
Guns for Hire
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.
Episodes
21 episodes
"Do not come for adventure here": Mercenaries in DRC
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 t...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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48:00

“No, really”: American PMCs in Gaza
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 sta...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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45:45

A mercenary client collapses
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 brit...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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35:01

Air force for hire
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 ...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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1:02:19

Sledgehammer: The Wagner cult in Syria
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 w...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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54:52

"Borrowed servants"? PMCs and sadism at Abu Ghraib
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,...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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1:02:30

I was a Blackwater mercenary in Iraq
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...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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59:48

Mercenary meatgrinder: The price of Bakhmut
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 ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:01:48

What makes Colombian mercenaries so interesting?
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 J...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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47:05

American hit-squad in Yemen
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 journalis...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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48:17

Mercenaries and Gaza
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 W...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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49:04

What's Charlie Sheen got to do with it?
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 ca...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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1:02:05

Prosecuting the Wagner Group
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 f...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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47:53

Tracking mercenaries
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 journalis...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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37:22

Semtex teddy bear: The mercenary build-up in Libya
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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48:23

Mercenary bloodline: The war in Sudan
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:06:05

“What just happened?” The Wagner Group mutiny
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 no...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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40:57

What's so bad about mercenaries?
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 con...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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38:31

What Russian mercenaries tell us about Russia
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 Russ...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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50:39

Defeating the Wagner Group
In the launch episode of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the author and former mercenary Dr Sean McFate about his three-pronged strategy for defeating the Wagner Group. They also discuss internal dynamics within the Kre...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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52:23
