Arif Rafiq was a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, a political risk advisory company focused on the Middle East and South Asia. 

Rafiq’s research interests include economic connectivity, great power competition, political reform, religious extremism, and terrorism in South Asia. He is the author of grant-funded studies on the economic, political, and strategic implications of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Sunni-Shia sectarian violence in Pakistan. Rafiq has written for numerous publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Los Angeles Times, POLITICO Magazine, The National Interest, and The New Republic. He is regularly quoted by major news outlets, including the Financial Times and The New York Times. And he has appeared on broadcast outlets such as Al Jazeera English, the BBC World Service, and WNYC radio.

Rafiq has been a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. Previously, he worked for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and leading public relations firms Burson-Marsteller and Ruder Finn. He received an MA in Arab Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.