In the past week, Bashar has been declared commander of the armed forces and promoted from colonel to general. President Assad himself had been organising the succession process for years - a sensitive issue, since Syria is officially a republican state. But he took care to follow formal procedures which demand that the country's leader have a position in the ruling Ba'ath Party. Bashar was required to abandon his career as an eye doctor when his elder brother Basil, his father's first choice as successor, was killed in a 1994 car accident. He has since been groomed for succession by his father, whose health had been poor since the 1980s.
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