Khatib eyes his chance
DIPLOMATS were getting grouchy, journalists were packing up to leave and Syrians were losing faith in the ability of their political opposition ever to get their act together. But at the last minute, on November 11th, bleary-eyed opposition figures, meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, signed a deal to meld a new opposition group to be called the Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Many Syrians said they felt hopeful that a plausible alternative to Bashar Assad and his regime had at last been found.The make-up of the new 63-member body certainly improves on the Syrian National Council (SNC), previously promoted as the opposition’s main umbrella group. Now led by a Christian politician, George Sabra, the council was folded into the national coalition after being offered 22 seats. In contrast to the long-exiled men who have been leading the SNC, the new coalition is headed—for the time being—by Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, a moderate imam from one of Syria’s grandest religious and national institutions, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Banned...