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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 first began pursuing the IRA through private civil actions in the 1990s and goes on to outline the application of these methods to the Wagner Group. Jason and Alia also discuss whether it’s meaningful to designate mercenary groups as terrorists, if private civil actions can form the basis for criminal prosecutions, and how Jason and his law partner were personally sanctioned by the Russian state.

“Autocrats are looking for a model for asymmetric warfare against democrats and the Wagner model is definitely the model on the table, with its plausible deniability. And it’s really important for us to not only designate it but to litigate it.”

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

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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 journalist and founder of the independent investigative collective, Bellingcat. Eliot, who was personally sued by the late mercenary leader Yevgeny Prighozin for outing him as the oligarch behind the Wagner Group, discusses the types of online open-source tools used to track mercenary activity, and how anyone with a bit of time and an internet connection can get involved.

“A mercenary might have a friend who uses social media a lot and they’re featuring a lot in these photographs, for example, and then you can start building out the networks from that.”

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