The work starts where institutions stop seeing clearly. A legitimacy collapse traced across fifteen years of survey data. A nine-figure acquisition with sanctioned actors buried four layers deep. A disinformation network in a kinetic conflict zone traced to state and non-state operators. The analytical infrastructure to see it before it surfaces — and the tools to keep seeing it after.
That gap is where legitimacy erodes, where illicit actors operate, and where policy fails. I measure it, trace who exploits it, and build the tools to see it in real time.
Some projects are redacted for confidentiality. Method and impact are described at the level I can share publicly. Additional details available on request.
Formal vs. informal institution gap · TAF Survey of the Afghan People
The Asia Foundation's Survey of the Afghan People is the most comprehensive longitudinal civilian survey ever conducted in a conflict zone. Fielded annually from 2006 to 2021, it surveyed 148,196 Afghans on security, governance, corruption, ethnic identity, and institutional trust.
This project involved cleaning the full fifteen-wave dataset and building an analytical platform from scratch: province-level panel analysis, survey-weighted regression, and external data integration. The goal was to trace the legitimacy competition between the Afghan state and the Taliban across its entire arc.
The finding: the Taliban didn't win a military war. They won a social contract competition. The state never closed the implementation gap between what its formal institutions promised and what they delivered.
Dashboard access: The analytical platform is available for demonstration to research partners, commissioners, and editorial teams. Request a walkthrough →
Four findings from the TAF Survey that the standard policy metrics missed.
State court satisfaction never exceeded 20% across any wave or province grouping. Taliban dispute resolution reached 78.8% by Wave 15 in Taliban-present areas. This is the implementation gap: formal institutions failing to deliver where informal ones already did.
Personal security perception decline preceded governance legitimacy collapse by 2–3 survey waves in southern provinces. Security was a leading indicator; governance legitimacy was lagging.
Pashtun respondents showed the widest and most persistent gap between state legitimacy scores and Taliban support proxies across all fifteen waves. Aggregate "Afghan opinion" is analytically meaningless: it averages over communities running fundamentally different calculations.
Opium cultivation intensity correlates with general institutional distrust (p<0.001) for state courts and community institutions equally. The causal substitution theory — that the Taliban displaced state institutions — fails the falsification test.
Reusable analytical infrastructure — transparent in methodology, operable without me in the room.
Adapted Groseclose-Milyo framework for measuring media ecosystem polarization and predicting conflict likelihood. Supports custom data input for any country or conflict zone.
Launch Tool →Quantify and rank narco-trafficking and arms trafficking supply routes using weighted OSINT indicators. Route comparison, sensitivity analysis, and severity classification for operational prioritization.
Launch Tool →Available for commissioned analysis, investigation subcontracts, custom tool development, research collaboration, and advisory retainers. Dashboard demonstrations by arrangement.