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Podcast January 30, 2025

“No, really”: American PMCs in Gaza

By Alia Brahimi

In Season 2, Episode 9 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi chats with modern warfare expert Andreas Krieg about the sudden deployment of three private military companies to the Netzarim corridor in the Gaza Strip. Andreas examines the risks and opportunities in outsourcing a key task of stabilization to the market and depending on low-profile companies for a high-profile job.

He argues that the Israeli Defence Forces have a poor track record when it comes to stabilizing any of the territories they have controlled and that Gaza might be a case where the profit motive of PMCs is preferable to the motivations driving two deeply traumatized societies. Still, Andreas outlines how the deployment of PMCs deepens the “gray zone” because we now have contractors operating on the ground whose status in international law is not well-defined.

“This is an entirely novel approach of basically outsourcing… an essential task of stabilization to the market.”

Andreas Krieg, modern warfare expert

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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 and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, 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: Foreign security personnel observe displaced Palestinians as they return from the south to their homes in northern Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, near Gaza City, January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled