A mob boss called Assad

Tyrant, war criminal, mob boss or, to his loyalists, their shrewd saviour: views about Bashar al-Assad rarely fall in between. After the emphatic, foregone conclusion of the Syrian leader’s re-election last week, a truer test of the authority he wields across a broken country has taken shape away from the political banners and faux campaigning.

In battered towns and villages, ravaged by a decade of savagery, the now veteran president has been clawing back losses, consolidating himself as the only figure who could plot a course from the ruins of the region’s most devastating modern conflict.

Slowly, over the past year, Assad and his extended family have been shoring up their influence.