Damascus
Running unopposed, Syrian President Bashar Assad won a second seven–year term this week in a referendum vote. A British–educated ophthalmologist, Assad, 42, became president shortly after the death of his father, President Hafez Assad, in 2000. He used his first term to crack down on the country’s tiny pro–democracy movement and squelch Sunni extremist groups. Most of Syria is Sunni, but the Assad family and the governing elite are Alawites, a Shiite minority sect. The Interior Ministry said 11 million of Syria’s 12 million voters showed up at the polls this week, and that more than 97 percent of them voted to give Assad another term. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The rise and rise of VTubersUnder The Radar This anime-inspired internet subculture is going global
-
Book reviews: 'The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip' and 'Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service'Feature The tech titan behind Nvidia's success and the secret stories of government workers
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin AmericaFeature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
