The ranks of the Syrian defectors who streamed into southern Turkey recently read like quite the roll call: a brigadier general, two colonels, two majors, a lieutenant, and dozens of soldiers, along with their families, according to press reports. Some 200 people in all, a logistical feat across an increasingly tense border between once friendly neighbors. The defections were announced shortly after the spectacular desertion of a Syrian fighter pilot who flew his Mig into Jordan, where he has been granted political asylum. Dramatic developments, to be sure, but how significant are they in terms of the larger battle between Syrian rebels and loyalists? What do these defections add up to?
Not enough, it seems, to significantly weaken Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces or markedly shift the vastly asymmetrical battle in favor of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). It was not a mass defection. The high-level defectors did not all break away from the same unit, or even from units operating in the same area, according to FSA deputy commander Colonel Malik al-Kurdi, who is based in the officers’ camp in Apaydin, about 12 miles from Antakya in southern Turkey.
