It’s just six months since the first lady of Syria, Asma al-Assad, was on a roll as the plushly-accessorized human face of Syria’s Assad regime. British-born, well-educated, multilingual, slim, young, and shod by Louboutin, Mrs. Assad had already been feted for her wardrobe by the Huffington Post, hosted Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Damascus, and been tapped by the Harvard Arab Alumni Association to serve as patroness and keynote speaker for its March 2011 Arab World Conference in Damascus. For the February edition of Vogue, she made herself oh-so-accessible to writer Joan Juliet Buck — who produced a widely circulated article describing Asma al-Assad as on a mission “to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.”
Courtesy of Asma, Vogue’s readers were effectively invited right into the home of the Assads — a home run on “wildly democratic principles.” There were insider moments, with Asma whipping up fondue in the kitchen, and a tour of the triple-decker playroom where Asma and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad (in his “off-duty” jeans) played with their children — happy neighbors dropping by, to look in on Assad family life.
This Assad idyll was interrupted by mass protests from Syrians who have had a bellyful of the Assad dynasty. To hold onto power, Assad’s regime has relied on carnage in which the United Nations estimates more than 2,200 people have so far been killed. Assad’s forces have been using heavy artillery against Syria’s own people, availing themselves of the help and expertise of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and posting snipers on rooftops. In May, they returned the mutilated corpse of 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb to his family, reportedly on condition they keep quiet about how he was murdered. This past week, Syria’s best-known political cartoonist, Ali Ferzat, was grabbed by armed, masked men, who beat him and broke the bones in his hands, to stop him from drawing.
Somewhere in there, between the Harvard Arab Alumni dinner, and the heavy-artillery assaults and crushing of Ferzat’s hands, Asma al-Assad vanished. If there has been a reliable sighting in recent months, by all means, please write in. I haven’t found one. There have been articles speculating that sometime this spring she and her children slipped out of Syria that they may be in hiding somewhere in the UK. The Atlantic Wire wondered about this back in May — “Where Is the First Lady of Syria?” So did Al Arabiya: “President Assad’s wife, Asma, could be in London.” Earlier this month a web site called The Syrian asked “Asma Al-Assad, Oh Where are you?”
Great piece!
Maybe you should ask to interview the editors of Vanity Fair on wheter they have any second thoughts?
I’m pretty sure that Vogue has already said they have no regrets. I forgot their logic as my eyes started to glaze over from the overdose of too much B.S.
If she dared to speak against her husband and his dictatorship, I fear that she may be incommunicado. Permanently, as in lying in a grave.
Dictatorships are not very good about tolerating dissent. For example, Stalin imprisoned many of his own family members. His second wife, who had dared to criticize Stalin at social occasions amongst other Politburo members, died as the result of a gunshot wound. The official story was that she died of an illness but some Kremlin insiders insisted that it was suicide. Some people speculate that Stalin himself might have shot her.
While other elements of the regime might not dare touch Mrs. Assad, her own husband might feel the necessity to kill her himself rather than to be seen to be harbouring a traitorous viper in his own midst.
If Stalin shot her (and they still called it suicide) I guess that would among the first “assisted suicides.”
Before marriage with Bashar Assad, Asma’s family name was “Akhras” which in Arabic means “dumb, mute”. May be she is literally so, incapable of hearing the cries of the heroic Syrian people! Knowing well that the simmering anger of the Syrians will some day explode aloud, the Assads were too ‘smart’ to chose a bride, particularly from a non-Alawite, Sunni, family who could also hear !! On the other hand in order to dupe the Sunni majority of Syrians, they had to find a Sunni bride. Lo and behold, they found an entire Sunni family of Akhras/es, dumb and mute.
By reading her interview in Vogue one could easily tell how akhras/dumb Asma Akhras al-Assad was!!
The wife of a dictator is simply an appendage of the dictator. She was an appendage six months ago; she is an appendage today. There is no point in directing hard questions to the wife of a dictator.
Better to direct hard questions to Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, the Harvard Arab Alumni Association, Angelina Joilie and Brad Pitt. Such as: how do you feel about the Assad regime playing you for fools?
They are not the first western people or institutions that the Assad regime has played for fools. Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder went to Syria to accept an “award.” Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry , and David Duke all made the pilgrimage to Damascus to protest the horrid policy of ejecting dictators that dastardly Dubya had imposed on Iraq. Assad agreed that getting rid of dictators was very bad policy.
So right. People have bought into her innocence since she puts on the headscarf and puts on the appearance of a soft spoken caretaker and humanitarian. When are people on this planet going to realize its actions; actions, not words that define a person. Asma al-Assad’s actions are that she is complicit in this. When it’s over, she’ll reappear and try to continue her Princess Diana act, and I have no doubt the same dolts in the media and Hollywood will fall for it.
As a former investment banker with J.P. Morgan, Asma might be making sure there is enough money in the “kitty” to make sure she maintains her lifestyle after her husband is captured, killed or runs away.
Is there an Arabic version of “Stand By Your Man”?
How about “Hillary Rodham Clinton” written in Arabic script?!
Anybody who hosts Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Damascus has to be insane. And didn’t Jolie and Pitt have a better place to go on vacation, like Libya or the Gaza Strip? I mean, if they really wanted a unique place to go to, I hear Kandehar is lovely this time of year, and I think they would just ADORE seeing the city of Hama, where the Assads are literally killing hundreds of people in the streets as we speak.
I’m getting very tired of American “celebrities” being used as propaganda tools and useful idiots by foreign dictators. Sean Penn and Hugo Chavez come to mind, and Fidel Castro and just about anybody in the Congressional Black Caucus also jumps out at me. Odds are, if an American celebrity goes anywhere, I automatically tune them out. I would also send them a copy of the Logan Act and make them read it very, very, carefully, although I doubt Eric Holder even knows the Logan Act even exists.
Yet another example of the monumental hypocrisy of Islam and all it has tried to absorb; or the hypocrisy of those who’ve permitted themselves to be absorbed by Islam or it’s proponents.
She gets no sympathy from me, it’s my uninformed guess that her husband sent her back to England to sweep a path for him to join the Islamic community there for some subversive position for the solidification of sharia amidst their current “no-go” enclaves.
Thanks to Claudia Rosett for alerting us to this additional murky chapter of the Twilight Zone of yet another Islamic animal.
I imagine she’ll do the traditional ex-dictatress thing, namely live a life of quiet luxury in some friendly country, utilizing the stolen fortunes of her husband’s victims.
Blood debts. Mrs. Assad is probably alive and will most certainly have nothing to say to anyone. If she were married to the greatest guy in the world, it is regime change time in an islamic country. Doesn’t matter who the good guys are or who the bad ones are. Probably no good ones on either side (or there won’t be any left). If, and it’s a big “if,” she has her children with her, she will not raise her head or her voice. And if they are not with her, likewise. If she is at all canny in her situation, she is laying groundwork for years down the road. Her future (and especially her childrens’)is neither in Syria nor in the public eye.
The editors of these magazines are the movers and shakers of the progs elite core of fawning journalists who tell us how brilliant obama is, how toned, mooshells arms are, how thunderous her thighs are. How she sets fashion standards. They wouldn’t know a phony if it was covered in three dollar bills.
I don’t know where ASSma ASSad is but I know she and the rest of the ASSad pimps are going to hell. She probably is in the UK. She is British afterall and so are her kids. Atleast she and her children are safe, comfortable and free unlike the poor people of Syria. What is that hopefully one term president of ours going to do about terrorist states like Syria, Saudis, emirates and Iran?
Money Talks- hat tip to ElderofZiyon
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/syria-hired-pr-firm-to-set-up-vogue.html
The Syrian government hired an international public-relations firm to help coordinate a Vogue magazine profile for Asma al-Assad, Syria’s first lady.
Brown Lloyd James agreed to a $5,000-per-month contract with the presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic in November 2010 to help with the interview and photo shoot for a glowing profile of al-Assad by the high-profile fashion magazine.
same PR firm shills for Al Jazeera
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and Mrs Assad? probably shopping for more Voguish clothes and shoes in fancy shops in London
According to Arab diplomatic sources in Britain, the wife of the Syrian President, Asma Assad, fled from Damascus to London together with her three children about two weeks ago in the face of the expansion of the protests against her husband’s regime.
Asma Assad is running around a suburb in London wearing a burka and covered from head to tail. She is using an assumed name and her kids are in school under a false name