Guns for Hire

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by Daniel McLaughlin, an international lawyer and Legal Director of the Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA), a California-based legal nonprofit working on behalf of victims of torture and other atrocity crimes. Daniel and CJA are leading a civil suit in San Diego against a Delaware-registered PMC for war crimes in Yemen. They represent the Yemeni par...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia sits down with Dimko Zhluktenko, a Ukrainian drone pilot and analyst within the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Ukrainian military. They discuss the realities of drone warfare in Ukraine, as well as the ways in which mercenary forces change the nature and tempo of battle. Dimko describes how he and his comrades are combatting Shahed drones, the psychological mechanisms...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by Dr Vanda Felbab-Brown, a renowned expert on non-state armed groups and organised crime. They begin by discussing the escalation of gang violence in Haiti over the last year, despite the arrival of the American PMC, Vectus Global, which is led by the Blackwater founder Erik Prince. They go on to explore the bunkering of fuel by colectivos in Venezuela, Hiz...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by the Iraqi political analyst Mohammed Salih to discuss the legion of Iraqi men turning up on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. They explore how poverty and political dysfunction in Iraq have been weaponised by mercenary recruitment networks – and how death in Europe has been packaged as an economic opportunity. They consider the possible complicity of...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by John Lechner to discuss his new book, Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare. They chat about the Wagner Group’s soft power strategy in Africa including films and beauty pageants, and its corresponding popularity in places like the Central African Republic, its patterns of recruitment, and how its mercenaries are alr...

Send Alia a Text Message In this emergency episode, Alia is joined by the international human rights lawyer and former senior UN official, Craig Mokhiber. They discuss a new, controversial mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza – with American PMCs at the core of the system. Craig offers his assessment of why the Israeli-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was established, its r...

Send Alia a Text Message Host Alia Brahimi is joined on the podcast by the African politics and security expert Ben Shepherd. After 300 Romanian mercenaries were cornered by M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo in January, Ben reflects on the reasons behind the rebels’ advance, as well as the perennial need for DRC’s government to look to external security providers for help with managin...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia chats with modern warfare expert Dr Andreas Krieg about the sudden deployment of three private military companies to the Netzarim corridor in the Gaza Strip. Andreas examines the risks and opportunities in outsourcing a key task of stabilisation to the market, and of depending on low-profile companies for a high-profile job. He argues that the Israeli Defence Forces h...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia sits down with acclaimed author and former CIA analyst, David McCloskey, to discuss the spectacular collapse of a major mercenary client in Syria. They discuss why, despite their notorious brutality, Bashar Al-Assad’s forces proved so brittle, and who the winners and losers are from the stunning rebel victory. David also talks us through CIA scenario planning around S...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by the mercenaries expert Alessandro Arduino, who is also a top China analyst. They discuss recent seismic leaps in UAV technology and how the cost of drone defence is a magnitude greater than drone offense. They explore the way certain aggressive PMCs are marrying drone capabilities with their mercenary offerings, raising the spectre of air forces for hire....

Send Alia a Text Message Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi chats with the defence researcher Jack Margolin about his new book on the Wagner Group. They focus on its operations in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the central place of Syria within the Wagner subculture. They also discuss the ever-present profit motive for the Wagner Group’s leaders, as well as the ways i...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by the international criminal lawyer Katherine Gallagher to explore her litigation against a prominent PMC for war crimes at Abu Ghraib. Katherine talks us through the sixteen-year legal fight on behalf of former Iraqi detainees, the various defences invoked by CACI Premier Technology Inc., and the decision-making around whether to prosecute corporations or...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by former Blackwater contractor Morgan Lerette. In a wide-ranging conversation about Morgan's experiences, they look at Blackwater’s lax vetting procedures, the tense relationship on the ground between private contractors and the US military, the absence of long-term benefits or a support system for former Blackwater employees, and the prevalence of sub...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia 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...

Send Alia a Text Message Host 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...

Send Alia a Text Message In 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 Americ...

Send Alia a Text Message In 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...

Send Alia a Text Message In 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...

Send Alia a Text Message Lawfare 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....

Send Alia a Text Message As humans share more of their experiences online for the world to see, the blank zones are shrinking. In episode seven of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Eliot Higgins , an award-winning journalist and founder of the independent investigative collective, Bellingcat. Eliot, who was personally sued by the late mercenary leader Yevgeny Prighozin for...

Send Alia a Text Message Host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Libyan security expert and Atlantic Council Nonresident Senior Fellow Emadeddin Badi. They discuss the surge of African, Syrian and Russian mercenaries in Libya since 2019, the major value-add of Wagner Group contractors in terms of utilising Libya's Soviet-era weapons and mortar and sniping capabilities, and how mercenary recruitmen...

Send Alia a Text Message In this bumper episode on the war in Sudan, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the former US government expert on Sudan, Cameron Hudson, about the mercenary pedigree of the Rapid Support Forces and its transformation from a ragtag Arab militia into an institutional juggernaut.  Cameron argues that this mercenary history has had a determinative impact on the conflict: it has gen...

Send Alia a Text Message Host Alia Brahimi speaks with renowned Russia expert Mark Galeotti about the striking developments which saw mutinous mercenary forces from the Wagner Group take over two Russian cities and march towards Moscow. Mark argues that the plot was not picked up in a timely manner precisely because the Wagner Group is a mercenary force operating outside of the purview of counteri...

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by the philosopher Professor Tony Coady, who examines the key characteristics of mercenaries, including the motivation for private gain. They discuss the Geneva Conventions definition of mercenaries, the gray area of military contractors in support roles, and whether it’s possible to base a moral or legal judgement on an individual’s intentions. They also co...

Send Alia a Text Message Host Alia Brahimi talks to the Russian defense analyst Dr Pavel Luzin about what the proliferation of Russian mercenaries abroad tells us about Russia at home. They explore the domestic forces that gave rise to the Kremlin’s co-optation of Russian mercenaries, how they are funded by the Russian federal budget, and the effects mercenaries are already having on Russian socie...