Author Biography
Norman Cigar holds a DPhil from Oxford (St Antony’s College) in Oriental Studies, where he worked on eighteenth-century Morocco. He taught in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin, conducted additional research in Morocco, and published various studies on that country’s history. His subsequent career was with the U.S. Department of Defense. He retired as Director of Regional Studies and the Minerva Research Chair from the U.S. Marine Corps University, where he previously also taught military theory, operational case studies, insurgency warfare, strategy and policy, and Middle East regional studies at the School of Advanced Warfighting and at the Command and Staff College. In an earlier assignment, he was the Army’s senior political-military staff officer in the Pentagon responsible for the Middle East in the Office of the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence and supported the Secretary of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and Congress with intelligence. He also represented the Army on national-level intelligence issues in the interagency intelligence community. In another assignment, he was Director of the Army’s Psychological Operations Strategic Studies Detachment responsible for the Middle East and Africa at Fort Bragg. He has been a consultant on multiple occasions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague and was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution, George Mason University. He has written extensively on issues in the Middle East and the Balkans. Dr. Cigar also holds an M.I.A. from the School of International and Public Affairs and a Certificate from the Middle East Institute, Columbia University; and an M.S. in Strategic Intelligence (with a focus on the Soviet Union) from the Defense Intelligence College. He has studied, conducted research, and traveled widely in the Middle East.