Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, who defected from the Syrian regime earlier this month, is presenting himself as the top pick for Syria’s new leader after Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is being called upon by the US and its allies to step down.
“I left [Syria]… to try to help the best I can to unite the honourable people inside and outside Syria to set out a road map to get Syria out of this crisis,” General Tlass, currently in exile, told the Asharq Alawsat newspaper in Saudi Arabia.
“The interview in a Saudi-owned newspaper,” according to The Independent, “indicates that Brig Gen Tlass…must have at least tacit support from the powers that be in Riyadh. The US is also said to be pushing him forward as a candidate to lead the transition.”
The Syrian National Council, the disorganized exile group pretending to be the viable choice for Syria’s political transition should Assad fall, is not ready to accept him. They and the rest of the opposition inside Syria have been skeptical of all of Assad’s former comrades.
“There is no way that he can work with the opposition now, maybe after the regime falls but not now,” said Haitham al-Maleh, a prominent dissident. “He is the son of Mustafa Tlass. The opposition inside the country are never going to shake a hand stained in blood.”
The US and its allies in the Gulf are officially committed to regime change in Syria and when they latch onto some former regime apparatchik – whether Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq or Omar Suleiman in Egypt – it usually means no good.
Saudi government is built as in inner circle cousins of the cousins of the cousins of the king and non are legitimate, they even have lots of left behind cousins in England and in Sweden that they have lost counts of their cousins.
This General is one of them, thats answers the question why he is in Saudi Arabia and not London or France or Stockholm for that matter, it simply shows who his working for and what kind of regime his supporting. Having said that, it shows who these “opposition” people are, one in London the others is Turkey and yet more are in France and Washington indulging themselves of a good life paid by US tax payers, carrying the title as “opposition”. It shows how divided they are wanting to carry such responsibility leading the Syrian people, governing a country not knowing what a country is or it means and what has become of it.., because most of these people never lived in Syria. everyone of these elements supporting their own agendas, they have no clues of how an ordinary Syrian lives, like Ahmad Chalabi, he didn’t know what Iraq was or what would become of it, he just was the opposition that US wanted him to oppose Saddam, he simply was a thieve living in Washington and before that in Joran.