History stutters: the new leader of the Syrian National
Coalition, knighted by the West, is none other than the grand-
son of one of the chief collaborators of the French occupation
of Syria in the 20s. Formerly, the French colonial power
resorted to religious leaders to teach submission to the people
under its domination; today it relies on clerics to overthrow
the secular regime of the Syrian Arab Republic. - A photograph
taken in 1941, when Syria was still under the rule of French
colonisers, has recently been circulating on social networking
sites. In the worn black and white photograph, French General
Georges Catroux is walking next to an elderly man with cunning
eyes, Nur-Eddin al-Khatib More than 70 years has passed and the
grandson of this Nur-Eddin – Mouaz al-Khatib, a former preacher
at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and now a deserter and traitor
– has been elected head of the “Qatar Coalition” which was
created on 11 November at a meeting in Doha. France has shown
its gratitude to the third-generat