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| Newly-elected SNC leader George Sabra |
The Syrian National Council (SNC) has chosen a Christian as its leader
after an overnight vote in Doha.
George
Sabra, 65, said his election showed the umbrella opposition group was not
sectarian, and he appealed for weapons to help overthrow President Bashar
al-Assad.
“We need only one thing
to support our right to survive and to protect ourselves: we need weapons, we
need weapons, we need weapons,” Sabra told reporters after the vote.
He
said he had just one demand of the international community: “To stop the
bloodbath and help the Syrian people chase out this bloody regime by providing
us with weapons.”
Sabra,
a prominent Christian member of the Syrian opposition for decades, won 28 votes
in the ballot held by the SNC’s 41-member general secretariat.
His
challenger, Jeddah-based Hisham Marwah, got the remaining 13 votes.
Hama-native
Mohammad Farouq Tayfour, deputy leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, was
elected as Sabra’s deputy.
Sabra said his election
proved the SNC was not plagued by sectarianism, saying: “The people here are
Muslims and they elected a Christian.”
Assad's regime tries to
depict itself as defender of the Christian minority in Syria against Islamist
extremism.
Sabra is a veteran
member of the Syrian Democratic People's Party, called the Syrian Communist
Party until 2005.
The Washington-based Carnegie Middle East
Center describes him as “a leftist, pro-Arab, secular opposition figure” who
“has been politically active in the opposition since the 1970s.”
He was arrested in 1987
and jailed for eight years during the reign of Bashar's father, Hafez Assad.
Having appeared in some
of the earliest marches against Bashar in 2011, he was twice detained by
authorities for inciting unrest. Sabra subsequently fled the country, fearing
he’d be arrested again if he stayed, joining the SNC as a representative of the
Syrian Democratic People's Party.
Sabra presented himself
as a candidate when the term of the SNC’s first chairman Burhan Ghalioun ended
in May 2012, but he lost the nomination to Abdelbaset Sida.
Born to a Christian
family in Qatana, 30 kilometers southwest of Damascus, Sabra graduated with a
geography degree from Damascus University in 1971 and a degree in educational
technology systems from the University of Indiana in 1978.
In his wide-ranging
post penned last April, Malik al-Abdeh says Sabra’s “popularity stems from
the fact that he is ‘George.’ Sabra may have a point about nostalgia for Syria
of the 1950s; one of its enduring icons was Faris el-Khoury, a Presbyterian who
served as prime minister in several cabinets and was Syria’s representative at
the inauguration of the United Nations.
“Khoury’s political success is hailed by
Sunni Muslims as proof of their willingness to accept members of religious
minorities as equal citizens; certainly there is something satisfying about a
Christian heading up the opposition at a time when Assad is stoking up fears of
sectarian civil war. True to his secularist credentials however, Sabra plays
down his Christian background, which, ironically, may prove to be an asset as
Syrians dream of a new Faris el-Khoury to unite the opposition and heal
confessional wounds.”
