Bashar al-Assad:The Accidental Autocrat

Many observers now regard Bashar al-Assad as a tyrant whose determination to maintain power has devastated Syria and created yawning geopolitical fissures. But how did he come to assume the Syrian presidency in the first place, and what were the early characteristics of his leadership? Abdullah Yusuf and Craig McCluskie examine al-Assad’s pre-Arab Spring rise to prominence, and his domestic and international conduct ahead of 2011 and the devastating fall into civil war