Vizier Consulting, LLC provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. Our research products harness structured analytic techniques and cutting-edge, open source tradecraft to produce analysis that is accurate, clear, and textured. We offer a range of services, including custom political risk analysis, curriculum development, expert training, and strategic communications guidance.
Good tradecraft separates quality analysis from the poor. It reduces the likelihood of error and results in a product that intellectually empowers the customer.
Analytical mistakes can be costly. An incorrect assessment of security risk could put your personnel in harm’s way. A misunderstanding of changing legal or regulatory dynamics could jeopardize your investments. And conforming to the negative consensus could blind you to opportunities your competitors might exploit first.
The hallmarks of our work: structured analytic techniques, quality sourcing, clear writing, and open communication with the client. The end result: analysis that provides warning of threats and alerts the customer to potential opportunities.
Good data is increasingly free, but distinguishing signals from noise and fact from fiction requires expertise.
From public databases to social media, open source data is increasingly ubiquitous and often unstructured. Making sense of it requires the right methodology or tradecraft.
Good analytic tradecraft — paired often with open source or proprietary software — enables one to assess the reliability of sources, distinguish the signals from the noise, and separate valid information from disinformation. All of our products utilize industry-standard structured analytic techniques, such as key assumptions and quality of information checks.
President
Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.
Rafiq was a weekly columnist with Pakistan’s Express Tribune, a leading Pakistani English-language daily, and a Pakistan analyst on the nationally syndicated John Batchelor radio program.
A frequent contributor to print and web publications, he writes regularly for The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest. Rafiq has contributed to the Christian Science Monitor, Daily Beast, and the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he worked for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and public relations firms Burson-Marsteller and Ruder Finn.
From 2011-13, Rafiq was listed by Foreign Policy as one of its top 100 foreign affairs commentators on Twitter. He received an MA in Arab Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.