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.

Host

Alia Brahimi

Dr Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. She previously held several academic positions at the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where she also read for her Master’s (MPhil) and PhD (DPhil) in International Relations and conducted her postdoctoral research.

Alia’s regional expertise lies in the Middle East and North Africa; her thematic interest centers on issues of morality, just war theory and non-state fighters. She is the author of Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror (Oxford University Press) and has published widely on just war theory, jihadism, mercenarism, ideology and the politics of the region, with a focus on Libya. She regularly provides expert comment for the media.