan is destined to fail #Syria

By David Schenker – Special to CNN

President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to U.N. envoy and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to end the bloodshed in Syria.  Al-Assad was wise to do so.  The U.N. initiative, which endorses al-Assad’s oversight of a “political process to address the legitimate aspirations” of the Syrian people - is a boon to the dictator and a setback for the opposition.

Al-Assad had little to lose by signing on to the plan.  The concessions he made in the deal- - the ceasefire, the ensuring of humanitarian assistance, a release of political prisoners, allowing entry to journalists, and permitting demonstrations - can all be reversed relatively quickly. 

Meanwhile, the benefits for al-Assad are significant.  Notwithstanding having killed nearly 10,000 Syrian citizens, some U.N. member states will likely view the president’s acceptance of the plan as a positive step providing evidence of the regime’s new willingness to compromise with the opposition.  More importantly, Annan’s plan says nothing about al-Assad having to leave, much less face trial for crimes against humanity.  To wit, when queried on March 27 about whether al-Assad would step down, Annan said “it’s up to the Syrian people.”

Putting aside the absurd supposition that the Syrian “people” ever had or ever will be empowered to determine al-Assad’s future through peaceful means, the plan not only perpetuates, but legitimates al-Assad’s continued rule.  For the time being, at least, the debate has changed from how al-Assad can be forced from power to what reforms the Syrian strongman can be convinced to make.

At the same time, the plan hurts the opposition.  The predictably divergent responses to the news of al-Assad’s acceptance from the Syrian National Council, the opposition’s government in exile, highlight rifts within the group.  Should the negotiations actually occur, questions of who will speak for the opposition will only exacerbate extant divisions.  Worse, Annan’s plan will slow the momentum building in Washington calling for providing critical funding and lethal assistance to the Free Syrian Army, the military opposition to the regime.

For al-Assad, the Annan plan also provides a useful respite both from international condemnation and for his troops.  In particular, a ceasefire would give the regime’s 4^th Division -  some 12,000 Alawite troops loyal to the minoritarian Alawite regime - a much-needed break.   For the past year, the division has been deployed throughout Syria, tasked with suppressing largely Sunni Muslim rebel forces.

Accepting this U.N. roadmap is vintage al-Assad regime strategy.  As usual, he is playing for time.  During the Bush Administration, for example, the regime was under a lot of pressure, internationally isolated for its assumed role in the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and for helping to move insurgents into Iraq to kill American soldiers.

At moments of maximum international pressure on the regime, however, al-Assad would float the possibility of negotiations with Israel.  The mere prospect of Damascus joining the peace camp alleviated the pressure and ended Syria’s pariah status.   Al-Assad succeeded in waiting out a hostile Bush Administration, which was replaced by an Obama Administration that campaigned on a pledge to diplomatically engage the regime.

If the Annan plan had even a remote chance of succeeding, it might be worth risking the potential downsides.  Alas, there is absolutely no prospect of success.  Al-Assad had more than ten years to implement political reforms.  Judging from al-Assad’s recently intercepted emails where he referred to promised reforms as “rubbish laws of parties, elections, and media,” the revolt has not spurred an epiphany.

While al-Assad may indeed engage in dialogue with opposition figures, he will not consent to real democratic elections that will lead to majoritarian [i.e. Sunni Muslim] rule in Syria.  He may likewise agree to vest parliament with more authority and provide the historically powerless legislature with the appearance of relevance.   But this is al-Assad’s vision of reform - it does not reflect the aspirations of the Syrian people who, for the past year have put their lives on the line to end the corrupt, tyrannical, and increasingly brutal regime.

What al-Assad will offer during the “political process” will be acceptable to neither the political nor the military opposition.  In fact, it’s difficult to see anything short of al-al-Assad’s departure from power being accepted.

So Kofi Annan’s initiative to end the crisis in Syria is destined for failure. To be sure, al-Assad will blame the plan’s failure on the opposition “terrorists” and continue with the atrocities.  Meanwhile, the opposition will regroup, and the Free Syria Army, armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, will continue the fight to protect demonstrators and end the regime.

At the end of the day, however, the biggest cost of this ill-advised effort may be time.  The longer the conflict drags on, the more Islamist the opposition is becoming.   Regrettably, counterproductive U.N. efforts like the Annan plan will do little to reverse this trend.

Syrian president Bashar Assad’s wife Asma is pictured at the Bristol hotel on December 11, 2010 in Paris. (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images)

By Maria Golovnina

LONDON, March 19 (Reuters) - She was supposed to be the gentler face of a would-be reformist regime. Now Asma al-Assad has become a hate figure for many.

Syria’s London-born first lady, once breathlessly described as a “rose in the desert”, is ensconced at the heart of the shadowy inner circle of President Bashar al-Assad.

As Syria slides towards civil war and foreign powers watch for cracks within the ruling clan, understanding Asma could prove vital to understanding the Assads and the future of the Syrian crisis.

A British-educated former investment banker, Asma cultivated the image of a glamorous yet serious-minded woman with strong Western-inspired values who was meant to humanise the increasingly secretive and isolated Assad family.

That image crumbled when her husband responded to an anti-government rebellion with extreme violence a year ago. Asma had clearly decided to stand by her man despite international revulsion at his actions. Assad himself says he is fighting an insurrection, involving foreign-backed “terrorists”.

Asma’s ancestral home is the city of Homs, now a symbol of the revolt which has been subjected to particularly fierce attack by her husband’s tanks to become ground zero in the year-long conflict.

With her penchant for crystal-encrusted Christian Louboutin shoes and Chanel dresses, Asma is a puzzle for many. The opposition roundly rejects suggestions that she is effectively a prisoner of conscience in the presidential palace.

“She was very much, as we would say, left wing. She (created) a very, very good impression. She seemed to be very bright, very respectful of others,” said Gaia Servadio, a writer and historian who has worked with Asma on several art projects.

“It’s a very nasty regime … Thousands of people have been killed. So it’s very difficult to say: poor woman. She certainly should have found a way to talk.”

The world was smitten by her immaculate facade. In the Western media, Asma, a 36-year-old mother of three, was described as sophisticated, elegant, confident, with a “killer IQ” and an interest in opening up Syria though art and charity.

For those who pinned their hopes on Assad as a potential reformer, his photogenic wife bolstered that image, lending a touch of glamour to his awkward public appearances.

A glowing article in Vogue magazine described her as “a rose in the desert” and her household as “wildly democratic”. A French newspaper said she was an “element of light in a country full of shadow zones”.

People were charmed by her classy demeanour, liberal views and British accent. She received the Gold Medal of the Presidency of The Italian Republic for humanitarian work in 2008 and won an honorary archaeology doctorate from La Sapienza university in Rome.

“THE REAL DICTATOR”

Yet emails published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper this month from accounts believed to belong to the family offer a different portrait, showing her as a capricious dictator’s wife spending tens of thousands of pounds on jewels, fancy furniture, and a Venetian glass vase from Harrods.

“I am the real dictator, he has no choice,” she apparently said in one of the emails in a comment about her husband.

Her London contact, a Syrian businessman, appears to send emails to her using an address he has nicknamed “Party party”.

The story of how the London-born daughter of a Sunni Muslim Syrian doctor married into Assad’s family, members of the powerful minority Alawite sect, reads like a cautionary tale.

She was born in the west London suburbs, whose sleepy streets are lined with neat houses, just like her family’s. Twelve years after she married Assad, the family home appears almost abandoned, its curtains drawn. Neighbours said her father still lives there with his wife, a former diplomat.

“We know they are there but we don’t see them,” said one neighbour, a veiled Arab woman who asked not to be named. No one answered the door bell when Reuters called at the weekend.

A Syrian dissident from Aleppo, who lives nearby and asked to be identified only by his nickname, Zayed, said most Syrians in Britain despised Asma now.

Zayed, angrily comparing Asma to Marie Antoinette or the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, called on the Syrian leader’s wife to “make a stand for your own sake, for your own people … She never did.”

A senior member of the British Syrian Society, set up with Assad’s help to promote business ties, said he has met the first couple in London and used warm words to describe them.

“They were quite impressive to talk to. He came across as someone who wanted to listen, get ideas, get advice, open to everybody, he made it plain that he wanted Syrians abroad to help building the country again. He was welcoming and warm.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity in a gentlemen’s club in a smart London neighbourhood, he added: “We all felt there was an opportunity that he, the president, representing the younger generation, could lead Syria to a new age of change.

“Perhaps he feels betrayed. Why are they (the West) ganging up on him? Now some people say, he is in full control, others say that he is not. Maybe he is shocked by the fact that … in the end they all turned against them.”

Asma’s father, Fawaz Akhras, a cardiologist and founder of the British Syrian Society, has not responded to a Reuters request for a meeting, made through an intermediary.


“WARLORDS, ONE AGAINST THE OTHER”

Known as Emma to her British friends, Asma spent the first 25 years of her life in North Acton, went to a smart London girls school, Queen’s College, and read computer science at King’s College London.

She was a rising star at JP Morgan when she met Bashar, who had studied ophthalmology in London but was sent home to be groomed for the presidency after his elder brother, Basil, died in a car crash in 1994.

“I was always very serious at work, and suddenly I started to take weekends (off), or disappear, and people just couldn’t figure it out,” she told Vogue. “What do you say - ‘I am dating the son of a president?’”

They married in 2000. What followed was a life full of glamour. They once dined with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Syria. Bashar joked, according to Vogue: “Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training!”

One photograph from happier days depicts them playing with their children, toys scattered around on the carpet.

The Assad side of the clan, however, didn’t like Asma, not least because of her Sunni Muslim origins.

“Certainly the Assad family doesn’t like her, to put it mildly … She was constantly under watch, her telephone, she was very careful,” Servadio, who spent time with the family in Syria before the uprising, told Reuters in London.

“She was shouted at. How odd, frankly, (that) somebody who is meant to be the wife of the president who is an autocrat, can be shouted at in this way.” She added: “It was like a mediaeval power, warlords, one against the other.”


CHILLING GLIMPSE

Asma’s husband was elected president with 97 percent of the vote in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had ruled Syria with an iron fist for decades.

Before the start of the 2011 uprising, there was hope Syria could change. Syrians saw his choice of wife as proof that things were about to change.

“When he came to power, people said, ‘Okay … let’s give him a chance and see what he’s going to do,’” said Ghassan Ibrahim, Global Arab Network’s London-based editor. “What happened is that he made corruption even more organised, Mafia appeared, poverty grew sharply … (But) she is standing by the criminal and she supports him.”

Emails leaked by Syria’s opposition offer a chilling glimpse into the lavish lifestyle the couple enjoyed even as Assad’s troops shelled opposition strongholds.

The tone of those emails is incongruously jokey. In one, Asma’s husband disparages his own reforms as “rubbish”. He also shares a pun playing on the words “elections” and “erections”.

Asma appears to have written in an email: “If we are strong together, we will overcome this together … I love you.”

As the revolt unfolded she gradually disappeared from public view but broke her silence in February, saying in a statement: “The president is the president of Syria, not a faction of Syrians, and the first lady supports him in that role.”

In a haunting interview with CNN, looking nervous, she once said: “We are losing time. We are working against the clock. Three thousand and three hundred people injured. More than that, 22,000 people have been displaced from their homes … This is the 21st century. Where in the world could this happen?”

She was talking in 2009 about an Israeli operation in Gaza.


“VIRTUALLY A PRISONER”

Some believe she is a propaganda tool of the Assad family, a liberal going through a moral crisis in Damascus, unable to speak up or escape.

“She is virtually a prisoner. The two of them missed their boat,” said Servadio. “I would certainly accuse him (Assad) of being a coward. … I think he is a puppet, very much used.

“For them (the family) it’s wonderful to have a scapegoat, these two people at the top who are absorbing all the hatred.”

Ibrahim disagreed. “It’s not true at all. Assad has been in power for over 12 years. He is in full control. Giving such excuses to him is unacceptable. They are like the Mafia.”

As battles raged across Syria, Asma kept spending on designer baubles from London, according to the emails.

For ordinary Syrians, Asma al-Assad is now a hate figure.

“They have stolen Syrian money. She is squandering it here in London,” said Fawaz, a man who came to an opposition fund-raising event in London wrapped in a Syrian flag.

“She and her father are accomplices to this crime. They learned nothing from the democracy here in the UK.” (Writing By Maria Golovnina Editing by Giles Elgood)