LITTLE ROCK — Syria’s leadership suffered a new setback Wednesday with the publicly broadcast defection of its military-police chief, the highest-ranking officer to abandon President Bashar Assad since the uprising against him began nearly two years ago.
The defector, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, announced his move in a video broadcast by Al Arabiya,saying he had taken the step because of what he called the Syrian military’s deviation from “its fundamental mission to protect the nation, and transformation into gangs of killing and destruction.”
Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab broadcaster critical of the Syrian government, first broadcast the video late Tuesday, and opposition figures confirmed its authenticity Wednesday, saying the general was somewhere in Turkey.
They said al-Shallal’s defection had been arranged weeks ago through tribal elders in Syria and that the effort to smuggle him across the border over several days included a four-hour motorcycle ride.
Turkey has been the main destination point for Syrian military defectors, and many of them have regrouped there to join the Free Syrian Army, the main insurgent force fighting Assad.
Reading from a preparedstatement while sitting at a desk, dressed in a camouflage uniform with red epaulets, the general did not specify in his message when he had decided to defect, but said he had been “waiting for the right circumstances to do so.” He also said, “There are other high-ranking officers who want to defect, but the situation is not suitable for them to declare defection.”
While the general’s defection was broadly embraced byopposition figures as a major blow to the government, the general, a Sunni Muslim, was not believed to be a member of the president’s inner circle of advisers. Over the course of the conflict, despite welcoming thousands of defectors, the opposition has failed to attract figures seen as critical pillars of the government or any members of the ruling Alawite minority of Assad, the sect regarded as the backbone of the military.
Nonetheless the general’s denunciation of the Syrian military was at the least a new embarrassment to Assad, further undermining his repeated claims that the uprising against him is basically the work of terrorists and their foreign collaborators.
Al-Shallal’s statement came as Syrian insurgents were claiming new territorial gains against Assad in the northern and central parts of the country and as a special envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League was visiting Damascus as part of an effort to reach a political settlement that would halt the conflict, the most violent of the Arab Spring revolutions that began in the winter of 2010-2011. More than 40,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad began in March 2011.
There has been speculation that the special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, presented Assad with proposals for relinquishing his authority and possibly leaving the country. But Assad, whose Alawite minority has ruled Syria for more than four decades, has consistently said he will not leave the country, even as his control over it seems to be slipping further away.
Dozens of lower-ranking Syrian military officers and hundreds of soldiers have fled Syria over the past two years, but al-Shallal, the head of the military-police division of the Syrian army, is the highest-ranking military defector so far. He outranked Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, a boyhood friend of Assad’s, who fled last July. Tlass isnow believed to be living in France.
Among civilians who have abandoned Assad, the highest-ranking defector so far has been the prime minister,Riad Farid Hijab, who fled to Jordan on Aug. 6. In the past few weeks, unconfirmed reports also have abounded about the possible defection of Syria’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, an English speaker who had numerous foreign contacts and who disappeared from public view in early December. The Lebanese television channel Al Manar, which is sympathetic to Assad, said Makdissi had been fired.
The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported this week that Makdissi had fled to the United States and was cooperating with U.S. intelligence. Patrick Ventrell, a State Department spokesman in Washington, said Wednesday that Makdissi was not in the United States.
Makdissi’s whereabouts and status remain murky. U.S. officials said they do not know where he is and that reports earlier this month saying that Makdissi had flown to London were incorrect.
In Lebanon, Syria’s interior minister, Mohammed al-Shaar, who had been recovering at a Beirut hospital from wounds said to have been received in a Dec. 12 suicide bombing attack outside his offices in Damascus, was on his way back to the Syrian capital Wednesday. The Associated Press quoted Beirut airport officials as saying the minister flew home on a private jet.
A top Lebanese security official said al-Shaar was rushed out of Lebanon after authorities there received information that international arrest warrants could be issued against him because of his role in the crackdown against protesters in Syria.
Over the past week, some Lebanese officials and individuals have called for al-Shaar’s arrest for his role in a 1986 crackdown in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.
In the 1980s, al-Shaar was a top intelligence official in northern Lebanon when Syrian troops stormed Tripoli and crushed the Islamic Unification Movement - a Sunni Muslim group that then supported former Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat. Hundreds of people were killed in the battles, and since then, many in northern Lebanon have referred to al-Shaar as “the butcher of Tripoli.”
The Lebanese security official said Lebanese citizens had also begun taking steps to sue al-Shaar for his role during Syria’s military domination of Lebanon for decades. Lebanese are deeply divided over the Syria crisis.
In Lebanon, airport officials in Beirut said Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Assistant Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous flew early Wednesday to Moscow.
Their visit to Moscowcomes two days after Assad met in Damascus with Brahimi, the international envoy to Syria. Brahimi, who is to go to Moscow as well, gave no indication of progress toward a negotiated solution for the civil war.
Brahimi is still in Syria and met Tuesday with representatives of the opposition National Coordination Body, state-run news agency SANA said. The head of the group, Hassan Abdul-Azim, said Brahimi briefed them on his efforts to reach an “international consensus, especially between Russia and the United States, to reach a solution.”
National Coordination Body spokesman Rajaa al-Naser said his group said there must be an end toviolence and formation of a “transitional government with full prerogatives.” Information for this article was contributed by Rick Gladstone, Kareem Fahim, Hwaida Saad, Eric Schmitt and Ellen Barry of The New York Times and by Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/27/2012