A division between a moderate voice willing to negotiate a transformation and the hard-line Qatari willing to risk all and have an Islamist state in place after the fall of Assad. No holds barred, including a deadly blast in the Damascus mosque killing a leading Sunni cleric who sided with the Syrian regime.
Syria rebel commander Riad al-Asaad wounded by blast
(Guardian) – Former opposition leader Khatib has put out a cryptic reaction to the assassination attempt on rebel commander Riad al-Asaad. Khatib’s statement in Arabic [EN] does not speciality blame the government for the attack, Syrian journalist Hassan Hassan points out in a translation for the Guardian.
It talks of “insidious schemes” against free leaders.
Khatib’s exact meaning is puzzling, Hassan says, because he also says all fighting groups in the area help to get Asaad to safety following the attack. The statement probably refers to assassins backed by foreign intelligence, Hassan speculates.
A Texan named as future PM by Qatar to block US influence after Assad falls
(Syrian Comment) – Ghassan Hitto was elected to be Prime Minister of an interim opposition government by a vote of 35 Syrian Opposition Coalition executives out of 45 who voted in Istanbul. There are 63 active members of which 48 voted and of which 4 cast blank ballots. Hitto received 35 of the remaining votes.
Ghassan Hitto is a Texas based Syrian, married to an American school teacher, Suzanne. They have four children, all born in the United States, where Mr. Hitto advocated for Muslim Americans after 9/11 as a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR. Born into a Kurdish family in Damascus, Mr. Hitto left Syria in the early 1980s and received an M.B.A. at Indiana Wesleyan University.
He was pushed forward for the position of interim Prime Minister of the opposition by Mustafa Sabbagh, who is Secretary General of the Opposition Coalition. Sabbagh is an Erdogan style Islamist, known to be close to the Qataris. He lives in Jeddah and was originally from Latakia, Syria. He was an important voice in the original construction of the Opposition Coalition back in December of 2012.
Cont’d below the fold …
According to Amr al-‘Azm, Sabbagh made a deal with the Muslim brotherhood delegates in the SOC to back Hitto. The MB had been advocating Osama Kadi as interim PM, but they agreed to drop him and back Hitto in a move to sideline Moaz al-Khatib. Other than the question of who would run day to day affairs in the interim government, one of the larger disputes between the Moaz al-Khatib and Sabbagh factions was the question over talking to the Assad regime. Khatib had pleased the Americans by agreeing to the Geneva parameters, which call for forming a joint government with Assad remnants. Mustafa Sabbagh, Yasser Tabbara, Wael Mirza, and George Sabra wanted an end to this initiative, which some in the opposition view a tantamount to treason, as well as to outflank Khatib. To this end, Hitto’s first words were that he would not negotiate with the Assad regime.
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Muslim Brotherhood Holds Sway Over Syrian Opposition
(Al-Monitor) – According to sources in the Syrian opposition, Qatar asked Mustafa Sabbagh, the coalition’s secretary-general, to ensure the appointment of Hitto. Mustafa Sabbagh, a businessman from Latakia working in Saudi Arabia, was appointed the coalition’s sectary-general in November after he showed up in Doha with 16 people claiming to represent provisional councils across the country. As it turned out, almost all the 16 people were either Sabbagh’s employees in Saudi Arabia or his relatives, some of whom had not visited Syria for decades. Sabbagh and the 16 coalition members met with the Brotherhood and told them to drop Kadi and vote for Hitto. Although the coalition had a secretary-general, there was neither a general secretariat nor any clear function for the post. Shortly after the coalition was formed, Sabbagh tried to assume executive powers — unsuccessfully, due to opposition from several prominent members.
The appointment has been a significant victory for the Brotherhood and its allies, restoring its control over the opposition after a period in which talks of dialogue threatened the group’s vision for regime change in Syria. The Brotherhood, along with Qatar and Turkey, hopes for a complete downfall of the regime to steer the transitional period and ensure its enduring control over the state. As US academic and Syria expert Joshua Landis pointed out, the move was partly aimed to kill Khatib’s initiative of dialogue with the regime.
Syrian opposition leader al-Khatib stands down
(France24) – The head of Syria’s main opposition group resigned on Sunday, in a blow to a diminishing moderate wing of the two-year uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. His resignation comes just days after Syria’s opposition chose a prime minister, Ghassan Hitto.
Moaz Alkhatib, a former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus who had offered Assad a negotiated exit, was picked to head the Western and Gulf-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces in November after leaving Syria following persecution and several stays in jail.
Al-Khatib’s resignation came after the coalition berated him for offering Assad a deal and after the group went ahead, despite his objections, with steps to form a provisional government that would have further diminished his authority.
“I had promised the great Syrian people and promised God that I would resign if matters reached some red lines,” Alkhatib said in a statement on his official Facebook page, without explaining exactly what had prompted his resignation.
Syria opposition in disarray as head resigns
(Daily Star) – An opposition source in Doha, where the Arab League is to hold a summit on Tuesday, told AFP that Khatib accused “certain countries, notably Qatar, of wanting to control the opposition” and of having imposed Hitto. US Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, on a visit to Baghdad, told reporters that the resignation was “not a surprise … It is almost inevitable in a transition.”
Coinciding with the resignation, an official in the rebel Free Syrian Army which has been fighting the regime for the past two years told AFP it does not recognise Hitto as rebel prime minister. “We in the Free Syrian Army do not recognise Ghassan Hitto as prime minister,” said FSA political and media coordinator Louay Muqdad.
“I speak on behalf of the (rebel) military councils and the chief of staff when I say that we cannot recognise a prime minister who was forced on the National Coalition, rather than chosen by consensus,” Muqdad said.
Note: A page from WaybackMachine archive, Ghassan Hitto was a member of the board of directors of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA).
