Syrian rebels remain divided as Hitto resigns

Departing Syrian opposition chief Ghassan Hitto says members of the opposition Syrian Coalition prevented him from establishing a government in liberated areas of Syria.

Mr Hitto resigned as prime minister on Monday, two days after the country’s leading opposition organisation, the Syrian Coalition, elected a new president with close links to Saudi Arabia.

“If my government had been ratified, today or tomorrow it would have been on the ground [in Syria] setting up offices,” he said, adding that despite the timing, his resignation was unrelated to recent personnel changes in the Coalition.

Mr Hitto, an IT manager who lived in Dallas, Texas for several decades before being elected to head the newly-formed opposition government last March, is thought to be close to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Qatari government, the latter a chief sponsor of Syria’s political opposition.

Earlier this year, he was seen as a consensus candidate amid a cloud of factional divisions and internal rivalries that plagued the coalition. His job was to administer swathes of northern Syrian territory that rebel fighters have wrestled from government forces over the past 18 months.

US weapons
In his first interview with a western media outlet since resigning, Mr Hitto urged the United States to assist rebels with weapons in order to curb recent Syrian military advances on a number of fronts around the country.

Though Washington has announced it is to provide military support to select rebel groups, reports emerged this week that al-Qaeda-linked fighters have already been buying weapons from secular Syrian rebels.

Furthermore, Reuters reported on Monday that congressional committees in the US government had been blocking a plan to send US weapons to rebels.

“It [US policy] is flawed. They need to figure out how to end Bashar al-Assad’s rule,” said Mr Hitto.

“There are 101 different ways to track these weapons,” he said of fears over missiles falling into extremists’ hands, “but if they don’t want to give weapons, offer surgical strikes or a no fly zone. You can keep dumping money at the problem but you are not investing where it matters most.”

Newly appointed coalition president Ahmed Jarba found his offer of a Ramadan ceasefire rebuked by Syrian authorities in Damascus, but said advanced weapons from Saudi Arabia would reach rebels “soon”.

Scepticism at the Syrian Coalition’s ability to coalesce around a single figure or strategy to take on the Assad regime has increased.

“Unless he [Mr Jarba] is going to be able to transform the dynamics of the coalition, I don’t think he is going to change much,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“The national coalition basically seems to hope the regime will drop dead or the international community will intervene. What if that doesn’t happen: what’s his plan?”

Diplomacy not dead
Mr Hitto still believes there is a chance for a political solution to the conflict in Syria, which has killed at least 93,000 people.

“I don’t think the Geneva conference initiative is dead, but the coalition should not go to Geneva as the situation stands on the ground now,” he said. “They’d be out of their mind to go to Geneva in this weak position.”

Mr Hitto says he will continue to work as an independent activist and will remain open to assisting the coalition if called upon. His son, Obaida, has been fighting with rebels against the Syrian army in an eastern province since last year.

Analysts are unconvinced of the opposition’s potential to affect the conflict on the ground given its damaged reputation. They could have set up administrative centres without saying they were a government or getting diplomatic recognition,” said Mr Sayigh of Mr Hitto’s four months as opposition prime minister.

“It tells us a lot about the coalition’s inability to provide leadership.”