A top general close to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has defected, in a move hailed by Washington and the Syrian opposition as a major blow to Damascus, a source close to the regime said yesterday.
“General Manaf Tlass defected three days ago,” the source close to the Syrian government said on condition of anonymity.
General Tlass, the highest-ranking military officer to have abandoned the Assad regime, was on his way to Paris to join his wife and sister, Nahed Ojjeh, widow of Saudi millionaire arms dealer Akram Ojjeh, said the source.
France, which yesterday hosted an international meeting on the almost 16-month-old conflict in Syria, confirmed the report. “A senior official from the Syrian regime, a commander in the Republican Guard, has defected and is headed for Paris,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told a news conference, without explicitly naming General Tlass.
General Tlass, who is in his late 40s, was a member of the inner circle in Syria, and a childhood friend of Bashar-al-Assad. A general in the elite Republican Guard charged with protecting the regime, he is the son of former defence minister Mustafa Tlass, a close friend of Mr Assad’s late father and predecessor, Hafez.
In Washington, the Pentagon said the defection signalled cracks in Mr Assad’s inner circle.
“We welcome this defection and we believe it is significant,” spokesman Captain John Kirby said. “He’s a senior official in the Syrian army and a former friend of Assad, so we do believe this defection shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
In Paris, the opposition Syrian National Council head, Abdel Basset Sayda, called the defection a major blow to Mr Assad’s regime and said the SNC wanted to work with him.
Meanwhile, in an unauthenticated and undated e-mail received by AFP yesterday and apparently signed by General Tlass, the general himself appears to call on his comrades to follow his lead.
The Sunni official’s family is originally from the rebel-held town of Rastan in the central province of Homs, that is currently besieged and being bombarded by government forces.
General Tlass was sidelined by the regime more than a year ago after being deemed unreliable.
His defection comes two weeks after a colonel in the privileged Syrian air force won political asylum after landing his MiG-21 fighter in neighbouring Jordan.
According to the source with close ties to Damascus, General Tlass undertook several unsuccessful reconciliation missions between regime loyalists and rebels in Rastan and the southern province of Daraa.
Months later he gave up his military uniform and opted for civilian clothing.
General Tlass’s cousin Abdel Razzak defected from the military several months ago, and heads the rebel Free Syrian Army’s Farouk Battalion in Homs.