Bashar al-Assad
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Bashar al-Assad is the president of the Syrian Arab Republic and not coincidentally the head of the Syrian Ba'ath Party. He has been president since 2000, when the previous president of 29 years died. He was trained to be an eye surgeon (not a dentist as various media reports said) but inherited the position from his father.
Despite condemnations of the Syrian government for massive human rights violations, the Baathists in power actually achieved greater women's rights than other Arab countries (Still, please avoid "not as bad as" "arguments").
The protests against Assad's regime began on 26 January 2011 as part of the Arab Spring; that May Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions upon him.[1] A year later, the uprising has become a disastrous civil war, following the veto by Russia and China of a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have allowed for international military intervention in Syria. Assad remains in power primarily due to Iranian and Russian arms supplies.[2]
As every observer of events in the Middle East well knows, outside intervention is invariably successful. Sarcasm aside, there was increasing support in Western and Sunni Arab capitals for intervention in Syria to support an insurgency; the problem is that it will likely be Salafiist, and things have gotten so complicated that people are unsure of who to support anymore.