CONFLICTED

Latest Episodes:

Mali: When Jihadists Win Jan 27, 2026

Show notes

As jihadist violence in Mali escalates, Thomas and Aimen trace the history and present-day power of JNIM (‘Support Group for Islam and Muslims’), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been laying siege to the capital Bamako. Will Mali’s secular state survive? Or is a jihadist takeover of the whole country now inevitable?

**Including BONUS MATERIAL for subscribers to the Conflicted Community!**

Thomas and Aimen discuss:

The evolution of JNIM out of AQIM (‘Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’)
The jihadist ‘privateers’ who built the organisation
Slavery and racial hierarchy in the Sahel
Will JNIM’s leader Iyad ag-Ghali become the King of Mali?
Fuel blockades, economic warfare, and attacks on the capital, Bamako
Whether Mali can still exist as a sovereign state

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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Syrian Blitzkrieg: How Damascus Crushed the SDF Jan 22, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Aaron Zelin returns to Conflicted to unpack the extraordinary collapse of the Syrian Democratic Forces’ position in northeast Syria over the past week — and what the fallout could mean for Syria’s fragile post-Assad order.

Aaron explains:

Why the March 2025 framework agreement ultimately failed
Why Sunni Arab tribes abandoned the SDF — and how Damascus prepared the ground
How and why fighting erupted in Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo
The rapid fall of SDF-held areas in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah
What happened at ISIS prisons and detention camps during the collapse
Why claims of ‘Kurdish abandonment’ by the United States are misleading
The PKK factor — and the risk of a new insurgency or terrorism campaign
What Syria’s consolidation means for ISIS, regional stability, and the country’s future

Follow Aaron on X: https://x.com/azelin

This episode includes BONUS MATERIAL after the credits ONLY for subscribers to the Conflicted Community.

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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Trump vs USAID: The Rise and Fall of America’s Aid Empire Jan 20, 2026

Show notes

On the first anniversary of the dismantling of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, Thomas and Aimen trace the history of the organisation and ask whether USAID’s collapse represents a failure of liberal internationalism itself, or simply the end of one particular way of organizing American power in the world.

They discuss:

Trump’s 2025 executive order and the effective end of USAID
USAID, anti-communism, and the CIA
The Clinton-era debate over whether USAID should survive at all
USAID in the War on Terror: Iraq, Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency
The Arab Spring and the shift toward NGO-mediated governance
Corruption in USAID
What the end of USAID tells us about the end of the unipolar era

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How Yemen Broke the Saudi-UAE Alliance Jan 15, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (a great friend of the show) tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of how different visions for the future of Yemen led long-simmering tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia to explode into the open.

For further reference, here’s a helpful map of Yemen showing current areas of control: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/info/infographic/49654

Baraa explains:

How Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered the war with different goals
The role Yemeni political parties and militias played in the conflict
Why southern Yemen has never been unified
The UAE’s obsessive fight against the Muslim Brotherhood
The emergence of parallel security structures and rival centres of power
How Saudi Arabia acted as a mediator between rival factions
The explosive gains, and rapid reversals, of Yemen’s renegade Southern Transition Council

Follow Baraa on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baraashiban/

Follow Baraa on X: https://x.com/BShtwtr

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crisis in the Gulf: Saudi vs UAE Jan 13, 2026

Show notes

A rare public rupture has emerged between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Triggered by a dramatic escalation over Yemen in late December 2025, the dispute has exposed deeper ideological and strategic differences between the two Gulf powers.

In this episode, Thomas and Aimen step back from the battlefield to examine the historical roots of Saudi–Emirati rivalry and why Yemen became the arena where these differences finally collided in public.

They discuss:

The 30 December 2025 Saudi airstrikes and the ultimatum to UAE forces
Why Yemen is the arena, not the cause, of the Saudi–UAE dispute
Continental vs maritime power in the Arabian Peninsula
The British influence on the Emirati state
The Buraimi Oasis dispute
Tribal allegiance and ‘weird borders’ in Gulf geopolitics
Why the UAE tolerates breakaway regions and Saudi Arabia cannot
Whether this rupture will be patched up and what happens if it isn’t

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Alan Leer.

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Re-Thinking Islam’s Global History Jan 08, 2026

Show notes

Islam is often treated as a civilisation apart — self-contained, resistant to modernity, and fundamentally at odds with the West. In this episode, Thomas speaks to Oxford professor James McDougall about why that framing is misleading, and how Islamic history is inseparable from the making of the modern world itself.

Drawing on his new book Worlds of Islam: A Global History, McDougall explains:

Why Islamic and Western histories are deeply intertwined rather than civilisationally opposed
The extent to which Islam is an imperial and political project
Islam’s role in shaping global modernity before European dominance
What made European power different in the nineteenth century
How the Mongol sack of Baghdad reshaped the geography of the Islamic world
The importance of Central Asia, Indonesia, and West Africa to Islamic history
The debate over early Islamic sources and why scholarly scepticism has softened
Whether today’s tensions reflect a clash of civilizations — or a clash of perspectives

Follow James on Instagram: www.instagram.com/jamesrobertmcdougall

Follow James on Substack: substack.com/@mcdougalljames

Follow James of Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jamesrmcd.bsky.social

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Crisis in Iran: The History Behind US-Iran Tensions Jan 06, 2026

Show notes

As mass protests sweep Iran and President Trump declares the U.S. is ‘locked and loaded’, Thomas and Aimen revisit the event that shaped U.S.–Iran relations for the next half-century: the Iran Hostage Crisis. Then, in real time, the conversation veers into a fast-moving geopolitical shock: Venezuela, Iran’s global networks, and what a new era of American ‘muscle’ might actually look like.

They discuss:

Iran’s 2026 protest wave: currency collapse, water crisis, and regime pressure points
Trump’s ‘locked and loaded’ warning
Why the embassy takeover began as ‘revolutionary entrepreneurship’
How and why Khomeini endorsed the hostage crisis
The shift to economic sanctions as America’s primary lever
U.S. back-channel diplomacy
Operation Eagle Claw: what the plan was and how it fell apart
Hostage diplomacy after 1979
The creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command
The Iran–Venezuela–Hezbollah nexus, and why Washington’s focus may be shifting

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zohran Mamdani and the Ascendancy of Third Worldism Jan 01, 2026

Show notes

Amid controversy surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power in New York City, Hussein Mansour tells Thomas all about the history of Third Worldism — where it comes from, what it originally meant, and why the term has resurfaced.

Thomas and Hussein discuss:

Zohran Mamdani as a symbol, not a cause, of a broader elite transformation
The Third Estate, the French Revolution, and the revolutionary inheritance of modern radical politics
Interwar Paris and the emergence of Third Worldist intellectuals
Négritude, anti-colonial humanism, and the promise of historical redemption
Decolonisation, revolutionary violence, and the crisis of postcolonial states
How ideological failure was reinterpreted as structural oppression
The migration of Third Worldist ideas into Western universities and institutions
Edward Said, postcolonial theory, and the institutionalisation of grievance
Third Worldism today less as a political programme than an elite posture

Subscribe to Hussein’s Substack The Abrahamic Metacritique here: https://critiqueanddigest.substack.com

Follow Hussein on X here: https://x.com/HusseinAboubak

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2025 Year in Review Dec 30, 2025

Show notes

As 2025 draws to a close, Thomas and Aimen take an unconventional tour of the Islamic world — looking beyond the usual headlines to the under-the-radar shifts that happened in 2025, with the potential to shape 2026 and beyond.

They discuss:

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger forming the Alliance of Sahel States and what a new Sahel bloc might mean
The geopolitical ‘cluster fuck’ of the Sudanese civil war
The European Union’s re-entry into Central Asia
The Gabala Summit and the rising Turkic axis
How Bangladesh is diversifying away from India
Southern Thailand’s Malay-Muslim insurgency and why it’s so rarely discussed
In Iraq, Kata’ib Hezbollah and the breakdown of state sovereignty

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

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And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inside the Trenches of Ukraine Dec 25, 2025

Show notes

The war in Ukraine is back in the headlines as a peace agreement appears increasingly probably — though with major concessions to Russia. So as a Christmas present to our listeners, we’ve brought this episode from August out from behind the paywall.

In it, Thomas speaks with his old university friend Jakub — a former Slovak Army officer who volunteered to fight in Ukraine — about the lived reality of modern warfare, from trench fighting to FPV strike drones. Drawing on nearly eighteen months at the front, Jakub offers an unvarnished account of combat, morale, fear, boredom, and survival — and challenges many popular assumptions about how this war is actually being fought.

Thomas and Jakub discuss: