Gushing Vogue profile of ousted Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s spouse Asma resurfaces after being wiped from their web site

It caused controversy at the time for its glowing review of Bashar Al Assad’s wife Asma which hauntingly coincided with war breaking out in Syria over the former President’s brutally repressive regime.

But Vogue’s surprising profile of the former First Lady – who is thought to have been granted asylum in Moscow with her deposed husband – is likely to resurface in the minds of many following the collapse of the al-Assad family’s iron rule after five decades.

However, few will be able to discover the full article, entitled ‘A Rose in the Desert’ and written by former French Vogue Editor Joan Juliet Buck, since shortly after it was published in the March 2011 edition of US Vogue, the feature suddenly vanished from the internet.

Despite being quickly pulled from the magazine’s website, some snippets remain online, showcasing the way in which the embarrassing profile praised the Assads as a ‘wildly democratic’ family-focused couple who lived in the ‘safest country in the Middle East’.

British-born Asma, who gave up a successful career as a banker in London to marry her husband of nearly 24 years, was described as ‘glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.

But the gushing profile, published as Assad began terrorising his own people, was met with a wave of criticism and both Buck and Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, were accused of pushing a public relations campaign on the regime’s behalf, reported The Guardian. 

In June 2012, Wintour issued a statement about the feature, saying, via The New York Times: ‘Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society. 

‘Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. 

‘The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.’

But the year prior, the senior editor at Vogue who was responsible for the story, Chris Knutsen, defended the controversial article, explaining: ‘We thought we could open up that very closed world a very little bit’, reported The Atlantic.

He said the profile strived to offer ‘a balanced view of the first lady and her self-defined role as Syria’s cultural ambassador’, but conceded that Assad’s country was ‘not as secular as we might like’. 

From Al Assad and his wife attending a Catholic carol concert, where he rang a Christmas bell and declared ‘This is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East… This is how you can have peace!’ to discussing the despot’s love of photography, the profile painted a cosy and modern picture of Asma and her husband.

‘[Asma’s] a rare combination: a thin, long‐limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement… She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun,’ insisted the feature, which detailed her efforts to give Syria a ‘brand essence’. 

In the article, Asma, whose parents are both Sunni Muslims, recalled teasing Brad Pitt about security during his and Angelina Jolie’s visit for the United Nations in 2009, embracing other religious such as Christianity by decorating a Christmas tree and travelling to the Louvre.

Indeed, instead of questioning the Queen’s College alumna about the oppression faced in the country, or seemingly anything of real consequence, Buck chatted with Asma about the early days of her romance with her now husband.

They also talked about her ‘central mission’ to encourage ‘active citizenship’ and the centres the former First Lady had founded to urge children and young adults to engage in their civic responsibility to ‘move this country forward’.

Meanwhile, Buck discussed photography with al-Assad and asked him about why he studied eye surgery as a student.

The profile also explained how their family was apparently run on ‘wildly democratic principles’, with the two parents and three children all voting on what they want.

It also mentioned how al‐Assad was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a ‘startling’ 97 per cent of the vote – but fails to mention that he was apparently the only candidate, according to The Atlantic.

Elsewhere, the feature has a compliment for Asma from her younger brother, who praises her ‘intelligence’, as well as notes how she starts her work days at 6 and never has a lunch break.  

The backlash to the profile cost Buck her ‘livelihood’, claimed the writer, and ended the association she’d had with Vogue since she was 23 years old.

She penned an article for Newsweek in 2012 about the feature, explaining how she’d initially rejected the assignment and didn’t know she was ‘going to meet a murderer’. 

The author said was taken in by Asma’s ‘well-rounded and glossy presentation of a cosy, modern, relaxed version of herself, her family, and her country’.

However, she also suggested that her phone and computer were monitored, couldn’t ‘shake a driver’ when trying to go about her journeys alone in the country and claimed to notice a ‘mobile prison’ outside a marketplace. None of which was mentioned in the original profile.

According to Buck, she was told by a features editor at the magazine that they ‘don’t want any politics, none at all’ in the article, adding ‘[Asma] only wants to talk about culture, antiquities, and museums’.

It came after The Hill had reported that US lobbying firm Brown Lloyd James had been paid $5,000 per month by the Syrian government to arrange the Vogue feature. 

Buck – who later labelled Asma the ‘first lady of hell’ – noted that the ‘Assads’ PR firm’ Brown Lloyd James took care of her visa. 

Born in London in 1975, to Fawaz Akhras, a successful cardiologist at the private Cromwell Hospital and her mother, Sahar, a senior Syrian diplomat, Asma, 49, was sent to Queen’s College, in Marylebone where fees are almost £9,000 a term.

From there she graduated at King’s College London in 1996 with a degree in computer science and French literature and embarked upon a career in investment banking at major companies including Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan.

Four years later she married Assad, now 59, in Syria in the same year he took control of the country, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died aged 69.

Together they have three children, who are aged between 19 and 23, and are presumed to be with their parents in Moscow.

On the international stage Mrs Assad cut a demure figure, with her understated attire and photogenic looks, her veilless face was emblematic of Syria’s reputation for relative freedom for women in a Muslim country.

This image seemed to be cemented when in February 2010, Vogue magazine called an interview with her ‘A Rose in the Desert’ describing her as the ‘freshest and most magnetic of first ladies’.

But the next year war broke out in Syria between rebels and Assad’s regime over his brutally repressive regime and the reputation of the country as open and secular was trashed.

During the conflict the couple are understood to have drifted apart, but with Assad’s mother dying in 2016 and Mrs Assad’s diagnosis of breast cancer in 2018, she was repositioned at the heart of the regime’s economy.

But this new role was nothing more than a ‘shakedown’ operation of the country’s middle class merchants and businessmen.

She orchestrated a secretive labyrinth of committees and policies, run by her henchman, which controlled everything from access to the internet to subsided food rations.

Her empire also extended to the distribution of foreign aid – effectively she controlled who got what when.

With her role within Assad’s dictatorship growing, she was unable to maintain her early image of the liberated woman operating at the heart of power in a Muslim country.

She became one and the same with the Syrian regime’s terrible suppression of its people.

Despite the challenges to her public image, she was still seen on the international stage meeting with the heads of state in Europe.

But her role in Syria’s financial policy earned her the widespread, unenviable nickname of ‘Lady Macbeth’ from rebels and commentators alike.

And now, with rumours swirling that she and her husband are seeking haven in despotic regimes such as Russia and Iran, her once gilded facade has been torn asunder utterly.

In four days time the Assads will be marking their 24th wedding anniversary, in settings no doubt, less salubrious than their former palatial seat of power in Syria’s capital Damascus.

But where exactly they will share that marital moment, with their dynasty in tatters, and no clear picture for the future, is anyone’s guess.

Russia, a long standing ally of the Assad regime, cryptically announced the family had fled Damascus, and confirmed it is in talks with the rebel factions filling the void left behind, but did not confirm if the Assads had entered Russian territory.

Wherever, Mrs Assad and her fallen husband finds themselves holed up in the coming years, be it Moscow or Tehran, it is a long road back to Damascus.

The home of Mrs Assad’s parents in West London, is a spacious terrace, with a brown stone front and white Edwardian glass panelled bay windows.

On neighbouring driveways rows of BMWs, Mercedes and Four by Four cars line up.

It is a quintessential middle-class street lined with trees, who have lost their leaves in December.

The houses fetch £600,000 to one million on average on the road, which is close to parks and busy shopping streets filled with boutiques, artisan bakeries, and cafes.

The in-laws of President Assad are said by neighbours not to have been seen for some time.

Nonetheless, their driveway is immaculately kept, with no obvious signs of disrepair on the paintwork of the black door and white window frames.

A large TV satellite dish protrudes from the front of the house, which is approached through a black gate and along a paved pathway.