section_path: Background/Bashar al-Assad
section_name: Bashar al-Assad
paragraph_text: Bashar al-Assad
  
  After Hafez al-Assad's death, his son and successor Bashar al-Assad inherited the existing personality cult, with the party hailing him as the "Young Leader" and "Hope of the People." Drawing influence from North Korea's hereditary leadership model, official propaganda in Syria ascribed divine features to the Assad family, and reveres the Assad patriarchs as the founding fathers of modern Syria.
  
  In 2011, the United States, European Union, and most Arab League countries called for Assad to resign following the crackdown on Arab Spring protesters during the events of the Syrian Revolution, which led to the Syrian civil war. As of 2022 the civil war had killed around 580,000 people, of whom at least 306,000 were non-combatants. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, pro-Assad forces caused more than 90% of the civilian deaths. The Assad government perpetrated numerous war crimes during the course of the Syrian civil war, and Assad's army, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, also carried out several attacks with chemical weapons. The deadliest chemical attack was a sarin gas strike in Ghouta on 21 August 2013, which killed between 281 and 1,729 people.
  
  In December 2013, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that findings from an inquiry by the UN implicated Assad in war crimes. Investigations by the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism and OPCW-UN IIT concluded, respectively, that the Assad government was responsible for the 2017 Khan Shaykhun sarin attack and 2018 Douma chemical attack. On 15 November 2023, France issued an arrest warrant against al-Assad over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Syria. Assad categorically denied the allegations, and accused foreign countries, especially the United States, of attempting regime change.