Norman Cigar is a research fellow at the Marine Corps University (Quantico, Virginia). Before retiring, he was professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and also taught at the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting and at the National Defense Intelligence College. The author of numerous works on politics and security issues dealing with the Middle East and the Balkans, he has a strong academic background in Arabic. He has studied and traveled widely in the Middle East for the last forty years. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.