A crisis that causes decay

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is in an unenviable position. Every day brings the worst kind of news. Defections from his inner circle are assuming an alarming nature.

Syria’s Prime Minister Riyad al-Hijab has defected together with his family to Jordan. “I announce today my defection from the murderous and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution. I declare that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution,” Riyad Hijab said in a written statement read by a Syrian opposition official, Mohammed el-Etri, on Al Jazeera TV. The Syrian state television announced earlier that Hijab had been dismissed from his office, without explaining the reasons, and that his duties would be temporarily carried out by Vice-Premier Omar Galavanji.

Hijab assumed the office of prime minister on June 6 after the parliamentary elections. Before that, he was Agriculture Minister and member of the ruling Baath party, although he had never belonged to President Assad’s inner circle. Being a Sunni must have been a crucial factor in his appointment. This appointment was to signal the expansion of the regime’s social and denominational basis. Nobody believed in this, so the result was nothing.

Of course, if the premier and ministers are abandoning the government, it is very serious. Also in this line is the flight to Turkey of the first Syrian astronaut Mohammad Faris who orbited the Earth in 1987.

Although it is mostly a political and informational factor, it seriously discredits the Damascus leadership. Yet there seem to be some more important aspects.

As Hijab fled, Agence France Presse reported that Colonel Yarab al-Sharaa, head of the information department of a political intelligence unit in Damascus, and his brother Mohammad Kanaan, also an intelligence officer, had asked for political asylum in Jordan. AFP says the al-Sharaa brothers belong to the same clan as Syria’s First Vice-Premier Farouk al-Sharaa. The latter abandoned the country immediately after the July 18 explosion that left several top officials dead.

Premiers, ministers, diplomats, scientists, astronauts – these are the signs of a crisis that has already reached the point of no return. A short “substitute bench” forces Assad to reshuffle a thinned-out pack. But when middle- and high-ranking army and intelligence officers side with the enemy, it is the beginning of the regime’s decay. A mere reshuffling won’t do here.

The officers who filled the armed opposition’s ranks have brought along the knowledge of the strategy and tactics of the government army, which the regime’s opponents so much lacked at the initial stage. Their situation has improved now, which the battles in Damascus and Aleppo vividly showed.

Earlier, it was sufficient for the governmental army just to surround a rebellious city and begin to bomb and shell it, and the opposition had to retreat. What also had a negative effect was lack of coordination and communication between the opposition units. This was largely the case during the Damascus act of sabotage, too. But the Aleppo battles were of a totally different nature. The fact that the government troops had to draw up more than 20,000 men for a decisive assault means that the armed opposition is assuming a different quality.

Another aspect. The defected intelligence officers carried away invaluable information on the structure, composition, and agents of security services. It is not so simple to replace agents and reorganize facilities. There are very many subtleties in the works of security services, which have been accumulated for years, and acquisition of this extremely important by the enemy is a very powerful blow.

Next: in addition to the fact that all this will get into the oppositionists’ hands, foreign intelligence agencies, the list of which will be quite long, may also take advantage of this information. It is not immediately obvious what consequences this may have.

Iran is the one that should worry the most, taking into account close links between the security services of Syria and the Islamic republic. Those who will take the greatest interest will undoubtedly be the Americans and their Turkish counterparts. The resulting knot seems to be too tight to undo, and the defection of intelligence officers is such an important and painful blow at Assad that the premier’s escape just pales in comparison with it.

The geopolitical situation in the Middle East is changing so fast that not only Damascus, Ankara, and Teheran but also other capitals cannot keep track of it.

We have already noted (Den, July 31, 2012) that the Syria conflict is having a direct impact on the nearby and faraway neighbors. Iran and Turkey have been drawn into the conflict. In the former, the mounting problems are aggravated by international sanctions. In the latter, this creates new domestic problems.

Ankara’s attitude to the Syrian problem has resulted in the increased contradictions inside the ruling Justice and Development Party. It is quite possible that the tandem of President Abdullah Guel and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan is on the verge of disruption. Should this happen, Ankara may somewhat change its policy – not only towards Syria and Iran, – while the domestic political situation will also deteriorate. The fall of Assad will put Iran into complete international isolation, even with due account of a somewhat evasive position of Iraq. Naturally, Teheran is very much concerned over these circumstances and is feverishly seeking an opportunity to cushion the impact of the losses. All this prompts Teheran to support extremely radical organizations. Militants attacked the Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom in Hebrew) checkpoint on the Egypt — Gaza Strip border with support from Egyptian radicals. Interestingly, the gunmen tried to flee to the territory of Israel on the armored vehicles they seized, but most of them were killed by Israeli border guards and aircraft.

This attack triggered a mixed reaction in Egypt. Islamists put all the blame on Israel and demanded that the army be deployed in the Sinai Peninsula. Cairo cannot do so because the Camp David Accords ban this kind of actions. Egypt’s President Mohammad Morsi has got into a trap of sorts. Politically, this – and not only this – was the aim of the militants’ attack.

Although the Palestinian HAMAS organization leader Ismail Haniyah has announced that Gaza Strip residents were not involved in the terrorist act and condemned the killing of Egyptians, another HAMAS official in the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was not so categorical. He does not rule out that the gunmen might have arrived from Gaza but called on the public to wait for the conclusions of an official inquiry.

Taking into account that radical Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip are funded and directed by Teheran, it is quite possible that the checkpoint attack will show an Iranian connection. The Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, has already announced the “extremist Iranian regime” stands behind the attack. This is also the result of Syrian events, as Teheran will now begin to destabilize the domestic situation in Arab states.

There are major changes in store for the Near and Middle East. They will affect not only the close but also the faraway neighbors of Syria. One should get prepared for this right now.