BEIRUT — An air force pilot landed his MiG-21 fighter at a Jordanian airbase on Thursday, becoming the first Syrian airman to defect with his warplane since the rebellion against President Bashar Assad began 15 months ago.
Jordan granted political asylum to the pilot and planned to debrief him, the government said.
The incident was an embarrassment and a symbolic blow for Assad, whose government is locked in a bloody struggle against a determined insurgency.
The Syrian Air Force — once commanded by Assad’s late father, Hafez Assad, himself a former fighter pilot — has been regarded as especially loyal to the government.
The state-run Syrian press bureau issued a strongly worded statement denouncing the pilot — identified as Col. Hassan al-Hamada — as “a deserter and a traitor to his country” who “will be punished accordingly.”
Opposition activists and Western governments seeking Assad’s ouster lauded the pilot as a hero.
Whether Thursday’s incident was a singular event or would trigger a wave of defections remained uncertain.
The uprising against Assad has seen the Syrian military suffer many desertions from its mostly conscripted ranks, drawn largely from the majority Sunni Muslim population — which has also been the driving force behind the uprising.
But the elite officer corps — stocked with adherents of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam — are believed to have remained mostly intact, despite repeated entreaties from the opposition.
Assad has clearly not suffered the kind of mass, high-level defections that plagued former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Scores of diplomats, generals and senior officials had abandoned Gadhafi by the time armed rebels chased him from the Libyan capital last year.
Still, word of an air force colonel deserting with his MiG-21 may carry symbolic weight in Syria, and seemed sure to bolster rebel morale. Branches of air force intelligence are situated throughout the nation and are regarded as ruthless enforcers of the Syrian police state.
The Syrian pilot took off early Thursday from a base in southern Syria, flying at a high speed and low altitude to avoid detection, reported al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite network. Once in Jordanian air space, al-Jazeera said, the pilot requested permission to land at a Jordanian military air base close to the Syrian border.
Earlier, Syrian state media reported authorities had “lost contact” with a MiG-21 fighter that was on a training flight in the south.
A source close to the opposition reported the pilot was a father of five from restive Idlib province and his family was under the protection of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel umbrella group based in Turkey that includes many deserters.
Jordan’s decision to grant the pilot asylum means, under international law, he cannot be sent back to Syria as long as he is judged to be at risk there. Jordan’s leadership is generally sympathetic to the Syrian rebellion and is hosting tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Last November, Jordanian King Abdullah made headlines when he suggested in a BBC interview Assad should step down.
Still, Jordan has not been as stridently critical of Assad’s crackdown against opponents as other Arab countries, notably the gulf nations of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which have voiced support for providing arms to Syrian rebels.
There were no reports of other crew members on the Syrian aircraft, a Russian-made model found in the fleets of many nations. Syria’s warplanes have not figured prominently in the rebellion thus far.
There have been no confirmed reports of Syria employing fixed-wing aircraft against rebel targets, though some opposition activists have alleged airborne attacks from jets. Independent observers have witnessed the use of attack helicopters, heavy artillery and tanks against suspected insurgent positions.
Meanwhile, reports Thursday indicated continuing clashes and gunfire prevented relief workers from evacuating people stranded in the battle-scarred central city of Homs. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has agreements from both sides in the conflict for a temporary truce to allow medical personnel access to old-town districts where hundreds of civilian and wounded people are said to be trapped. Persistent violence has thus far thwarted rescue efforts.
