Guns for Hire

About Guns for Hire

The Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it explores the causes and implications of the growing use of mercenaries in armed conflict. The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalisation of private warfare tells us about the world as we currently find it, but also about the future of the international system and about what war could look like in the coming decades. Written and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.

Publisher

Atlantic Council

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Feb 2023

Latest episode

22 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

31 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Sept 2026

   Strait talk: Yemen, mercenaries and the Iran war

   Send Alia a Text Message In this first video episode of the podcast, Alia is joined by Ibrahim Jalal, an expert on Yemen and the Gulf. Ibrahim describes the major escalation in Yemen and explains its timing and connection to Iran's bid to generate a two-strait crisis in advance of US midterm elections. They discuss the Russia and Iran-linked mercenary recruitment networks preying on young men of fighting age: Yemeni bodies may be sourced by the Houthi to fight for Russia in Ukraine in exchang...

2. 

   19 Aug 2026

   Satan’s Chariot: Mercenary trouble in Mali

   Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by Wassim Nasr, the veteran French journalist for France24 and Senior Fellow at the Soufan Center. Wassim talks us through the spectacular April 25th offensive across Mali by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate that looks set to soon make a play to take over the whole country. They discuss the setbacks of the Wagner Group – now Africa Corps – campaign to roll back the jihadist advance in Mali, as well as the Kremlin’s goals in the Sahel. Wassim offers his views...

3. 

   26 May 2026

   “Shoot everybody”: US contractors in San Diego court

   Send Alia a Text Message Alia is joined by Daniel McLaughlin, an international lawyer and Legal Director of the Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA), a California-based legal nonprofit working on behalf of victims of torture and other atrocity crimes. Daniel and CJA are leading a civil suit in San Diego against a Delaware-registered PMC for war crimes in Yemen. They represent the Yemeni parliamentarian Anssaf Ali Mayo, who was one of the targets of an alleged hit-squad in Yemen. Daniel...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

4.8 / 5

17 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 15 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

9

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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