Loring:

Well, my own particular areas of operation are the North and South Caucasus,
Central Asia, and Pakistan/Afghanistan.  I have been working in all of these
areas since 1994, on security and commercial issues, and have spent
significant amounts of time throughout these regions.

Stratfor's work on the Caucasus and Central Asia - particularly with
reference to pipelines and Russian activity - was execrable.  Paper after
paper from them displayed a total lack of familiarity with the basics of how
pipeline construction is financed as well as the basics of oil and gas
exploration and development (this, mind you, from an organization based in
Texas); moreover, they also displayed a pronounced tendency to assume that
everything even slightly negative that happened anywhere in Central Asia was
as a result of Russian influence.  They rarely if ever displayed a
familiarity with local factors and often made little allowance for the
ability of locals to take actions on their own initiative.

I have been told that the bulk of Stratfor's analysis is done by
undergraduates and graduate students at UT Austin, and I find that
believable.  You do occasionally find issues where Stratfor's work is of
higher quality; this is almost always the work of a given individual and
serves as the exception that proves the rule.

Stratfor's failings are no worse than those of any medium-sized newspaper
organization; I do not mean to hold them to a higher standard.  But they
should be used with the same degree of caution that one would use with any
journalistic source.

RSB