Middle East War

Combat veteran and author Hans Halberstadt takes listeners deeper inside the elusive world of snipers than ever before, from recruitment and training to the brutality of the killing fields. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how snipers think and interact with each other, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet finally strikes its target.

There are only a few hundred snipers from all the services put together in combat at any one time, making this true inside story a rare and important event.

Now with a new chapter! Sweeping from Syria into Iraq, Islamic State (ISIS) fighters have been brutalizing and annihilating Christians. Where did the terrorists come from, and what can be done to stop them? For more than a decade, journalist Mindy Belz has reported on the ground from the Middle East, giving her unparalleled access to the story no one wants to believe. In They Say We Are Infidels, she brings the stark reality of this escalating genocide to light, tracking the stories of real-life Christians who refuse to abandon their faith.

From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8,000,000 learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency - and as a result of its long war experience.

On March 21, 1968, Yasir Arafat and his guerrillas made the fateful decision to break with conventional guerrilla tactics, choosing to stand and fight an Israeli attack on the al-Karama refugee camp in Jordan. They suffered terrible casualties, but they won a stunning symbolic victory that transformed Arafat into an Arab hero and allowed him to launch a worldwide campaign, one that would reshape Cold War diplomacy and revolutionary movements everywhere. In The Global Offensive, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin offers new insights into the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This is the true story of Yasmeena, a bright and beautiful young Lebanese woman who was imprisoned in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Yasmeena's shocking journey is a tale of the madness of war, of the sexual brutality unleashed by chaos, and of one woman’s courage to stand in danger’s way to aid her fellow sufferers.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

As a 23-year veteran of the United States Navy SEAL Teams, Ryan Zinke received two Bronze Stars for battle valor and eventually rose to command the elite members of SEAL Team Six. During his career Zinke trained and commanded many of the men who would one day run the covert operations to hunt down Osama bin Laden and save Captain Phillips ( Maersk Alabama). He also served as mentor to now famous SEALs Marcus Luttrell ( Lone Survivor) and Chris Kyle ( American Sniper).

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning, the first of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.

From Graeme Wood comes the definitive book on the history, psychology, character and aims of the Islamic State. Based on Wood's unprecedented access to supporters, recruiters and high-ranking members of the most infamous jihadist group in the world, The Way of the Strangers is a riveting, fast-paced deep dive into the apocalyptic dogma that informs the group's worldview, from the ideas that motivate it to the 'fatwa factory' that produces its laws to its very specific plans for the future.

In this revealing journey through Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza itself, longtime journalist Mark Patinkin explores one of the world’s most divisive conflicts, capturing the stories of both sides in “The Holy Land at War.” He saw where Oct. 7 unfolded, and later witnessed Palestinian hardship - and hospitality - in Ramallah and Bethlehem. He traveled through the now dystopian landscape inside the war zone, spoke with wounded IDF soldiers, the parents of Israeli hostages, and heard the words of everyday Palestinians struggling to survive in Gaza.

Colonel Tiso's account offers unique insights into the challenges of planning the Iraqi campaign and the intricacies and challenges of multinational service through the lens of his assignments as a war planner at U.S. Central Command, Senior Military Adviser of the Arab Peninsula Shield Force and the Polish-led Multinational Division (Central-South), and Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (C-3) of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team tasked to develop the New Iraqi Army.

Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burn down the school and threaten the teacher and students with death. As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man, and the Taliban target Yasmine’s Western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee.

What are the roots of radicalism? Journalist Carla Power came to this question well before the January 6, 2021, attack in Washington, DC, turned our country’s attention to the problem of domestic radicalization. Her entry point was a different wave of radical panic - the way populists and pundits encouraged us to see the young people who joined ISIS or other terrorist organizations as simple monsters. Power wanted to chip away at the stereotypes by focusing not on what these young people had done but why.

No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning―and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan’s story from a new angle.

In 21 Days to Baghdad, historian Dr. Heather Stur describes the commitment of the division to Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq and the three weeks of violent desert conflicts on the way to Baghdad before the siege and battle for the city itself, and the “thunder runs” that saw its fall to U.S. forces. She then details the complex security mission that required the soldiers and their commanders to convince Iraqi citizens that the U.S. was there to help them, while at the same time they continued fighting Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, paramilitary forces, and terrorists.

Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group.

In late August 2011, Shahbaz Taseer was driving to his office in Lahore when he was dragged from his car at gunpoint and kidnapped by members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Taliban-affiliated Uzbek terrorist group. Shahbaz’s father, the late Pakistani governor, had recently been assassinated. His crime: speaking in support of a Christian woman who had been accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death.

A revelatory account of the cloak-and-dagger Israeli campaign to target the finances fueling terror organizations - an effort that became the blueprint for US efforts to combat threats like ISIS and drug cartels. ISIS boasted $2.4 billion of revenue in 2015, yet for too long the global war on terror overlooked financial warfare as an offensive strategy. "Harpoon", the creation of Mossad legend Meir Dagan, directed spies, soldiers, and attorneys to disrupt and destroy money pipelines and financial institutions that paid for the bloodshed.

The Spymaster of Baghdad tells the dramatic yet intimate account of how a covert Iraqi intelligence unit called “the Falcons” came together against all odds to defeat ISIS. The Falcons, comprised of ordinary men with little conventional espionage background, infiltrated the world’s most powerful terrorist organization, ultimately turning the tide of war against the terrorist group and bringing safety to millions of Iraqis and the broader world.

On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden's reign of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes listeners inside the walls of Bin Laden's compound.