In December 2010, the French first lady Carla Bruni sat down to lunch under the gold chandeliers of the Elysée palace with Asma al-Assad, wife of the Syrian leader Bashar. As they sat demurely with their husbands around a butterfly-print tablecloth dominated by a pastel flower-arrangement, a photographer was ushered in to grab a picture for French celebrity magazines. After all, this was a communion of fashion's high priestesses: a former Italian supermodel turned folk-singer entertaining a Chanel-loving, London-raised, former banker and conveniently westernised Middle Eastern first lady. French Elle had recently voted Asma "the most stylish woman in world politics", Paris Match called her "an eastern Diana", a "ray of light in a country full of shadow zones".
Only days after the lunch, a desperate Tunisian vegetable seller would set himself alight, sparking the first revolution of the Arab spring. Already, as the Sarkozys' butlers served the Assads crystal glasses of freshly squeezed juice from silver platters, there was unease among certain diplomats about the French president schmoozing the ruler of an oppressive dictatorship known for torture, brutality and political prisoners. But Nicolas Sarkozy, an expert on the importance of photogenic wives in politics, saw Asma as his insurance policy. "When we explained that this was the worst kind of tyrant, Sarkozy would say: 'Bashar protects Christians, and with a wife as modern as his, he can't be completely bad,'" the former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner later confided to journalists.
Now, after 11 months of bloody repression of the pro-democracy uprising in Syria, with thousands dead and tens of thousands of refugees spilled over Syria's borders, Asma's careful public-relations strategy as the gentle British-born face of the regime has crumbled. When she appeared smiling and immaculately dressed on Sunday alongside her husband to vote in a referendum on a new constitution, it only deepened opposition accusations that she has become a modern-day Marie-Antoinette. The row over a shockingly fawning, lengthy puff-piece in American Vogue last year depicting Asma's Louboutin shoes and charity work, as well as a recent appearance at a rally hugging her children in support of her husband and an email to the Times explaining her backing of him, has reopened the debate about the role of dictators' wives in the Arab spring.
"Every revolution has its Lady Macbeth," sighed one Middle East expert in Paris. The dictators' wives are all very different, united by the varying degrees of hatred they inspired, eye-watering fortunes, expensive wardrobes and often a state-sanctioned so-called "feminism" or, like Asma al-Assad, charity work as a public distraction against the brutal realities of the regime. » | Angelique Chrisafis | Tuesday, February 28, 2012
