As Syria’s bloody crackdown against its opponents deepens, so do the cracks in President Bashar Assad’s regime. On Thursday, Gen. Manaf Mustafa Tlas, the son of a former defence minister, reportedly fled to Turkey, the latest in a stream of military defections. Meanwhile, the secrets-busting online group WikiLeaks said it had begun releasing some 2.4 million emails among Syrian politicians, government officials and companies, stretching back six years.
“The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents,” said a statement from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, trying to avoid extradition to Sweden.
The exposure of the vast trove of data is badly timed for Syria. It may give pause to those who are defying sanctions to supply Damascus with technical and military aid when it needs it most.
But more immediately damaging to Assad are the defections and assassinations of his Syrian supporters.
“Things are falling apart,” said Middle East expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, who closely monitors events in Syria. “The regime is getting closer to falling. Everybody believes the ship is going down. The rats are leaving the ship.”
On Wednesday, Landis said, an “important Alawite figure” — who belonged to the minority Shiite-linked religious group of the Assad family — was killed in a restaurant bombing. Others around him were critically wounded. Five people died in another explosion in a Damascus suburb.
Defections are also taking their toll, Landis said.
“They aren’t just at the bottom rank now — they go right up to the highest. Even two months ago people thought that Assad could save the situation, and could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Now they know that won’t happen.”
Syria’s economy is foundering, too, according to its recent statistics. Inflation has risen more than 32 per cent since last May, the trading volume of stocks fell 50 per cent in the past week, and tourism has dropped nearly 80 per cent in the first quarter of 2012.
The WikiLeaks data is expected to shed new light on trade and diplomacy between foreign countries and Syria.
“The range of information extends from the intimate correspondence of the most senior Baath Party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations,” the group said.
An earlier email leak threw an embarrassing light on the free-spending habits of Assad’s British-born wife Asma.
But until the uprising began 16 months ago, the couple was warmly received in some Western and Middle Eastern circles. Although the U.S. had already imposed three layers of sanctions on Syria, it also quietly condoned it as a country that could maintain stability in Israel’s neighbourhood.
“There was the understanding that (Assad) wasn’t going to launch a full frontal attack on Israel,” said Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, co-author of a study of Syrian sanctions. “There were some attempts to cosy up to Assad.”
WikiLeaks may show how close the relationships were. Only 25 emails have been published on the site so far, one of them detailing an apparent collaboration between an Italian communications company and one from Greece to provide a secure communication system to Syria after the government crackdown on protesters began.
Some of the messages speak of supplying communications technology for “choppers,” a possible reference to the attack helicopters that have devastated some Syrian opposition towns.
While the WikiLeaks material is difficult to authenticate — the group says it is “statistically confident” that the “vast majority” are real — it can only add to the confusion in the West over what to do about a worsening conflict that appears to have no resolution in sight.
Ongoing meetings of concerned countries have produced no solutions, an Arab-brokered peace attempt failed, and Russia has made clear that it will not offer Assad asylum to speed the end of the conflict.
Meanwhile, worries are increasing as violence threatens to spill over Syria’s borders. On Thursday, Iraq said that Al Qaeda insurgents are moving into Syria — a reversal of a few years ago, when the militants flooded into Iraq and wreaked havoc after the 2003 U.S. invasion.