Guns for Hire

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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]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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 Jovenel Moïse. Andrés goes on to look at the thousands of Colombians who enlist under the banner of the UAE,  what’s driving hundreds of Colombians to sign up to fight Russia in Ukraine, and what makes former Colombian soldiers so interesting to the international private security market.

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

Get in touch at: [email protected]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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 journalists to report from Yemen first-hand, Nawal discusses the Delaware-registered PMC contracted by the UAE to kill “terrorists”, her meetings with two of the Americans involved, and the PMC’s training of Yemeni units – including former al-Qaeda operatives – to conduct targeted assassinations. 

“He knows these guys aren’t terrorists. This was a business deal. He knew what he was doing but he will never say it.”

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

Get in touch at: [email protected]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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 Wagner Group has been tasked with transferring a Russian air defence system from Syria to Hizballah in Lebanon. 

They go on to discuss the rivalry between Russia and Iran in the Middle East, what is motivating the non-state actors leading the bid to avenge Gazans, and whether elements of the Iran-backed Shi’a militia that have fanned out across the region can be classed as mercenaries. Alia and Renad also consider parallels between the campaign in Gaza and the violence and futility of the 2003 Iraq war.

“There will be within these networks and this massive web of [Shi’a] armed groups those that are economically inclined, those that do see economic opportunity in trade or in taking advantage of conflict”

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

Get in touch at: [email protected]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/ 

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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 campaign to free him. They discuss Russian political and media operations in Africa, from Libya to Madagascar, and how Russia fundamentally lacks the ideological and financial enticements of the Soviet Union or of China.

“This goes back to Soviet times when the Soviet Union was inviting people like [George] Bernard Shaw and many other public figures… Today Russia is using virtually the same playbook.”

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

Get in touch at: [email protected]. 

Subscribe to Alia's (free) Substack, "highly irregular": https://highlyirregular.substack.com/