‘Assad puts intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, under house arrest for planning coup’
JPOST.COM STAFF/05/11/2015
Syrian President Bashar Assad has placed his top intelligence official under house arrest for allegedly conspiring with the regime’s enemies to carry out a coup, the British daily Telegraph reported on Monday. Ali Mamlouk, who heads the National Security Bureau, was reportedly detained after he was suspected of maintaining contact with governments backing the Syrian rebels as well as oppositionists from abroad. According to the Telegraph report, key associates of the president, including those with access to him, “are increasingly turning on each other.”The newspaper cites sources within the presidential palace as saying that there is great dissension within the various intelligence arms, some of whose commanders are growing wary of Iran’s burgeoning influence in Damascus.
Factions within Assad’s “inner circle” are weary of the role the Islamic Republic is playing in Syria’s domestic conflict and how much influence their officials are amassing in Damascus, while others are in support of Iranian patronage.
It was as Syrian troops lost control of Idlib city and Jisr al-Shughour to an alliance of Islamist rebels including Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s local branch, that Mamlouk reportedly began to make contact with hostile governments and former regime officials, the Telegraph added. “Mamlouk had been communicating with Turkish intelligence through an intermediary,” according to an unnamed senior regime source with knowledge of Mamlouk’s plan.
Furthermore, it is alleged that Mamlouk was in contact with Rifaat al-Assad, Bashar’s uncle, who was ostracized from the regime in the 80’s for his role in an attempted coup, who still retains “big interest among…Syrian officers and military,” should he return back to Syria.
Iranian resources have been indispensable to Assad’s efforts to battle a fierce and fractured opposition enemy. Yet, the spread of Iranian influence has infiltrated some of Syria’s most important institutions, including the central bank, angering some as a breach of Syrian sovereignty.
“Most of the advisers at the presidential palace are now Iranian,” an unnamed source told the Telegraph. “Mamlouk hated that Syria was giving her sovereignty up to Iran. He thought there needed to be a change.”Tehran has also provided the credit and monetary support necessary to keep Syria’s ailing economy from completely collapsing, more than $15 billion, according to Damascus’ finance minister. However, as Tehran continues to have a major hand in decisions regarding both battlefield strategy and financial policy, the animosity between the two allies continues to grow. Last month, when senior officials in Syria’s regime made one of their regular visits to Tehran, the meetings were tense, and at sometimes fraught, the Telegraph reported.
“Members of the regime said that they were losing control of Syria. At one point they even suggested considering cutting a deal with the opposition,” the source said. “The Iranians were furious, after all they had done to help. They would not lose control.”
The Telegraph dispatch is the latest in a string of recent reports that suggest the Assad’s grip on power is slipping in light of recent rebel gains on the battlefield. A report in the Saudi newspaper Okaz earlier this month quoted Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas denying an article in the same paper a day earlier quoting unnamed sources claiming that Syrian intelligence told the elite Alawite families to leave the capital within 48 hours for its coastal stronghold of Latakia. “Reports of President Assad giving his top Alawites orders to flee Damascus are undoubtedly wishful thinking and activist fancy,” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told The Jerusalem Post.
“The regime lost an important provincial capital that was surrounded by opposition militias,” said Landis adding. “Morale has been damaged, but the regime is neither giving up the ghost nor preparing to abandon Damascus for some coastal Alawite enclave.”
The unconfirmed Saudi report could have simply been propaganda by the kingdom against its rival. Adding doubt to the original Saudi report and others that call into question the stability of the Syrian regime, the Syrian Army reportedly tightened its grip in the capital on Sunday. “The regime has cut off the last main road for rebels leading out of eastern Ghouta,” a rebel stronghold in Damascus, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman, AFP reported.
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