In exile in Russia, Bashar al-Assad has offered little clue about how he understands his fall: as defeat, betrayal, or the price of a rule built on fear.
Bashar al-Assad’s exile reportedly means a secluded life in Russia, far from cameras, palaces and the machinery of fear that sustained his rule for more than two decades.
Accounts of his post-presidential routine remain difficult to verify. Some have portrayed him as withdrawn, absorbed by mobile games and perhaps returning to an old professional interest: ophthalmology.
For a ruler once at the center of one of the bloodiest wars of the 21st century, the image is both strange and revealing. Assad did not merely lose an office. He lost access to an entire country. He entered one of the rarest forms of unemployment: retirement from absolute power.
That is the peculiar afterlife of many deposed dictators. Some are executed, imprisoned or sent to court. Others survive into exile, where they are left to fill empty days with hobbies, grievances, luxury, nostalgia and theories of betrayal. The question is not only how they live after power, but how they explain losing it.
In Assad’s case, the answer remains hidden. His silence may be strategic, imposed or simply habitual. But his exile raises a question that has followed many fallen rulers before him: does he see his downfall as the consequence of his own brutality and misrule, or as the result of allies who used him until he was no longer worth the cost?
Assad’s case is unusual in one respect: he is among the few deposed dictators of the 21st century to avoid execution, imprisonment or extradition to The Hague. But he is hardly alone in discovering strange routines after the collapse of a reign of terror.
Idi Amin of Uganda, notorious for his brutality and long surrounded by lurid allegations of cannibalism, reportedly became obsessed with fruit, indulged in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and learned to play the accordion. The Marcos family, whose conspicuous consumerism was fueled by a vast apparatus of corruption and symbolized most famously by Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection, lived in comfort in Hawaii and were frequent visitors to Honolulu’s luxury stores. Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti initially enjoyed a lavish exile on the French Riviera before losing much of his fortune in an acrimonious divorce, while his former wife went on to live comfortably in Switzerland.
Perhaps the most vulgar of all dictatorial exiles belonged to King Farouk of Egypt. Overthrown by the Free Officers and sent into exile in Italy, Farouk reportedly left Egypt in tears. Yet he soon abandoned any serious effort to reclaim the throne. In Italy, his reputation as a playboy grew. He became known as the “King of the Night” and was said to have memorized the names of Rome’s call girls. His appetite for collecting also continued: coins, stamps, clocks, jewelry and, most famously, pornography.
These details can make exile look almost comic. But for many dictators, life after power was not only a period of indulgence or eccentricity. It was also marked by a profound sense of betrayal.
In an Alhurra interview, Riccardo Orizio, journalist and author of Talk of the Devil, observed that many deposed dictators believed they had first been useful to great powers and then discarded once they became inconvenient.
“They were conscious of the fact that they’d been used first and then deposed,” Orizio said. “They did what was convenient to the great powers, up to a point until when it was not convenient anymore. And then all of a sudden, the various powers who protected us discovered that we were dictators.”
Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the Central African ruler whose delusions of grandeur cast him as a Napoleonic figure, felt this sense of betrayal especially strongly toward France. Orizio noted that Bokassa’s rise had been closely linked to Paris. He had served in the French army, fought for France in Asia and during World War II, attended President Georges Pompidou’s funeral, and enjoyed close ties with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Then, suddenly, France overthrew him.
“Bokassa became president of the Central African Republic because, in Paris, they decided so,” Orizio said. “And all of a sudden, France decides to depose him. Of course he feels betrayed.”
Bokassa spent much of his exile casting himself as an abandoned French veteran, complaining that after decades of service to France he had been left with little more than an inadequate officer’s pension.
That sense of abandonment brings the question back to Assad.
His survival depended heavily on Russia’s airpower and Iran’s network of militias, advisers and money. Yet both relationships were ultimately transactional. Moscow helped save his regime when it served Russian interests. Later, Russia’s attention and resources were consumed by Ukraine. Iran helped preserve Assad’s rule for years, but it did not rescue him at the moment when his state finally collapsed.
The sharper question, then, is not simply whether Assad feels betrayed. It is whether he believes he was abandoned by allies, or merely used by them until he was no longer useful. Does he see Russia’s dealings with Syria’s new authorities as a pragmatic necessity, or as a personal humiliation? Does he regard Iran’s failure to intervene decisively as proof that its loyalty had limits?
Or, like many fallen rulers before him, does he still interpret his downfall not as the result of his own rule, but as the product of foreign betrayal?
Given Assad’s secrecy and isolation, the answer may never be known. Unlike some exiled rulers who spent their final years raging against their former patrons, Assad has offered little public insight into how he understands his own collapse. But his silence leaves behind one of the central mysteries of his exile: whether he sees himself as a defeated tyrant, a discarded client or the victim of allies who saved him only until saving him became inconvenient.
