Last summer a photograph of Syria’s First Lady circulated on social media. At the time, government troops in north-west Syria were battering the last pockets of rebel resistance to the regime. The picture showed Asma Assad, her husband Bashar al-Assad and their three children standing on a wind-swept hilltop, flanked by soldiers in camouflage. Bashar, dressed in an anorak, trainers and an untucked polo shirt, looks more suited to corralling the kids for a Sunday walk than torturing dissidents. Asma stands more stiffly, arms by her sides, wearing white jeans, trainers and the kind of aviator sunglasses beloved of Middle Eastern strongmen. She is at the centre of the photo; Bashar, president of Syria, hangs awkwardly at her shoulder.

The tranquillity of the landscape behind Asma is deceptive. Ten years on from the Arab spring, in which millions of people across the Middle East turned on repressive regimes, Syria’s ruling family has retained power – but at a terrible cost.

The regime’s forces have killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and tortured more than 14,000 people to death. Half the population have fled their homes, precipitating the greatest refugee crisis since the second world war. Iran and Turkey, as well as America and Russia, have fought proxy battles for influence on Syrian soil. Throughout the Arab world the hopeful dreams of a decade ago have been crushed, but nowhere more bloodily than in Syria.

Asma, however, is more powerful than she has ever been. Her journey to supremacy over this devastated land has been a winding one, and the road is littered with her many incarnations: a J.P. Morgan banker cutting late-night deals; the glamorous First Lady who thought social reform and sharp tailoring would modernise a pariah state; the Marie Antoinette of Damascus, shopping as her country burned; mother to the nation, battling cancer while her husband’s troops crushed insurgents.

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.

It was an unlikely beginning for a dictator’s wife. Asma Akhras was born in 1975 in Acton, a nondescript pocket of west London bordering far wealthier neighbourhoods. Like most Syrians her parents are Sunni Muslims, the dominant group in Syria until the 1960s, when a small, marginalised sect called the Alawites staged a coup. Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, was part of the plot, and declared himself leader in 1970.

Asma’s parents arrived in London in the 1970s in search of better opportunities. The family remained religious in exile: her father attended Friday prayers and her mother discarded her hijab only after Asma married. Friends describe the family as culturally conservative but eager for their children to assimilate. At her local Church of England primary school Asma was known as Emma. “You’d be hard-pressed to recognise her as a Syrian,” a neighbour recalled.

She seemed destined for a life among London’s monied elite. As a teenager Asma went to one of Britain’s oldest private girls’ schools, Queen’s College, a few doors down from her father’s private medical practice in Harley Street. She did a degree in computer science at King’s College London, where both friends and detractors recall her as clever and hard-working.

No one remembers her showing any interest in the Middle East. On visits to Damascus with her parents she’d spend her time by the pool at the Sheraton hotel. “She was very English and seemed to want to have nothing to do with Syria,” said a family friend.

Few were surprised when she landed a job at J.P. Morgan, an investment bank. Staff were expected to work up to 48 hours on the trot, and even sleep in the office. Some trainees were brash and overtly ambitious but Paul Gibbs, who managed Asma, remembers her as “demure, polite and subservient”, dressed in prim black suits. Asma specialised in mergers and acquisitions (experience that later proved useful in Syria). She dated the odd banker and even had offers of marriage. Despite her ample salary, she continued to live with her parents while she was working in London.

Her mother, Sahar, had ambitious plans for Asma. Her own great-uncle had helped Hafez Assad seize power. Sahar used this connection to get a job at Syria’s embassy in London. She was also keen to promote a match between Asma and Bashar, Hafez’s second son, according to Sam Dagher, author of “Assad Or We Burn the Country”. The two met several times when Bashar was a gangly medical student in London in the 1990s.

Bashar grew up in the shadow of his commanding father, and was the only one of six siblings to study abroad. Bashar’s distaste for blood led him to specialise in ophthalmology, one of the less prestigious medical disciplines. His tutor, Edmund Schulenburg, says he was adept at draining cysts.

Bashar’s older brother, Basil, served in the Syrian army, drove fast cars and chased women. Bashar, by contrast, was “hard-working, punctual, went every day to college and avoided the wild life,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat. He listened to Phil Collins and the Electric Light Orchestra, drank green tea and cycled around town. Unlike his father, who retained a peasant brogue, Bashar spoke the refined lilt of the Damascene elite.

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.

Bashar was still unmarried when his father died in June 2000. He became president two months later, after a sham election. At this point, Asma had been chained to her desk at J.P. Morgan for two years. Suddenly she disappeared for three weeks without notice. On her return she told her employer that she’d been swept off her feet by a dashing Syrian, who whisked her off to Libya where he sealed the deal in a tent in the Sahara. Asma resigned immediately, also giving up a place she’d just won at Harvard Business School. An interviewer later asked her whether this choice left her with regrets. Her reply: “Who would choose Harvard over love?”

Syria becomes complicated when you leave the Sheraton hotel. Its mountains and deserts shelter a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups, most of which have oppressed each other at one time or another. France prised the country from the Ottomans, and its rule between the world wars was brief and resented. The early years of Syria’s independence were marked by relentless internal strife as coup followed coup.

The turmoil came to an end in 1970 with the ascent of Hafez Assad, an uncompromising air-force officer from the ruling Baath party. During his reign of fear the security services ran informant networks, tapped phones and tortured people indiscriminately. When Sunni Islamist dissidents rose up against Baathist rule in Hama in 1982, Hafez razed whole sections of the city to the ground.

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.

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.

Asma seemed a promising consort for the new Syrian leader. Queen Rania of Jordan, Sheikha Moza of Qatar, even Princess Diana in Britain, all served as models for how a glamorous first lady might become a force for reform. Syria’s secularist Baath party made it more receptive than most Arab countries to women taking public roles. “I thought the combination of these two would make Syria a heaven,” said Wafic Said, a wealthy Syrian expat who befriended the couple.

But like many women before her, Asma had to reckon with her in-laws. Bashar’s mother, Anisa, had wanted her son to marry within the clan to create a long-lasting dynasty like the Sauds of Arabia. Some family members even suggested that Bashar should forfeit the presidency for marrying a Sunni.

Having failed to thwart the wedding, Bashar’s mother resolved to conceal it. There were no news bulletins about the low-key event. No official photos have ever been released. Asma was repeatedly told that her job was to produce heirs and stay out of the news. Bashar’s mother insisted on retaining the title “First Lady”; state media referred to Asma as akilatu al-rais, the president’s spouse. No one recognised her in the street.

Home life was miserable. “They hated her,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, an adviser to Bashar at the time. “They kept her inside the house for years.” Asma was not yet fluent in Arabic. When the family gathered for meals they made a point of conversing in their impenetrable Alawite patois.

The rest of the ruling elite was no friendlier. Bashar’s reforms faced roadblocks, particularly from his father’s former allies. “Hafez Assad was an octopus that controlled the tentacles,” said a businessman who works with the regime. “Bashar began as an octopus controlled by his tentacles.”

Within months it became clear that Bashar’s promises of reform were flimsy, made in part to bolster support for his succession. “Bashar would tell you exactly what you wanted to hear and then do absolutely nothing,” said Wafic Said. He soon backtracked. Academics were jailed. Posters of Bashar were put up, even bigger than those of his father. The right to public assembly became so restricted that couples had to get a government permit to hold a wedding in a hotel.

Hopes that Syria might change were repeatedly dashed. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Bashar provided the Americans with facilities in which to interrogate suspected terrorists, but the Bush administration had got a taste for “spreading democracy” and suggestions that Syria would be the next target after Iraq pushed Syria’s regime to change tack. Bashar dispatched homegrown jihadists across the border to support the Iraqi insurgency against the Americans.

As Bashar cemented his power, Asma dutifully fulfilled the role of broodmare. She had three children in quick succession, two of them sons. She still dressed like a demure banker. The only time she made headlines was on trips abroad. Even then, her in-laws fumed.

The cruelty within the family was mirrored by its viciousness without. On Valentine’s Day 2005 a car-bomb killed one of Lebanon’s most prominent politicians, Rafik Hariri. Syria kept its small, dysfunctional neighbour on a tight leash and many assumed that Bashar had ordered the hit. Faced with the threat of international sanctions and massive Lebanese demonstrations, Bashar blinked. He withdrew Syrian troops from Lebanon after 30 years of occupation, infuriating Syrian hardliners.

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.

Two months after Hariri’s assassination, in April 2005, Asma stood by her husband’s side at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Few were keen to shake Bashar’s hand but Asma, discreetly glamorous in a black lace veil, had more appeal. Photos show her hobnobbing with world leaders.

This was a pivotal moment for the couple. Until now Asma, the foreign wife, had been relegated to the sidelines. Now she came to play a central role in Bashar’s international rehabilitation. “She was his ambassador to all the countries with whom he couldn’t mingle and mix,” says Abdel Nour, Bashar’s former adviser.

In interviews with Western media she couldn’t help outshining Bashar (in an attempt to appeal to Christian audiences, he would refer to Jews as Christ-killers). At home, too, Asma softened the couple’s image. The Assads made a show of their modesty. They shunned the gargantuan, $1bn, marble-clad palace the Saudis had built the Assads, and lived in a modest three-storey house nearby. Asma would pick up her children from the local Montessori school each day. When Wafic Said had supper at their home, he was astonished by the lack of pomp. “We didn’t see any servants. He and his wife served us dinner.”

With the help of a new hairdresser, Asma turned up the volume of her own look. Her stilettos and earrings grew a few inches; her nails were manicured and painted. Though neither she nor Bashar wore a wedding ring, regal agates hung at her neck. Syrian Airlines ground staff in London remember a never-ending stream of crates containing clothes from London’s finest department stores. Syrian diplomats dubbed her Imelda Marcos, after the Filipina first lady with an addiction to shoes.

The charm offensive worked. Just months after Hariri’s assassination, the New York Times asked whether they represented “the essence of secular Western-Arab fusion”. “I was enchanted,” says a Syrian diplomat now in exile, who organised a European tour for the pair. “She’s lovable the moment you meet her. He’s different to other dictators in the Middle East. He looks modern and sophisticated. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

Asma’s next project was Syria itself. After the decades of central planning and import restrictions, she wanted to rejuvenate Syria. Asma blinded her husband with financial jargon and pushed for the banking sector to open up to private and foreign-run companies. “She wanted to turn Damascus into a regional Dubai, a tax-haven free from financial controls,” recalled a well-connected Syrian economist.

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.

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.

With its rugged landscape and archaeological riches, Asma reckoned Syria ought to be a desirable tourism destination. She recruited curators from the Louvre and British Museum to redesign central Damascus. A cement factory would become a gallery, modelled on London’s Tate Modern. The banks of a dirty river running through the city were to be regenerated as a cultural park. A new railway line was planned to connect Damascus to the ancient Assyrian cities in the underdeveloped north-east.

For the most part, Western diplomats in Damascus gladly supported Asma’s trust. She charmed the European Union, the UN, the World Bank and Qatar, yielding millions of dollars to finance her vision. A flurry of newspaper articles celebrated Damascus’s “cultural renaissance”, as Asma called it. “This is how you fight extremism – through art,” Bashar said.

Her colleagues saw a different side. On a good day she was “enormously curious” and “amazingly accommodating”, according to a former employee. But another consultant remembered her “princess-like temper. She would shout and vent”. (He resigned after eight months.) “She’s a control freak, a scary person,” said the consultant.

She was also effective. “It was surprising how many times she said ‘I’d like something to happen’, and it happened,” said someone who worked for her in Damascus for six years. Her staff kept to the punishing schedule she’d grown accustomed to at J.P. Morgan: the office opened at 6am and work continued into the evening. Officials knew to consult Asma, not the culture minister, on major questions.

Asma hired PR firms in Britain and America to buff her image. They flew in parliamentarians from around the world to admire her good deeds. Celebrities came to Damascus, including Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Sting and Damon Albarn. The grand mufti invited Syrian Jews who had fled persecution decades earlier. Brown Lloyd James, an American PR company, arranged a cover story in Vogue in March 2011, which portrayed Asma as “a rose in the desert” who was determined to make Syria into a “brand”.

The trust’s remit was limited. “We didn’t get into anything related to the mosque, religion and politics,” said an employee. Such boundaries were hard to police. Educators toured Syria with a large inflatable igloo designed as a storytelling space, built with the help of a former executive of the Science Museum in London. They were supposed to focus on uncontroversial questions, such as a child’s right to clean air, but conversation turned to the regime’s abuses. “One kid said I’ve got a story about human rights, and explained how he’d been arrested, stripped and made to sit on a bottle,” said an organiser. “We had to take it to the First Lady, and I understand that someone lost their job in the local security services.”

The trust’s foreign consultants lived in a gilded bubble in Damascus: they ordered sushi from room service and drew large salaries as they nattered about capacity-building. “Many villages had no proper sewerage or electricity, and she turned up with her consultants and talked about entrepreneurship, civil society, sustainable development and cheese-making training,” said Samir Aita, a consultant to the finance ministry. Asma “thought the Syria Trust could save everything, but it was just stupid people speaking English to poor peasants.”

Even some employees questioned whether the trust was merely a vehicle for Asma’s self-aggrandisement. Advisers were expected to address her as “Your Excellency” and stand up when she entered a room. One former associate maintains that Asma was genuinely committed to liberalising Syria. Others are unconvinced. “Was it ever real? That’s the question I asked myself,” said a Western ambassador who served in Damascus at the time.

Among those who did well out of Asma’s rise was her own father, Fawaz Akhras. Soon after Asma married Bashar, Akhras established the British-Syrian Society, an organisation in London that drummed up political and financial support for Syria. He co-ordinated the society’s activities with Asma’s organisation, attracting a crowd of rich Syrians.

Akhras was frank about his proximity to power: his preferred opener when giving speeches was, “As the father-in-law of the president…”. “Compared to him the Syrian ambassador was a busboy,” said Yahya al-Aridi, who ran communications for the Syrian government in London. It was said that even Syria’s prime minister asked Asma’s father to forward messages to Bashar.

Asma’s father, a cardiologist at a private hospital in Kensington, was known for his preoccupation with money. Patients say that he asked for cash payment in advance. His defenders point out that for decades he has lived in the same, modest semi-detached house near a busy motorway in west London: weeds wriggle through the paving stones in the front garden; the paint on the porch is peeling. But a long history of violent politics has taught Syrians to hide their wealth.

As Asma’s star was in the ascendant, Syria’s international profile was also improving. American officials began to visit Damascus again, particularly after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. An invitation to Washington was rumoured to be pending. The French were even more sympathetic. Paparazzi stalked the Assads when they visited Paris. Paris Match praised Asma for shining “light in a country full of shadows”.

On December 10th 2010, Asma addressed the assembled French elite at the International Diplomatic Academy, a think-tank in Paris, where she talked without notes about the “change that’s happening in my country”. A few days later, a Tunisian vegetable seller set himself on fire, sparking uprisings across north Africa and the Middle East that came to be known as the Arab spring. Soft power and sharp heels were not going to be enough for the Assads to survive it.

In the first two months of 2011, the mood in the Middle East was electric. After decades of stasis and repression, demonstrations erupted from Tunisia to Libya, Algeria to Bahrain, Jordan to Yemen. Mass protests in Cairo toppled Hosni Mubarak, dictator of Egypt for nearly 30 years. The tide of revolution seemed unstoppable.

Many Syrians were intoxicated by what they saw, but fear inhibited most from coming onto the streets. Then, one night in February in a drab agricultural town called Deraa, south of Damascus, a group of schoolchildren sprayed graffiti on a wall: “It’s your turn next, doctor.”

The local security chief was a cousin of Bashar, a thug even by the standards of Syria’s secret services. His men rounded up the children and tortured them. When their fathers pleaded for their release, the security chief offered to give them more children if they sent their wives over. Crowds gathered outside Deraa’s mosques, demanding dignity and freedom. Troops opened fire.

It wasn’t clear at first – including, it seems, to Asma – how Bashar would respond. One of his generals counselled him to imprison the local security chief and apologise for the bloodshed in Deraa. Syria’s bigger cities were still tranquil, so public contrition and renewed promises of change might have kept a lid on things.

In Washington, Syria’s ambassador helped Bashar draft a speech announcing new reforms. The Assads’ friends in the West were told of it. Asma, too, seems to have been expecting a crowd-pleaser. As the Arab spring gathered pace, she’d said that the regime knew it had to change and a former associate says she tried to talk to the opposition. On March 30th, Bashar addressed Syria’s largely ceremonial parliament.

“Syria is facing a great conspiracy,” Bashar declared, confounding expectations. He labelled footage of security forces shooting protesters as “fake information”. He dismissed calls for reform, saying they were cover for an unspecified foreign plot. “It was the old regime speaking,” says one of Asma’s board members (he left Syria straight after the speech). “There was not one word of conciliation, no recognition that things could be done differently. When I met Bashar he would talk about reform. It was devastating to discover it was just a sham.”

After the speech, demonstrations grew in number and size each week, usually massing after Friday prayers. So began an escalating cycle of funerals, protests and violence. Over the course of a month the regime’s response became more vicious: first goons, then snipers, then heavy artillery.

The influence of Syria’s army generals, intelligence chiefs and Baath party had all waned over the previous ten years. Now they were back with a vengeance. Anisa, Bashar’s mother, also pressed for a firm response. What would your father have done, she taunted Bashar. When an uprising broke out against his rule in 1982 he had brutally suppressed it. A former French ambassador to Damascus reports that, around this time, Bashar was overheard saying: “My father was right. Thousands of deaths in Hama bought us three decades of stability.”

As Syria descended into chaos, Asma’s castles in the air came tumbling down. A gala marking the relaunch of the national museum was cancelled. Her cultural regeneration projects never materialised. After seven years of planning, the Museum of Discovery, modelled on the Science Museum in London, remained a concrete shell. Funding dried up and consultants left the country, expunging the Syria Trust from their CVs. The most prominent Western visitors were pariahs like Nick Griffin, then head of the far-right British National Party.

Wafic Said says he pleaded with Bashar to pursue a moderate course. “They love you and your wife, you’re not like Mubarak,” he told them. “Don’t miss this opportunity to become the greatest leader in the Arab world. Just give them some rights, a bit of dignity and you could be loved for ever.” But Bashar’s course was set. In a second speech, in June, he likened protesters to “germs”. A dark chapter was about to begin.

In February 2012, a year into the Arab spring, Syria’s Fourth Armoured Division, under the command of Bashar’s younger brother, Maher, trained its artillery on Homs in western Syria. Asma’s parents had grown up in the city; now protests there were escalating into armed insurrection. Soldiers defected to the rebels and some 7,000 civilians had already died across the country.

As tanks rumbled towards her family’s hometown, Asma emailed a friend. “Does anything catch your eye?” She was forwarding her information about an exclusive collection of Christian Louboutin heels. Asma had barely appeared in public since the protests started, provoking speculation. Was she a prisoner of circumstance or did she support her husband’s actions? Perhaps she had even fled abroad.

People who spoke with her in private in the early days of the crisis say she stuck rigidly to the official line: the uprising was a foreign conspiracy. One former friend left a coffee morning with her wiping away tears. “It was always a lie,” she said. “I had been used.” Others, though, insist Asma was appalled as Bashar’s viciousness grew. Who could watch the fate of Muammar Qaddafi, whose mutilated body was dragged through the streets of Libya in October 2011, without flinching?

In theory, Asma could have gone to London. There were offers of safe passage, apparently accompanied by handsome rewards from Gulf states. The British government repeatedly stated that, as a British citizen, they couldn’t prevent her entering the country – which some observers interpreted as a discreet offer of protection. Even in London, the atmosphere was uninviting. Protesters gathered outside her family home in Acton and smeared red paint on the door. Queen’s College scrubbed her name from its list of honoured alumnae.

There were rumours that Asma had gone. An official who worked in the Syrian embassy in London at the time remembers security officials preparing to receive or dispatch a VIP at the end of 2011 (though this may not have been Asma). Others say she was stopped on her way to Damascus airport by henchmen who took her children – and she baulked against travelling without them.

For months, Asma stopped giving interviews. Former friends describe her as looking emaciated on a rare public outing to a pro-government rally in January 2012. At some point she and her children moved to the family’s summer palace near the coast, far from any shelling or tear gas.

Without a public role, Asma focused instead on home refurbishments. In the first year of the uprising she advertised for a gardener and spent £250,000 on furniture. To circumvent sanctions she sent her hairdresser shopping in Dubai and used an alias when ordering from Harrods. The Assad family’s fixer in London fielded her requests for chandeliers. Asma jokingly referred to herself as the “real dictator” in the Assad household.

Asma’s shopping sprees were revealed in a collection of thousands of emails from the Assads’ inner circle, leaked in 2012 to the Guardian by Syrian opposition activists, as well as others published by WikiLeaks. The messages also suggest that Asma may have been wavering. In December 2011 she exchanged emails with the daughter of the then emir of Qatar, a friend of hers until the Qataris aligned themselves with Syrian rebels. The princess told Asma it was “not too late for reflection and coming out of the state of denial”, then apologised if she’d overstepped the mark. It is possible she was encouraging Asma to defect.

The response Asma gave was surprisingly ambiguous, first welcoming the “frankness” then seeming to check herself. “Life is not fair my friend – but ultimately there is a reality we all need to deal with!!!” She hinted of forces compelling her to stay.

The emails also shed light on the Assads’ marriage. Many believe the alliance was primarily aimed at securing both families’ interests. Bashar was known for his philandering, an impression reinforced by adoring emails from young female assistants in the leaked emails. Yet Bashar and Asma corresponded with affection. On December 28th 2011, as tanks shelled her family’s hometown of Homs, Asma wrote to Bashar, “If we are strong together, we will overcome this together…I love you.” It’s unclear whether the troubles they needed to “overcome” were in Syria or their marriage.

A few days later, when she emailed her batta (“duck” in Arabic), her pet name for her husband, he responded with a heart. She replied, “Sometimes at night, when I look to the sky, I start thinking of you and ask myself, why? Why do I love you? I think and smile, because I know the list could run on for miles.” In February 2012 Bashar seemed to be offering a veiled apology for his dalliances, sending her a country-and-western song with the lyrics: “I’ve made a mess of me/The person that I’ve been lately/Ain’t who I wanna be.”

Soon afterwards, Asma issued her first official statement since the start of the uprising: “The president is the president of all of Syria, not the head of a faction of Syrians, and the First Lady supports him in this role.” She was standing by her man.

If dissidents are to be believed, as part of her reconciliation with Bashar, Asma negotiated her return to public life with the help of her father. Henceforth she would be a fully-fledged partner in the presidency. In the summer of 2012 Bashar’s sister, Bushra, fled to Dubai after her husband was killed in a bomb blast. The rebels claimed responsibility, but it was well beyond the capacity that they’d demonstrated so far. Bushra and her husband had represented one of the biggest sources of anti-Asma sentiment in the inner circle. Many assumed the assassination was an inside job.

Over the following year, Bashar’s prospects also improved. He checked rebel advances and drove them out of their stronghold in Homs. Anti-government forces still controlled some suburbs of Damascus and lobbed shells into the city centre, but were unable to unseat the Assads.

As the war continued, Bashar became more ruthless. One Western diplomat recalls the slow escalation of violence – using artillery against civilians, then air raids, then barrel-bombs. “They would…use it once, there’d be an outcry, but not to the point of international intervention,” said the diplomat. “So they would roll it out, and that would become the new normal.” International condemnation of Bashar’s crimes grew, yet this incremental choking of Syria, rather than all-out attack, helped forestall intervention.

On August 21st 2013 new footage appeared, showing people in the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus with bubbles foaming at their noses and mouths, and their limbs jerking. Hundreds died. A UN investigation later confirmed that they had been killed by sarin, a nerve gas. It was the worst chemical-weapons attack anywhere since Saddam Hussein had gassed Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

The next day, as the world absorbed the images, photos were posted on Facebook chronicling the First Lady’s official activities in minute detail. One showed her and her husband sitting on a flower-trimmed balcony with the caption: “Love is a country led by a lion who stamped out conspiracies and a First Lady devoted to her homeland”. One user commented underneath: “Are you not ashamed? Your people are being slaughtered and you are just observing and even worse…ordering shoes.”

It’s hard to compute the scale of destruction in Syria over the years that followed. In 2014 Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group, took advantage of the chaos to establish a so-called caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq. Its sectarian ferocity presented a serious threat to Bashar’s forces but also weakened support for his opposition and justified Iran and Russia in propping him up.

Almost every inch of the country was fought over. Though Bashar recaptured Aleppo, the last of the big cities, in 2016, he kept on dropping bombs: nearly half of Syria’s towns and cities have been reduced to rubble. The UN gave up trying to count the war’s death toll in 2016, when it had already reached nearly half a million. More than 10m Syrians are refugees.

Chanel frocks and stilettos don’t go down well in the ruins of a civil war. Syria’s new reality required a new Asma. Out went the heels, the manicures, the power jackets and the jewellery. In came flat shoes, T-shirts and trousers that exposed her emaciated arms and petite frame. When Anisa, Bashar’s mother, died in February 2016, Asma lost her most powerful opponent. The biggest change, however, was a gruelling personal ordeal.

In 2018 Asma was diagnosed with breast cancer. The illness didn’t stop her from carefully managing her public image, or making sure that everyone knew she’d stayed in Syria for her treatment. Her struggle was documented in detail by state media and on the presidency’s social-media channels. She was even filmed being wheeled into the operating theatre.

When her hair fell out she was photographed wearing chic headscarves, projecting both vulnerability and strength, an irresistible metaphor for her husband’s own struggle against the insurgency. “Congratulations on your victory over cancer,” began one TV interviewer. “Thank you,” replied Asma. “And I hope we will soon celebrate Syria’s victory.”

Even before she had fully recovered, pro-government media showed Asma sharing in Syria’s grief. Accompanied by camera crews, she knocked on doors in impoverished highland villages, hugged the surprised mothers of martyrs and offered them handouts.

Asma made a conscious effort to disguise her Britishness. She worked so hard on her Arabic that even Syrians could no longer detect an English accent. She ignored interview requests from Western media, accepting only bids from Russian and local outlets. Though Asma had turned her back on the West, her facility with international donors persisted. The income of her charity, the Syria Trust, dried up after the EU imposed sanctions in 2012. Now, international humanitarian aid flooded in to support Syrians devastated by war. Much of that money was about to come Asma’s way.

For UN agencies looking to deliver aid to regime-held areas, the trust was an invaluable interlocutor: its English-speaking staff were familiar with international regulations. Asma could open doors and checkpoints. By 2017 more UN funds were being channelled through the trust than virtually any other Syrian organisation.

The UN often deals with corrupt and brutal counterparts: in many countries this is the only way to deliver aid. But even UN veterans were shocked by the degree to which the institution co-operated with Syrian government organisations. From 2016-19, the Syria Trust received increasing amounts of money from UN agencies each year (the UN refugee agency alone donated $6.5m in the first five months of 2018). The trust had nearly 1,500 employees by 2020, a ten-fold increase in ten years, as well as 5,000 volunteers.

As head of the Syria Trust, Asma gained more than just wealth. Funnelling UN aid, she developed a vast network of patronage that included Syrian warlords. People reportedly showed gratitude for her protection and benevolence in the form of suitcases full of cash delivered to organisations she was associated with.

Asma profited from the war economy more directly, too. A business she has been linked to won a government contract to manage smart-card payments. She also launched a mobile-phone distributor called Emmatel, after her childhood name. This was registered in the name of Khodr Ali Taher, whom one businessman refers to as “Asma’s façade for everything”.

Asma’s own family became increasingly influential in Syria’s economy. Syrian news sites (some of them affiliated to the opposition) say that her brother, Firas, and cousin, Muhannad Dabbagh, effectively run the smart-card company on her behalf. A recent report by a former employee of the American embassy in Damascus labelled Tarif Akhras, Asma’s cousin, as “one of the regime’s most prominent economic figures”. In December the American government targeted the Akhrases with sanctions.

Former associates say Bashar is pleased at his wife’s financial success and grateful for her help: he is tired after a decade-long war – and economics was never his strong suit. Asma has become his “chief economic adviser”, according to a lobbyist for the Assads in Europe.

By 2019 the Russians were harassing Bashar to repay Syria’s loans and America was tightening sanctions. The Syrian government desperately needed money and the Assads looked for a target. Over the course of decades, Rami Makhlouf, Bashar’s cousin, used his connections to the ruling family to amass a vast empire of companies, import monopolies and smuggling routes. Among his prize assets was Syriatel, the main mobile-phone operator. On paper Makhlouf was just a successful businessman. In practice he acted like Syria’s chief executive. It was said that he could sack a minister with a single telephone call.

With Anisa dead, Makhlouf had lost his protector. The Syria Trust now took over the charity Makhlouf had used to curry favour in the Alawite heartlands. The government put Syriatel into receivership. Makhlouf’s bank accounts were frozen and Asma’s people installed on the boards of his enterprises.

In response Makhlouf tried to tear down Asma. In May 2020 he released a video on Facebook accusing “a group at the top” of plotting against him. At the same time, Russian media ran reports, citing Arab sources, that Bashar had spent $30m on a David Hockney painting for his wife (the story was false). But to little avail. Makhlouf remains under partial house arrest, rumoured to be kept alive only because he holds the passwords and deeds to overseas assets worth an estimated $10bn.

Asma’s mergers and acquisitions continue apace. Syria’s second-biggest mobile-phone firm has also gone into receivership; last month Asma’s cronies were appointed to its board. Emmatel – the phone company with her name – now has branches countrywide (even in areas her husband doesn’t control).

The financial success and ruthless machinations have eroded Asma’s carefully cultivated image. “Some still love her, put her photo on their Instagram page. But most now perceive her as a sneaky greedy person,” said one Syrian businessman. These days, though, no one accuses Asma of failing to understand how Syria works.

Late last year residents of the Damascus neighbourhood where Asma lives noticed a surreal change in the landscape. An old statue depicting a lauded colonel was joined by a new one: a vast sculpture of a horse’s head, at the direction of Asma’s business associates. Locals complained about the extravagance. According to reports in Gulf newspapers, the authorities had the horse’s head removed. Hours later it was back. The message was clear: in post-war Syria, Asma calls the shots.

State media gives increasing air time to “the Lady of Jasmine”. Huge posters of her image have been spotted in her parents’ hometown of Homs, covering entire housing blocks. Uniquely for a Syrian First Lady, ministers have taken to displaying her portrait in their offices alongside Bashar’s.

With Makhlouf hobbled and Bashar’s sister and mother gone, Asma has few substantial rivals within the inner circle. Many of her closest advisers fill top posts in the president’s office. “She’s in control of palace appointees,” said a businessman who travels between Damascus and Europe. “She can nominate whomever she wants.”

Both in Damascus and foreign capitals, Syrians openly speculate whether she harbours political ambitions to climb to the very top. If Bashar’s position becomes untenable, could a President Asma offer a sop to the country’s Sunni majority while preserving continuity? There are even rumours that a family member recently met American officials to seek backing for such a scheme. “Bashar and Asma are both thinking about this,” says a former Syrian diplomat. “She would love to be president and both are considering it as a revolutionary solution to save the regime.”

Once Britain might have supported Asma’s aspirations, happy to add to the collection of Middle Eastern leaders with British ties. Despite voluble denunciation of the Assads, the British government never revoked Asma’s citizenship, as it did with Shamima Begum, the east Londoner who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015 when she was still a teenager.

Alawite hardliners are unlikely to support any bid by Asma for the presidency. Perhaps her most powerful potential opponent is Maher, Bashar’s younger brother, who still commands the feared Fourth Armoured Division of the army. “The military and the sect will conspire to stop her standing as president,” said a well-connected Syrian trader in Dubai.

She is more powerful than ever, but also more vulnerable. Even talk of presidential ambitions could be dangerous for Asma. Though many of Asma’s friends distanced themselves from her years ago, they remain concerned about her well-being. In aiming for the biggest prize, the girl from west London could finally overreach. “I worry for her,” says Wafic Said. But as Asma realised long ago, there is no turning back.