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Prime Minister's Defection Jolts Syrians
(New York Times) Damien Cave and Dalal Mawad - Syria's prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, began discussing the idea of fleeing, an aide said, as soon as President Bashar al-Assad strong-armed him into taking the job in June. In recent days, he worked to get his extended family out. Then, early Monday, the prime minister slipped out of Damascus under cover of darkness with his wife and four children, scrambling through the desert into Jordan as a fugitive. The scale of the Hijab defection - involving 10 prominent Sunni families who escaped in small groups over the past week - suggests that Assad is losing the loyalty of Sunni political and security officials crucial to his minority government's ability to hold power.