Syria: Who Will Win the Future?

The Henriette van Lynden lecture 'Syria: Who Will Win the Future?' organised by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was held on Thursday, November 9th, at the Rode Hoed, Amsterdam. Nikolaos van Dam, Hadi Al Bahra, and Ibrahim Hamidi shared their views on the topic and participated in a panel discussion. Nikolaos van Dam Nikolaos van Dam is a specialist on Syria who served as Dutch Special Envoy for Syria in 2015-16. He previously served as Ambassador of the Netherlands to Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq. He is the author of Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria (2017), and of The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba’th Party (4th edition 2011). Hadi Al Bahra Hadi Al Bahra is an engineer by training who is a member of the Syrian opposition movement and was the President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC) from July 2014 until January 2015. He has been working with the opposition inside Syria, and has been contributing to media outreach as well as to political and relief activities ever since the Syrian revolution erupted. Ibrahim Hamidi Ibrahim Hamidi is a Syrian journalist and senior editor Syrian affairs for Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in London. He was previously Bureau Chief for Al-Hayat in Damascus, and contributes regularly to a variety of international media outlets and think tanks. Hamidi's work focuses on strategic issues in the Middle East, and on Syria's internal and regional politics in particular. He is a co-founder of the Syrian Studies Center at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and of the Arab Investigative Journalism Program.