Until a few weeks ago, although he had the rank of brigadier general in the Syrian army, 48-year-old Manaf Tlass was better known as an aging member of the jeunesse dorée in Damascus: the playboy son of an eccentric former defense minister, a buddy of President Bashar al-Assad, and the brother of Nahed Ojjeh, née Tlass, an influential hostess in Paris with one of the most controversial histories of reputed amours, which, in France, is saying something.
Manaf himself is, no doubt about it, a handsome devil. Those of us who were invited to tea with him and his siblings at his father’s house years ago still remember his languorous eyes and the thick black hair that is, today, a rakish mop of premature gray. But no Syrian would have picked Manaf then, or since, as a potential leader of his country—much less someone who could guide the nation out of war to a new democratic future, as he now claims he wants to do.
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