What Assad can expect from a life in political exile

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What Assad can expect from a life in political exile

After more than two decades in power and countless lives lost, Bashar al-Assad has

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with his family. But when regimes collapse and bloodthirsty dictators end up abroad, what happens next? Just as tyrants themselves differ, so does their time in exile.

The former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle was shot to death shortly after fleeing, while Juan Perón managed to retake power in Argentina after spending 18 years in exile. Most rulers end up in-between, living a life of comparative safety and relative irrelevance.

When Ugandan dictator

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first arrived in Saudi Arabia, he still had hopes of staging a comeback. But when his attempt to do so failed, he lost more than just hope. Amin, who liked to refer to himself as the “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas” became, in a sense, ordinary. Eager to be a decent host, the Saudi government made sure that he would have a nice home, cars, maids and even cooks. In exchange, the Lord of All the Beasts had to keep quiet to avoid embarrassing Riyadh. Amin was definitely comfortable, but also irrelevant; and psychologically, the impact of that is not to be underestimated.

In exile, Idi Amin lived comfortably but became irrelevant – Getty

As a dictator, you practically become the centre of the universe. Since they promote people according to loyalty and not competence, everyone around them begins to tell them what they want to hear. If somebody doesn’t, an unpleasant truth can be rewarded with demotion, prison or death. Having experienced such power, having been someone who matters, it’s incredibly difficult for these characters to go back to being a nobody at the total mercy of someone else.

During the Cold War, even vile tyrants could hope to retire in prosperous and safe democracies if they were on the “right” side. In 1986, the American government had a decision to make: Would they extend a “Golden Parachute” to Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine dictator? Marcos was tired, scared and out of good options. But if the Americans could get the ageing dictator out of Manila, further bloodshed might be avoided.

That said, the cost would be steep, as Americans would inevitably help him steal yet more from his country. And steal he did. When Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos landed in Hawaii, they brought with them, amongst other things, two-dozen gold bricks, an ivory Jesus with a necklace made of diamonds and 140 jewel-studded cufflinks. Also, millions in cash. For a man who officially earned $13,500 a year, it wasn’t the worst start to his new life in Honolulu.

To live as the Marcos’ family subsequently did, tyrants need to steal a lot of money, and they need to find a way to keep it. When Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier first arrived in France after being toppled in a coup, he reportedly had plenty and he acted as such. He enjoyed speedboats, expensive cars and a villa on the Côte d’Azur. If the reporting is to be believed, his wife once spent £42,000 on a clock.

Jean-Claude Duvalier began a lavish lifestyle in exile, but eventually found himself struggling to pay rent – Getty

But one of the problems of exile, as Baby Doc would soon find out, is that you can no longer steal from your people. When dictators are in power, they have almost endless opportunities for thievery. Perhaps some of the money destined for the state budget ends up in a foreign bank account instead. Or it could be that an investor makes his problems with the tax authorities go away after paying a “fee.” Maybe, just maybe, a government-owned company gets privatised and sold to an ally of the dictator at a fraction of the real price, incentivising said ally to show his gratitude to the ruler that made it happen.

Now in France, Duvalier couldn’t do any of it. Whatever he had stolen had to last, and it didn’t. As the bills kept coming and he underwent an incredibly expensive divorce, Baby Doc could no longer even afford a two-bedroom apartment. Though his rent was now just a few hundred euros a month, he simply couldn’t pay it. If it hadn’t been for some supporters picking up the tab, the man accused of stealing hundreds of millions could have become homeless thousands of kilometres from home.

And of course, all these former rulers must consider the possibility that they might one day be forced to leave. Because just as former rulers tend to loathe the idea of exile, so do many of their hosts. When Idi Amin left Saudi Arabia temporarily in 1989, Riyadh initially refused to take him back because it made them look bad. ‘‘His nagging desire to recapture power in Kampala has embarrassed his Saudi hosts and put his African sympathisers on the spot,’’ an observer said at the time.

Even though president Ronald Reagan rescued

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from Manila, he distanced himself from him after he arrived in the United States.

Ferdinand Marcos and his wife set up residence in Hawaii – Sipa/Shutterstock

And Jean-Claude Duvalier? He only ended up staying in France because the US, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco and Gabon refused to take him in. Dissatisfied with his presence, Paris could have kicked him out at any moment, which means he never experienced real safety again.

But if neither deposed leaders nor hosts are keen on exile, why does it happen anyway? For tyrants, the answer is straightforward: When political scientists looked at dictators that decided to flee, they found that the vast majority of them go abroad during a coup, revolt or civil war. They go into exile not because it’s a good option, but because it’s more attractive than imprisonment or imminent death.

For the host, the reasons tend to be more varied. It can be about avoiding bloodshed, sowing chaos or giving a friendly leader space to plan his return to the presidential palace. Most importantly, it sends a signal to other sympathetic leaders that they, too, will be taken care of when the going gets tough.

After the fall of his regime, Bashar al-Assad’s best-case scenario is now a life of irrelevance in a Moscow suburb – Getty

Only time will tell what

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for Assad and his family in Russia, where they will join Viktor Yanukovych and Askar Akayev, the former Kyrgyz president ousted in the 2005 Tulip Revolution.

A return to power looks highly unlikely, so his best-case scenario is now irrelevance in a Moscow suburb.

Whether that will materialise will depend in huge part on Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has just suffered a major embarrassment since he was unable to protect Bashar al-Assad in Damascus despite investing blood and treasure for years. If Assad is lucky, Putin will calculate that he cannot afford his death – for now.

Marcel Dirsus is a political scientist and the author of How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive, published by John Murray.

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