Tag Archives: Featured

by Susan Katz Keating World SitRep tracks selected developments in conflicts, armed networks, and illicit activity, focusing on significant shifts and emerging patterns. Hizballah Cash Flies Commercial Air A smuggling network uses airline passengers to carry hundreds of millions of dollars in cash bound for Hizballah, the US Treasury Department …

by Cliff Wade Iraq, 2007 Every now and again we’d get an outsider attached to our unit on missions. Sometimes they were enablers who proved to be assets, other times they were regarded as interlopers who got in the way. One such instance sticks out in my mind over others: …

by Jonathan Stumpf Life with a frontline mortar crew, where an old Soviet weapon fires from the countryside as the war in Ukraine moves toward Chasiv Yar. “Tri, dva, simdesyat,” crackles over the radio. “Tri, dva, sim, nol,” I repeat as I lay the old Soviet 120mm mortar onto the …

by Carl Hancocks For the past four years, the city of Agadez has been what could barely pass as home for a woman without a name. Nigerian, she fends for herself as a sex-worker, but that was not how she arrived in this place. Her story is that of a …

by Jonathan Stumpf A dispatch from Ukraine. News of Prigozhin’s mutiny rips through the International Legion like wildfire. Stretched out on our cots, “Austria,” “Niente,” and I feverishly track the latest developments on our smartphones. I gave Niente his nickname because he wanted to be called “Nothing.” He had joined …

by Igor R. Salikov Excerpted from Putin’s ‘Viper’ Detachment: One Man’s Role in a Russian Special Forces Unit and the Invasion of Ukraine, by Igor R. Salikov, published by Frontline Books. War is a tiresome thing, even in conversation. Especially if you tell the truth. These are not dashing stories …

by Mark Grdovic In the spring of 2003, the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group tied down 60 percent of the Iraqi Army north of Baghdad while US and coalition forces attacked from the south. Mark Grdovic was on the ground as part of the mission he helped design. The following is …

After that night our extended holiday in Mozambique ended. The war had come to us. Story from Jaime De Melo. Written by Royce de Melo Things had been very quiet since my battalion’s arrival by ship in Mozambique in August 1970. We had been posted to various sectors in the …

by Jerry Kraus South African parachute veterans, a black Super Huey, and one hell of a water jump over Florida. Last fall, I attended a small reunion of Soldier of Fortune friends at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. After a long day of shooting, I found myself …

by Al Hagan In the early 1980s, I was in the Marine Corps, and a friend of mine who had gone into the Army was getting married. We’d grown up together, and so I and others – lots of military – journeyed back home for the occasion. Naturally, this required …