Hold Your Fire!

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood are joined by Jean-Hervé Jezequel, Crisis Group’s Sahel Project Director, for a frank look at why French-led efforts to weaken the jihadist grip on the Sahel and restore regional stability have foundered. He describes the lay of the land today, how jihadist groups have exploited the void left by states, and why emphasis should be shifted to local-level dialogue and governance to effectively reverse the spiral of violence.For more information, see our latest report: A Course Correction for the Sahel Stabilisation Strategy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why did the generals seize power on 1 February in Myanmar? With protests gathering steam, what does the future hold? How should outside actors respond? This week on Hold Your Fire!, Richard Atwood, Crisis Group’s Interim President, and guest host Comfort Ero, our Interim Vice President and Africa Program Director, speak with Richard Horsey, Crisis Group’s Senior Adviser on Myanmar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood speak with Ivan Briscoe, Crisis Group’s Program Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, and discuss the current situation in the region following a tumultuous year. Ivan examines the impact of COVID-19 in Latin America, from stifling public protests to reducing homicide rates, and whether we are likely to see these trends continue. He explains how Venezuela has affected the region as a whole and touches on solutions going forward. Due to the complex history of international intervention in Latin America, finding an answer won’t be easy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood bid farewell to Rob Malley, who has left Crisis Group to join the Biden administration, and discuss trends on the African continent in 2021 with Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director and interim Vice President Comfort Ero. Comfort points out the rising violent jihadist threat in the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin, Somalia and Mozambique, the risky political transitions and tense elections in Uganda and Ethiopia, and the role of African powers in the continent’s crises. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood host Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Syria, Dareen Khalifa, for a wide-ranging discussion of how the war in that country, until lately one of the world’s hottest, has cooled down over the past year. Dareen unpacks the de facto division of Syria into four parts, each controlled by a different faction with different outside allies, and explains what the future likely holds for each part.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood host Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director, Ali Vaez, and Senior Analyst for Venezuela, Phil Gunson, to assess Washington’s unilateral sanctions on Tehran and Caracas. They argue that the Trump administration’s "maximum pressure" policy had none of the intended effects on the Iranian and Venezuelan governments but had dramatic ill effects on civilians. The unintended consequences highlight the responsibility that comes with the power to impose these penalties, as does the difficulty of reversing them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Rob Malley and Naz Modirzadeh host Sheera Frenkel, New York Times cybersecurity reporter and author of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination, to discuss the role that social media platforms played in the mob assault on the U.S. Capitol and the response, or lack thereof, to online disinformation by Big Tech companies. They also talk to Peter Salisbury, Crisis Group’s Yemen Senior Analyst, who warns of dire consequences for Yemen if the U.S. does not quickly overturn its recent designation of the Huthis as a terrorist group. Background readings:Sheera Frenkel: An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for DominationCrisis Group: The U.S. Should Reverse Its Huthi Terror Designation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Rob Malley and Naz Modirzadeh host Crisis Group’s Chief of Policy Richard Atwood in a special episode on Crisis Group’s flagship publication “10 Conflicts to Watch in 2021”,  discussing the hot-spots we chose to feature, the opportunities for conflict resolution and the legacy of Donald Trump’s foreign’s policy, as well as debating the conventional wisdom that there is no military solution to political conflict. Background readings:10 Conflicts to Watch in 2021.  How to Hide an Empire. A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr. The Man Who Ran Washington. The Life and Times of James A. Baker III by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Hold Your Fire!, Rob Malley and guest host Richard Atwood unpack the normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco with Century Foundation Fellow Dahlia Scheindlin and talk with Crisis Group’s North Africa Project Director Riccardo Fabiani about how U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara could affect the conflict over this territory. They also address the elections in Venezuela and what the rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccine could mean for conflict prevention as well as Richard’s 100-year-old grandmother. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week marks two years of detention in China for our colleague Michael Kovrig, for no reason other than being a Canadian in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rob Malley and guest host Brittany Brown dedicate this episode of Hold Your Fire! to Michael’s case and talk with his wife Vina Nadjibulla about Michael’s resilience in prison, the conditions there, the letters they have exchanged, the geopolitical intricacies of his case and her relentless fight at the highest levels of government to get him out and safely home.      Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.