
The Gulf and Syria Crisis: With or Without Assad?
Panel’s Video:
A continental breakfast will be served.
Featured Speakers:
- Location: National Press Club: 529 14th St, NW 13th Floor Washington, DC, Holeman Lounge
- Seating capacity is limited! Email events@gulfii.com by March 5th, 2018
- Please respond with the following information: Full Name, Company/Affiliation, Title, Phone Number
- You must receive RSVP confirmation by email in order to attend
Speakers’ Bio:
Charles Lister: Senior Fellow and Director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Program at the Middle East Institute.
His work focuses primarily on the conflict in Syria, including as a member of the MEI-convened Syria Study Group; and on issues of terrorism and insurgency across the Levant. Prior to this, Lister was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Qatar and a Senior Consultant to the multinationally-backed Syria Track II Dialogue Initiative, where he managed nearly three years of intensive face-to-face engagement with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups.
Lister is a frequent source of briefings on the Syrian insurgency to political, military and intelligence leaderships in the United States and across Europe and the Middle East. He appears regularly on television media, including CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera, and his articles have been widely published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, among others.
Lister has previously held positions at the Brookings Institution and as head of MENA at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London, UK.
Lister’s critically-acclaimed book, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, was published in February 2016 by Oxford University Press. He also published The Islamic State: A Brief Introduction (Brookings Press, 2015) and he is now working on the third book on Syria, commissioned by Oxford University Press.
Wa’el Alzayat: CEO of Emgage Foundation, a national civic education and engagement grassroots organization for Muslim Americans, and a lecturer at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
Alzayat previously served as a U.S. Middle East policy expert at the U.S. Department of State for ten years, including as senior policy advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, Syria outreach coordinator with Ambassador Robert Ford, and special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to the Iraq James Jeffrey. Alzayat has long been a passionate advocate for protecting fundamental American values and freedoms, and increasing the civic engagement of minority communities. Alzayat was recently named Top 10 Inspiring Arab Americans Leaders by the Huffington Post. Alzayat is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Dr. Radwan Ziadeh: is a senior analyst at the Arab Center – Washington D.C.
Dr. Ziadeh is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria. He is also the co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Ziadeh was the managing editor of the Transitional Justice Project in the Arab World and the Head of the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice, which was established on November 14, 2013, by the Syrian Interim Government. Since the Syrian uprising started in March 15, 2011, Dr. Ziadeh was involved in documenting the ongoing human rights violations in Syria and testified at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the Human Rights Commission in the U.S Congress.
Sigurd Neubauer: Non-Resident Fellow at Gulf International Forum and a columnist for Arab News.
Neubauer’s expertise includes Oman; Qatar, Saudi Arabia; Yemen; Persian Gulf security; inter-Gulf Cooperation Council dynamics; Arab-Israeli relations; and Afghanistan. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Gulf International Forum and a columnist for Arab News. Neubauer is frequently quoted by the international media on the state of U.S.-GCC relations, and has contributed to Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, CNN, Fox News, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times, among others. His work has also been translated into Arabic and Farsi. Neubauer has nine years experience from the U.S. defense industry; he currently works for SOS International LLC and has been with the company since 2009. From 2015-2017, Neubauer was a Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a columnist for Al Arabiya English. Fluent in seven languages, Neubauer is a graduate of Yeshiva University in New York where he studied Jewish History (M.A.), Political Science (B.A.) and French Literature (B.A.). A native of Lillehammer, Norway, Neubauer lives in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area with his family.