Speaker biographies
Larry Crandall is a contractor with the U.S. Department of State. In 2006, he was on assignment with the U.S. Embassy in Iraq to design a demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration program that would treat the problems of both the militias and insurgent groups. Prior to this position, he served as the deputy director for the Program Management Office with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Crandall has more than thirty years’ experience in developing and managing large and politically complex development programs throughout the world, including lengthy assignments in the former Soviet Union, Haiti, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh.
Michael Eisenstadt is a senior fellow and director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is also a reserve officer in the United States Army, in which he served on active duty at Central Command and on the joint staff during the planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2000–01. He also acted as an advisor to the Department of State’s Future of Iraq Defense Policy working group. Prior to his work at the Washington Institute, Mr. Eisenstadt worked as a civilian military analyst with the Army. He is an expert in Persian Gulf and Arab-Israeli security affairs, and has published numerous articles and monographs on U.S. strategy in the Middle East, regional security, and the armed forces of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.
Ali Latif is a former exile from Iraq and a fellow with the Baghdad Institute for Public Policy Research. He is the chairman of the Iraqi Prospect Organization, an Iraq-based nongovernmental organization which seeks to educate young Iraqis about democratic values and civil society in order to increase their participation in the political process.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar in foreign policy studies at AEI, where he studies Arab democracy, Kurdish society, and domestic politics in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Prior to joining AEI, he served as a political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from 2003 to 2004. Previously, he was a staff advisor for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during 2002–2004. He is currently the editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
Larry Sampler is a research staff member with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Virginia. In 2006, he worked on projects related to U.S. government interagency collaboration, responses to illicit power structures in fragile states, capacity-building in the West Bank and Gaza, and non-military contributions to the global war on terror. He was recently on assignment at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, where he worked as a senior executive service advisor to the ambassador on reconciliation and demilitarization. From 2002–05, Mr. Sampler served as the chief of staff for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, a flag-level position. Prior to that assignment, he was a consultant to the Afghan government in support of the Afghan Constitutional loya jirga (similar to a consultative assembly). In 2002, he performed a similar role for the U.S. Agency for International Development, in support of the Afghan emergency loya jirga, for which he was awarded the Constitutional Medal by Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
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