Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid discusses the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan with Charlie Rose. This video is a timely summary of the region’s difficulties.

Tags: Afghanistan, Pakistan, International Security, News

In this video from the Frontline Club reporter Hamida Ghafour and author Ahmed Rashid discuss if the Taliban are set to regain control in Afghanistan or if they are they being slowly marginalised.

Tags: Analysis, Afghanistan

The Human Security Brief 2007 has been released. It challenges the conventional doom and gloom we've become so used to hearing. Maybe, just maybe, the voices of reason are winning.

You can also listen to a webcast of Andrew Mack's press conference to discuss the report. Sorry but you'll need RealPlayer. Note to UN - why can't you use a non-proprietary format?

Tags: Analysis

The Insurgency Research Group has an excellent analysis of the significance of the Taliban attack on Sunday's Afghan National Day parade. The whole post is worth reading but don't do it yet. Read the following paragraph first and then watch the No Comment TV video.

The incident on Sunday demonstrates a classic propaganda of the deed partnership in which the insurgents with growing skill select a media-significant target and with witless incomprehension international reporters beam the most sensationally damning images of the event around the world so as to deliver the worst possible interpretation. There is no need for a Taliban subtext or even a photo caption, the images speak powerfully for themselves sending messages of a stricken regime put to flight in their gilded uniforms by the daring fighters of the Taliban.

OK. Now go ahead and read the whole post.

Tags: Afghanistan, Analysis, News, video

For a brief period, while I was an analyst, I worked for a General who was inclined to say, “tell me what you know, tell me what you think you know, and tell me what you don’t know”. Of course he missed a category of information. It was what we later came to call the ”unknown unknown”. Nicholas Taleb refers to this category of information as silent evidence. It is the vast body of information that we are not aware of, and even worse, are not aware that we are not aware of it.

Does this matter to the NGO security analyst? Of course! If we fail to acknowledge the existence of silent evidence we fool ourselves into believing we know the world better than we really do. We track incidents and develop models to try and predict the future without thought to how incomplete our models are. Worse, if we are naïve enough to believe our models we unknowingly leave ourselves exposed to future unknown risks.

Lesson Learned: I don’t know as much as I think I do. No matter how much information I have the vast bulk of it, the hidden silent evidence, remains below the surface. From this morass of unseen circumstance can spring forth all manner of unanticipated surprises.

Tags: risk, Black Swan

Over the past few weeks I've been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable". It has been a very difficult read for me. Not so much because his ideas are complicated... they are, but Taleb explains them very well. No, my difficulty has been that the book challenges, even destroys, ideas that I have long held dear.

I've learned (maybe I should say I'm trying to learn) a lot from Black Swan. Taleb's ideas are changing my view of the nature of knowledge, analysis, and prediction. Over the next few posts I hope to outline some of the lessons that I think NGO security officers can take from this book. It won't be easy and I'm sure that I'll get a lot wrong.

For this post however, I'll take the easy way out. This video clip is of the Taleb himself, explaining the term "Black Swan".

Tags: risk, video, Black Swan