Robert Pelton on Muck Rack

Robert Pelton

  • Founder and CEO, Xaerx
San Diego
As seen in: Bloomberg Businessweek, Daily Mail, Reuters, National Geographic, VICE, Wes Siler’s Newsletter, Analytical Chemistry, Foreign Policy Magazine, Outside Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review and
Covers:  Conflict, Mercenaries, Jihadis, Global Criminal Networks, High Adventure
Doesn't Cover: Easy stories.
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Finding Private Bowe Bergdahl | VICE United States

Finding Private Bowe Bergdahl | VICE United States

Vice — Private Bowe Bergdahl is the personification of America's lack of purpose and clarity in its decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The narrative thus far is this: An introverted but adventurous 23-year-old neophyte soldier becomes disenchanted with the war he has eagerly signed up to fight. Then, within weeks, he wanders off base and ends up kidnapped by the Taliban. He becomes our singular POW, a soldier held against his will for five years-at some points in a cage. According to the kangaroo court of public opinion, though, he is a deserter. The overall tone of the saga is overwhelmingly negative.
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Introducing the 'Saving South Sudan' Issue | VICE United Kingdom

Introducing the 'Saving South Sudan' Issue | VICE United Kingdom

Vice — The "Saving South Sudan" Issue of VICE is unlike anything done before in the 21-year history of the magazine. It tells a single story over the course of 130 pages, following the writer Robert Young Pelton, the photographer and filmmaker Tim Freccia and a former South Sudanese refugee named Machot as they travel to Machot's homeland, one of the most war-ravaged countries on Earth. For Machot, the trip was an attempt to help South Sudan out of the seemingly never-ending cycle of war, corruption and power-hungry strongmen that have ruled the country for generations.
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The All-American Life and Death of Eric Harroun

The All-American Life and Death of Eric Harroun

Vice — Eric Harroun became a jihadist just after 10 PM on a crisp January night in 2013. The 30-year-old American was in northern Syria, where he'd been fighting alongside rebel forces for all of two weeks. Less than a mile away loomed the vast expanse of the regime-controlled Taftanaz Military Airbase, from which gunships and troop-transport helicopters would periodically take off to drop improvised oil barrels full of explosives and shrapnel - what would come to be known as barrel bombs - on civilian and rebel positions. Eric was with a multinational gaggle of nine Arabic-speaking rebels, moving through the night in single file.
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Saving South Sudan - Documentary

Saving South Sudan - Documentary

www.youtube.com — Read the entire issue devoted to South Sudan: http://www.vice.com/read/saving-south-sudan Late last year, South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, accused his former vice president, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup d'état amid accusations of rampant corruption within the government. Infighting immediately broke out within the presidential guard, sparking what has now become a brutal tribal and civil war that has pitted Machar's ethnic Nuer loyalists against the majority Dinka, who have sided with Kiir. Machar narrowly escaped assassination, fleeing to the deep bush as Kiir's troops razed his home and killed his bodyguards. And now the world's newest sovereign nation is in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.
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The All-American Life and Death of Eric Harroun | VICE News

The All-American Life and Death of Eric Harroun | VICE News

Vice — Eric Harroun became a jihadist just after 10 PM on a crisp January night in 2013. The 30-year-old American was in northern Syria, where he'd been fighting alongside rebel forces for all of two weeks. Less than a mile away loomed the vast expanse of the regime-controlled Taftanaz Military Airbase, from which gunships and troop-transport helicopters would periodically take off to drop improvised oil barrels full of explosives and shrapnel - what would come to be known as barrel bombs - on civilian and rebel positions. Eric was with a multinational gaggle of nine Arabic-speaking rebels, moving through the night in single file.
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Afghanistan: The New War for Hearts and Minds | Men's Journal

Afghanistan: The New War for Hearts and Minds | Men's Journal

archive.mensjournal.com — ROBERT YOUNG PELTON goes deep inside America's new, brainier strategy in Afghanistan and finds that, on the front line, scientists and soldiers don't always mix. An absurdist tale of modern warfare. The portal to America's war on terror is gate three at the Bagram military base in Afghanistan, a six-and-a-half-square-mile blast-wall fortress surrounded by a wasteland of dust.
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Inside Burma's Dirty War

Inside Burma's Dirty War

Dangerousmagazine.com — Inside Burma's Dirty War Robert Young Pelton heads deep inside the jungle of Burma to meet rebels, mercenaries, missionaries, and monks. All are engaged in the world's longest running civil war. At the center of this conflict are the Free Burma Rangers, led by a former US Special Forces soldier known as The Father of the White Monkey.
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National Geographic on John Walker Lindh

National Geographic on John Walker Lindh

National Geographic — Inside the Afghan War Machine Author Robert Young Pelton is known for seeking danger, and in Afghanistan, he found it. Teamed with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum-the Northern Alliance commander who toppled the Taliban in the north-and an elite team of Green Berets, Pelton was on hand for some of the war's most dramatic and critical moments to date. In the March 2002 issue of National Geographic Adventure, Pelton covers the November-December prison uprising outside Mazar-e Sharif and the discovery of U.S. Taliban John Walker Lindh, whom Pelton interviewed in a worldwide scoop (read excerpt).
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Hijacked - By Robert Young Pelton

Hijacked - By Robert Young Pelton

www.foreignpolicy.com — See more photos of Somali pirates here. In October of last year, I set sail from Dubai on an aging 160-meter cargo ship laden with supplies for Somalia. For me, as publisher of Somalia Report, it was a chance to experience pirate waters up close. I had met pirates on land and in prison, and had counted their captured ships neatly lined up from the air -- but I had never visited them at their 3.2 million-square-mile workplace. For the multinational crew, it was yet another nerve-wracking voyage for minimal pay.
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Erik Prince, an American Commando in Exile - MensJournal.com

Erik Prince, an American Commando in Exile - MensJournal.com

www.mensjournal.com — In a humid, 88-degree summer swelter, Erik Prince pulls up on his Cannondale mountain bike drenched in sweat but unwinded. Dressed in a cheap white polo shirt, the 41-year-old ex-Navy SEAL, ex-CIA assassination point man, and avid adventure racer has just pedaled over to meet me from his self-described redneck mansion, a low-key brick affair a few miles away in North Virginia horse country, where he has been raising his seven school-age children. The next day, Prince will board a flight from Dulles International Airport, heading off to begin a new life in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates - a nation, some have been quick to note, that lacks an extradition policy with the United States.
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Somali Pirates' Rich Returns

Somali Pirates' Rich Returns

Bloomberg BusinessWeek — Tucked behind the shouting dockworkers and fishermen cleaning their nets at the wharf in Bosaso, on the Gulf of Aden, there's a row of decrepit gray skiffs and patrol boats. Strewn with rusted antiaircraft shells and old mattresses, these dead ships look more like floating homeless shelters than vehicles of terror. Out on the water, though, they played a starring role in a booming criminal enterprise. These are the impounded attack vessels used by Somali pirates to hijack passing cargo ships, private yachts, and even massive oil tankers.
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A Weapon of Minor Destruction - By Robert Young Pelton

A Weapon of Minor Destruction - By Robert Young Pelton

www.foreignpolicy.com — On April 8, Eric Harroun will appear with his public defender in an Alexandria, Virginia, court to answer charges that he conspired to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States. While such legal wording may suggest that he was looking to get his hands on a chemical or nuclear weapon, Harroun's alleged crime is actually much more mundane: He stands accused of using a rocket-propelled grenade launcher while fighting with rebels who aim to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
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VQR " The Black Zone

VQR " The Black Zone

www.vqronline.org — Only subscribers may read this in its entirety. What follows is a free preview, truncated midway through. Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy may have pushed Burma from an isolated nation to potential partner to the rest of the world. But a trip deep inside the rebel camps tells a different story. Most villages within Karen state are only accessible through a network of jungle paths. Supplies are carried in by porters, many of them young women who carry up to fifty pounds up and down steep mountain routes. Medical supplies, as well as basic necessities, are smuggled in from Thailand then trekked to remote villages.
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