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International Centre for Defence and Security Accessibility

Omar Ashour

Professor of Security & Military Studies

Dr Omar 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 a non-resident senior fellow at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (Ukraine). His current research projects focus on comparative combat effectiveness and small(er) state defence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Prof Ashour is the author of How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (2021, translated into Ukrainian and Arabic) and The De-Radicalization of Jihadists (2009). He is the editor of Bullets to Ballots: Collective De-Radicalisation of Armed Movements, which has also been translated into Ukrainian and Arabic. Previously, Prof Ashour served as a Reserve Officer and a Senior Consultant for the UN. He contributes regularly to media outlets. 
Updated: March 11, 2025

Agenda

The Middle East’s Dangerous New Normal
LMC 2025
A Play of Hopes and Fears: Military Lessons from Ukraine
LMC 2023

Articles

Nothing Is Forever Lost: Ukraine’s Multi-Domain Resistance and the Future of Peace

Over the past eleven years, Ukraine’s resistance movement has matured into a hybrid, multi-domain defence ecosystem operating deep within occupied territory and, increasingly, across the border inside Russia itself. What began as a series of loosely coordinated and under-resourced acts of defiance in 2014 has…

Omar Ashour
LMC 2025

In the news

British-Canadian Expert Advising Polish and Ukrainian Authorities: The Israel-Hamas War Holds Lessons for Baltic Defense

The Baltic Sentinel, June 7, 2025

Poolakaid ja ukrainlasi nõustav sõjandusekspert: ​Hamasi ettevalmistus võiks olla õppetund ka Eestile

Postimees, June 7, 2025