In early November 2013, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces elected the first cabinet for its exile government, which will be led by Ahmad Tumeh. On Syria in Crisis, Samer Abboud has described some of the challenges that lie ahead for Tumeh and his government.
But trouble has already started. In the election, three ministers failed to receive the required number of votes, leaving the cabinet without ministers for education, health, and the interior. The last case is the most interesting one, since the ministries of interior and defense were supposed to be controlled by the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the command structure of the rebel Free Syrian Army. The candidate for this post, who received only 30 of the required 62 votes, was Ammar al-Qurabi.
Qurabi, a forty-three-year-old pharmacist and union activist from Idlib, is currently president of the National Change Party, a small liberal organization active in Syria’s exile politics. Before 2011, he was best known as the head of the National Organization for Human Rights. In the years before the Syrian revolution erupted, this was one of the most active human rights groups in the country, despite being a frequent target of regime harassment. Qurabi went into exile in 2011 and has been living in Istanbul ever since.
I asked Ammar al-Qurabi about his ill-fated candidacy for minister of interior and what he thought would become of Tumeh’s exile cabinet now. He responded with a scathing criticism of the National Coalition and the way that Tumeh’s government had been formed.
Were you the SMC’s candidate for interior minister?
It’s true that I was proposed as a candidate by the SMC.
Why did the SMC want a human rights activist as interior minister?
The main reason is that I have developed a plan for the Interior Ministry, dealing particularly with issues such as border crossings, support for a police force to keep the peace, and a solution the problem of passports for Syrians. There are other issues that concern Syrian citizens too, like documenting events such as marriages, divorces, and births.
Most of the members of the SMC have known me for a long time. I’ve been working closely with them since the early days of the revolution, and they trust me. I’ve also worked on these issues before, particularly the police. The most important thing is my ability to attract political and financial support for these projects from some states.
What happened to change the situation?
I had agreed to this candidacy on one condition—that it wouldn’t be proposed via the National Coalition. That was accepted. But then, to no one’s surprise, the coalition started insisting that there should be a vote on the interior and defense ministers anyway, contravening the agreement. The coalition wanted to vote on every single minister in the government, even though that’s not the way it works in the entire world.
The thing with a cabinet is that it is an interdependent block that relies on political, ethnic, religious, sectarian, and regional quotas. If you bring down one minister, you strike the government as a whole.
Tumeh surrendered to the wishes of the National Coalition’s members, hoping that he would get the prime minister seat whatever the cost—even if he had to replace every one of his ministers an hour before the vote. For example, instead of Rim Jeha, they coalition picked Taghrid al-Hajali as minister of culture and family. Instead of Khaled al-Helou, it picked Fayez al-Zaher as justice minister. And there’s [Uthman] al-Bedawi instead of Jaber Alyan as local administration minister. The list goes on. All this, simply for Tumeh to get a position!
What happened during the National Coalition’s vote?
For my part, when I heard that the members of the National Coalition were going to vote on the government, I boycotted the meetings. I didn’t go there at all, during the four days they were assembled, because I knew they were going to vote against me. My view of them has been well publicized throughout the revolution. I’ve attacked them in the media, described them as the reason for the revolution’s failure, and accused them of corruption and dictatorship.
I mean, what sort of coalition has a man with Alzheimer’s disease as head of its legal commission—his name is Haitham al-Maleh—alongside a little clique of mercenaries working for various governments?
Sadly, the National Coalition, which had united against me, used immoral methods. Coalition members accused me of working for the Syrian regime, not to mention working for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and others. In the most public way, they spread doubts about me. But when I was attacking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading a revolution, and founding the Syria Conference for Change, a June 2011 meeting of opposition leaders in Antalya, Turkey, these people were busy defending the idea of reform and calling for dialogue with Assad. The leaders of the National Coalition, from Michel Kilo and George Sabra to Riad Seif and Burhan Ghalioun—they were all working with the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, which favors political dialogue and peaceful protest.
Do you think the government will be a success?
When the government was proposed, I knew that not a single state would recognize it. Countries in both the West and the East told me, officially, that they wouldn’t recognize Ahmad Tumeh or his government. That’s why I agreed to a ministry that I could have gathered support for by myself, without relying on Tumeh.
Tumeh told me a few days ago that no one is answering his phone calls and that governments aren’t dealing with him in a serious fashion. Adding to the problem, Tumeh has thrown himself at the feet of the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping to get Qatari and Turkish support. He’s brought in little kids from the Brotherhood and made them advisers, but that hasn’t helped him with these two states, not yet.
Who do you think will be the new interior minister?
In my view, Major General Abdul Aziz Jassem al-Shallal is going to be the next minister of interior.
