Damascus: President Bashar Al Assad's army is close to a collapse that could plunge the Middle East into a "nuclear reaction", its most senior defector has told The Sunday Telegraph.
In his first full-length newspaper interview, General Mustafa Al Shaikh, who has taken refuge in Turkey, gave an apocalyptic view of the state of the regime — despite its attempt to reassert control last weekend.
But Gen Al Shaikh said only a third of the army was at combat readiness due to defections or absenteeism, while the remaining troops were demoralised, most of its Sunni officers had fled, been arrested, or sidelined, and its equipment was degraded.
"The situation is now very dangerous and threatens to explode across the whole region, like a nuclear reaction," he said.
The failure of Al Assad to keep a tight grip even on the towns and suburbs around Damascus, some of which have driven out the army for periods in recent weeks, has led to a reassessment of his forces' unity. When Gen Al Shaikh fled over the border from his town in the north of the country in the second half of November, he thought the army could hold out against a vastly outnumbered opposition for a year or more.
Now, he said, attacks by the rebels' Free Syrian Army (FSA) were escalating as the rank and file withered away due to lack of belief in the cause. The Al Assads' increasing reliance on loyalists from their own Alawite minority meant Sunni officers had fled, were under house arrest or at best marginalised and distrusted.
"The army will collapse during February," he said.
"The reasons are the shortage of Syrian army personnel, which even before March 15 last year did not exceed 65 per cent.
"The Syrian army combat readiness I would put at 40 per cent for hardware and 32 per cent for personnel. They are sending in elements from the Shabiha [militia] and the Alawite sect to compensate, but this army is unable to continue more than a month. Some elements of the army are reaching out to the FSA to help them defect."
Gen Al Shaikh is negotiating with the Syrian National Council and the FSA over his future role in the offensive against Al Assad.
"That the government's days are numbered can no longer be in serious doubt, but just how many it has left remains an open question," Yezid Sayigh, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, a think tank, wrote last week.
"The regime cannot win, but it certainly can resist and prolong the conflict."
Gen Al Shaikh said he had battled with his conscience before fleeing, mindful of his 37 years' service and of possible retribution against his extended family. He said the final straw had been a sexual assault by soldiers who took turns to attack a young bride at a village near the town of Hama.
He believes the army has become a "crazy killing machine", and that without a solution within a fortnight, "the whole region will flare up".
"The region is strained to the limits because of the role of Iran," he said. "The Syrian regime has helped transform it into a base for Iranian conspiracies."
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2012
