Rose in the Desert

You are a top staffer for a New York public relations firm and your clients are a murderous dictator embroiled in a genocide against his own people and his chic and urbane yuppie wife. A real P.R. dilemma.  But hey, when life gives you lemons, why not make lemonade?

Run some puff pieces focussing on them playing with their children and on the first ladies inimitable sense of style.

Your typical western family, typical that is if Grandpa started off the proud family tradition of killing 20,000 of his own people in his campaign on the Syrian city of Hama.

Al Arabiya has a great story today on the Assad's hiring of BLJ, Brown Lloyd James to reform their less than grand image. They arrange to write a story on Mr. and Mrs. Assad for Vogue Magazine. The New York firm whose partner, ex Clinton White House staffer Mike Holtzman, represents the first couple hires long time Paris Vogue editor Joan Buck to write the piece, lyrically titled A Rose in the Desert. This story is supposed to present the other side of the homicidal regime, the stylish, warm and fuzzy side. Operatives are directed to "burnish the country's image."

BLJ clients in the region also include the ousted Qaddafi regime in Libya and Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

"...The company continued to work with the Syrian government by sending a four-page memo in May 2011 offering advice on strategy for handling and improving the public image of the regime as it escalated its violent crackdown to crush the uprising. The memo was published by Wikileaks during the first week of July with 2.4 Syrian million documents."

The writer Buck was apparently shielded from seeing anything controversial on her visit, on advice from Holtzman.

"...According to the leaked email, Holtzman goes on to instruct Sherry (Sheherazad Jaafari, who is also the daughter of Syria envoy to the U.N. Bashar Jaafari)  to “not mention anything controversial to her (Joan)”, this included “lists Syria maybe on, rumor, etc.”“What she (Joan) sees must be 100% affirmative,” concluded Holtzman. "

Here is the original article, from February of 2011, still on Assad's own presidential website. The P.R. company now says that they were just trying to be a force for good and help the regime change its evil ways. Teflon.


Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

At the end of the article the author describes a Christmas celebration, now tinged with a bit of surreal irony:
Two hundred children dressed variously as elves, reindeers, or candy canes share the stage with members of the national orchestra, who are done up as elves. The show becomes a full-on songfest, with the elves and reindeer and candy canes giving their all to “Hallelujah” and “Joy to the World.” The carols slide into a more serpentine rhythm, an Arabic rap group takes over, and then it’s back to Broadway mode. The president whispers, “All of these styles belong to our culture. This is how you fight extremism—through art.”
Brass bells are handed out. Now we’re all singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” 1,331 audience members shaking their bells, singing, crying, and laughing.
“This is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East,” says the president, ringing his bell. “This is how you can have peace!”