DOHA, Qatar — Syrian opposition factions signed a tentative agreement on Sunday to create a unified umbrella organization that could pave the way for long-elusive international diplomatic recognition, as well as more funding and improved military aid from foreign capitals.
Roughly 60 opposition negotiators reached agreement after three days of haggling at a luxury hotel here. They have been under intense pressure, both from the soaring daily death toll in Syria and from foreign supporters alarmed by the drawn-out factional squabbling that has crippled previous attempts to ease the fighting.
“Today in Doha is the first time the different factions of the Syrian opposition are united in one body,” said Riad Hijab, the former Syrian prime minister and the highest level defector from the Damascus government. “So we ask the international community to recognize the Syrian opposition as the representative of the Syrians.”
The umbrella organization was designed to subsume the Syrian National Council, a previous attempt at unification that has appeared increasingly marginalized as Syria has descended into civil war. That group’s authority was undercut when it failed to attract sufficient support from key minorities, religious and tribal figures, businessmen — and most importantly, rebel units conducting the fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
The hope among Western countries is that the new coalition, somewhat clumsily called the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, can establish itself and give local opposition councils the legitimacy to bring fighters under their authority. That would give an important counter-voice to the well-armed jihadist commanders who in many places have set the pace of the fighting and created worries that Islamists will gain a permanent hold. One of the first steps for the new group, likely to be known as the Syrian National Coalition in shorthand, is to elect new leadership, which could begin as early as Sunday night. One possibility for president is Riad Seif, 66, a Syrian businessman and longtime dissident who organized the unification effort and has gained support for the new post despite health issues.
One key change was that revolutionary councils from 14 Syrian provinces now each has a representative, though not all live in Syria. The hope is that will bind the coalition to those inside.
In addition, perhaps the most important body the new group is expected to form is the Revolutionary Military Council to oversee the splintered fighting organizations and to funnel both lethal and nonlethal military aid to the rebels. It should unite units of the Free Syrian Army, various militias and brigades in each city and large groups of defectors.
Before the ink was even dry on the final draft, negotiators were hoping that it would bring them the antiaircraft missiles they crave to take on Syria’s lethal air force. Both the United States and Britain have only offered nonmilitary aid to the uprising.
A similar attempt by the Syrian National Council to supervise the military never jelled — organizers said funding was too haphazard. Eventually foreign governments like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who are both funding and arming the rebels, found their own favorites.
Foreign capitals wanted this unification largely so they could coordinate their own efforts and aid through a group of technocrats. Once it receives international recognition, the coalition is supposed to establish a temporary government.
There is a kind of international choreography, what diplomats referred to as “sequencing” which is supposed to ensure both that the coalition lives up to its promises and that the international community strengthens it with incentives like a new international financial aid fund.
But there is a kind of Catch-22 aspect to the relationship between the new coalition and its backers, which also damaged the previous Syrian National Council. The foreign backers want to see the new organization functioning almost like a government-in-exile before they extend it the money and weapons promised, but coalition members said they need at least some of that aid in order to function.
Syrian Opposition Groups Sign Unity Deal
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Syrian Opposition Groups Sign Unity Deal
