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Oula Alnashar Alrifai [1] ( Arabic: علا الرفاعي; born September 12, 1986) is a Syrian emigrant to the United States and writer for various Washington-based think tanks.
Oula is a co-founder and executive director of SANAD Syria. [2] She was featured with her family in The Washington Post [3] newspaper on an account of their activism and support for rebels in the Syrian civil war. Alrifai is Ammar Abdulhamid's step-daughter. Alrifai with her parents (Ammar Abdulhamid and Khawla Yusuf) and her brother Mouhanad sought political asylum in Washington, D.C., in 2005. [4] She is currently a senior fellow [5] at Washington Institute for Near East Policy. [6] [7] Alrifai has been published in the most prestigious American magazines including Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, [8] CNN [9] The National Interest, The Hill, and CTC Sentinel. Her research and policy analysis focus on Syria and the Middle East. [10] Oula became a U.S. citizen in 2016. [11] In 2018, she released her documentary, Tomorrow's Children. [12] [13]
In December 2011 Alrifai received her B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park in Government and Politics and Middle East studies, where she was awarded the full-tuition Academic Excellence Scholarship until her graduation. [14] [15] Alrifai is a member of the National Political Science Honor Society ( Pi Sigma Alpha) and a member of the International Honor Society ( Phi Theta Kappa). Alrifai holds a Master of Arts in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. [16] Her thesis, The Self-Flagellation of a Nation: Assad, Iran, and Regime Survival in Syria, focuses on the development of the Iranian-Syrian relationship in the 1970s and 1980s through the lens of religio-political dynamics. It is now available at Harvard Library. [17]
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