In 2005 he founded and continues to direct IBI Consultants, LLC, a national security consulting firm specializing in field research on security challenges, transnational organized crime, extra-regional actors and the rise of authoritarianism in Latin America. Its clients have included different departments of the U.S. government, NATO governments, think tanks including CSIS, the Atlantic Council and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the private sector. He is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed academic studies and two books.
From September 2013 to September 2022, Farah was a contract subject-matter expert for the Department of Defense and a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University. He led the Western Hemisphere Illicit Network Review Project, a nine-person regional team specializing in field research and mapping transnational criminal networks and extra-regional actors. In that capacity, he frequently briefed research findings across senior levels of the Department of Defense, interagency and intelligence communities.
Farah frequently guest lectures at universities in North and South America, as well as to senior military, government and business audiences. He has testified before Congress 15 times. For the two decades before founding IBI Consultants, he worked as a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post, covering civil wars in Central America, conflict and organized crime in South America, blood diamond and gold wars in West Africa, and illicit financial flows.