Riyad Naasan Agha

Journeys

Biography

Riyad Naasan Agha served as Syria's Minister of Culture from 2008 to 2012, representing the Assad government's cultural face as the revolution began. A poet and writer, he became one of the most articulate official defenders of the Assad government in its early propaganda campaign, giving interviews to Western media during the 2011 crackdown. He later served as a presidential advisor. His trajectory — a cultured literary man serving as a public face for a government engaged in mass atrocities — illustrates the complicity of Syria's cultural establishment with the Assad system.