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Unfortunately, economic reform threatened the interests of some of Syria’s most powerful people. To change how business was done, Asma would have to go up against Rami Makhlouf, Bashar’s cousin through his mother’s aristocratic clan. By some estimates Makhlouf’s companies controlled over half the Syrian economy. Asma tried to challenge his supremacy in 2007 by creating her own holding company, but was unable to attract enough of Syria's business heavyweights to join her – they largely remained in Makhlouf's sphere. Her plans for the Syrian economy would have to wait. He did have an eye for women, often dating his brother’s manicured discards. But the choice of wife wasn’t his alone. When Basil died in a car crash in 1994 (reportedly while racing to Damascus airport in his Mercedes), the fate of the Assad dynasty suddenly fell on Bashar’s shoulders.
Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a Elena Ceausescu: Greatest Scientist Ever — except she was a
Where will the journey end? Her ascendance in the court of the Assads is no longer just fodder for gossiping Syria watchers. Last year the American government described Asma as one of Syria’s “most notorious war profiteers”. There are now whispers that she could one day succeed her husband as president. Asma Assad has certainly come a long way from the pebble-dash, semi-detached house in London where she was raised. A visit to the grand Ceausescu Palace in Bucharest conjured ghosts of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu and what was known as a “conjugal dictatorship” before their unceremoniously swift trial and execution. Asma soon found a new way to extend her influence. She had toyed with charity work early in her marriage, and now sought to unify her projects within a single organisation, the Syria Trust for Development. She aimed to make the trust the primary conduit through which Syria encountered the world, recruiting Anglophone Syrians living abroad, former United Nations officials, strategists from the Monitor Group, a Boston-based management consultancy, even a German diplomat’s daughter. “It was licensed to engage with foreigners when other bodies weren’t,” recalls a diplomat then in Damascus. Elena Ceausescu (1916-89) was the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-89). During the 1970s and 80s, she was one of the two most powerful women on earth (the other was was Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain). Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda.
Yet, in reality, Elena's success was a fiction. Her reputation was falsely built up thanks to a fraudulent PhD, appointments to Central Committee positions, and extensive propaganda—all helped along by the intervention of the Securitate, Romania's brutal secret police. The path to prestige
The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry | Theresa Book Review: The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry | Theresa
She cites the recent news of Melania Trump launching a non-fungible token (NFT) – a watercolour depicting her eyes. “She called it ‘an amulet to inspire’ and I thought that was actually a perfect representation of Melania’s time in power because it’s a thing, but it’s not a thing. It’s not something you can touch. It’s a representation, an empty emblem, a hollow image, and that felt like a microcosm of her time as first lady,” explains Berry. In his inaugural speech, Bashar vowed to fight corruption and allow genuine multi-party elections. Soon after, he closed one of the country’s biggest prisons. In the cafés of Damascus, people cautiously began to discuss politics. As Behr explains in his history of the Ceaucescus' reign of terror, Mircea Corcioveci, one of the top scientists at the Institute, eventually discovered that Elena "didn't know what a chromatograph was and didn't recognize the formula for sulfuric acid," which was "taught to first-year chemistry students" (141). Ultimately, she became Chair of the National Council for Science and Technology and controlled all scientific research in the country, although she knew nothing about it. Elena Ceausescu: Doctor Horroris. Youtube, 21 Aug. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSoxcc6ZPoI.Now 30 and based in London, Berry worked as a financial and political journalist at Reuters before becoming an author. She reported on the US presidential election in 2016 after joining the Mail Online, where her observations of the rise of Donald Trump with Melania Trump at his side planted the seed of the novel. Bashar had never needed his allies more: his British wife might help placate Western governments. He promised Asma that he would muzzle the in-laws and agreed to designate her “First Lady” (Syria’s state media started using the term only after Anisa died in 2016). Asma had finally won a seat at the table. Hafez was dead by the time Asma moved to Damascus at the end of 2000, but his legacy was ubiquitous, from the Soviet-style architecture to adulatory billboards bearing his face. His support for terrorist organisations across the region had cut off Syria from the West. Bashar’s ascendance was an opportunity to reset relations.
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