General defects from leadership

Syria’s embattled leadership suffered a new setback Wednesday with the publicly broadcast defection of its military police chief, the highest-ranking officer to abandon President Bashar Assad since the uprising against him began nearly two years ago. Maj. Gen. AbdulAziz Jassem al-Shallal announced his move in a video broadcast by Al Arabiya, saying that he had taken the step because of what he called the Syrian military’s deviation from “its fundamental mission to protect the nation and transformation into gangs of killing and destruction.” While the general’s defection was broadly embraced by opposition figures as a major blow to the government, the general, a Sunni Muslim, was not believed to be a member of the president’s inner circle of advisers.