MANAF TLASS, a brigadier general and childhood friend of Syria's president Bashar Assad, has defected and left the country. He was previously head of the Republican Guard, an elite unit situated on Mount Qassioun overlooking Damascus, the capital city it was charged with guarding.

French officials have confirmed that Mr Tlass is on his way to Paris, where Friends of Syria, a collection of Mr Assad's foes, are meeting for the third time. His wife is already there and his businessman brother, Firas, is also believed to be outside the country.

Defections by high ranking soldiers have increased over the past fortnight but Mr Tlass is the highest and most significant so far; he is the first defector from the regime's inner circle and comes from a family long intertwined with the ruling Assad clan. Mr Tlass's father, Mustafa, was defence minister from 1972 to 2004, during which Mr Assad's father, Hafez, put down an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing at least 20,000 people in Hama in 1982. Mustafa also helped the younger Assad inherit power on his father’s death in 2000. The family is part of the country's power-broking Sunni backbone.

But Mr Tlass is not necessarily representative of the inner circle of Assads and security chiefs. An attractive, shaggy-haired man who looks more like an artist than a military chief, he has long been thought of in Damascus circles as a reformer (as was Mr Assad and his wife). Before the crisis he was less aloof than most of the out-of-touch security men, sometimes seen walking around listening to music and talking to the people on the street.

His dissent has been a topic of discussion amongst the Damascus intelligentsia since May last year, when he was put under house arrest for having expressed opposition to the regime's crackdown. During the initial months of the uprising, he was sent to Damascus’s suburbs to negotiate with protesters. But a deal he brokered with local leaders and protesters in Rastan, a rebellious city close to Homs and his hometown, was later undermined by an army assault. 

This reputation may allow him to assume a role in the opposition despite his longstanding connections with the regime. Mr Assad's enemies will be hoping that Tlass’s departure will help secure further defections (especially as his ability to escape suggests weak links in Syria’s security apparatus). In any case, the symbolism has not been lost on Damascus, where relative quiet in the centre is broken by thuds from ongoing military operations in the suburbs. Many here, irreversibly lost to the regime, are hoping that a spiral of defections will signal a swift end to the bloodshed.