Alia Brahimi

  • Nonresident Senior Fellow
  • Contact email: abrahimi@atlanticcouncil.org
  • Media queries: press@atlanticcouncil.org
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Recommended Reading

All Content

Podcast

Jun 18, 2026

“Shoot everybody”: US contractors in San Diego court

By Alia Brahimi

In Season 2, Episode 16 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi 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, Spear Operations Group, 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 talks us through the facts of the case, how it ended up in a California courtroom ten years later, and which US and international laws were ostensibly broken by the PMC. He also argues forcefully that the US government has a duty to regulate how former members of its military use their training and know-how.

Middle East Rule of Law

Dispatches

Jun 5, 2026

Agentic AI opens the door to weaponizing financial systems

By John James, Alia Brahimi

AI-enabled financial operations are extending the bounds of modern irregular warfare, targeting systemic vulnerabilities rather than battlefield positions.

Artificial Intelligence Financial Regulation

Podcast

Mar 9, 2026

Fighting mercenaries: A Ukrainian soldier’s perspective

By Alia Brahimi

In Season 2, Episode 15 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Dimko Zhluktenko, a Ukrainian drone pilot and analyst within the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Ukrainian military. They discuss the realities of drone warfare in Ukraine, as well as the ways in which mercenary forces change the nature and tempo of battle.

Drones Eastern Europe

Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs, and the writer and host of the Guns for Hire Podcast.

Brahimi previously held several academic positions, as research associate in international relations at the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford; research fellow in global security at the London School of Economics of Political Science, where she also managed the North Africa programme; and visiting research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. She has also worked as a political advisor on policy areas related to the Middle East and North Africa and has delivered expert briefings to western governments.

Brahimi’s regional expertise lies in the Middle East and North Africa; her thematic interest centers on 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 jihadism, Islamism, the ethics of war, ideology and the politics of region, with a focus on Libya. Brahimi’s work has appeared in a variety of academic journals and edited volumes, and with think tanks such as the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, IISS, and Carnegie.

Her commentary for a wider audience has been published by the GuardianForeign Policythe Telegraph and Newsweek, and she has provided expert comment to Reuters, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, among many others. She also appears regularly in the broadcast media.

Brahimi first graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. She then read for a master’s (MPhil) and PhD (DPhil) in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she also supervised undergraduate and graduate students and completed her postdoctoral research.