BEIRUT, Lebanon — The defection of Syria’s
prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, began like so many others: with coded
conversations and furtive planning. He began discussing the idea of fleeing, an
aide said, as soon as President Bashar al-Assad strong-armed him into taking
the job in June. In recent days, he worked to get his extended family out.
Then, early Monday, the prime minister slipped out of Damascus under cover of
darkness with his wife and four children, scrambling through the desert as a
fugitive.
Employees of Syrian state-run television
looked at the damage after a bomb reportedly hit the third floor of the
television building in Damascus on Monday.
At sunrise, he crossed into Ramtha, Jordan,
shocking the Syrian government — which immediately claimed he had been fired —
and spurring jubilation within a weary opposition.
“This is a proof that the political basis of the regime is
collapsing,” said Samir Nachar, a leader of the Syrian National Council, the
main exile opposition group. “This is the momentum we needed to tell the
political and military elite that it is time for them to jump off the sinking
ship.”
Mr. Hijab’s journey began when he climbed
into a simple car with a driver who did not know his identity, according to an
account provided by a Free Syrian Army commander, an activist at the
Syria-Jordan border, and Mr. Hijab’s spokesman. He traveled down roads lined
with rebel lookouts until he reached a contested stretch of border. Finally, he
made his dramatic departure from Syria.
The Assad government — nearly a year and a
half into the conflict — remains surprisingly strong where it counts. Its
powerful military pounded rebels again on Monday in Aleppo, Damascus and other
cities, and many analysts question whether the defection of another Sunni
leader, no matter his place in the hierarchy, is enough to swing the conflict
to a conclusion. The war, after all, has already taken on a blunt rhythm of
violence, sectarianism and revenge that does not necessarily respond to the
finer pitches of politics and defection.
And yet the scale of the Hijab defection —
involving 10 prominent Sunni families who escaped in small groups over the past
week — suggests that Mr. Assad is losing the loyalty of Sunni political and
security officials crucial to his minority government’s ability to hold power.
His feared internal security apparatus also
seems to be cracking. Mr. Hijab, the highest-level official to leave, was
closely watched by the Assad government, which nonetheless failed to keep him
from communicating with the opposition for months and arranging for dozens of
relatives to leave Damascus, where government agents are concentrated.
“This is someone who was very, very close, and they couldn’t keep
him,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Center for the Middle East. He
added that while the impact was not cataclysmic, “it’s a sign of advanced
decrepitude.”
“It’s a beginning of an endgame sort of thing,” he added.
Mr. Hijab’s departure came less than a
month after four members of Mr. Assad’s inner circle were killed in a bomb
attack in Damascus that raised serious questions about the cohesiveness of the
embattled government. On Monday, rebels struck again close to the leadership’s
core, bombing the third floor of the government television and radio
headquarters, which have been used to reassure the population that Mr. Assad
remains in control.
No one died this time, but the explosion —
shown on Syrian television, where officials insisted it was insignificant —
again highlighted the rebels’ ability to breach government institutions.
Defections highlight another vulnerability:
betrayal within the ranks of supposed loyalists. Over the past few months,
there has been a steady flow of high- and midlevel figures announcing that they
have turned on the regime. In recent days, in addition to Mr. Hijab, Syria’s
most famous astronaut, an air force officer named Ahmed Faris, fled to Turkey,
pledging his loyalty to the opposition.
In Washington, the White House spokesman,
Jay Carney, said the defections were “a sign that Assad’s grip on power is
loosening.”
“That the titular head of the Syrian government has rejected the
ongoing slaughter being carried out at Assad’s direction only reinforces that
the Assad regime is crumbling from within and that the Syrian people believe
that Assad’s days are numbered,” he said.
Rebel leaders and defectors said that the
process for leaving varied. In some cases, military officers have taken their
allotted leave and have never returned to their units. Other defectors say they
have falsified paperwork or used disguises to get through government
checkpoints. In June, a Syrian Air Force pilot simply landed his fighter jet at
an airport in Jordan.
Most of the defectors have been members of
the Sunni majority, breaking away from a government dominated by Mr. Assad’s
Alawite minority. Mr. Hijab, who has served in government for most of his life
after receiving a Ph.D. in agriculture, is typical. The well-educated head of a
Sunni family drawn into government by Mr. Assad’s father in an effort to add
legitimacy to his government, he benefited from the government’s patronage
before finally rejecting it.
Two of his brothers followed a similar
path, with the opposition reporting that they held high positions at the
Ministries of Oil and the Environment before they fled the country. And by
leaving, said Sami Nader, a Lebanese political analyst, they are stripping Mr.
Assad of his “Sunni veneer.” With the defection of such a senior-level Sunni
family, Mr. Nader said, it will be harder for Mr. Assad to claim that his is a
national government representing all Syrians.
But few analysts, or even opposition
leaders, seemed to believe that this latest high-profile defection would be
anywhere near enough to end the conflict. The exuberance surrounding the early
reports of Mr. Hijab’s defection partly reflected claims that at least two
other cabinet-level officials would be joining him.
Mohammad Otari, Mr. Hijab’s spokesman, said
that was never true, and that the plan had always been limited to Mr. Hijab and
his family. “There were no ministers involved,” he said. “There was no one left
behind.”
Rumors about some kind of high-level
defection began to spread late last week. An activist in the border region of
Dara’a said that government troops had subjected the area to intensified shelling
while the army seemed to be on the hunt for someone important.
“We heard they were looking for high-level officials,” he said. “They
went in to every home along the border.”
Mr. Otari said the full details of the
escape would be provided later, after the Hijab family reached a location
outside Jordan. But he said the most difficult challenge involved leaving
Damascus and Mr. Hijab’s home in the upscale neighborhood of Mezze. Scores of
government agents were watching. Mr. Hijab, Mr. Otari said, had taken the job
of prime minister only after Mr. Assad issued a threat: “You take this position
or you die.”
Previously, Mr. Hijab had been the governor
in the coastal province of Latakia. An activist who said he had dealt
frequently with Mr. Hijab said he appeared to have been selected as prime
minister because of his close relationship with Mr. Assad’s brother, Maher
al-Assad. But during the initial protests last year, the activist said, Mr.
Hijab seemed to have some sympathy for the opposition; he had agreed to keep
the military and the police away from the first protests.
Later, after arrests were made at
subsequent demonstrations, Mr. Hijab helped in the release of 15 people. “He’s
a good man,” said the activist, Rami, who declined to provide his full name
because he feared reprisals.
Malek al-Kurdi, the deputy commander of the
Free Syrian Army, also said the defection was encouraging because “he has a
clean record” and “is accepted by the Syrians.”
Some analysts said he could have escaped
only through bribery, paying off all the guards responsible for monitoring him.
But Mr. Otari would say only that Mr. Hijab took enormous risks to declare his
loyalty to the opposition. “It was the most dangerous and difficult defection
that took place since the beginning of the revolution,” he said. “This
defection breaks the back of the regime.”
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