Rebels: My Life Behind Enemy Lines with Warlords, Fanatics and Not-so-Friendly Fire

A 21st century take on Dispatches, award-winning VICE News journalist Aris Roussinos tells the real stories behind life in a rebel army.

The hidden truth about war is how much fun it is. That’s because however they begin, whatever their aims, wars are fought by young men. Some fight because they have an unshakable belief in the cause, others fight because war is all they have ever known. And there are those who fight because there’s nothing better to do.

They fight in burned-out buildings and shelter under thorn trees. They eat their meagre rations, and starve for days cut off from supply lines. They smoke forty cigarettes a day and ride to war stoned, listening to Craig David. These are the men, and boys, who fight these wars. Their senses are sharper; they shudder every time they hear a plane pass overhead: they know it’s not a videogame anymore. The bombs and bullets are terrifyingly real, and the guys they’re killing aren’t always faceless enemies: sometimes they’re friends.

For the last three years, award-winning journalist Aris Roussinos embedded himself with rebel groups in the Libyan uprising, the brutal conflict in the South Sudan, and the civil war in Syria, among others. Part travelogue from the world’s most dangerous hotspots, part eyewitness testimony to recent, bloody history, this is the uncensored, unflinching account of the rebel armies and those who fill their ranks.