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| Clockwise from top: Ghassan Hitto, an illustration of kudos, and his son Obaida in Deir Ezzor |
Hours after his election as the first
prime minister of an interim Syrian government, Ghassan Hitto went on air to
address the beleaguered Syria people, saying his administration:
- Firmly and unequivocally rules out dialogue with the Assad regime.
- Has “one principal target, which is to bring down the regime by all means and build the New Syria.”
- Shall kick-start its work from “inside the liberated areas’
- Shall cooperate closely with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Higher Military Council and revolutionary forces and endeavor to secure them the military support they need. Together they shall strive to safeguard strategic sites and assets, protect state institutions and take full control of border crossings
- Shall demand that all humanitarian aid for Syria be channeled through border crossings it controls
- Shall urge the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to return to their homes in the areas under its jurisdiction
- Shall uphold all human rights, freedoms and civil liberties and formally foreswear racial, religious, sectarian, gender and ethnic discrimination…
- Shall invite the international community to extend all assistance possible to the Syrian people
- Shall request the 130-odd countries that recognized the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people to formally recognize the Interim Government as the legitimate representative of revolutionary Syria
- Shall demand that all Syrian regime assets frozen or seized by the international community be remitted to the Syrian people through their legitimate representatives
- Appreciates the political, material and moral aid already extended to the Syrian revolution by such countries as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States.
Information
technology executive Ghassan Hitto is a naturalized Syrian-born American
citizen of Kurdish origin.
He is a 1963 native of
Damascus who moved to the United States in 1983.
Last November, the
50-year-old relocated from Wayne in northeast Texas to Turkey to help
co-ordinate aid to rebel-held areas.
Hitto, a board member of the Syrian American Council, was
already involved in humanitarian aid work stateside, establishing the Shaam Relief Foundation in 2011, and
helping organize fundraisers, including a "Walk for Children of Syria
Day."
Hitto
received 35 votes of 48 ballots cast overnight by members of the opposition
Syrian National Coalition, eclipsing other nominees, including Osama Kadi, who
I wrongly thought (in an earlier
post) would be the man to beat at the meeting in Istanbul.
“A
near consensus emerged on Hitto. He is a practical man with management
experience and is open to debate. He promised to consult widely before naming
ministers and only appoint those with a long experience,” Mohammad Qaddah, the
coalition’s representative from Deraa, told Reuters.
Hitto’s first
task will be to form his interim government, which will oversee the areas
captured from government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
He earned a bachelor’s
degree in mathematics and computer sciences from Indiana's Purdue University in
1989, and a master’s in business administration from Indiana
Wesleyan University in 1994.
He is a founding member of
the Muslim Legal Fund of America, a U.S.
public cause charity established in 2001 to support
legal cases impacting civil rights and liberties in America.
Hitto and his wife,
Suzanne, an American schoolteacher, have four children, including Obaida, 25, all
born in the United States.
Obaida a former high
school football player, deferred his plans for law school and sneaked into
Syria last year to assist the rebels by making videos and spreading information
on the Internet to help their cause.
“Eighty-five percent of
the civilian population has left the city,” Obaida said in a Skype interview
with The New York Times last September from Deir
Ezzor, where he was later injured by mortar shrapnel. “If people only saw what
was really happening to the people here they might do the same thing I did.”
