PAX SYRIANA! From Zenobia to Assad

Before the CIA and KGB were collecting client states like they were Pokemon cards, Romans and Sassanians wrote the original manual on how to make puppet governments look like sovereign states.

So here's the latest plot twist in season 13 of our never-ending Middle Eastern soap opera: Assad, our fave ophthalmologist-turned-dictator, just pulled the ultimate failson move and fled to Mother Russia, leaving his Damascus McMansion to be ransacked by militants who are treating it like a Barneys’ going-out-of-business sale. Jaish al-Islam, a group whose LinkedIn profile reads "Definitely not affiliated with Al-Qaeda anymore, we promise," is now hosting the world's most cursed open house in Assad's three six-story buildings of pure dictator kitsch. Watching the rebels give CNN a tour of his collection of sports cars, like an MTV Cribs for our loony age, filming TikToks with Louis Vuitton shopping bags, is like a Veblen goods version of the French Revolution, except instead of storming the Bastille, they're arguing over who gets to keep the Carrara marble bathroom fixtures.

Meanwhile, the Assad family's doing what every self-respecting fallen autocrat does – upgrading to Moscow real estate. Because nothing says "I fought to the last man to defend Syria" like having a backup portfolio of luxury apartments in