Guns for Hire

Satan’s Chariot: Mercenary trouble in Mali

Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by Wassim Nasr, the veteran French journalist for France24 and Senior Fellow at the Soufan Center. Wassim talks us through the sp

“Shoot everybody”: US contractors in San Diego court

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

Fighting mercenaries: A Ukrainian soldier’s perspective

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 dis

Narco noir: Drugs, gangs and mercenaries in Latin America

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 escalatio

“Youth as merchandise”: Iraqi mercenaries in Ukraine

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 Ukrai

Death is our business

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

"Yes, really": American PMCs (back) in Gaza

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

"Do not come for adventure here": Mercenaries in DRC

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 cornere

“No, really”: American PMCs in Gaza

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

A mercenary client collapses

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

Air force for hire

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 technolog

Sledgehammer: The Wagner cult in Syria

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 foc

"Borrowed servants"? PMCs and sadism at Abu Ghraib

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

I was a Blackwater mercenary in Iraq

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 Blac

Mercenary meatgrinder: The price of Bakhmut

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’

What makes Colombian mercenaries so interesting?

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

American hit-squad in Yemen

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 he

Mercenaries and Gaza

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 regi

What's Charlie Sheen got to do with it?

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 o

Prosecuting the Wagner Group

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