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| Khatib (center) surrounded clockwise from left: Seif, yet unnamed Kurdish rep, Atassi and Sabbagh |
Moaz al-Khatib, a soft-spoken Muslim Sunnite preacher
and former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, will head the newly created National
Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (see my post yesterday,
“The
Syrian opposition’s Doha agreement”).
The
Coalition, formed after a week of talks among Syrian opposition groups in Doha,
will have two vice-presidents -- prominent dissident Riad Seif and leading
secular activist Suhair Atassi – and a secretary-general, Mustafa Sabbagh.
A
representative nominated by the Kurdish opposition will fill the post of third
vice-president.
President Moaz al-Khatib was born in Damascus in 1960. He is
a member of the Syrian Geological Society and the Syrian Society for
Psychological Science. He was previously President and remains Honorary
President of the Islamic Society of Urbanization. He has been guest speaker in the
United Kingdom, the U.S., Turkey, Holland, Bosnia and Nigeria. He is married
and the father of four children: Aman, Abdurrahman, Asma and Hashem.
He left Damascus for Cairo in July after four bouts of detention by the Syrian
authorities. As he signed the agreement that formed the Coalition with Syrian
National Council (SNC) head George Sabra, Khatib called on the international
community to “fulfill its pledges.”
First Vice President Riad
Seif, 66 and ailing, is the godfather of the
Coalition, having developed and drafted its blueprint with U.S. backing. A
prominent businessman, he was elected to the Syrian parliament as an
independent in 1994 and again in 1998. He founded and led the Forum for
National Dialogue, which earned him five years behind bars ending in 2006. He
was again arrested in early 2008 and imprisoned for trying to "overthrow
the government," in reference to his work as a leader in the Damascus
Declaration. He was held once more in May 2011 in Damascus.
Second Vice President Suhair Atassi, 41, is a secular political
activist who runs the Jamal Atassi Forum group on Facebook, which is an
offshoot of the banned Jamal Atassi Forum in Syria. The forum named after her
late father calls for political reform and the reinstatement of civil rights
in Syria. She was beaten and detained for her involvement in
protests at the start of Syria's uprising in March 2011, before going into
hiding and being smuggled out of the country late last year.
Now an exile living in Paris, she is trying to drum up support for
humanitarian aid in Syria.
Secretary-General Mustafa Sabbagh
is a 1965 native of Latakia now residing in Jeddah. He heads the Syrian
Business Forum, which was founded at Doha last June. Three of the Forum’s seven
board members are businessmen still based in Syria. The Forum is helping fund
the Syrian revolution.
Election of the leaders
followed the signing of an agreement whereby the Coalition committed:
--To leave open membership in the new
body to all hues of the Syrian
opposition
--To bring
down the regime and all its symbols and mainstays, to disband the regime’s
security services and to call to account those responsible for crimes against
Syrians.
--Not to
engage in any dialogue or negotiation with the regime
--To
endorse the Joint Command of the Revolutionary Military Councils
--To form
an Interim Government after receiving international recognition
--To break
up and disband the Interim Government once a National General Assembly is held
and a Transition Government formed.
A BBC correspondent
described the Coalition's leadership as a carefully balanced team that was set
to become the face and voice of the Syrian opposition in the coming phase.
The Coalition of 62
members of the opposition carries representation for ethnic Kurds, Christians, Druzes,
Alawites, Muslim ulema, Turkmen, tribes and women.
Of the 62 seats, 22 – or
a third plus one -- are reserved for the SNC.
Among the principal SNC
representatives are George
Sabra, Burhan
Ghalioun, Abdelbaset
Sida, and Louay Safi.
Other leading lights joining
the Coalition are Michel
Kilo, Haitham al-Maleh,
Muntaha
al-Atrash, Ali Sadreddine
al-Bayanouni, Kamal
Labwani and Sadiq
Jalal el-Azm.
Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu said there was “no excuse any more” for foreign
governments not to support the opposition.
France,
a vocal backer of the rebels and which once ruled Syria, hailed the deal. “France
will work with its partners to secure international recognition of this new
entity as the representative of the aspirations of the Syrian people,” Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement in which he called the Assad
government “the criminal regime in Damascus.”
“We
look forward to supporting the National Coalition as it charts a course toward
the end of Assad's bloody rule and the start of the peaceful, just, democratic
future that all the people of Syria deserve,” State Department deputy spokesman
Mark Toner said in a statement.
In
London, Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "I welcome the decision to form the
National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
This is an
important milestone in forming a broad and representative Opposition that
reflects the full diversity of the Syrian people… I
will travel to Cairo for a meeting of the EU and Arab League this Tuesday,
which will discuss support to the new National Coalition. And on Friday the UK
will host a meeting in London of donors and coalition representatives which
will consider further support to the Syrian opposition at this critical time.”
