Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center and fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, did not open a bottle of champagne when he first learned that President Barack Obama accepted the political compromise that would allow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stay in his Damascus palace. Shaikh has been working extensively to facilitate national dialogue among Syrian constituencies and key figures. The Pakistani-born former UN official and British citizen is a policy adviser on regional and international involvement in the Syrian crisis. He served as special assistant to the UN special coordinator to the Middle East peace process, and political adviser to the UN secretary-general’s personal representative for Lebanon during the 2006 war. Shaikh also worked as director for policy and research in the Office of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, consort of the former emir of Qatar.
In a telephone interview with Al-Monitor, he seemed to agree with Ambassador Nassif Hitti's observation on Oct. 7 that the chemical weapons crisis “is encouraging the regime to become more intransigent.”