Prof. Dr. Omar Ashour
Doha, Qatar
Prof. Dr. Omar-Oscar Armani-Ashour is a Professor of Security and Military Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar) and the University of Exeter (UK). He is the Director of the Strategic Studies Unit at the Centre for Research and Policy Studies and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (Ukraine).
He is the author of How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh University Press, 2021 – translated to Arabic in 2022 and Ukrainian in 2023) and The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (Routledge, 2009); and the editor of Bullets to Ballots: Collective De-Radicalisation of Armed Movements (Edinburgh University Press, 2021 – translated to Arabic in 2023 and to Ukrainian by 2025). Professor Ashour specialises in small state defence; combat effectiveness; military adaptations, innovations and transformations by state and non-state forces; weapon systems analysis; counterinsurgency and counterterrorism; and collective de-radicalization.
He has written tens of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on security and military affairs in the Middle East, the Post-Soviet Union Republics, and Europe. His scholarly publications appeared in Foreign Affairs, Terrorism and Political Violence, International Affairs, Parameters, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Middle East Journal, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Studies, and others academic journals. Prof. Ashour has also written over two hundred op-eds in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Globe and Mail, al-Jazeera.net, CNN.com, Project Syndicate, The Independent, The Middle East Eye and Ukrainian outlets such as New Voice of Ukraine and European Pravda.
His current research projects are focused on comparative combat effectiveness, and it includes two forthcoming studies titled “How Putin’s Army Fought like ISIS in Ukraine (2014-2022)” and “Comparative Combat Effectiveness and Military Lessons: Ukraine’s Regular Armed Forces (2014-2024)”.
