Personality Cults

In the most common pose, outside Hamidiyya Souk in Old Damascus

More full post to come, time permitting, but I thought I would share with you some of the many portraits of Bashar and Hafez al-Assad (respectively, the current present and his deceased father and predecessor) that are all over Syria. Some of these, in public places, are clearly put there by the administration, but many (such as Bashar portraits in many shops and one Bashar family portrait we saw in a car) seem spontaneous and personal. One cynic told us that Syrians would wear underwear with Assad on it. All of the Syrians we spoke with on the subject seemed genuinely to like the Assads, even if they did not have warm feelings for the Syrian government overall. And, if you think about Syria as a monarchy, somehow it’s less strange that so many pictures of the leader would be plastered all over the place.

I think there is a focus on the persons of the Assads in Syria in large part because Syria as a state, like most others in the Middle East, is a creation of the West (in Syria’s case, Britain and France drew its boundaries). Without a discrete, unifying history or culture to distinguish itself from its neighbors, a country needs to define itself in other ways, and one of those is by a strong leader.

Father, in sight of the historic Hejaz railway station, Damascus

Son, at Lattakia railway station

At the Lebanese border

With Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Ahmedinejad of Iran, advertising a fast food shop in Old Damascus