Youssef Aboul-Enein

Cdr. Youssef Aboul-Enein served in the U.S. Navy for 28 years from 1994 to 2022.

His deployments span the First Liberian Civil War in 1996, the Balkans, and Southern Watch.

During the first seven years, Youssef was a medical planner charged with getting injured evacuees, Marines, and sailors on an operating table as quickly as possible.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Youssef was at the Pentagon waiting for the 9:40 shuttle to take him to Bolling Air Force Base. American Flight 77 crashed into the building at 9:37.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, there was a dire need for Arabic linguists, and the remainder of Youssef’s active-duty career refocused on the Global War on Terrorism. He served as Director for North Africa and Egypt, as well as Assistant Director for Arabian Gulf Affairs for four years (2002-2006) at the Office of the Secretary of Defense when the late Donald Rumsfeld, was Defense Secretary.

He then joined the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired from the agency in 2022, as the subject matter expert and senior counter-terrorism advisor on Violent Jihadi Groups and the Middle East. He has trained thousands of men and women for assignment to the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia, including serving as a graduate level instructor at the National Defense University and National Intelligence University.

Upon retirement from active duty, he continues to train men and women of our armed forces as a contractor.

Youssef is the author and co-author of seven books, five of which are with Naval Institute Press.

He is best known for the books “Militant Islamist Ideology” (Naval Institute Press, 2010), which was named among the top 150 most influential books on terrorism by the peer-reviewed journal Perspectives on Terrorism and “Middle East 101” (Naval Institute Press, 2019), which was named essential 2020 summer reading by the Military Officers Association of America Magazine, Military Officer.

Youssef is a member of Francis Scott Key Post 11 in Frederick, Md., where he uses the reading room to study and work on his doctorate degree in organizational leadership from nearby Hood College.