The Syrian National Coalition is on its last leg

Clockwise from top left: Beshar, Tayfur, Mrs. al-Ameer and Jarba

Clockwise from top left: Dr. Labwani, Mekdad, Hijab and Sabbagh

Syria’s opposition umbrella known as the Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is on its last leg.

It is being dragged kicking and screaming to the Geneva-2 peace conference slated for January 22 by its newly reelected leader Ahmad Jarba, its chief Arab benefactor Saudi Arabia, and its so-called Western “friends.”  

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal demanded Tuesday that the National Coalition be the only legitimate umbrella of the Syrian opposition.

He said the planned Geneva-2 peace talks should lead to the formation of a national government with large powers and rejected any role for President Bashar al-Assad and his inner circle in any future government.

The Geneva-1 communiqué of June 2012 said,  “The transitional governing body would exercise full executive powers. It could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.”

“There are some parties who issue statements undermining efforts to make Geneva-2 succeed in resolving the Syria crisis,” al-Faisal told reporters during a visit to Pakistan.

“I fear the aim of these statements is to derail the conference from its goal to implement the Geneva-1 recommendations,” he added.

During its 121-member general assembly meeting in Istanbul on Sunday, the Coalition reelected Jarba as its leader for another six-month term by a 65-52 vote against Syria’s former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab.

It also elected Jarba’s three vice-presidents, namely:

1. Faruq Tayfur
2. Mrs. Noora al-Ameer, a media figure from Homs, and
3. Abdul Hakim Beshar, head of the Kurdish Syrian National Council (KNC), an umbrella group of 15 of the 17 total Kurdish parties in Syria.

Overnight, the Coalition deferred until January 17 its final decision on joining or boycotting the Geneva-2 talks, according to Aljazeera TV channel’s news portal.

The reason is: “Disputes among Coalition members.”

Aljazeera’s correspondent in Istanbul Wassima bin Saleh says the postponement follows threats by 68 of the Coalition’s 121 members to resign from the umbrella organization if it decided to sit at the Geneva-2 table.

Twenty-eight of the 68 dissidents belong to the Syrian National Council (SNC) chaired by George Sabra.

The 40 other members planning to break away from the Coalition include former Premier Riyad Hijab, Free Syrian Army spokesman Louay Mekdad, the Coalition’s former secretary-general Mustafa al-Sabbagh and Dr. Kamal al-Labwani.

Mushakis.net, Syria’s satirical online daily, suggests today that a “ghost figure” representing the Coalition has already delivered the political alliance’s “unconditional approval” to attend Geneva-2.

Saudi Arabia’s Asharq Alawsat said earlier the hush-hush missive to the United Nations carried Jarba’s own signature and was handed over to UN headquarters in New York by Najib al-Ghadban, the Coalition’s representative to Washington.

Syrian Coalition comes back from the dead

From top left, clockwise: Michel Kilo, Farah Atassi, Fayez Sara and Samira Masalmeh

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces came back from the dead by closing ranks overnight and adding 43 new members to its general assembly.

It took the Coalition a full week of political wrangling and horse-trading at meetings in Istanbul to expand its general assembly.

The assembly swelled from 63 members on the May 23 opening day of its session to 71 members by May 27 and to 114 members – eight of them women -- on the session’s closing day early this morning.

The total number of National Coalition members is now 114, acting chief George Sabra told reporters, adding that the general assembly has now adjourned until June 12, when it would reconvene to elect a Coalition president.

The eight members voted in on May 27 were Christian thinker and liberal bloc leader Michel Kilo, Syrian-American activist Farah Atassi, Jamal Suleiman, Alia Mansour, Noura el-Amir, Ahmad Abulkhair Shukri, Ayman al-Aswad and Anwar Badr.

The 43 members co-opted overnight, Sabra said, are “15 from the Chief of Staff of the Free Syrian Army, 14 from al-Hirak al-Thawri (the Revolutionary Movement inside Syria) and 14 others.”

Eight of the “14 others” belong to Kilo’s liberal bloc. The rest include two independents, two representing the Local Coordination Committees and two belonging to the Syrian National Council.

The star newcomers on Kilo’s list are Fayez Sara and Samira Masalmeh, the first woman to become editor-in-chief of Syria’s state-run daily Tishreen. She was fired after giving an interview to the satellite station Aljazeera in which she held the security forces responsible for the killing by regime forces of 37 protesters in Deraa on April 8, 2011.

Sabra said the group had agreed a "plan for the transitional period", but did not elaborate.

The group had also set up agricultural, education and health committees to try and mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Syria, he added.

S-330s, MiGs and Apples

On the international front, Russian media are adamant today that Moscow has not yet delivered advanced S-300 missiles to Syria, despite rather vague Syrian indications to the contrary.

The Russian business daily Vedomosti said it was unclear whether or not the air-defense systems would be delivered this year, while the daily Kommersant reported the S-300 missiles would only be delivered in the second quarter of 2014. According to Kommersant, the systems would need another six months of testing and training before they become operational.

An arms industry source also told Russia’s Interfax today Moscow is unlikely to deliver a shipment of S-300s to Syria before the autumn. The source also indicated the timing of the delivery of the arms, which has alarmed Western governments, would depend on the development of the situation in Syria.

President Bashar Al-Assad didn't say S-300s have already begun arriving in Syria, Fox News reported last night.

Gen. Kornukov (top) and the MiG-29

It noted two different transcripts of the Al-Manar interview that were released, one in which Assad claims Syria already received the S-300, and a second one released later in which he used more careful, general language.

The second transcript was inconclusive and in it, Assad says, "There are many arms agreements between us and the Russians from a long time. The Russians are committed to their agreements. All that was agreed with Russia will be implemented and part of it has been already done. We and the Russians are in agreement and we will continue to be like this."

Former Russian Air Force Commander General Anatoly Kornukov told Interfax Syria needs at least ten S-300 divisions to fully protect its airspace.

“Our specialists,” he said, will also have “to train Syrian colleagues if they receive such systems. But everything will depend on the diligence of those trained. But the most minimal period of training is half of a month or a month.”

But the head of Russian aircraft maker MiG said separately Russia was counting on providing Syria with 10 MiG-29MM2 fighter planes, and was discussing details with a visiting Syrian delegation.

At the same time, the United States yesterday relaxed restrictions on the sale of mobile phones and other communications devices, software and services to Iran.

A five-page document by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has authorized the following transactions, effective immediately:

• The exportation or re-exportation, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by US persons, wherever located, to persons in Iran of fee-based services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and e-mail, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, Web browsing, and blogging.
• The exportation or re-exportation, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by US persons, wherever located, to persons in Iran of consumer-grade Internet connectivity services and the provision, sale, or leasing of capacity on telecommunications transmission facilities (such as satellite or terrestrial network connectivity) incident to personal communications.

The shift marks the first time Apple's iPhone can be exported legally to Iran.

The newly relaxed rules have been interpreted as an effort to counter Tehran’s efforts to “silence its people” before the June 14 presidential elections, which are two weeks away.

Really?

I wonder.

Syria bishops’ kidnap linked to Boston Chechens?

Bishops Paul Yazigi (left) and Yohanna Ibrahim

Syria’s state-run media say armed rebels in the northern province of Aleppo kidnapped two prominent Syrian bishops on Monday.

SANA news agency said the Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were seized by "a terrorist group" in the village of Kfar Dael as they were “carrying out humanitarian work.”

Activists blame regime militias for the kidnapping.

The independent Beirut daily an-Nahar today says Ibrahim had gone in his chauffeur-driven car to collect Yazigi from the rebel-held Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey.

The two bishops were being driven to Aleppo when they were abducted.

“The kidnappers killed the driver, who is Chechen…

“Preliminary reports last night suggested the armed men who killed the driver were Chechens themselves. There were whispers linking the incident to the stateside Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent killing of a Chechen suspect and the arrest of his wounded brother.”

The newspaper pointed to a newswire dispatch claiming the “Noureddin Zanki Brigade,” which is active in Aleppo’s western rural areas, comprises Chechen fighters.

George Sabra, a Christian who has now replaced Moaz el-Khatib as leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, is reportedly working to secure the bishops’ release after receiving a telephone call from Greek foreign minister Dimitris Avramopoulos.

Interestingly, Weasel Zipper wrote earlier this week:

The revelation that the main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were two Russian citizens of half-Chechen, half-Avar (Dagestani) ethnicity has prompted Kremlin leaders to dust off a longstanding argument that the U.S. should listen to Moscow’s warnings about extreme Islamist terrorists, whether they hail from Chechnya, or Syria, or anywhere else.

The Russians say the US should turn away from its current path of criticizing Russia on human rights issues and embrace greater anti-terrorist cooperation in the name of common civilizational values.

President Vladimir Putin made that pitch explicitly in a Saturday telephone conversation with Barack Obama. A brief statement posted on the Kremlin website noted, “Both sides emphasized their interest in increasing coordination between Russian and American intelligence services in the fight against international terrorism.”

“I would like to remind you that since the early 2000s, when there was a war going on in the northern Caucasus, Putin has said more than once that there can’t be domestic and foreign terrorists, and you can’t flirt with them,” Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told journalists Saturday. “They can’t be differentiated. You can’t deal with some of them, and not others. They all equally deserve non-acceptance.”

This brings to mind Putin’s response to criticism from a French journalist about the war in Chechnya at the Russia-EU summit Brussels in 2002. It went like this:

FRENCH JOURNALIST:  ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multi-confessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one of them for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

Editorially, Tariq Alhomayed, writing today for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, is mystified by the international community’s prejudice in typecasting terrorist groups:

I am puzzled by the chicanery of the international community when it condemns Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, forcing everybody else to outlaw it, but stays tight-lipped watching Hezbollah fight alongside Bashar al-Assad’s forces, specifically in Qusayr.

I say “chicanery” because Jabhat al-Nusra is less, not more, dangerous than “Jabhat Hassan Nasrallah,” which is defending the region’s most criminal regime for sectarian reasons.

Whoever wants to shut out Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda from Syria has to shut out “Jabhat Hassan Nasrallah” first.

What the West fails to perceive is that Jabhat al-Nusra is the symptom of a disease. The disease proper, which is being disseminated by Assad and Iran, is called “Jabhat Hassan Nasrallah.”

The West is also refusing to recognize that withholding help to the Syrian rebels to rein in Hezbollah will make Afghanistan of the 1980s and its aftermath look like a promenade compared to the sectarian bloodbath brewing in Syria.

It’s all sectarian doom and gloom in today’s Lebanese press as well.

Ibrahim al-Amin, co-founder and editor-in-chief of al-Akhbar, which speaks for the Assad-Hezbollah-Iran triumvirate, raises the “specter of a comprehensive war”:

Of course, Hezbollah’s participation in the Syria war does not sit well with a good number of Resistance partisans in Lebanon and the Arab world.

It is incumbent on Hezbollah leaders to come up with convincing explanations and justifications.

To its mind, however, Hezbollah views the Syria crisis as a run-up to a blitz on the Axis of Resistance stretching from Iran to Palestine via Iraq and Lebanon.

Persistence of the incitement against Hezbollah -- by Lebanese sides allegedly wanting to defend the Syrian insurgency or by a Saudi-sponsored move to set up a fait accompli Lebanese government – means we’re heading to a showdown. Hezbollah will be driven to fend for itself on three fronts: internal, Syrian and Israeli.

All this would translate into an all-out war, which is already in the making.

Political analyst Rosanna Boumounsef, writing for al-Nahar, says most political circles in Lebanon are worried:

Hezbollah has put the premier-designate, the president of the Republic and the whole of Lebanon before a fait accompli they cannot come to terms with – in that it killed and buried the official policy of dissociation from the Syria crisis.

This effectively means that the flames of the Syria war have spread and Lebanon has been thrust into the broader regional inferno.

Syria: A coincidental Christian dichotomy

Patriarch Ra'i and Assad representative embrace

George Sabra in Azaz

Lebanon’s Cardinal Bechara Boutros ar-Ra'i has been itching for nearly two years to become the first Maronite patriarch to visit Syria since Lebanon’s independence in 1943.

He did it this weekend.

Syria’s ambassador in Beirut, Ali Abdulkarim Ali, officially invited Ra’i to visit Syria in the week he was elected the 77^th patriarch of Lebanon’s Maronites on the day the Syrian uprising broke out in mid-March 2011.

Ra’i, who has since been appointed cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, entered Syria yesterday through the Masnaa border crossing.

He arrived in Damascus amid tight security measures to attend a ceremony marking the enthronement of the new patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church.

He held a mass at the Maronite Cathedral of St. Anthony in the Bab Touma district of the Syrian capital soon after arriving in the war-ravaged country.

Representing President Bashar al-Assad, Joseph Suweid, a Christian minister of state belonging to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), welcomed him with open arms and a warm embrace in the cathedral’s entrance hall.

Although his aides said there was no political dimension to the visit, Ra’i told the congregation in a short sermon preceding the mass, “We pray each day for the birth of a new society and a new state fulfilling all our good people’s hopes.

“From here in Damascus, we join you in telling all those engaging in these tragedies: enough warfare, violence, killings and destruction of homes and landmarks.

“They say it’s for reforms’ sake. Reforms are needed in every state and homeland. But outsiders don’t dictate reforms. Reforms are homegrown to fit each country’s particular needs. No one knows a home better than its dwellers.”

Later Saturday night, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told state-run TV, “The visit of Maronite Patriarch Beshara Ra’i to Syria has religious as well as political connotations.”

This Sunday morning, Ra’i attended the enthronement of Syria's Greek Orthodox leader, Yuhanna X Yazigi, at the Church of the Holy Cross in Qassaa, a central Damascus neighborhood.

Yazigi, bishop of Western and Central Europe, was elected Greek Orthodox patriarch of the Levant and Antioch, succeeding Patriarch Hazim Ignatius IV who died in December 2012.

Lebanese Maronites allied with Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which is supported by Syria and Iran, are hailing the trip by Ra’i to Syria as a shield for Christians.

Other Lebanese Maronite Christians, allied with former premier Saad Hariri, have expressed their misgivings.

“Here is Patriarch Ra’i in Assad’s Syria, the Syria of a child-killer regime, revealing his true colors under the pretext of participating in the enthronement of Greek Orthodox Patriarch Yuhanna X Yazigi. The pretext does not in any way hide the fact that he empathizes with Assad’s course of action,” Elias Bejjani writes in a commentary for Cedar News.

On his first visit to France in September 2011, Ra’i urged that Assad be given a chance to implement reforms because he is “open-minded” and “ cannot work miracles.”

He also indirectly defended Hezbollah’s arms by linking the party’s arsenal to Israel’s exit from Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms and the repatriation of Palestinian refugees.

Two months later, he defended Hezbollah suspects who were indicted in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

In an interview with Reuters on 4 March 2012, Ra’i said, "All regimes in the Arab world have Islam as a state religion, except for Syria. It stands out for not saying it is an Islamic state... The closest thing to democracy [in the Arab world] is Syria.”

Three weeks ago, he said in his Sunday sermon at the seat of the Maronite patriarchate in Bkerke that Lebanon should lobby the international community to offload its Syrian refugees into “safe areas” in Syria and other Arab countries.

In his book, Le Tsunami Arabe, Franco-Lebanese author Antoine Basbous suggests Ra’i’s public endorsement of the Assad regime is a likely result of the patriarch being blackmailed by Damascus (see “The Ra’i rumor tells us little”).

In the other Syrian corner sits another Christian, this one a native Syrian born to a Christian family in the city of Qatana in Rif Dimashq Governorate.

He is George Sabra, head of the Syrian National Council and second-in-command of the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (see my post, “Syrian opposition elects Christian leader”).

While Damascus was welcoming Ra’i, Sabra was concluding the first tour by a Syrian National Coalition leader of areas in Aleppo and Idlib governorates held by the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

A short video posted by activists on YouTube showed scrutinizing photo murals of the uprising in the small town of Azaz close to Aleppo after coming through the opposition-held Bab al-Hawa international border crossing between Turkey and Syria.

Syrian opposition elects Christian leader

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.”

“The Kremlin will give up Assad”

Drawing by Natalia Mikhailenko for Kommersant

An unforeseen twist in the Syria crisis concerning the future of President Bashar al-Assad is looming, according to Russia’s political and business daily Kommersant.

"We aren't defending Assad," an unidentified Kremlin source told Kommersant earlier this week. "The president of Syria has missed his chance. The likelihood of him remaining in power is slim, about 10 percent."

On Thursday, July 5, Kommersant also published a comment by Konstantin von Eggert surprisingly titled, “The Kremlin will give up Assad.”

Eggert is a commentator and host for radio Kommersant FM, Russia's first 24-hour news station. He also writes a weekly column for RIA Novosti. In the 1990s he was Diplomatic Correspondent for Izvestia and later the BBC Russian Service’s Moscow Bureau Editor.

Here is Eggert’s 405-word opinion piece published Thursday by Kommersant:

Russia has had it its way – there will be no Western military intervention or forced change of regime in Syria; however, the West also seems to have succeeded – Bashar Assad’s fate will soon become a bargaining chip in negotiating future settlements.

According to unnamed sources, Russian officials have admitted in private that the Syrian leader has missed the boat and his chances of remaining at the presidential Tishreen Palace in Damascus are slim. Yet Moscow wants him to delay stepping down as long as possible. Back in the spring, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear that the Yemeni scenario for handover of power in Syria would suit Russia. In Yemen, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh handed over the reins to his vice president and retired with a personal security guarantee in his pocket. This scenario will not work in Syria – so much blood has been shed there that the Yemeni clashes will never ever match the Syrian civil war. Furthermore, there are many more religious groups in Syria than in Yemen.

The potential future leader of Syria will have to address two tasks that are virtually mutually exclusive – to retain the loyalty of the army that currently supports Assad and simultaneously dismantle the regime. There is no such man in the Syrian opposition at the moment. Assad, who has done his best to keep the Syrian political field barren, now says there is no one to negotiate with. But I guess that nature abhors a vacuum and so the opposition will find someone, while Assad, for his part, will likely eye Minsk as a possible destination. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has nothing to lose by offering asylum to Assad; he has already alienated half the world. The Kremlin, on the other hand, will not be willing to irritate the Arabs by offering the former dictator a new home.

The hardest thing to imagine is Vladimir Putin or Sergei Lavrov calling Assad and saying, “Pack your bags. There is nothing else we can do for you.” This will be the end of the special relationship between Moscow and Damascus, which was established 40 years ago during the first years of the presidency of Hafez Assad, the incumbent president’s father. Even if some of Russia’s interests in Syria should be protected by special accords, there will be new people arriving at the Damascus offices, without any Moscow numbers on speed dial on their phones.

Separately, Syrian opposition figures are meantime heading to Moscow this week for talks with Lavrov.

The Russian foreign minister will meet with delegates from the Syrian Democratic Forum tomorrow, Monday.

The Forum’s most prominent figures are Aref Dalila and Fayez Sara.

Lavrov is also set to hold talks with representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the country's largest opposition group, on Wednesday.

SNC executive member George Sabra tells today’s edition of the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat: “It is hard to predict what will be the Russian positions during our visit to Moscow on the 11^th of July. But in discussing the situation in Syria, we will be emphasizing the Syrian regime is a thing of the past and they (Russians) need to concede this and start working for the transition to a democratic and multiparty state bereft of killings and deaths.”

He said the SNC group would be reiterating to Moscow that a transitional government should exclude Assad and his clique but bring together both oppositionists and loyalists. Referring to loyalists, he said Syrian army and Baath Party ranks include many nationalist figures opposed to the regime’s crackdown on its own people.

Commenting on the reports in Kommersant, Sabra said, “This is additional proof that Russian policy is evolving. Moscow is realizing Assad is the past. He is not part of the problem – he is the problem per se. I hope the (Moscow) policy shift won’t be long in coming…”

Syrian Kurd or Christian likely to head the SNC

Abdelbaset Sida, George Sabra and Burhan Ghalioun

By week’s end, an activist from Syria’s Kurdish or Christian minorities will most likely succeed Burhan Ghalioun as leader of Syria’s main opposition umbrella, the Syrian National Council (SNC).

Either a Syrian Kurdish native, Abdelbaset Sida, or a Syrian Christian, George Sabra, will probably be named to replace Muslim Sunnite Ghalioun at the June 9-10 meeting of the SNC executive bureau in Istanbul. Both are members of the SNC executive bureau.

Many in the opposition view Sida or Sabra's appointment as a way to convince minorities they are partners in the revolution and in shaping Syria's future. The move would also allay concerns over the Muslim Brotherhood’s hegemony in the SNC.

Ghalioun has led the SNC by consensus since its formation last October and was elected chairman in a vote held in Rome in mid-May, when Sabra came second in the ballot.

Based in Paris since the 1970s, the 67-year-old Ghalioun is the author of numerous books dealing with sociological and political issues of the Islamic world. He is director of the Centre d'Etudes sur l'Orient Contemporain (CEOC) in Paris and a professor of recycling sociology at the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle).

Sida, 56, is a native of al-Hasakah in Syria’s northeastern corner sandwiched between the borders with Turkey and Iraq. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and has been living in self-exile in Sweden since 1994. His book – “The Kurdish Question in Syria” – was published in 2003.

He told KurdWatch organization, which reports on human rights violations against Kurds in Syria, in an interview last November, “I try (at the SNC) to bring the Kurdish question to the fore, because it is in Syria's interest to find a just and democratic solution to this question.

“To the Syrian opposition, I say again and again: If you solve the Kurdish question, you will win as new friends more than 20 million Kurds in Northern Kurdistan, seven million Kurds in Southern Kurdistan, and up to 10 million Kurds in Eastern Kurdistan… But our main objective (for the moment) must be to overthrow the regime.”

Sabra, 65, is a working-class liberal Christian and longtime dissident now based in Paris. He spent two years in solitary confinement and only left Syria, crossing to Jordan on foot, last October following a brief spell in detention.

He is a founder member of the Damascus Declaration for National Democratic Change and an ally of Syria’s top dissident Riad al-Turk.

Turk, an 81-year-old former leftist who spent 25 years as a political prisoner, operates underground inside Syria. The opposition looks to him for moral guidance.

In a televised interview aired by Alarabiya news channel earlier this year, Sabra blamed the diffidence of Church leaders for the lack of Syrian Christian presence on the streets. He said Christians should not draw parallels with their coreligionists in post-Saddam’s Iraq and refuted remarks by Aleppo’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart that Christians don’t trust Sunnite governance.

“The history of independent Syria tells another story,” he said. He was referring to Syria of the 1950s, when the Godfather of modern Syrian politics was a Presbyterian Christian statesman, Faris el-Khoury, who served as minister, prime minister, speaker of Parliament, and represented his country at the inauguration of the United Nations.

A vote to choose between Sida and Sabra might be abandoned if there is a “consensus” agreement on one of them or on a third “dark horse.”

Idlib Christian officer joins the Free Syrian Army

Clockwise, from top left: Lt. Col. Elias, May Skaff, Faris Helou and George Sabra

As the Syrian army intensifies its crackdown on the restive Idlib province of northwest Syria, bordering Turkey, Lt.-Col. Mutee Elias Elias is now the first Christian officer to defect in Idlib and join the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA).

He announced his defection in a YouTube video yesterday, saying he was an “eyewitness of crimes committed against innocent civilians.”

Political, social and media figures from Syria’s Christian community play a leading role in the yearlong uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

They include, among others:

• George Sabra, a political activist who fled on foot to Jordan last December before settling in France after 42 years of harassment and imprisonment in Syria. Hailing from Qatana, he served eight years behind bars during Hafez Assad’s rule and was held without charge or trial on two occasions last year – one for a month and another for two months – for supporting the opposition. He is now a spokesperson for the opposition umbrella Syrian National Council (SNC), and is a likely successor to SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun at the end of the latter’s term.
• May Skaf, a renowned TV star and actress who was detained and beaten for taking part in a peaceful demonstration in Damascus last July and later released subject to restrictions on her movements.
• Faris el-Helou, a popular actor who wrote on Facebook hewas threatened with death for joining a 2011 protest against the government.

The “godfather of modern Syrian politics” was also a Christian. Faris el-Khoury (1877-1962) served Syria as minister, prime minister and parliament speaker. He was the first Syrian statesman to visit the United States and represent Syria at the 1945 inauguration of the United Nations.