ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syria on Thursday announced it will begin reinstating thousands of volunteer officers who had defected during the era of longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, marking what officials say is a key step in rebuilding the country’s armed forces. The move comes only days after Damascus’s foreign ministry reinstated over 20 defected diplomats.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted Brigadier General Badr al-Din Qassas, Director of Recruitment and Mobilization at the Ministry of Defense, as describing the decision to reinstate volunteer Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) “who defected from the army during the era of the former regime” as “a normal organizational procedure within the military institution, which began its reconstruction from scratch” following the fall of Assad.
Qassas explained that “immediately after the liberation, we began receiving defected officers and took the necessary steps to start the process of reintegrating volunteer NCOs who had previously defected back into the defense ministry.”
He further estimated the defected NCOs at “over three thousand,” while “more than two thousand defected officers have already been reinstated within the Syrian Arab Army formations.”
The Syrian conflict, which erupted in 2011, was marked by a significant wave of high-ranking defections that dealt successive political, military and symbolic blows to Assad’s rule.
One of the most prominent political defections occurred in early August 2012, when then-prime minister Riyad Hijab defected after just two months in office, declaring that he could no longer serve a regime he described as one of “killing and terror.”
The diplomatic corps also saw substantial erosion during the summer of 2012, with several senior envoys abandoning their posts. Among them were Nawaf al-Fares, Syria’s ambassador to Iraq, and Khaled al-Ayoubi, the chargé d’affaires in London.
A series of military defections coincided, including that of Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who went on to help lead the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in its fight against Assad’s forces.
A pivotal moment came in July 2012 with the defection of Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, a senior officer in the Republican Guard and a childhood friend of Assad. Later that year, in December, Major General Abdulaziz al-Shalal, head of the Syrian Military Police, announced his defection, denouncing the army’s transformation “into gangs of killing and destruction.”
The senior defense official affirmed that “all NCOs will return to service with the ranks they held at the time of their defection from the former regime, under clearly defined standards for promotion.”
Qassas confirmed that the NCOs are a “fundamental element in developing the army, due to the cumulative experience they possess, which contributes to building a professional army capable of defending Syria and safeguarding its security.”
For his part, Assem Ghalyoun, Director of Media and Communication at the defense ministry, announced that the ministry “will soon begin accepting applications for the reinstatement of volunteer NCOs who defected during the era of the former regime.”
Importantly, the push to reinstate NOCs comes only days after Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani on Monday officially reinstated 21 diplomats who had defected from the Assad regime, according to SANA.
Shaibani praised the returnees for their "efforts in exposing the crimes of the defunct regime," stressing that the state seeks to build a nation where all citizens feel "security and belonging."
Director of the Diplomatic Institute at the Syrian foreign ministry, Yasser Al-Jundi, remarked Monday that "the returning diplomats possess vast experience” and that “the ministry will benefit from their accumulated expertise."
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