Hold Your Fire!

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk to Crisis Group’s Project Director for Central Africa Richard Moncrieff and Crisis Group’s Libya expert Claudia Gazzini about what the death of Chadian President Idriss Déby means for the country and for the Sahel region and the connection between Chadian rebel groups and Libya. They unpack possible scenarios now that Déby’s son,...

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk to Crisis Group’s program director for Europe and Central Asia, Olga Oliker, about rising tensions between Russia, on one hand, and Ukraine and Western capitals on the other, over Moscow’s recent military build-up at the Ukrainian border. They talk about the motives behind Russia’s deployments, how they are being perceived in Kyi...

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk to Crisis Group’s Senior Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa, Dina Esfandiary, about what drove Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among other Gulf states, to cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017, why the Gulf Arab countries announced an end to the crisis in January 2021 and whether the rift is truly over.  The...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk to Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Afghanistan, Andrew Watkins, about the fast-approaching 1 May deadline for U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the stalled peace process and ongoing violence across the country. In February 2020, the U.S. struck a deal with Taliban leaders. It entailed the U.S. pledging to withdraw its...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and guest co-host Comfort Ero, our Interim Vice President and Africa Program Director, talk to Nelleke van de Walle, Crisis Group’s Central Africa Deputy Project Director, about the challenges preventing the Democratic Republic of Congo from moving forward. They discuss President Tshisekedi’s consolidation of power and the still strong influence of for...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Richard Atwood, Crisis Group’s interim president, and guest host Comfort Ero, our interim vice president and Africa Program director, talk to Murithi Mutiga, Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa director, about the fighting in Tigray and its implications for regional politics. Murithi sheds light on the calculations of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, rebel Tigray lead...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh talk to Crisis Group’s Libya expert, Claudia Gazzini, about the historic turn of events resulting in a new unity government in Libya. After years of chaos, division and war, often fuelled by foreign powers, the past six months saw Libyan leaders engage in UN-led peace talks and agree to an interim cabinet headed by Prime Minister Abd...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Richard Atwood and Naz Modirzadeh speak with Beth Dickinson, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Colombia, about the Colombian government’s new war on drugs and the escalation of violence in rural areas. Beth unpacks the complex dynamics between vulnerable farming communities, criminal groups vying for control over illicit markets, and security forces failing to contai...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood talk to Azadeh Moaveni, Crisis Group’s Gender Project Director, in honor of International Women’s Day. They look at the challenges in implementing the goals of UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security twenty years after its adoption. Azadeh also talks about Crisis Group’s work on gender and conflict. She details recent resear...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood speak with Peter Salisbury, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Yemen, about Yemen’s multilayered conflict, now in its seventh year. They look at the state of play in Marib, where an offensive by Huthi forces could worsen what the UN already calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Peter unpacks the complex alliances and rivalrie...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood are joined by Jean-Hervé Jezequel, Crisis Group’s Sahel Project Director, for a frank look at why French-led efforts to weaken the jihadist grip on the Sahel and restore regional stability have foundered. He describes the lay of the land today, how jihadist groups have exploited the void left by states, and why emphasis should be shi...

Why did the generals seize power on 1 February in Myanmar? With protests gathering steam, what does the future hold? How should outside actors respond?  This week on Hold Your Fire! , Richard Atwood, Crisis Group’s Interim President, and guest host Comfort Ero, our Interim Vice President and Africa Program Director, speak with Richard Horsey, Crisis Group’s Senior Adviser on Myanmar. Hosted on Aca...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood speak with Ivan Briscoe, Crisis Group’s Program Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, and discuss the current situation in the region following a tumultuous year. Ivan examines the impact of COVID-19 in Latin America, from stifling public protests to reducing homicide rates, and whether we are likely to see these trends conti...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood bid farewell to Rob Malley, who has left Crisis Group to join the Biden administration, and discuss trends on the African continent in 2021 with Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director and interim Vice President Comfort Ero. Comfort points out the rising violent jihadist threat in the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin, Somalia and Mozambique...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood host Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Syria, Dareen Khalifa, for a wide-ranging discussion of how the war in that country, until lately one of the world’s hottest, has cooled down over the past year. Dareen unpacks the de facto division of Syria into four parts, each controlled by a different faction with different outside allies, a...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood host Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director, Ali Vaez, and Senior Analyst for Venezuela, Phil Gunson, to assess Washington’s unilateral sanctions on Tehran and Caracas. They argue that the Trump administration’s "maximum pressure" policy had none of the intended effects on the Iranian and Venezuelan governments but had dramatic ill eff...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and Naz Modirzadeh host Sheera Frenkel, New York Times cybersecurity reporter and author of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination , to discuss the role that social media platforms played in the mob assault on the U.S. Capitol and the response, or lack thereof, to online disinformation by Big Tech companies. They also talk to Peter Salisbur...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and Naz Modirzadeh host Crisis Group’s Chief of Policy Richard Atwood in a special episode on Crisis Group’s flagship publication “10 Conflicts to Watch in 2021”,  discussing the hot-spots we chose to feature, the opportunities for conflict resolution and the legacy of Donald Trump’s foreign’s policy, as well as debating the conventional wisdom that there...

This week on Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood unpack the normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco with Century Foundation Fellow Dahlia Scheindlin and talk with Crisis Group’s North Africa Project Director Riccardo Fabiani about how U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara could affect the conflict over this territory. They also address th...

This week marks two years of detention in China for our colleague Michael Kovrig, for no reason other than being a Canadian in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rob Malley and guest host Brittany Brown dedicate this episode of Hold Your Fire! to Michael’s case and talk with his wife Vina Nadjibulla about Michael’s resilience in prison, the conditions there, the letters they have exchanged, the ge...

In this week’s episode of Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood take on the U.S. “forever wars” with Phil Gordon, a former adviser to President Barack Obama and author of the acclaimed book Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East (St. Martin's Press, October 2020). Rob also addresses one of the most pressing foreign policy decisions the inco...

In this week’s episode of Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood unpack the state of talks among the U.S., and Afghan governments and the Taliban about a peace deal, along with Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director Laurel Miller, who served as acting U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. They also address the expulsion of Crisis Group Senior Analyst Will Davi...

In this week’s episode of Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood talk about the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh with Crisis Group Europe Program Director Olya Oliker. Then they speak with Crisis Group expert Richard Horsey about Myanmar’s identity crisis as it emerges from the second democratic elections in its history.  Background readings by Crisis Group: Another Landslide Vict...

In this week’s episode of Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Brittany Brown compare their own experience with presidential transitions to the Trump administration’s refusal thus far to pave the way for Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House. They then explore what a Biden foreign policy could look like with Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders, evoking the motto: “...

In this week’s episode of Hold Your Fire! , Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood try to make sense of a very convoluted electoral map, with no clear winner, the day after the U.S. election. They then turn to the protests against police brutality that have shaken Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with Crisis Group Senior Adviser Nnamdi Obasi and Africa Program Director Comfort Ero....