CONFLICTED

By Message HeardReligion & Spirituality History

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CONFLICTED episodes

January 27Mali: When Jihadists Win
As jihadist violence in Mali escalates, Thomas and Aimen trace the history and present-day power of JNIM (‘Support Group for Islam and Muslims’), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been laying siege to the capital Bamako. Will Mali’s secular state survive? Or is a jihadist takeover of the whole country now inevitable?
**Including BONUS MATERIAL for subscribers to the Conflicted Community!**
Thomas and Aimen discuss:
The evolution of JNIM out of AQIM (‘Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’)

The jihadist ‘privateers’ who built the organisation

Slavery and racial hierarchy in the Sahel

Will JNIM’s leader Iyad ag-Ghali become the King of Mali?

Fuel blockades, economic warfare, and attacks on the capital, Bamako

Whether Mali can still exist as a sovereign state
Join the Conflicted Community here: ⁠https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/⁠
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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55 min
January 22Syrian Blitzkrieg: How Damascus Crushed the SDF
In this episode, Aaron Zelin returns to Conflicted to unpack the extraordinary collapse of the Syrian Democratic Forces’ position in northeast Syria over the past week — and what the fallout could mean for Syria’s fragile post-Assad order.
Aaron explains:
Why the March 2025 framework agreement ultimately failed

Why Sunni Arab tribes abandoned the SDF — and how Damascus prepared the ground

How and why fighting erupted in Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo

The rapid fall of SDF-held areas in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah

What happened at ISIS prisons and detention camps during the collapse

Why claims of ‘Kurdish abandonment’ by the United States are misleading

The PKK factor — and the risk of a new insurgency or terrorism campaign

What Syria’s consolidation means for ISIS, regional stability, and the country’s future
Follow Aaron on X: https://x.com/azelin
This episode includes BONUS MATERIAL after the credits ONLY for subscribers to the Conflicted Community.

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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56 min
January 20Trump vs USAID: The Rise and Fall of America’s Aid Empire
On the first anniversary of the dismantling of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, Thomas and Aimen trace the history of the organisation and ask whether USAID’s collapse represents a failure of liberal internationalism itself, or simply the end of one particular way of organizing American power in the world.
They discuss:
Trump’s 2025 executive order and the effective end of USAID

USAID, anti-communism, and the CIA

The Clinton-era debate over whether USAID should survive at all

USAID in the War on Terror: Iraq, Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency

The Arab Spring and the shift toward NGO-mediated governance

Corruption in USAID

What the end of USAID tells us about the end of the unipolar era

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
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And YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ConflictedYoutube
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
55 min
January 15How Yemen Broke the Saudi-UAE Alliance
In this episode, Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (a great friend of the show) tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of how different visions for the future of Yemen led long-simmering tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia to explode into the open.
For further reference, here’s a helpful map of Yemen showing current areas of control: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/info/infographic/49654
Baraa explains:
How Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered the war with different goals

The role Yemeni political parties and militias played in the conflict

Why southern Yemen has never been unified

The UAE’s obsessive fight against the Muslim Brotherhood

The emergence of parallel security structures and rival centres of power

How Saudi Arabia acted as a mediator between rival factions

The explosive gains, and rapid reversals, of Yemen’s renegade Southern Transition Council

Follow Baraa on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baraashiban/
Follow Baraa on X: https://x.com/BShtwtr

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 26 min
January 13Crisis in the Gulf: Saudi vs UAE
A rare public rupture has emerged between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Triggered by a dramatic escalation over Yemen in late December 2025, the dispute has exposed deeper ideological and strategic differences between the two Gulf powers.
In this episode, Thomas and Aimen step back from the battlefield to examine the historical roots of Saudi–Emirati rivalry and why Yemen became the arena where these differences finally collided in public.
They discuss:
The 30 December 2025 Saudi airstrikes and the ultimatum to UAE forces

Why Yemen is the arena, not the cause, of the Saudi–UAE dispute

Continental vs maritime power in the Arabian Peninsula

The British influence on the Emirati state

The Buraimi Oasis dispute

Tribal allegiance and ‘weird borders’ in Gulf geopolitics

Why the UAE tolerates breakaway regions and Saudi Arabia cannot

Whether this rupture will be patched up and what happens if it isn’t

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Alan Leer.

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53 min
January 08Re-Thinking Islam’s Global History
Islam is often treated as a civilisation apart — self-contained, resistant to modernity, and fundamentally at odds with the West. In this episode, Thomas speaks to Oxford professor James McDougall about why that framing is misleading, and how Islamic history is inseparable from the making of the modern world itself.
Drawing on his new book Worlds of Islam: A Global History, McDougall explains:
Why Islamic and Western histories are deeply intertwined rather than civilisationally opposed

The extent to which Islam is an imperial and political project

Islam’s role in shaping global modernity before European dominance

What made European power different in the nineteenth century

How the Mongol sack of Baghdad reshaped the geography of the Islamic world

The importance of Central Asia, Indonesia, and West Africa to Islamic history

The debate over early Islamic sources and why scholarly scepticism has softened

Whether today’s tensions reflect a clash of civilizations — or a clash of perspectives

Follow James on Instagram: www.instagram.com/jamesrobertmcdougall
Follow James on Substack: substack.com/@mcdougalljames
Follow James of Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrmcd.bsky.social

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr
January 06The Crisis in Iran: The History Behind US-Iran Tensions
As mass protests sweep Iran and President Trump declares the U.S. is ‘locked and loaded’, Thomas and Aimen revisit the event that shaped U.S.–Iran relations for the next half-century: the Iran Hostage Crisis. Then, in real time, the conversation veers into a fast-moving geopolitical shock: Venezuela, Iran’s global networks, and what a new era of American ‘muscle’ might actually look like.
They discuss:
Iran’s 2026 protest wave: currency collapse, water crisis, and regime pressure points

Trump’s ‘locked and loaded’ warning

Why the embassy takeover began as ‘revolutionary entrepreneurship’

How and why Khomeini endorsed the hostage crisis

The shift to economic sanctions as America’s primary lever

U.S. back-channel diplomacy

Operation Eagle Claw: what the plan was and how it fell apart

Hostage diplomacy after 1979

The creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command

The Iran–Venezuela–Hezbollah nexus, and why Washington’s focus may be shifting

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
57 min
January 01Zohran Mamdani and the Ascendancy of Third Worldism
Amid controversy surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power in New York City, Hussein Mansour tells Thomas all about the history of Third Worldism — where it comes from, what it originally meant, and why the term has resurfaced.
Thomas and Hussein discuss:
Zohran Mamdani as a symbol, not a cause, of a broader elite transformation

The Third Estate, the French Revolution, and the revolutionary inheritance of modern radical politics

Interwar Paris and the emergence of Third Worldist intellectuals

Négritude, anti-colonial humanism, and the promise of historical redemption

Decolonisation, revolutionary violence, and the crisis of postcolonial states

How ideological failure was reinterpreted as structural oppression

The migration of Third Worldist ideas into Western universities and institutions

Edward Said, postcolonial theory, and the institutionalisation of grievance

Third Worldism today less as a political programme than an elite posture

Subscribe to Hussein’s Substack The Abrahamic Metacritique here: https://critiqueanddigest.substack.com
Follow Hussein on X here: https://x.com/HusseinAboubak

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 20 min
December 30, 20252025 Year in Review
As 2025 draws to a close, Thomas and Aimen take an unconventional tour of the Islamic world — looking beyond the usual headlines to the under-the-radar shifts that happened in 2025, with the potential to shape 2026 and beyond.
They discuss:
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger forming the Alliance of Sahel States and what a new Sahel bloc might mean

The geopolitical ‘cluster fuck’ of the Sudanese civil war

The European Union’s re-entry into Central Asia

The Gabala Summit and the rising Turkic axis

How Bangladesh is diversifying away from India

Southern Thailand’s Malay-Muslim insurgency and why it’s so rarely discussed

In Iraq, Kata’ib Hezbollah and the breakdown of state sovereignty

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
53 min
December 25, 2025Inside the Trenches of Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is back in the headlines as a peace agreement appears increasingly probably — though with major concessions to Russia. So as a Christmas present to our listeners, we’ve brought this episode from August out from behind the paywall.
In it, Thomas speaks with his old university friend Jakub — a former Slovak Army officer who volunteered to fight in Ukraine — about the lived reality of modern warfare, from trench fighting to FPV strike drones. Drawing on nearly eighteen months at the front, Jakub offers an unvarnished account of combat, morale, fear, boredom, and survival — and challenges many popular assumptions about how this war is actually being fought.
Thomas and Jakub discuss:
Why Jakub left academia to fight in Ukraine

Life as a foreign volunteer inside a regular Ukrainian infantry battalion

The psychological reality of trench warfare

How artillery, drones, and attrition have reshaped the battlefield

The limits of NATO doctrine when confronted with peer warfare

What this war suggests about the future of European security

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 hr 23 min

About CONFLICTED

From the publisher's feed

An ex-Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 spy and a former monk turned filmmaker, have been embedded at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East. Together Aimen Dean and Thomas Small unpack the realities of…