Speaker Biographies
January 13, 2006
Redouane Boudjema is a longtime human rights activist and reformist in Algeria. He is a journalist from for the daily El Youm.
Hafez Abdo Al-Bukari is Chairman of Yemeni Center for Polling & Communications Research (MARAYA), which he established in September 2004. He is also the secretary general of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, the regional manager of Okaz Saudi, and a member of the freedom committee of the Federation of Arab Journalists. A longtime freelance writer, Mr. Al-Bukari was previously a correspondent for Okaz Saudi newspaper. He was also director of foreign media affairs in the information department of the Yemeni prime minister’s office and the director of the training department at the Arabic Democratic Institute.
Rola Dashti is head of an international consultancy firm in Kuwait, focusing on issues of privatization and activation of SME’s to put Kuwait’s economy on par with modern economic structures worldwide. She has previously worked in business development; strategic planning; and project analysis, evaluation, and management. Ms. Dashti has held key positions in research and development institutions such as the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research. She has worked with major financial and development institutions locally and internationally, where she was a senior economist at the National Bank of Kuwait and the World Bank. She also managed the contracts on behalf of the government of Kuwait for the Emergency and Reconstruction Program during the post-invasion- liberation period in 1990 to 1991. Ms. Dashti is also a board member of the Kuwait Economic Society, the Center for Strategic and Future Studies, and the Al-Fatat Club. She is a leading activist for gender equity in the State of Kuwait. Her case was the first in the history of Kuwait to reach the constitutional courts, where she contested the constitutionality of Kuwaiti election law.
Mohamed Eljahmi is a senior software engineer with over twenty-two years of experience in the software industry, where he has worked in design and in development of software applications. He is a Co-Founder and former member of the Board of Directors for the American Libyan Freedom Alliance (ALFA), and he has coordinated communications and public relations for the organization. ALFA was founded to promote representative democracy in Libya. His work within ALFA was focused on creating a pro-American political agenda. Mohamed has lived in the U.S. since 1978 and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1990.
Neila Charchour Hachicha is the founder of Tunisia's Parti Libéral Méditerranéen. Born in Tunis in 1955 and trained as an architect, Ms. Hachicha is the daughter of the late Mahmoud Charchour, a prominent Tunisian diplomat and key figure in the ruling Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique (Constitutional Democratic Rally) party, long led by modernizing strongman Habib Bourguiba. Following Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 1987 seizure of power, Hachicha became increasingly active in opposition and has become one of Tunisia's chief dissident voices, using her Parti Libéral Méditerranéen platform to advocate for an end to the one-party state and for the establishment of a democratic, multiparty liberal system in its place
Ali Saif Hassan is executive director of the Political Development Forum in Sanaa, Yemen. He is also advisor to the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. An independent political and human rights activist, Mr. Hassan renounced his membership in the Unionist Nasserite Party, where he had held a number of prominent positions, most recently assistant secretary general of the party. Previously, he worked as an executive manager for a number of companies in the private and public sectors.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies (ICDS), based in Cairo. The Ibn Khaldun Center is focused on democratization and the role of civil society organizations. On July 29, 2002, Mr. Ibrahim and four Ibn Khaldun Center co-defendants were sentenced to harsh prison terms for their work on voter education and election monitoring (after their third trial). He was recently released by the Egyptian high court. Mr. Ibrahim has long been a proponent of strengthening Egypt’s democracy. The repeated persecution of Mr. Ibrahim and his Ibn Khaldun co-defendants received massive media attention; as a result, over $30 million in aid from the U.S. government to Egypt was withheld.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. 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. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington and the Middle East.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Between 2002 and 2004, Mr. Rubin worked as a staff advisor for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in which capacity he was seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He has previously worked as a lecturer in history at Yale University, Hebrew University, and at three different universities in northern Iraq. Mr. Rubin is the coauthor (with Patrick Clawson) of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave, November 2005), and the author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Palgrave, 2001).
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