Name? Bashar al-Assad
Westphalian identity? Syrian
Age? 55
Why is he in the news? High levels of inflation in Syria, prisoner swaps with Israel, or one of his intelligence agents being convicted over state sponsored torture in Germany…There are plenty of reasons why al-Assad is in the news but the only one he is truly affected by is the horrible economic performance of Syria.
Why do we care? When asked about his solutions to inflation and economic hardship, al-Assad proposed that “television channels should cancel cooking shows so as not to taunt Syrians with images of unattainable food.” If you ask us, that is the type of pragmatic and straightforward policymaking the world needs.
Why should you care? The World Food Programme recently reported that 60% of all Syrians (12,4 million) were at risk of hunger. That is a lot of people going hungry over a conflict that has stagnated for the past few years yet is still destroying Syrian lives. On our how much you should care scale, hunger of millions of people scores a 9/10.
Who else cares? Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel recently exchanged an Israeli woman who crossed the border to Syria illegally for 60000 Russian vaccines, worth 1,2 million USD. Such an exchange highlights the influence of Putin in the region, the pragmatic ways of Bibi, and the desperation of al-Assad to obtain vaccines. Given that two of the countries are actively engaging in warfare with each other…this just shows how dire the situation must be.
Any further comments? His wife, Asma al-Assad, is not helping the situation either. In the spirit of Marie Antoinette, she advised Syrians to turn towards online education as it “saves time, effort and money, as well as achieving justice.” How Syrians are supposed to afford the technology or go online during ongoing power shortages she ignored. They could just google how to fix the power themselves instead of watching cooking shows, right?
