14 episodes
Guns for Hire Atlantic Council
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- Science
The Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it explores the causes and implications of the growing use of mercenaries in armed conflict. The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalisation of private warfare tells us about the world as we currently find it, but also about the future of the international system and about what war could look like in the coming decades. Written and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.
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Mercenary meatgrinder: The price of Bakhmut
Send Alia a Text MessageAlia is joined by the Russian reporter and photojournalist, David Frenkel, to consider the staggering toll of the “Bakhmut meatgrinder”– Russia’s bloodiest battle since the Second World War. They talk through his latest report from independent Russian news platform Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service, “The Price of Bakhmut”, and David’s methodology for determining which prisoners were recruited and from where. David also examines the numbers that were killed, the que...
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What makes Colombian mercenaries so interesting?
Send Alia a Text MessageHost Alia Brahimi speaks with Dr Andrés Macías, a Bogota-based expert on Colombian mercenaries. They begin by discussing the explosive case of 26 Colombian nationals arrested for their part in the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse. Andrés goes on to look at the thousands of Colombians who enlist under the banner of the UAE, what’s driving hundreds of Colombians to sign up to fight Russia in Ukraine, and what makes former Colombian soldie...
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American hit-squad in Yemen
Send Alia a Text MessageIn the season two opener of the Guns for Hire podcast, Alia chats with Emmy award-winning BBC investigative journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi about her film exposing American mercenaries in Yemen. One of the few journalists to report from Yemen first-hand, Nawal discusses the Delaware-registered PMC contracted by the UAE to kill “terrorists”, her meetings with two of the Americans involved, and the PMC’s training of Yemeni units – including former al-Qaeda operatives – ...
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Mercenaries and Gaza
Send Alia a Text MessageIn Episode 10 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Renad Mansour, an expert on Iraq, Iran and allied groups. As the region convulses from the war in Gaza, they begin by assessing reports that the Wagner Group has been tasked with transferring a Russian air defence system from Syria to Hizballah in Lebanon. They go on to discuss the rivalry between Russia and Iran in the Middle East, what is motivating the non-state actors leading the bid to...
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What's Charlie Sheen got to do with it?
Send Alia a Text MessageIn episode nine of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the Russia analyst Sergey Sukhankin about the 2019 arrest in Libya of the Wagner Group political operative Maksim Shugaley and the Russian propaganda campaign to free him. They discuss Russian political and media operations in Africa, from Libya to Madagascar, and how Russia fundamentally lacks the ideological and financial enticements of the Soviet Union or of China.“This goes back to Soviet t...
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Prosecuting the Wagner Group
Send Alia a Text MessageLawfare is the use of legal systems for strategic advantage. One of its pioneers, the international human rights lawyer Jason McCue, joins host Alia Brahimi on episode eight of the Guns for Hire podcast. Jason describes how he first began pursuing the IRA through private civil actions in the 1990s and goes on to outline the application of these methods to the Wagner Group. Jason and Alia also discuss whether it’s meaningful to designate mercenary groups as terror...