Oula A. Alrifai

Oula Alnashar Alrifai (Arabic: علا الرفاعي; born September 12, 1986) is a Syrian emigrant to the United States and writer for various Washington-based think tanks.^[1]

Oula is a co-founder and executive director of SANAD Syria.^[2][3] She was featured with her family in The Washington Post^[4] 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.^[5] She was a senior fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy.^[6][7] Alrifai has written for prestigious American magazines including Foreign Affairs,^[8] The Washington Post,^[9] CNN,^[10] The National Interest,^[11] The Hill,^[12] and CTC Sentinel.^[13] Her research and policy analysis focus on Syria and the Middle East.^[7] Oula became a U.S. citizen in 2016.^[14] In 2018, she released her documentary, Tomorrow's Children.^[15][16][17]

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.^[1][18] 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.^[19] 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.^[20]

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