In Season 2, Episode 6 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi chats with defense researcher Jack Margolin about his new book on the Wagner Group. They focus on its operations in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s central place within the Wagner subculture. They also discuss the ever-present profit motive
In Season 2, Episode 5 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by international lawyer Katherine Gallagher to discuss her litigation efforts against a prominent private military company (PMC) for war crimes at Abu Ghraib. Katherine talks us through the sixteen-year legal fight on behalf of former Iraqi detainees, the various
In Season 2, Episode 4 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by former Blackwater—rebranded as Academi— contractor Morgan Lerette in a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss everything from Blackwater’s lax vetting procedures, the opacity surrounding the laws and regulations governing Private Military Companies (PMCs), the absence of a support system for former
In Season 2, Episode 3 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Russian photographer and journalist, David Frenkel, to consider the staggering toll of the “Bakhmut meatgrinder.” They talk through the latest report from independent Russian news platform Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service, “The Price of Bakhmut”, and David’s
Coming up this Thursday, in Season 2, Episode 2 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Dr. Andrés Macías, a Bogota-based expert on Colombian mercenaries. They begin by looking at the explosive case of 26 Colombians arrested for their part in the 2021 assassination of the Haitian president, as well
In Season 2, Episode 1 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the award-winning BBC investigative journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi to talk about her film exposing American mercenaries in Yemen. One of the few journalists to report from Yemen first-hand, Nawal discusses the Delaware-registered private military company (PMC) contracted by the UAE
In Season 1, 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 defense system
In Season 1, Episode 9 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Russia analyst Sergey Sukhankin. They discuss the arrest in Libya of the Wagner Group operative Maksim Shugaley and the propaganda campaign to free him, broader information and media operations in Africa, and the re-emergence of Wagner Group
In Season 1, Episode 7 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins. They discuss the importance of Libya to the genesis of Bellingcat, the events which led to Eliot being personally sued by the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prighozin, and how anyone with a bit of
