About

I’m co-founder and Executive Director of Kawaakibi Foundation, a MENA-centered human rights organisation. We work on long-term systems change and collective liberation in the MENA region, by envisioning and implementing projects that have a potentially revolutionary impact on the state of human rights.

Our disinformation research program exposed how authoritarian governments use online disinformation as a tool to influence the policy and actions of allies, shift domestic public opinion, and hound or intimidate dissent. The most high-profile examples of this include the Saudi government’s hack of Jeff Bezos to attempt to quell reporting on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (through the Washington Post, which he owned), and influence operations to dilute human rights standards and attract western support for regional dictatorships through the Abrahamic Accords with Israel. This work informed policy decisions at major tech platforms, as well as the European Union.

I also led Shefa, our pioneering program to develop a culturally grounded and highly-effective protocol for trauma recovery in activists. It has supported the successful recovery of dozens of frontline activists, helping rebuild the personal resilience that underpins sustained civic action.

I’m a strategic advisor at the Albert Einstein Institution, where we study and educate on what makes strategic nonviolent action more effective and form part of a recursive link between research and frontline movements. I joined the organisation after the passing of its founder, the legendary nonviolent action theorist Dr Gene Sharp, when its continued existence was in question. Alongside the Executive Director I worked on developing the organisation’s future strategy, recruiting senior staff, fundraising, and planning and implementing new projects, including the People-Powered Training Platform and a new program on inorporating Unarmed Civilian-Based Defense into defense policy.

My book, The Middle East Crisis Factory, is a primer on our region’s past and how the vicious cycle of terrorism, tyranny and foreign intervention was born, as well as how we can build a better future.

Before all of this I was a mechanical engineer, doing product design/development in both startups and FTSE500 companies.

Consulting

I’ve spent over a decade dealing with problems in the context of starting and building organisations. I enjoy helping others resolve problems in the areas I’ve spent a lot of time on, particularly:

• Political Consulting. I study the behaviour of authoritarian states, disinformation, human rights in the MENA region, and how these intersect with foreign policy, digital security practices for individuals and small teams.

• Organisational Consulting. ⁠My expertise is in helping young or growing organisations develop, with all that it entails from the simple problems of institutionalising efficient processes to big-picture strategy development and developing organisational culture. Areas of particular interest are transition to remote or asynchronous work, developing or improving of organisational workflows and processes, and knowledge management for expert teams with high-levels of information flow.

• Overcoming Financial Barriers One of the greatest issues normally facing building or growing an organization outside of Western developed nations is access to the ability to freely transfer money - whether due to banking regulations, undeveloped banking sector, foreign funding laws or otherwise. I’ve repeatedly had to solve these problems in different contexts, and implement solutions or deliver training to other organisations fairly regularly.

If you think my experience fits the problems you’re facing well, then I’ll probably enjoy helping you solve your problems. Get in touch on ahmed [at] gatnash.com.