Sami Moubayed

Sami Moubayed
Born	July 16, 1978 London
Occupation	Writer historian Journalist
Nationality	Syrian
Subjects	Syria and the Middle East
www.mideastviews.com

Sami Moubayed (سامي مبيض) is a Syrian political analyst, journalist, and author based in Damascus, Syria. He is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine, published in English in Syria since 2006. His articles on Middle East affairs have appeared in a variety of newspapers, including al-Ahram Weekly, al-Hayat, Gulf News, The Daily Star, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and Asia Times. He is a blogger with The Huffington Post and an online panelist with The Washington Post.

Biography

Sami Moubayed, a native of Damascus, studied at the Faculty of Political Science at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and obtained his PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, specializing in the founding years of the Syrian Republic. His first book, The Politics of Damascus 1920-1946 was published when he was a college student at AUB in 1998.

In 2000, Moubayed worked as a researcher at the Arab Political Document Center at AUB, and as a journalist with Beirut-based The Daily Star. When Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000, Moubayed wrote an open letter to Syria's new President Bashar al-Assad calling for the democratization of the Syrian state and then end of one-part rule under Baath. He was later appointed as The Daily Star's Damascus Correspondent to cover the early months of Assad's tenure and the Damascus Spring that took place in 2000-2001.

Between 2001-2004, Moubayed divided his time between Damascus, Beirut, and London, writing extensively on the Palestinian second intifada, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Despite years of tension and bad blood between Syrian authorities and Yasser Arafat, Moubayed stood up in defense of the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) after he was besieged at his Ramallah compound by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in March 2002.

Between 2005-2011, Moubayed taught at the Faculty of International Relations at the University of Kalamoon in Deir Atiyya, Syria, while serving on its Board of Trustees. He also served as Vice-President of Haykal Media, the publisher of Forward Magazine, which was founded by his colleague and college friend, Abdulsalam Haykal. He also served as a part-time consultant on historical documents, related to the Syrian-Israeli peace talks from 1949 to 2000 at the Syrian Presidency between December 2010 and June 2011.

Over the last 12-years, Moubayed has interviewed leading regional and international figures, like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Finnish President Tarja Halonen, Indian President Pratibha Patil, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, and Lebanese Presidents Elias Hrawi and Amin Gemayel. In December 2008, he was the first Syrian journalist to interview a US president, being ex-President Jimmy Carter, during the latter's visit to Damascus. The interview was published in Forward Magazine. He also interviewed bestselling Brazilian author Paolo Coelho, and Wikpedia founder Jimmy Wales, for Forward Magazine.

During the Arab Spring, Moubayed spoke in favor of the successive Arab uprisings and celebrated downfall of Egyptian President Husni Mubarak. He also wrote extensively against Libyan Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi and in support of the rebels.

Moubayed, long viewed as a supporter of the Assad regime, avoided writing on Syria during the first few months of the Syrian uprising. In July 2011, he wrote an article condemning the violence, supporting political reforms and openly calling for an end to 48-years of Baath Party rule. Moubayed wrote that, "Baath Party rule, as we have known it for 48 years, is practically over. The party simply cannot survive with the same tools, rhetoric and mechanisms that it has used to rule for nearly five decades." He also argued that a democracy, rather than military rule, is the only way to liberate the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Since August 2011, Moubayed has given no press interviews or TV appearances, writing occasionally, however, for The Huffington Post, Gulf News, and Asia Times.

Works

His works focus on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine. In 2004, along with pioneer Syrian web-designer Sahban Abd Rabbo, Moubayed co-founded www.syrianhistory.com, an online museum of Syrian history. It contains over 4,000 photographs, documents, and rare audiovisual material on Syria during the years 1900-2000. The website contains un-published audio clips from historical Syrian figures like president Adib al-Shishakli, Hashim al-Atassi, and Shukri al-Quwatli.

Moubayed has written much about pre-Baath Syria, and is a specialist on former Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, whose biography he authored in a book entitled The George Washington of Syria (Beirut, 2005). In 2007-2009, he worked on the script for a 30-episode TV series about the life of Quwatli, which never saw the light due to disagreement with Quwatli's family.

Selected works

He is the author of several books on modern Syria, including:

• The George Washington of Syria, (Beirut, 2005), a biography of Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli.

• Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship, (Maryland, 2000), the book covers the periods between 1949 and 1957, when ten coups shook Syria. Each attempt to overthrow the government was led by powers sympathetic to either the Soviet Union or the United States. The book claims ultimately that this destroyed Syria's chances for a stable democracy.

• Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000, (Cune Press, 2006), the book covers the Syrian nationalists who led the independence struggle against the French and the makers & shakers of post-1946 Syria, running up to 2000.

• Syria and the USA: From Wilson to Eisenhower, (IB Tauris, 2012) covering early Syrian-US relations during the years of the Mandate and throughout the FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower Administrations.

External links

• Sami Moubayed Homepage (Last Accessed: 1 April 2007)
• Forward Magazine
• The Washington Post, PostGlobal Panelist(Last Accessed: 1 April 2007)
• Articles from worldpoliticswatch(Last Accessed: 1 April 2007)
• Syria History Museum(Last Accessed: 1 April 2007)