Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in mid-March 2011, Maher's troops played a key role in violently suppressing protests in the southern city of
Daraa, the coastal city of
Banias, the central province of
Homs and the northern province of
Idlib. The
Los Angeles Times reported that video footage existed, which activists and observers claimed showing Maher personally shooting at unarmed protesters, who were demanding the fall of the Assad government in the
Barzeh suburb of
Damascus. Defecting soldiers under Maher's command reported they were given orders by him to use
deadly force against unarmed protesters. One defecting sniper reported that during the protests in Deraa: "We were ordered to aim for the head or heart from the beginning. We were not given specific numbers but told to kill as many as possible as long as there were protests."
Prime Minister of Turkey,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stated that Maher's actions during the Syrian uprising approached "savagery", and he pressured Bashar al-Assad to remove Maher from command of the military and to send him into exile. Two weeks later, on 10 May 2011, the
EU sanctioned Maher for being the principal overseer of violence against demonstrators during the Syrian uprising. On 2 December 2011, Maher was also placed on an international travel ban. Maher al-Assad's role became more significant following the assassination of the Syrian defense minister, high-ranking security officials and Assef Shawkat on 18 July 2012. After a four-day siege by the opposition forces from 18 to 22 July 2012, the 4th Armoured Division, commanded by Maher, swept through three rebel-held districts of Damascus. In August 2012, Saudi newspaper
Al-Watan claimed that Assad was willing to step down and that his brother Maher had lost his legs in the
18 July 2012 Damascus bombing, allegedly quoting the Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov. The information was immediately denied in Russian media. The daily then released an audio of the claimed conversation, but the voice reportedly did not sound like Bogdanov's. Other sources, including a Western diplomat, said they had heard Maher lost a leg. A July 2013 report by a pro-government website stated that Maher was commanding troops in the Aleppo and Homs theatre of operations. On September 30, 2024, the
Israeli Defense Forces launched an airstrike with high-explosive missiles on Maher's villa in a Damascus suburb. It was reported that members of
Hezbollah and the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps frequently visited the villa. It was soon reported that Maher was unharmed because he was not in the villa at the time of the attack. On November 30, a new rebel coalition, spearheaded by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), carried out a surprise attack across Syria over 11 days, sweeping through major cities to conquer Syria and
overthrow the Assad regime. This significant development faced minimal resistance from the Syrian army. Since the
fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Maher is presumed to be in hiding.
Reuters reported that Maher had flown a helicopter to Iraq before proceeding to Russia, having been failed to be informed by his brother Bashar of his own departure to Russia. In March 2025, Syrian security forces arrested former Ba'athist Brigadier-General Abdel Karim Al-Hamada, a close associate of Maher. ==Controversies==