Sima Ghaddar, Fellow
Sima Ghaddar is a fellow at Century Foundation specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. Her research focuses on identity and mechanisms of social control.
Renad Mansour, Contributor
Renad Mansour is a senior research fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House and the project director of its Iraq Initiative.
Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow and Director of Century International
Thanassis Cambanis is an author, journalist, and director of Century International. His work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Arab politics, and social movements in the Middle East.
TCF World Podcast: Recruiting militants: Greed or grievance?
The growing power of armed groups in the Middle East has raised an old question: how do militants recruit new constituents? Researchers have long debated the relative merits of ideology versus services as drivers of militant groups (an argument dubbed “greed vs. grievance”).
Developments in Iraq and Lebanon have given us a better understanding of the interplay of ideas and material rewards for militia recruitment. Legacy militia groups like Hezbollah have been joined by relative newcomers like Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (“Hashd al Shaabi”) at the epicenter of power. On this podcast, Renad Mansour, a leading expert on Iraq’s paramilitaries, joins Sima Ghaddar, a keen observer of Hezbollah, to discuss the new insights about paramilitary recruitment and loyalty that they’ve learned from Iraq and Lebanon.
Participants include:
Tags: tcf world, Podcast