Satan’s Chariot: Mercenary Trouble in Mali

August 28, 2026 • 4:51 pm ET Alia Brahimi In Season 2, Episode 17 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi chats to 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 on the way forward in Mali, and whether it makes sense to negotiate with an al-Qaeda ally like JNIM. Alia and Wassim also cover the high risk of JNIM defections to the Islamic State. “The way [the Russians] are conducting operations on the ground is fuelling jihadi forces and they are not getting good results… They paid a very high price for it in Tinzaouaten where they had almost 80 of their fighters killed.” Find the Guns For Hire podcast on the app of your choice 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 examines the causes and implications of the increasing use of mercenaries in armed conflicts. 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 reveals about the world we currently inhabit, the future of the international system, and what war may look like in the coming decades. Further Listening 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. Podcast Feb 11, 2026 Narco noir: Drugs, gangs and mercenaries in Latin America By Alia Brahimi In Season 2, Episode 14 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Dr Vanda Felbab-Brown, a renowned expert on non-state armed groups and organised crime. They begin by discussing the escalation of gang violence in Haiti over the last year, despite the arrival of the American PMC, Vectus Global, which is led by the Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Vanda points out that a recent air campaign weaponizing off-the-shelf drones was intended to decapitate the gangs but, while hundreds of Haitians have been killed, none of them have been significant gang leaders. They go on to explore why governments in the region allow and coopt street militias, the bunkering of fuel by colectivos in Venezuela, Hizballah’s continuing narcotics operations across Latin America, the IRGC’s role in drug trafficking, and how the regime in Iran ends. 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: Bullet holes are seen in a police station in Gao, Mali, August 11, 2015. The United Nations has deployed 10,000 peacekeepers and poured more than $1 billion into Mali but its efforts to end a three-year conflict are threatened by the reemergence of a centuries-old rivalry between Tuareg clans. Picture taken August 11. To match Insight MALI-VIOLENCE/MILITIA REUTERS/Emma Farge