Biography

Ghassan Schbley is a Project Associate at the RAND Corporation working on issues related to terrorist and extremist organizations in the Middle East and Africa. Mr. Schbley is currently involved in a study that analyzes the growing presence of Salafist-Jihadists groups and other Islamic organizations in the Levant. He recently completed a study that analyzed the provision of social services and economic activities of Islamic groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. Before Joining RAND, he was at the Nixon Center where his primary source research supported a study on extremism in the Middle East, including social and economic factors in the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, he interned at the Economic section of the US Mission to the European Union with the US State Department. There, he analyzed European Union Supply Chain Security initiatives and assisted in the organization of a counter-terrorism financing conference. In 2004, he worked as a Finance Assistant at the United Nations Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo where he dealt with the financial aspect of the UN activities in the Region. He holds a Master of Philosophy in Economics from the Free University of Brussels and a Master of Arts in International Politics from the European Center of Strategic and International Research. He is a native Arabic and French speaker.