Speaker biographies

Salah al-Bandar is the secretary general of the Gulf Centre for Democratic Development in London. He is also a writer on political affairs and a community rights activist. Dr. al-Bandar lived in Bahrain from 1990–2006 and worked as a consultant in the government’s Cabinet Affairs Ministry and statistics agency. In September 2006, two months before Bahrain’s parliamentary elections, he disseminated a 240-page report accusing the Sunni-led government of fomenting sectarian strife and conspiring against the country’s Shiite majority. Bahrain’s public prosecutor’s office charged al-Bandar with sedition and “working against the interests of Bahrain.” Authorities expelled him from the country on September 13, 2006. Dr. al-Bandar has lectured extensively on political Islam, community empowerment, and race relations. Over the past twenty years, he has worked in different capacities with national, regional, and international nongovernmental organizations on issues related to group rights, conflict resolution, and development.

Abdul Hadi Al-Khawaja is a human rights activist and executive director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) in Bahrain. On September 24, 2004, he voiced strong criticisms of Bahrain’s prime minister and the government’s economic and human rights records while speaking at a BCHR conference on poverty. In response, the government arrested him and closed the BCHR’s offices. Mr. Al-Khawaja appeared in court and was charged with “inciting hatred of the state, defamation, [and] spreading false information designed to destabilize public security.” Hundreds of people demonstrated and called for his release. He received a one-year prison sentence but was immediately pardoned by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The BCHR has continued to stand for human rights and recently launched an English-language website.

Toby Jones is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and visiting assistant professor in the history department at Swarthmore College. His main research interests include the history of state-building, politics, and Shiite-Sunni relations in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Before joining the history department at Swarthmore, he served as the Persian Gulf analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004–06, in which capacity he wrote about reform and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report, Foreign Affairs, and the Arab Reform Bulletin. He is currently revising a book manuscript on state-building and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Jones has lived and worked extensively in the Middle East, spending several years in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain.

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, D.C. and the Middle East.

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