Assad’s Enforcer

Asef Shawkat began his political career as a relative outsider in a government dominated by the Al-Assad family, neither a member of the Assads or one of their influential Makhlouf cousins. Through his marriage to President Bashar Assad’s older sister Bushra, he ascended to the ‘inner circle’ of power in Syria after a turn of events that resembled a combination of The Godfatherand a soap opera plot. Born into a middle class Alawi family in the town of Tartous in 1950, he joined the ...

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