generalspeaking

Achieving Status

Women who 'marry well', often achieve a large-scale social status and celebrity because they become the official consorts to royalty and the public imagination celebrates the ages-old phenomonon of a commoner, a woman endowed with beauty and intelligence capturing the heart of a powerful man who sweeps her off her feet and into a marriage in which her presence will enhance his presentation, and a dynasty is born -- or continued on its way.

Folk tales and fairytales that children, mostly girls, traditionally consumed in their formative years had more than ample stories of beautiful young woman and their ravishing princes, most ending happily ever after. But not necessarily. That these events occur in real life is undeniable, and there exist many examples from Middle Eastern rulers like King Hussein of Jordan and his son after him wedding beautiful and accomplished women.

Even Hollywood comes into the picture with former actress Grace Kelly marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco, the world's smallest principality. And famously, one actress thought to be one of the world's great beauties, Rita Hayworth, apart from marrying countless times, also counted among her serial husbands, Prince Aly Khan, son of Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan II, leader of Shia Islam's Ismaili sect.

A London-raised, Sunni Syrian career woman caught the eye of the heir to the tyranny of Syria, and yet another beautiful young woman was carried away to represent as the consort of a powerful man. Asma al-Assad's father, a wealthy London-based surgeon, came from Homs, his ancestral home. She married a Shia Muslim man whose father was well known to have inflicted a bloody massacre upon Sunnis in Hama.


Homs is considered by the Alawite regime of Asma's husband to be a nest of terrorist enemies of the state. And the wife of the new butcher of Syria is accepting of the fact that she is now part of a government which has exacted revenge upon its citizens for protesting their inequality in their country of birth and citizenship by dispatching helicopter warships to strafe civilians, and by using artillery to bomb them.



The wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now portrays herself in a public relations gambit as the gracious host to their faithful, grateful public, mostly comprised of Shiite Muslim Syrians. She is seen modestly ingratiating herself with ordinary people to demonstrate to them and to the world at large that she and her husband and their murderous regime are really concerned for the well-being of the citizens of Syria.

The revolt that is taking place is not of their liking, nor of their making. They nobly respond as best they can, including, needless to say, with the use of the military -- for what else is a nation's military for but to defend the government and the nation -- from the predatory viciousness of foreign Islamists who have entered the war-torn country from Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, to destabilize and disrupt civil life in their country.

For their pains and as reward for their love of country last month the presidential convoy returning from an Eid celebration was attacked by rebels whose boldness knows no bounds or decency. The president and first lady escaped unscathed, while a bodyguard was killed. This outrage is, to their way of thinking, indefensible. An affront to decency. No way to honour a couple who have given their all for their country.



And so, there are those who have imagined a response to this significant affront to majesty and decency out of a sense of outrage so emotional that it exceeded the bounds of forethought and consequences. Where President Assad's brother Maher, commander of the Republican Guards and of the Fourth Armoured Division devised a revenge attack. A vendetta against the crude violence threatening the president and his wife, by the responding use of chemical weapons.

Nerve agents used in bombs that rained down on a Damascus suburb that represented a stronghold of the Syrian rebels. Deadly gas that crept in silently in the small hours of the night to suffocate and to cause untold suffering and finally death. A rage that could not be appeased other than by a swift and direct response that would bring a huge death toll. The message delivered; to Syrian rebels that a price will be exacted for such boldness of purpose.

To the world at large that the regime will not tolerate the endangerment of its president and its first lady, let alone their precious, vulnerable, innocent children. Now, threatened by the very real prospect of international intervention to halt the atrocities mounted by the government against its own population, millions of Syrians have fled their homes in terror.

They have been preyed upon by both their government and the jihadists who have entered the country to wrest control from the Alawites to transfer it to Sunni fanatics.

The Assads are isolated, friendless but for Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. No other Arab country wishes them well. Their list of enemies has proliferated wildly. Asma al-Assad's first concern is for the welfare of her children, offspring of her marriage to their father, the totalitarian, murderous tyrant of Syria.

She has come far from the genteel upbringing she experienced in London, from the university education she had there, from the comfort of a wide circle of friends and admirers. And the affirming, concerned presence of her doting parents, ex-diplomat mother Sahar, cardiologist Fawaz Akhras.

"There was this hope that we had a young couple with strong UK ties that maybe we could push in the direction of the Jordanian royal family, where they all go to Harrow and Sandhurst", said Harry Hogger pensively, Britain's former ambassador to Syria, of the formerly graduate of the Western Eye Hospital in London.

Labels: Atrocities, Chemical warfare, Conflict, Human Relations, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 08, 2013