By RICK GLADSTONE and ALAN COWELL
Published: June 21, 2012
Syria’s government was jolted Thursday by the first defection from its elite air force in the 16-month-old uprising, when a colonel commandeered a Soviet-era MIG warplane and flew to neighboring Jordan, where he sought and received political asylum.
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Damage and destruction litter a street in Qusayr, southwest of Homs, in western Syria.
The pilot was identified as Col. Hassan al-Mirei Hamadeh, and his defection raised questions about whether fealty to President Bashar al-Assad was fraying in the air force, the military branch regarded as closest to the Assad family, which has controlled Syria for four decades. Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, was an air force officer.
It appeared to be a propaganda victory for the Syrian rebel movement. Colonel Hamadeh, like most Syrian pilots, belongs to the Sunni Muslim majority, which forms the backbone of resistance to Mr. Assad and his governing Alawite sect. Nearly all commanding officers in the air force are Alawites, and the defection generated speculation that Sunni pilots would face new restrictions on any flying missions.
“The air force defection is not insignificant,” said Aram Nerguizian, a scholar of the Middle East and North Africa and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It is deeply embarrassing for Assad.”
There have been other defections and desertions from the Syrian military, mostly by army conscripts, many of them now members of the Free Syrian Army, the amalgamation of armed groups fighting to overthrow Mr. Assad. But no Syrian Air Force pilots had been known to defect, and in such a flamboyant fashion.
The defection was reported as anti-Assad activists said that fighting had escalated across the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British group with contacts inside Syria, said 114 people had been killed, the biggest one-day toll since a United Nations-brokered cease-fire took effect two months ago and which has now been all but abandoned. It was impossible to verify the group’s tally, which included 32 dead in Homs and 29 in Dara’a, bastions of the anti-Assad resistance.
In another sign of the fighting’s severity, the International Committee of the Red Cross said a convoy trying to reach Homs had been forced to turn back by gunfire, delaying the effort to evacuate sick people and women and children. Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman, could not say when the effort would resume.
News of the defection was greeted enthusiastically by the Syrian rebels and among the refugees, exiles and dissidents whose struggle against Mr. Assad has been hampered by disorganization, infighting and the superior firepower of the government’s military forces. Some predicted that more defections by air force pilots would follow.
The state-run Syrian news media reacted with outrage. SANA, the official news agency, said Colonel Hamadeh had been on a training flight, and it quoted a Defense Ministry statement as saying he was “a deserter and a traitor to his country and military honor and will be punished accordingly.” The ministry also demanded the return of the plane.
Activists reached in the northern city of Idlib, the pilot’s home, said Syrian forces had set fire to his house. It was impossible to corroborate that assertion.
Jordan’s information minister, Sameeh Maaytah, said the pilot made an emergency landing at a Jordanian air base and asked for political asylum, which was granted after a cabinet meeting.
Even weighing such a request presented awkward complications for Jordan, which has sought to avoid becoming ensnared in the conflict in Syria, an important trading partner. By some estimates, more than 50,000 Syrians are in Jordan, many of them refugees from Mr. Assad’s campaign to crush the uprising that began as a peaceful political protest in March 2011.
The Jordanian authorities did not allow any outside access to Colonel Hamadeh, and his whereabouts was not clear, although it was widely assumed that intelligence officials were debriefing him.
It also was unclear where Colonel Hamadeh’s flight had originated. An anti-Assad activist reached inside Syria, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the pilot flew into Jordan after refusing orders to bomb targets in Syria. The activist did not reveal the source of that information.
Despite rebel assertions that Mr. Assad is now using warplanes against the rebels, there has been no independent verification that he has escalated tactics to that extreme, although he has deployed attack helicopters.
Some military analysts said that if Mr. Assad had been contemplating the use of warplanes, that possibility seemed more unlikely because of the defection.
“This signals the erosion of the regime’s capacity to use all its forces; the idea of sending planes is no longer an option, neither against an internal or an external enemy,” said Gen. Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese officer and an expert on Syria’s military.
Mr. Assad’s air force is one of the largest in the Middle East, with nearly 500 warplanes, 200 training aircraft and 200 helicopters, according to a tally compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London research group. It is unclear how many of the aircraft, nearly all of Russian design, are fully operational; many of them are from the 1970s and ’80s.
The United States has increasingly criticized Russia for supplying weapons to Mr. Assad. The Russians have countered that they are not taking sides in the Syrian conflict, and that the weapons are purely defensive and part of longstanding commercial relationships with Syria.
Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia reiterated those positions on Thursday in a lengthy interview with the radio station Ekho Moskvy. He also angrily criticized Britain for forcing a Russian-operated freighter laden with advanced defensive missile systems and repaired Soviet-era helicopters to turn back on its way to Syria this week.
British officials said that the British insurer of the Russian vessel, the 400-foot MV Alaed, had canceled its coverage policy because of the cargo, forcing the vessel to end the voyage. Mr. Lavrov said the move reflected “the unreliability of the British insurance system.”
Mr. Lavrov also dismissed speculation that Russia was in discussions with other major powers about any transition plan for Syria that would assume Mr. Assad’s departure, saying: “This scheme is, unequivocally, unworkable from the very beginning. Because he won’t go.”
He spoke ahead of a visit to Russia by Nabil el-Araby, the general secretary of the Arab League, who has called for revisions to the cease-fire agreement in Syria because it has failed to halt the fighting.
Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar, Dalal Mawad and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan; Ellen Barry from Moscow; and J. David Goodman from New York.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 22, 2012, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrian Air Force Pilot’s Defection Raises Concerns for Military.
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