Speaker Biographies

October 5, 2005

Ghanim Jawad Ali is the director of the Culture and Human Rights office at the al Khoei Foundation. Ali is the former director of the Organisation of Human Rights in Iraq, London and a founding member of the Coalition for Justice in Iraq. He is also a co-founding member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and head of its human rights office. Ali is a frequent commentator on Iraq and Islam for Arabic press and satellite channels. His publications include Development of Human Rights Documents in the Islamic Culture (Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, 2000) and Transitional Justices in Iraq: What Will Happen after the Change in Iraq (2005). He is also a regular contributor to several Arabic-language newspapers.

Salem Chalabi is a lawyer focusing on privatizations, banking, and securities law. He has practiced corporate and finance law at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius from 1993 to 1997 and, beginning in 1997, was recruited to help start the U.S. securities practice at the London office of Clifford Chance. In September 2002, he took a leave of absence from Clifford Chance to focus on the transition in postwar Iraq. He participated in the State Department’s Future of Iraq project, in both the Democratic Principles Working Group (for which he served as a coordinator) and the Transitional Justice Working Group (for which he served as rapporteur). In March 2003, he traveled to Kuwait to assist ORHA on reconstruction and legal issues, later going to Baghdad in April 2003. When the Governing Council was formed, he became a member of the legal and finance committees of the council, where he was the principal drafter of the Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal and the statute establishing the Iraqi Property Claims Commission. He was also responsible for coordinating the drafting of the foreign investment laws, the new companies and securities law, the banking law, and various other commercially related laws.  In January 2004, he was chosen to be chairman of the Transitional Administrative Law Drafting Committee, where he acted as one of the two principal Iraqi co-drafters of the Transitional Administrative Law. He was previously director of administration of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, in charge of prosecuting crimes committed by Saddam Hussein. 

Munther al Fadhal is a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and a member the constitutional drafting committee. He was previously a visiting associate professor of Middle Eastern law at the International College of Law in London and a legal adviser in Stockholm. He formerly served as a member of the State Department’s Future of Iraq project, for which he drafted a sample Iraqi constitution. He has taught civil law at numerous universities including: the University of al Zaytoonah in Amman, Jordan; the University of Baghdad; and the University of Annaba in Algeria. From 1979 to 1981, Mr. al Fadhal served as an expert on legal reform in the Iraqi Justice Ministry. After the liberation in Iraq he worked as a legal consultant at the Ministry of Justice with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad. He is the author of many articles and books, published in Arabic, English, Kurdish, and Swedish.

Sheikh al Seyed Afeefuddin al Gaylani was born in Baghdad in 1972 and conducted his studies there. He was the student of the current Mufti of Iraq, Maulana al Sheikh Abdul Karim al Mudarris, and has studied with many other Islamic scholars. He was the Imam and spiritual guide in several mosques in Baghdad as well as mosques in other states, including the Mosque of al Sheikh Abdul Qadir al Gaylani. His Holiness is one of the current leaders of Tariqatul Qadriyah and specializes in Fiqh and Tasawuf. He is the head of Darul Qadriyah International, a network of organizations dedicated to the study and practice of Tasawuf. He was also a frequent guest lecturer in Iraq and other countries. His holiness is the nineteenth direct descendant of Sultan-Ul-Awliya, al Sheikh al Seyed Abdul Qadir al Gaylani, and the thirty-third direct descendant of Sayidinah Rassulullah Mohammad.

Sama Hadad is the spokeswoman of the Iraqi Prospect Organization, a pro-democracy group based in Baghdad. She is also a fellow at the newly established Baghdad Institute for Public Policy Research where she studies Shi’i political theory, security, and Iraqi international relations. Dr. Hadad was forced to flee from Baghdad when she was one day old. Her family was chased out by the Iraqi government. She says the family was considered too “religious” to be allowed to stay in Iraq. The family moved around from country to country until they finally found a new home in Canada. Many of her relatives in Iraq were tortured. Some lost their lives in terrible circumstances.

Colonel Frederick R. Kienle is dean of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School of the Joint Forces Staff College of the National Defense University. From September 2004 to March 2005, Col. Kienle served as the chief of staff of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT), Multinational Security Transition Command – Iraq (MNSTC-I) in Baghdad.  During this assignment, he had oversight of numerous aspects of training, equipping and advising the Iraqi Armed Forces.  Col. Kienle’s other assignments include company commander and assistant operations officer in the 3rd U.S. Infantry (the Old Guard) at Fort Myer and subsequently as assistant professor of military science at Seton Hall University. While stationed in Alaska, he served as division plans officer, battalion executive officer, and brigade operations officer. From 1994 to 1997, Col. Kienle served as a strategic plans and policy officer in the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii. From 1997 to 1999, Col. Kienle commanded the 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry at Fort Jackson, followed by duty as the director of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s School for Command Preparation and as executive officer to the deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

Ali Feissal al Lami is the director of the De-Baathification Committee, where he has directed the investigation of charges of corruption against the former Minister of Defense, Hazem Sha’alan. He is also a representative of the Shiite Council, an umbrella political group that holds fourteen seats in the National Assembly, and a prominent member of Iraqi Hezbollah, a Shiite party that is part of the United Iraqi Alliance.

Kanan Makiya is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University and founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation. Makiya was born in Baghdad, left Iraq to study architecture at M.I.T, and later joinied Makiya Associates to design and build projects in the Middle East. In 1981, he left the practice of architecture and began to write a book about Iraq. In October 1992, he acted as the convener of the Human Rights Committee of the Iraqi National Congress, a transitional parliament based in northern Iraq. He has written several books, including Republic of Fear (1989), The Monument (1991), and Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993). Along with these books, Makiya has written for the Independent, the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplementm, and The Times. Since Saddam Hussein’s April 2003 ouster, Mr. Makiya has been a leading advocate for de-Baathification and a commemoration of the victims of Baathist tyranny.

Mishkat al Moumin is the former Iraqi minister of environment. Prior to her appointment as minister, Ms. Moumin was a lecturer of international law and constitutional law for undergraduate students and a lecturer of human rights, fundamental rights, and international conventions for postgraduate students at Baghdad University College of Law. She is the former director of women’s issues and NGO director of the Baghdad office of the Free Iraq Foundation. She has served as an advisor to the International Federation of Election Systems and is a member of the Iraqi Bar Association. Ms. Moumin is currently working on an advanced degree at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Abdul Karim al Muhammadawi is the head of Iraqi Hezbollah. He is a member and rotating chairman of the Interim Supervisory Council in Maysan Province and was a member of the Interim Governing Council. Al Muhammadawi was dubbed “Prince of the Marshes” for his role in leading the resistance movement against Saddam in the Southern Marshes for seventeen years, for which he spent six years in prison.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq and a project on democracy in the Arab world. She recently served as a member of the congressionally-mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Entifadh K. Qanbar is deputy military attaché for the Embassy of Iraq and the spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in Baghdad. Until the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Mr. Qanbar was the director of the INC’s Washington office and served as liaison to the Pentagon and Iraqis training under the ILA. From 1999 to 2000, he served as vice president for the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, a political action committee that promoted the implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. During 2003–2004, he served as deputy to Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. For the 2005 election, he helped to organize voting for Iraqis living in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Before leaving Iraq and seeking political asylum in the United States in 1990, Mr. Qanbar served for five years in the Iraqi Air Force during the Iran-Iraq War. He was arrested in 1987 for suspected activities against Saddam’s regime.

Rend Rahim was the ambassador-designate of Iraq to the United States until October 2004. She is a founding member of the Iraq Foundation, and previously acted as its executive director. In that capacity, she worked extensively with the Iraqi community in northern Iraq and in exile and traveled to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq on numerous occasions. Ms. Rahim was the editor of Iraqi Issues, the Foundation’s periodical from 1992–1998.  She has published many essays and articles on Iraq, including a chapter titled “The Iraqi Opposition” in Iraq After the Gulf War (ZED Books, 1994); “Iraq: Race for the Finish Line” in Middle East Insight; and “The Iraqi Opposition and the Sanctions Issue” in Middle East Report. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the Boston Globe. She is the coauthor of a book titled The Arab Shi’a (St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

Judy Van Rest is the executive vice president for the International Republican Institute (IRI). Previously, she served as senior advisor for governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad. She also served as CPA’s director of the Office of Democratic Initiatives, coordinating programs ranging from election administration, civic education, political party building, women’s leadership training, and non-governmental organization development to local government, media infrastructure building, and transparency in government and civil society. Ms. Van Rest has also been the director for management and chief information officer and regional director for the Europe, Mediterranean, and Asia region at the Peace Corps. Prior to the Peace Corps, she served as regional director for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) programs at IRI. Ms. Van Rest was chief of staff for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and has held management positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Smithsonian Institution, and the Republican National Committee.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI, focusing on Arab democracy and domestic politics in Iran and Iraq. Before returning to AEI, Mr. Rubin was a political adviser in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and an assistant on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He was a visiting lecturer on international relations and history at Hebrew University (Jerusalem) from 2001–2002 and at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok (Iraqi Kurdistan) from 2000–2001. From 1999–2000, he was a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting lecturer in history at Yale University.  His most recent book, Eternal Iran, co-authored with Patrick Clawson, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in November.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al Samaraie is a Sunni cleric at Baghdad’s Um al-Qura mosque. He is also a member of the Muslim Scholars Association.

Ammar al Shahbander joined the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) as the Iraq Country Director in April 2004. He has previously worked as the Iraq Foundation’s programmes coordinator in Iraq and prior to that as the assistant manager of the Iraq Information Network. Al Shahbander has been covering the crisis in the Middle East with focus on Iraq for many years. He is currently the Iraq Program Coordinator, holding the overall responsibility for all of IWPR’s activities in Iraq.

Mustafa Safwat Rashid Sidqi is a member of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq. He is an attorney and the founder of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization, which prosecuted abuse of power claims against the regional government.

Zainab Al-Suwaij is the co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a post-September 11th social activist organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that works to foster tolerance, promote civil society and civil rights, and mobilize a moderate voice in the American Muslim community. After fleeing Iraq following the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein (in which she participated), she worked as a refugee case manager for Interfaith Refugee Ministry. She continues to be an outspoken social activist and positive voice in the Muslim community. Ms. Al-Suwaij’s writings on Iraq, Muslim women, and Islam have appeared in the the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, the Boston Globe, and the Houston Chronicle. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio, CNN, Fox News, and other national media outlets. She has been a teaching fellow in Arabic at Yale University. In 2004, Ms. Al-Suwaij received a commendation from Los Angeles County in recognition of community service and civic pride in the benefit of all citizens.

Qubad J. Talabani serves as the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the United States. In spring 2003, he served for one year as a senior foreign relations officer for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraq, working closely with the U.S-led Coalition Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA); he was also the PUK’s top liaison to the Coalition after it became the Coalition Provisional Authority.  Mr. Talabani was a key PUK negotiator during the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL).  He also acted as a liaison officer between the PUK and U.S. forces in Iraq. From 2001 until spring 2003, Mr. Talabani served as the deputy representative of the PUK in Washington, D.C. 

Abdul Aziz al Wandawi is a member of the De-Baathification Committee. A former engineer, he participated in the drafting of the Iraqi constitution.