Overview

Mohammad Hekmat Walid has served as the leader, or the “comptroller general,” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria since November 2014.Agence France-Presse, “Syria Muslim Brotherhood appoints new leader,” Al Monitor, November 7, 2014, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ar/contents/afp/2014/11/syria-conflict-islam-politics-opposition.html. Hailing from Latakia, Syria, Walid is the 12^th leader of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood since the group’s founding in 1945. He is an ophthalmologist by training and is reported to have studied in the United Kingdom.“The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, accessed May 16, 2016, http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48370;
Hazem Kandil, Inside the Brotherhood (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2015), 154, “Q&A: ‘We want to build a new Syria,’” Al Jazeera, May 26, 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2015/01/qa-want-build-new-syria-20151146413892728.html.

Walid left Syria in the 1970sDasha Afanasieva, “Banned in Syria, Muslim Brotherhood members trickle home,” Reuters, May 7, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-brotherhood-idUSKBN0NR20Y20150507. and was a long-time resident of Saudi Arabia Raphaël Lefèvre, “New Leaders for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,” Carnegie Middle East Center, December 11, 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/12/11/new-leaders-for-syrian-muslim-brotherhood. before moving to Istanbul, Turkey, around 2014.Raphaël Lefèvre, “New Leaders for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,” Carnegie Middle East Center, December 11, 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/12/11/new-leaders-for-syrian-muslim-brotherhood. In March 2014, he was elected head of the Brotherhood’s Waad political party in Syria.Raphaël Lefèvre, “New Leaders for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,” Carnegie Middle East Center, December 11, 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/12/11/new-leaders-for-syrian-muslim-brotherhood. That November, Walid officially left the Waad party and was elected general comptroller of the Syrian Brotherhood.“Mohamed Hikmat Walid Elected Comptroller-General for Syria Muslim Brotherhood,” Ikhwanweb: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Official English web site, November 7, 2014, http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31886;
Raphaël Lefèvre, “New Leaders for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,” Carnegie Middle East Center, December 11, 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/12/11/new-leaders-for-syrian-muslim-brotherhood.

In mid-2015, Walid told Reuters in an interview that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was encouraging its members—many of whom had been in exile in Turkey since the 1980s—to return to Syria and re-establish the group there amid the Syrian civil war.Dasha Afanasieva, “Banned in Syria, Muslim Brotherhood members trickle home,” Reuters, May 7, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-brotherhood-idUSKBN0NR20Y20150507. According to Brotherhood analyst Raphaël Lefèvre, Walid is known for his “diplomatic skills and compromising spirit.”Raphaël Lefèvre, “New Leaders for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood,” Carnegie Middle East Center, December 11, 2014, http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/12/11/new-leaders-for-syrian-muslim-brotherhood.