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He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. In the 1980s, Assad became a doctor, and in the early 1990s he was training in London as an ophthalmologist. In 1994, after his elder brother Bassel al-Assad died in a car crash, Assad was recalled to Syria to take over Bassel's role as heir apparent.
On 8 December 2024, the Assad regime collapsed during a major offensive by opposition forces.The offensive was spearheaded by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and supported mainly by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army as part of the ongoing Syrian civil war that began with the Syrian Revolution in 2011.
Ba'athist Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), [a] was the Syrian state between 1963 and 2024 under the one-party rule of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. From 1971 until its collapse , it was ruled by the Assad family , and was therefore commonly referred to as the Assad regime .
Assad was born Asma Fawaz Akhras on 11 August 1975 [10] [11] in London to Syrian parents Fawaz Akhras, a cardiologist at the Cromwell Hospital, and his wife Sahar Akhras (née Otri), a retired diplomat who served as First Secretary at the Syrian Embassy in London. [12] [13] Her parents are Sunni Muslims from the city of Homs. [12] [14]
Following the fall of the Assad regime after several offensives launched by opposition groups between late November and early December 2024, several clashes between Assad loyalists and incumbent Syrian transitional government forces have occurred primarily in hold-outs in the Alawite-majority Tartus and Latakia Governorates, as well as in western Hama and Homs Governorates.
Following the fall of the Assad regime in mid-December 2024, graves attributed to the rule of the Assad family, including both Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad, were uncovered by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch along with several academic researchers associated with the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam.
The Syrian Revolution, [29] [30] also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity [b] was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from February 2011 to December 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world.
The presidency of Bashar al-Assad began on 17 July 2000 succeeding his father, Hafez al-Assad who served as President of Syria from 1971 until his death on 10 June 2000, [1] until his overthrow in 2024 during the Syrian civil war on 8 December.