Rep. Mike Lawler questions Syrian civil society leader and human rights activist, Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, at the Helsinki Commission Hearing: Putin’s Syrian Puppet - War Crimes and Complicity from Syria to Ukraine.
Chapters
00:00 - Questioning by Rep. Mike Lawler
00:19 - Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council
Mohammed Alaa Ghanem is the Senior Political Adviser, Government Relations Director, and Strategist for the Syrian American Council in Washington D.C. Ghanem is a Syrian academic, human rights activist, pro-democracy campaigner, and a former editor at the digital platform that issued the original call for peaceful protests in Syria. An early pioneer of organized Syrian American political advocacy, he currently serves as the policy chief for the American Coalition for Syria (ACS), an umbrella group of eight specialized, multi-faith, regional and US-based organizations. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN among many others. A native of Damascus, he is a former assistant professor at the University of Damascus and an alum of Harvard and Columbia universities.
Ghanem previously served as a professor at the University of Damascus, and has been involved in the Syrian Revolution since its early days as a peaceful protest movement. His work connects U.S. policy-makers and the Syrian-American community with the revolution inside Syria. Utilizing his extensive network of contacts at all levels of the Syrian opposition, he frequently travels to the liberated parts of Syria, participates in international conferences on Syria, and advises local administrative councils in liberated areas across Syria on international relations. In early 2013, he participated in monitoring the elections of the first democratically elected government in Aleppo. Ghanem is also a fellow with the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies. At SCPSS, he has been involved in SCPSS’ Syria Transition Roadmap, an ambitious post-Assad transition project. He holds a master’s degree in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He’s frequently quoted in the media, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Politico, the Daily Beast, the Hill, the New York Post, the Huffington Post, Syria Deeply, and the Atlantic Council MENASource. He has appeared on CNN, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, HuffPost, RT, and CCTV America.
