A political taboo was quietly shattered this month, when one of Syria’s most powerful security officials, Lieutenant General Jamil al-Hassan, gave his first-ever interview to a Russian news site.
Though Hassan mostly voiced common pro-government positions that are in themselves unremarkable, the interview itself was a groundbreaking event. As head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, Hassan has almost never been heard from in public before, and Syrian intelligence chiefs take great care to stay out of the limelight. But another thing stood out, too: Hassan’s implicit criticism of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for having shown too much restraint in the early days of the Syrian uprising in 2011.
This rare public intervention from one of the most powerful men in Syria set off some interesting reactions.