PHILADELPHIA – March 31, 2026 – The Middle East Forum (MEF) today announced the appointment of Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi as director of its new Syria office. Based in Aleppo, Al-Tamimi produces in-depth field reports that provide objective, on-the-ground coverage of Syria’s political transition—with a particular focus on the status of the country’s religious and ethnic minorities—to inform policymakers and wider audiences during this critical juncture in post-Assad Syria.
Al-Tamimi’s January 2026 field report from the Kurdish region of Afrin received widespread acclaim for its balanced assessment of efforts to secure the return of Kurdish inhabitants displaced during Turkey’s 2018 invasion, while also documenting ongoing challenges, including the lingering presence of former Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” networks and the precarious situation facing the region’s Yezidi minority. More recently, Al-Tamimi authored an in-depth eyewitness report for the Middle East Quarterly on the Twelver Shia minority villages of Nubl and al-Zahra in the Aleppo countryside, examining how these isolated communities are navigating the post-Assad period.
“Aymenn is one of the few analysts working today who combines genuine Arabic-language fluency, deep archival expertise, and a willingness to spend extended periods in difficult and sometimes dangerous field conditions,” said Jonathan Spyer, MEF’s director of research and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. “His appointment gives the Forum a permanent, credible presence inside Syria at a time when most organizations are relying on remote analysis. The quality of his Afrin and Nubl reports speaks for itself—this is the kind of rigorous, ground-level work that is simply unavailable anywhere else.”
“Syria’s transition will be defined by whether its minorities—Kurds, Yezidis, Twelver Shia, Christians, Druze, Alawites—are protected or erased,” said Gregg Roman, MEF’s executive director. “We opened our Syria office because the decisions being made right now in Aleppo, Afrin, and the countryside will determine whether this transition produces a pluralistic state or a new form of sectarian consolidation. Aymenn’s work ensures that those decisions are documented, analyzed, and placed in front of the people who can act on them.”
Al-Tamimi is a historian, Arabic translator, and analyst. A graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford University, he earned his Ph.D. from Swansea University, where his dissertation on historical narratives in Islamic State propaganda received the James Callaghan Thesis Prize for best doctoral thesis in 2024–25. His research focuses primarily on Iraq, Syria, and jihadist groups, and he maintains a widely cited archive of internal Islamic State administrative documents. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Agence France-Presse, among other outlets. His published works include a translation and study of Fatḥ al-Andalus (Routledge, 2025).
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For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman
Roman@MEForum.org
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