The Economist Magazine Cover For 12-14-2024

The Economist Read in browser December 14th 2024 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief Our worldwide cover this week was devoted to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad. A lot of commentary has warned that post-Assad Syria is doomed to descend into religious tyranny or civil war. Many fear that the country will once again export refugees, jihadists and instability. That is indeed a danger. However, we wanted a cover which, without seeming naive, argued that the fall of the Assads is neither so bleak nor so hopeless. We thought that such a momentous event would probably demand a news photograph. One choice was whether to feature Bashar al-Assad, the Moscow-based ex-tyrant, or the victorious rebels who deposed him. One looked back at a watershed, the other forward at what it might bring. Here are some shots that focus on Mr Assad. The ripped poster is powerful, but it has been widely published. The decapitated statue is much fresher—and indeed we ended up using it in our briefing section. However, it features Bashar’s father, Hafez, and it is wrong for the cover. It looks as if the rebellion was taking place in Tallinn or Riga in 1989, rather than in Damascus today. We also looked for pictures of the rebels. This lot are brandishing their own version of the Syrian flag—with green instead of red at the top and three red stars instead of two green ones. The trouble is that this could have been almost any group with a grievance. The other picture is too tasteful for a story packed with danger and human tragedy. As the regime collapsed Syrians impoverished under Mr Assad’s rule gawped at his abandoned palaces. Broken people emerged blinking from his prisons; some could no longer remember their own names. And Syria’s future could very well descend into sectarian strife. In a country crammed with weapons, people have many reasons to seek vengeance. Syria’s new most powerful factions are hardly men of peace—their origins lie in al-Qaeda and Islamic state. Within a day of the regime’s collapse foreign powers were escalating their fighting in Syria so as to advance their own interests. We were leaning towards focusing on Mr Assad, but we wanted to assess more news pictures to be sure. This jihadist captures the mix of jubilation and menace that Mr Assad’s ousting inspires. Jubilation, because his benighted regime left behind nothing except ruin, corruption and misery. Menace, because the leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, will struggle to unite Syria. Even if it does, HTS’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, may end up resembling the dictator he has just toppled. We also looked at another disturbing photograph. At first you register a celebration, as Syrians cheer their liberation after 53 years under the Assads’ yoke. But then you look at the young boy sitting astride the barrel of a tank and you realise that in his short life he has known nothing but war. That is not the only reason the country will be hard to put back together: Syria is a mosaic of peoples and faiths carved out of the Ottoman empire. They have never lived side by side in a stable democracy. The daunting task of attempting to forge a new political settlement out of a fractured country could well fall to Mr Sharaa. This picture speaks to his violent inheritance. As ruler of Idlib, a rebel province in the north, Mr Sharaa ran a competent government that nodded at religious pluralism and oversaw a successful economy. However, although he has distanced himself from more radical groups and courted the West, Mr Sharaa has become increasingly autocratic, and had taken to purging rivals and imprisoning opponents. If he tries to run Syria permanently as a giant Idlib—a Sunni fief dominated by HTS—he will fail. Syria will remain divided between feuding warlords, many of them mini-dictators in their own right. The shot-up face of Mr Assad was hard to recognise. This picture of contempt was much stronger. A boot is less extreme than a bullet, but seeing it is what counts. We debated whether to use the photograph in colour or black and white. Some argued that colour was more newsy; others thought the fall of the house of Assad was a piece of history and that black and white would have more weight. We went with weight. Much will go wrong in a traumatised place like Syria. The effort to rebuild the country is bound to entail a struggle for influence. But it was time to pause for a moment and share Syrians’ joy at bringing down a tyrant. Cover image • View large image (“What now?”) Backing stories → How the new Syria might succeed or fail (Leader) → Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future (Briefing) → The Assad regime’s fall voids many of the Middle East’s old certainties (Briefing) → Inside Bashar al-Assad’s dungeons (Middle East & Africa)