Bouthaina Shaaban

Bouthaina Shaaban بثينة شعبان
1st Minister of Expatriates
In office 2002 – 30 July 2008
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Joseph Sweid
Political and Media Adviser to the Presidency
In office 2008 – Incumbent
Personal details
Born	1953 (age 63–64) Masudiyah, Homs, Syria
Political party	Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party

Bouthaina Shaaban (Arabic: بثينة شعبان‎) (born 1953) is a Syrian politician and is currently the political and media adviser to the President of Syria. Shaaban served as the first Minister of Expatriates for the Syrian Arab Republic, between 2003 and 2008, and has been described as the Syrian government's face to the outside world.

Born in Masudiyah, Homs and a member of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party since the age of 16, she was educated in Britain and obtained her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Warwick. She is married with two daughters and a son.

Shaaban worked first as an interpreter for the Syrian presidents Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad, his son. Under Hafez she became an "adviser to the Foreign Ministry," and in 2003 she was named Minister of Expatriates, "a new post created to try to lure wealthy Syrian expatriates abroad — or at least their resources — back home." In 2008, she was appointed political and media adviser to president Bashar al-Assad. Between 1985 and 2003 she was also the professor of Romantic poetry at the English department of Damascus University.

Shaaban was particularly visible in English-speaking media after the Valentine's Day 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, when she participated in several television interviews and wrote several op-ed pieces attacking the United Nations probe into Syrian involvement in the murder and insisted that Israel and the United States were responsible for Hariri's assassination. In August 2011, the US sanctioned Shaaban together with other five other Syrian officials.

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