The wires are ablaze with the news that Syria’s deputy oil minister, Abdo Hussameldin, has switched sides to the country’s opposition. His is, after all, the most high-ranking defection so far, and he doesn’t have any kind words for his former employers. As he puts it in a video that has been posted on YouTube, the current regime are ‘not friends of the Syrian people but partners in the killing of the Syrian people’.
We shouldn’t, however, get too excited just yet. This could be a significant moment, not least because it suggests that Assad’s hold over his own government is beginning to weaken. But it’s also worth remembering that Hussameldin is only one of dozens of deputy ministers in Syria. Much depends on whether others follow him — and, even then, defections aren’t necessarily sufficient to bring down a tyrant.
And then we should ask just what Abdo Hussameldin is defecting to. We’ve already questioned the nature of the Syrian rebellion in The Spectator, in the form of articles by John R Bradley and Rod Liddle. And today the Independent contains a useful overview of the various groups that are agitating against Assad and his brutal regime, from various incompatible political factions to — yep — al-Qaeda.
The Russians may be operating to their own political ends during all this, but perhaps they had a point yesterday when they said to the UN, ‘Taken into consideration the fact that al-Qaeda is active in the territory of Syria, a question arises: Is there a chance that an export of revolution could become an export of terrorism?’
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