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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