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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 already “bringing the war home” to Russia. John also reflects on his own experiences interviewing dozens of Russian mercenaries and on being seized and interrogated for two days in Mali. John argues that the Wagner Group’s legacy is drawing Russia into Africa and transforming it into a major security player on a strategic continent. 

“I do think that if and when we do see a ceasefire in Ukraine, the pool of recruitment for PMCs globally is going to jump incredibly… With the Russians, but I’m sure we’ll see a Ukrainian version of it as well.” 

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 rejection by the UN and the international aid community for weaponising hunger, as well as the international laws it is breaching. He describes the cruelties and dangers inhering in this new aid system and outlines how individuals, including PMC employees, may be held legally accountable for their participation in the GHF and their association with the IDF’s wider war crimes.

"This is not an aid operation. It is an extension of the unlawful Israeli occupation and its plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza."

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 managing threats. They also discuss Rwanda’s support for M23, regional jockeying for access to DRC’s vast mineral wealth, and a recently thwarted coup involving three US nationals. 

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 have a poor track record when it comes to stabilising any of the territories they have controlled and that Gaza might be a case where the profit motive of PMCs is preferable to the motivations driving two deeply traumatised societies. 

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 Syria and what spy services might be doing or thinking in relation to Syria right now.

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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. Alessandro also talks us through China’s developing thinking around privatised force, with some in China now pushing for more forceful security around the Belt-and-Road Initiative and the Chinese nationals constructing it.

“We have already boots on the ground, meaning an army for hire… So the next step will be to have an air force for hire. Of course, sometimes reality is faster than fiction.”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 in which grievances born in Syria festered and fostered resentment for many years, before exploding with the Wagner mutiny in June 2023. 

“[They] focused on this understanding of Slavic culture as being the inheritor of traditional values, but also attaching that to pre-Christian imagery. So you'd see a lot of runes, a lot of celebration of these Slavic pagan deities.”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 individual contractors. She also discusses her role in the case brought against Caterpillar Inc. for the death of Rachel Corrie, and how private corporations involved in warfare are on notice now much more so than twenty years ago.

“CACI has largely been saying since the time the first cases were filed… Anything that we were doing, we were doing in service of the United States and therefore we can't be held liable.”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 substance abuse and suicides. Morgan likens private military contractors to a single-serve coffee cup, to be used and discarded at will so that corporations can profit, and governments can avoid committing boots on the ground.

“I still don’t know what legal rules and regulations govern private military contractors. And I think there’s a reason for that”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].

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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 prisoners were recruited and from where. David also examines the numbers that were killed, the question marks over whether promised death payments were made, and why the Wagner Group turned to prisons for manpower in the first place.

“This is a long tradition from Soviet times when inmates were used for building factories and deforestation in Siberia and so basically, they came back to that old idea to use inmates as soldiers.”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Get in touch at: [email protected].