A mercenary client collapses
In Season 2, Episode 8 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi 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 security forces proved so brittle, and who the winners and losers are from the stunning rebel victory.
David describes the Assad security system as a hub-and-spoke model and conceives of the different military and security units as profit centres who had lost the incentive to defend the regime. 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.
“What I think was unknowable and therefore not predicted by the agency would have been the speed of the collapse… My guess is that was not anyone’s bingo card and so it was missed.”
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About the podcast
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 normalization of contract warfare tells us about the world we currently live in, the future of the international system, and what war could look like in the coming decades.
Further reading
Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.
Image: A Russian soldier rides on an infantry fighting vehicle part of a Russian military convoy heads towards Hmeimim air base in Syria's coastal Latakia, Syria, December 14, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas