Photo published by Syrian presidency on August 8, 2018, announcing the Syrian 'First Lady' was fighting a breast cancer. Picture by Balkis Press/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved. In
the past few weeks, much has changed in Syria. The people of Daraa,
the cradle of the Syrian revolution, used to look up and see regime
warplanes; now they see the regime’s red, white, and black flag
fluttering triumphantly over their city for the first time in seven
years.

The
victory was swiftly followed by promises to take back Idlib by
negotiations and diplomacy or any means necessary. Syrian
representative to the UN, Bashar Jaafari declared, drunk on victory:
“If Idlib returns via reconciliation, this is well and good. And if
it does not, the Syrian army has the right to restore control over
Idlib by force.” The regime is willing to bomb Idlib street by
street in their quest to achieve another victory for Syria’s
‘sovereignty.’

Feeling
empowered, Assad now feels secure enough to deal with the issue of
thousands of enforced disappearances that have taken place since
2011. The regime has recently issued an unprecedented number of
‘death notices’ – declarations that detainees in its
prisons have died. Assad had kept the uncertain fate of these
thousands of Syrians as a bargaining chip in the Astana and Geneva
negotiations that were already tilted in his favour. Now, certain
that any backlash to the sheer number of deaths in detention can be
managed, he has revealed their grim fate. 

Syrians,
as they have done wearily for decades before, tried to decipher the
message Assad was sending by releasing these death notices and the
time he chose to do so. The message is in fact simple: the regime is
back, scared of no one, and will rule on as if the revolution never
happened.

Public
relations renaissance

Meanwhile,
a vigorous public relations campaign is underway. A recent photo
of Assad holding his wife Asma’s hand in a military hospital after
her diagnosis with breast cancer shows that the regime’s PR machine
is stumbling no more, and is now roaring back into action. The PR
campaign isn’t limited to the first couple but extends to their
family as well. Images of Assad’s family visiting the villages of
fallen regime soldiers went viral not too long ago.

But
as all this is happening front and centre of the public’s eye,
there is something more dangerous afoot that is being given scant
attention: the PR campaign to polish the image of regime figures that
until now had kept to the shadows – waiting for the right time to
unveil themselves.

Khaled
al-Ahmad is one such figure.

A
few days ago, a friend emailed me an article entitled “Meet
the Mystery Fixer Who Negotiated Syria out of Seven Years of War”,
I thought this is interesting until I started reading it. It was
scary. The report is in essence a puff piece for a businessman named
Khaled al-Ahmad, a man known less for his entrepreneurial acumen than
for his ties to the regime. His most high-profile foray into the
public sphere until now had come in 2012, when his name appeared in
leaked emails belonging to Assad.

The
propaganda piece was written by a pro-Assad journalist who said it
was part of a two-part series on the ‘reconciliation process’ in
Syria. With crushing predictability, the article was published and
republished again by various western
media outlets, all of
which
dub themselves ‘alternative,’ and
claim to be standing up against the ‘mainstream media’ narrative
of the coverage of the Syrian war;all of which support Assad the
anti-imperialist in his war against the decadent west
and puritan Islamists.

The
article starts off by introducing al-Ahmad in modest terms, crediting
him for having “a central role in bringing one of the worst
conflicts since World War Two to an end.” He was also credited for
the regime’s recent victories in East Ghouta and on the southern
front. The focus of the article, however, was on crediting him on
being the mastermind behind the government’s so-called
‘reconciliation strategy,’ if such a thing even exists.

The
word reconciliation was used many times in the article to show the
prowess of al-Ahmad and the regime’s conflict resolution skills.
The piece takes Hammeh in rural Damascus as a sole example of a
successful reconciliation deal. The article also quotes local  people
who spoke about the sectarian uprising that started there and the
negative role of the mosques in the revolution. A cliché narrative
that services the purpose of the article, which can be summarised in
two points: exalting reconciliations offered by the regime and
crediting Al Ahmad for it.

And
while the word reconciliation outside Syria implies an agreement
between two parties or more, the case in Syria remains
different. The reconciliations they are talking about are not
dignifying and certainly not optional. Rather, they are merely one
out of an arsenal of coercive tools the regime uses
in
order to
take back areas and communities that slipped out of its grasp. 

The
reconciliations
that are happening in Syria under the eye of the international
community are mainly achieved by creating siege environments
on the targeted area accompanied almost all the times by aerial
bombardment. These dystopian conditions encourage the local community
within the besieged area to pressure their leaders to reach an
agreement – any agreement – with the government to end their
misery. The government, in turn, evacuates most of the local
population, if not all of it, and then restores state control over
what is left.

The
man, the myth, the playmaker

But
why would this long-anonymous, 30-something-year-old businessman
suddenly have an in-depth article published about him, detailing his
role, revealing his relation to the American journalist Nir Rosen,
and giving him enough credit that he be called the “fixer” who
negotiated Syria out of its war?

The
answer is that the regime intentionally kept people like al-Ahmad
away from the political sphere in order to keep them ‘clean,’ and
in turn use them as liaisons with the west
– just as the article showed as being the case. Al-Ahmad served the
regime sincerely, but managed to keep his ties to it known by so few
people that he was never placed on the sanctions list, unlike other
regime-linked businessmen in Syria.

Al-Ahmad
was kept in the shadows until the right time came for him to step
forward into the light – when Assad was placing the final touches
on his painting by tying up one loose end after another; from seizing
southern revolutionary cities like Daraa to finalizing the deaths of
those killed in prison long ago.

The
next phase in Syria’s brutal modern history will likely see more
al-Ahmad type figures propagated by the regime, repackaged and sold
in western
media as ‘fixers,’ despite having played a part in the breaking
of their country. Al-Ahmad will not be last of his kind, and as for
the man himself – only time will tell what his future role will be.