Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where he is the Director of the Syria and Counterterrorism programs. His work focuses on all-things Syria and on issues of terrorism and insurgency across the Levant. At MEI, Lister directs two major international initiatives focused on Syria. The "Resolving the Detainee Crisis" initiative seeks to help the international community resolve the unprecedented challenges associated with the detention of 10,000 terrorist fighters and 45,000 associated people in northeast Syria. More than 40 governments and INGOs have engaged in high-level multilateral talks in London, Washington D.C, Vienna and Malta, resulting in decisive policy progress. The "Syria Strategy Project" is coordinating discussions involving 100 subject matter experts and 25 governments and Syrian governing entities aimed at developing a holistic and realistic multilateral approach to resolving Syria’s long-running crisis. Prior to joining MEI, Lister was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Consultant to the Syria Track II Dialogue Initiative, in which he managed three years of intensive face-to-face engagement with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups. He previously held other positions at the Brookings Institution and IHS Jane’s in London, UK. Lister’s critically acclaimed book, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press. He has also published The Islamic State: A Brief Introduction and Winning the Battle, Losing the War: Addressing the Drivers of Non-State Armed Actors and Extremist Groups. He is working on a fourth book on Syria, commissioned by Oxford University Press.