Five days after north-west Syria was rocked by a deadly earthquake, two unlikely visitors glided into an Aleppo hospital with a press pack in tow.
It was the man who had spent years dropping thousands of barrel bombs on parts of the city, accompanied by his glamorous wife.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife took part in a carefully choreographed tour of the region, which has, at times, been the focal point of the country's long and brutal civil war.
Dressed in a luxe cream turtleneck and matching anorak, first lady Asma al-Assad hugged children and held the hands of quake survivors recovering in hospital.
Her husband smiled broadly while posing for selfies with supporters, then took a moment to slam the West in front of the press pack following their every move.
"The West prioritised politics over the humanitarian situation," he said.
"It's natural that they politicise the situation, but there is no humanitarianism, neither now nor in the past."
Syria is one of the most heavily sanctioned nations on Earth, thanks to the Assad regime's brutal repression of an uprising that spiralled into civil war in 2011.
The quake risks pushing to the brink this nation that has already endured 12 years of civil war.
Its economy is close to collapsing, 90 per cent of its people live below the global poverty line, and day-long blackouts are the norm for many.
But Syria's dictator may see this devastating earthquake as much an opportunity as it is a humanitarian disaster.
After years trying to build an image of youthful glamour through mysterious PR campaigns, the Assads found themselves suddenly out in the cold when their brutal response to the civil war shocked the world.
While Assad has since turned his country into a so-called "mafia state" that keeps his wife in Western designer outfits and his family living in relative luxury, experts say he is desperate to return to the world stage in some form.
"Assad is trying to exploit the earthquakes to get out of international isolation," Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, told the Associated Press.
"His regime's call for the lifting of sanctions is an attempt at de facto normalisation with the international community."
Before the war, the promising young leader and his 'rose in the desert'
In its March 2011 'Power' issue, American Vogue published a fawning profile of Asma al-Assad, describing her as "glamorous, young, and very chic".
"She's a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement," the reporter breathlessly wrote.
The feature and accompanying photoshoot was the culmination of years of careful planning, which included engaging a London PR firm on a $7,200-per-month contract, to spruik the Assads around the world.
Bashar al-Assad's ascent to power following his father's death in 2000 was initially met within Syria and around the globe with cautious optimism.
An ophthalmologist who studied in Damascus and London, the younger Assad raised hopes among many leaders in the US, the European Union and the Arab League that he would not follow in his father's brutal and oppressive footsteps.
The Assads were quick to trade on this optimism, spruiking themselves as a young and attractive couple who would bring stability and democracy to Syria.
In 2007, the now-defunct magazine Details placed Assad on its list of most powerful men on the planet — though he was 21st to Britney Spears's ex-husband Kevin Federline's seventh.
Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie lunched with the Assads during a UN tour of the region.
Appearing in the pages of Anna Wintour's Vogue should have been a triumph for the couple.
But at the same time the magazine was hailing Asma for her "long neck" and "energetic grace", her husband was beginning a bloody crackdown on his opponents.
The uprising was initially rooted in a desire for more freedoms and economic reform, but from the protests sprouted an armed conflict along sectarian lines.
As Assad maintained his grip on power, his military and affiliated militia dropped chlorine gas and the highly toxic nerve agent sarin on his people.
Cities were flattened. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed. More than half the country's pre-war population was displaced. Hundreds disappeared into regime torture dungeons. From the chaos, the Islamic State group emerged to unleash untold horrors on civilians.
Leaked emails showed that during the first years of civil war, Asma lived like the Marie Antoinette of the Arab Spring, spending $15,000 on candlesticks and furniture from Paris.
She also ordered a pair of $6,600 crystal-encrusted Christian Louboutin stilettos to be shipped to Dubai to avoid sanctions.
As the same countries who once tried to court the Assads imposed sanctions against them, the Vogue writer who branded Asma a "rose in the desert" gave her a new nickname: "the first lady of hell".
Assad becomes a global pariah and turns Syria into a mafia state
Over the past decade, sanctions designed to financially suffocate the regime have included arms embargoes, restrictions on Syrian banks, and bans on buying Syrian oil, which accounted for about two-thirds of its exports before the war.
The US banned exports of their goods into Syria, even through third countries, while the EU and UK restricted their exports and banned "luxury items" such as purebred horses, caviar and truffles, wine and spirits, cigars and perfumes.
Targeted sanctions also took aim at key regime officials, with Assad at the top, and prominent business figures including the first lady — singled out as "one of Syria's most notorious war profiteers".
Syria's currency soon plummeted, food prices skyrocketed and the economy tanked. A UN report estimated the macroeconomic cost of the conflict at $US442.2 billion ($649 billion) by the end of 2018.
An emerging black market filled the void, widening the chasm between Syria's rich and poor and allowing profiteers to amass immense power while ordinary citizens struggled to survive.
With few friends left, the Syrian government leaned on long-time allies Russia and Iran, as well as China, racking up huge debts over the past decade.
Increasingly desperate and isolated, Assad's regime got creative, embarking on what has been called "a mafia-style money grab", raiding local businesses and seizing their assets, often under the guise of tax violations.
Along the way, Asma accumulated more power and influence, chiefly through the vast charity network she founded in 2001 and interests in telecommunications companies.
When Assad stripped his cousin Rami Makhlouf of a massive portfolio worth as much as $US10 billion, Makhlouf's charity was transferred to Asma.
With other foreign investments stymied and humanitarian relief heavily restricted by Western sanctions, the regime set its sights on what little aid was still trickling through.
The government insisted that all aid bound for opposition-held territory must be funnelled through Damascus — a set-up that allowed Assad to siphon off supplies, make a profit, and starve his enemies.
Numerous reports and investigations have detailed how the regime directs aid to areas it deems loyal, blocks access to other regions, and diverts deliveries to military units.
Analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2020 found that by manipulating the exchange rate, the Syrian government made nearly 51 cents for every international aid dollar spent in the country that year.
By 2022, the Assad family's net worth was estimated to be somewhere between $US1 billion and $US2 billion ($1.47 billion and $2.93 billion), drawn from an intricate web of sources.
"The Assad family runs a complex patronage system including shell companies and corporate facades that serves as a tool for the regime to access financial resources via seemingly legitimate corporate structures and non-profit entities," a US state department report concluded.
"[This also allows them to] launder money acquired from illicit economic activities including smuggling, arms trading, drug trafficking, and protection and extortion rackets."
Meanwhile, their people were living in poverty, heavily reliant on humanitarian aid.
The earthquake as an opportunity for Assad to acquire Western funds
When the first magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck southern Türkiye, about 50km from the border and 100km from Aleppo, it plunged millions of people into an even more desperate situation.
The death toll has now surpassed 46,000 — mostly in Türkiye, though thousands of Syrians are among the dead.
In Syria's rebel-held north-west, entire towns already pockmarked by years of heavy artillery have been completely flattened.
In the days immediately following the quake, local rescue teams with limited equipment were only able to search about 5 per cent of affected areas in Syria.
Syria received planeloads of aid from more than a dozen countries — mostly those already sympathetic to the regime — but little reached the areas under opposition control.
Help was slow to arrive, and Assad quickly blamed Western sanctions restricting the flow of aid into his country.
Drawn-out negotiations by the UN Security Council — upon which Assad allies Russia and China both hold permanent seats — left just one Turkish border crossing open from 2020.
The only way to bring aid into Idlib province was through Bab al-Hawa, and damage to roads and infrastructure in southern Türkiye slowed this even further.
Raed Al Saleh, head of the Syrian White Helmets, said it took four days for the first aid delivery to arrive at Bab al-Hawa, and even then the supplies had been scheduled before the quake.
"There was nothing to help with our rescue efforts," he wrote for CNN.
Some rebel leaders in the north begged the international community to send more help, while others refused to accept aid coming through any government-held parts of Syria.
"We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned," the UN's relief chief, Martin Griffiths, tweeted on February 12.
On February 13, a full week after the quake struck, Assad agreed to open two more checkpoints, at Bab al-Salam and Al-Rai, to allow humanitarian aid to begin trickling through to the worst-hit areas.
The US put a temporary freeze on its financial sanctions to allow search and rescue teams, medical supplies and equipment to be sent through, and pledged $US1 million for the recovery.
Some Republicans expressed outrage at the move, claiming it "opens the door to the regime pilfering aid".
The European Union is sending winter tents, cooking equipment and other supplies to the country's north-west and has allocated 10 million euros ($16 million) for rapid relief.
All the while, Assad has received support from much closer to home, with aid donations and visits from world leaders who have not stepped foot in his country for years.
Signifying a shift in frosty relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, Assad thanked his "Arab brothers and friends" for their support last week.
Recovery efforts are still patchy, however, and the cost of rebuilding is likely to be in the tens of millions, with one economist predicting Syria's direct damage amounts to $US1.1 billion.
The UN has launched an international appeal seeking $US400 million, with the UAE already pledging a quarter of that total.
Assad appears to be banking on long-term international assistance to foot the bill.
"The magnitude of the disaster and the tasks that we should all shoulder are much larger than the available capabilities," he said last week.
"What we shall face for months and years, in terms of economic, social and services challenges is no less important than what we faced during the first days."
The Tony Soprano of the Middle East is hoping for a comeback
As well as fielding phone calls from foreign leaders for the first time in many years, Bashar al-Assad is also travelling overseas to visit old friends.
This week, the president went to Oman for his first trip to the kingdom since the civil war began.
Assad may hope to capitalise on diplomatic momentum generated by the quake so he can finally come back in from the cold.
The international community is left to balance the needs of Syrians who have lived a decade-long nightmare compounded by a quake, with their doubts about whether they can trust one of the world's most brutal rulers.
Those who know Bashar al-Assad have always maintained that he is motivated only by power and is unlikely to ever change.
"Assad is the Tony Soprano of the Middle East," a CIA officer who knows Assad told the Guardian.
"At bare bones a mob boss with omnipresent family crises and rivalries, overseeing a crime syndicate simply designed to enrich himself and his family, and always willing to inflict violence to achieve his goals."
