A man walks past a vandalized portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad is pictured in the town of Adra on the northeast outskirts of Damascus on Dec. 16, 2024. Islamist-led rebels took Damascus in a lightning offensive on Dec. 8, ousting president Bashar al-Assad and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. (Credit: Aris Messinis/AFP)
It’s 2011. Loubna Mrie is 20 years old. She leaves her coastal hometown of Jableh to join Damascus and the revolution, in the course of which she becomes a journalist and covers the bombings of eastern Aleppo. Yet nothing predestined her for this. The young Alawite woman grew up in a region where men enlist in the army by the thousands, and under the shadow of a father in the Air Force Intelligence. Head of security for Bassel al-Assad, Jawdat Mrie became involved in the assassination of a dissident abroad and made his wealth by climbing the ranks of the regime, coming as he did from a modest background.In her autobiography “Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion and Survival in Syria” (Viking, 432 pp., February 2026), Loubna recounts the grip of this patriarch, both feared and adored, much like President Hafez al-Assad, who ruled...
It’s 2011. Loubna Mrie is 20 years old. She leaves her coastal hometown of Jableh to join Damascus and the revolution, in the course of which she becomes a journalist and covers the bombings of eastern Aleppo. Yet nothing predestined her for this. The young Alawite woman grew up in a region where men enlist in the army by the thousands, and under the shadow of a father in the Air Force Intelligence. Head of security for Bassel al-Assad, Jawdat Mrie became involved in the assassination of a dissident abroad and made his wealth by climbing the ranks of the regime, coming as he did from a modest background.In her autobiography “Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion and Survival in Syria” (Viking, 432 pp., February 2026), Loubna recounts the grip of this patriarch, both feared and adored, much like President Hafez al-Assad, who...
