Meet Asma al-Assad: the former first lady went from being Syria’s ‘Princess Diana’ to ‘Lady Macbeth’ after supporting her husband’s regime and spending lavishly – but what did Anna Wintour’s Vogue say?
London-born Asma was an investment banker before marrying Bashar al-Assad; she was once called ‘A Rose in the Desert’ before her husband’s brutal regime – and her own actions – put a dent in her image
On December 8, a “stunning rebel advance” took control of Damascus, ending the tenure of the al-Assad family who had ruled Syria for 50 years. In turn, then-president Bashar al-Assad fled the country for Russia, a long-time Syrian ally, with wife Asma and children Hafez, Zein and Karim.
In the wake of the Assads’ fall from grace, multiple think pieces have been written about the couple and how they presented themselves and their vision for Syria when they first wed. A recent headline in The Guardian read: “They didn’t look the type: How the media was fooled by Bashar and Asma al-Assad.”
Syria has been at war for over 13 years after peaceful protests against Assad’s government in early 2011 were met with a brutal crackdown by the government, per AP News. The war has cost the lives of at least 580,000 people, per The Guardian. According to Al Jazeera, more than 13 million Syrians have been displaced.
Here’s how Asma al-Assad went from working as an investment banker to cover girl and dictator’s wife.
She wanted the world to think she was “normal”
