Armed groups outside state control compete to seize power the day after. What is the relationship between them and which countries support them?
With the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, the so-called armed non-state agents have returned to the forefront as important actors in a region in flames. Although there is no internationally agreed definition, the term refers to organized groups operating outside state control and using armed violence.
According to the University of Oxford, the definition includes ideologically, religiously, and ethnically motivated groups, as well as criminal organizations and groups seeking personal gain. “The weakening of state actors and structures in the Middle East has allowed non-state agents to emerge not only as military forces but also as actors of governance,” explains Dr. Marina Eleftheriadou, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Security at Neapolis University in Paphos, Cyprus.
Map of participation in violent incidents be non-state actor group (2023-2024)
The color of each circle indicates the non-state actor involved, regardless of whether they initiated the event. Different non-state actors may have been grouped based on alliances and shared interests. This does not strictly reflect the purpose of the event but rather the historical activity of the organization/group.
Incidents that occurred on the same day have been counted separately if there were any differences in the actors involved. The size of each circle on the map represents the number of violent events per category of non-state actors attributed to the same geographical location, according to the data source.
It is estimated that approximately 7% of the total 31,461 events may overlap with others and are not visible on the map due to high event concentration in certain areas.
In 4% of the incidents, two of the studied groups were involved. Due to a lack of data identifying a dominant actor, these cases have been grouped together and are represented in black, indicating inter-group conflicts.
Data source: ACLED
Data processing & visualization: Chrysoula Marinou & Kelly Kiki / iMEdD
Lebanon and Syria
iMEdD has analyzed a range of data on the armed groups involved in the current crisis in the Middle East. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), an international non-profit organization that collects data on violent conflicts and protests, in 2024 Hezbollah was the most active group among those analyzed. The total number of violent incidents in which it was involved exceeds 6,000 due to the organization’s conflict with Israel.
In the Lebanese region, Hezbollah has been able to maintain power without being threatened within the country’s borders. “During the civil war in Lebanon, many militias were disbanded after the peace agreement, and the only organization that kept its weapons was Hezbollah,” says Dr. Marina Eleftheriadou.
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 as a Shiite organization with direct references to the religious Shiite revolutionism that emerged from the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and with the primary goal of expelling Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
Over the years, it has become an integral part of Lebanese political life and enjoys the support of the local community. The organization has close ties to Iran, from which it receives part of its funding, and to Syria. Its involvement in the Syrian civil war on the side of Assad further strengthened the organization’s ties to the former Syrian regime.
In 2023-2024, the groups involved in most of the conflicts, in addition to Hezbollah, were the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a predominantly Kurdish armed group that also participated in the overthrow of the Assad regime. Both were extremely active in 2024, participating in a total of 5,441 and 1,964 conflicts, respectively.
With whom have the Islamic State (right) and the Syrian Democratic Forces – SDF (left) been involved in violent incidents?
Of the total violent incidents involving the Islamic State, 20% are with the Iraqi State Forces. Another 20% are with the predominantly Kurdish SDF. In turn, the SDF has been involved in violent incidents with Syrian Civilians in 26% of cases and with the Turkish State Forces in 17% of cases.
Data Source: ACLED • Data Processing: Chrysoula Marinou / iMEdD
The diagram illustrates the groups with which the Islamic State and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have clashed in the years 2023 and 2024. The larger each section of the diagram, the higher the percentage of conflicts involving the respective group. The sum of the percentages in each analysis does not equal 100% due to rounding.
The Kurds, although a minority in the Middle East, have an active presence as armed non-state agents. The PKK is a militant national liberation organization based in Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan. Its political arm takes the form of a political party that participates in Turkey’s elections. The organization has been designated a terrorist organization by NATO and the EU.
In 2013, it collaborated with other organizations in the region in the war against the Islamic State (IS). The SDF was formed in 2015 to participate in the armed fight against jihadists in Syria. In 2019, with the active support of the United States, it liberated territories in northeastern Syria controlled by the Islamic State.
“In general, the Kurds have no friends in the region,” says Dr. Eleftheriadou. “They maintain a hostile attitude towards them precisely because all the neighboring countries have a Kurdish population that they do not want to be inspired by Kurdish nationalism.”
Almost a year after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the situation in Syria flared up. The umbrella organization in charge was the Fatah al-Mubin Operations Room, also known as the Military Operations Command, under which the rebel factions united to overthrow the Assad regime. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) played the most important role in the events of November 2024, and its leader, Abu Mohammed Al-Jawlani, is now the head of the Syrian interim government.
The HTS is a Sunni group in the Syrian opposition and has about 30,000 fighters. It came out of the Syrian civil war and its original identity was jihadist. Its past association with other organizations, such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, has led to it being placed on the UN Security Council’s list of terrorist groups, a decision that is to be reviewed following developments in December.
Dr. Eleftheriadou says that HTS in Syria is now considered an independent organization, whose actions and funding are not easily traced to a foreign country. Qatar is said to have been a silent financier in the past. At the same time, Turkey appears to maintain a practical relationship with the HTS, characterized by their shared dislike of the deposed Assad and groups friendly to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
“There is a concern that Turkey is going to also try to influence HTS. But in general, HTS is not that dependent on Turkey,” said Dr. Amy Austin Holmes, Research Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
“This was also evident in its attitude toward the Kurds of the SDF,” adds Dr. Eleftheriadou. “If Turkey had its way, the first thing it would do would be to attack the Kurds. However, as long as Turkey remains the protector of the new Syrian regime –and as long as it remains the only support for the outside world– the dependency will increase.”
(Editor’s note: According to the Guardian, on March 11, 2025, the SDF signed a cooperation treaty with the new Syrian government, which consists mainly of HTS members. The treaty includes a ceasefire, the integration of the SDF into the official Syrian army, and the takeover of the formerly autonomous Kurdish regions by the Syrian government. At the same time, the Syrian government commits to recognizing Kurdish rights, which the Assad government had restricted for years.)
The Syrian National Army (SNA) is considered a loose alliance of Arab and Turkish fighter groups rather than an organized opposition force. It was formed in 2017 by remaining members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) group, who wanted to continue their opposition activities.
As noted in a revised version of the US Congressional Review of US and Syrian Policy (July 2024), the FSA had previously received financial assistance from the United States, while, according to Stanford University, similar assistance was provided by several Gulf states.
Moreover, as analysts and a number of studies point out, Turkey is behind the operations and strategies of the SNA, as it was behind the old FSA, and is funding it in order to prevent the creation of a unified Kurdish state inside Syria.
An analysis of the ACLED database for the years 2023 and 2024 shows that about six out of ten conflicts in which the Syrian National Army (SNA) was involved were with other groups under study, mainly of Kurdish origin. Significantly, in 34% of the conflicts, the second “pole” is the SDF, the Kurdish force on Syrian territory.
The SNA participates in the Military Operations Command along with other smaller and larger groups such as Ahrar Al-Sham, the National Liberation Front and Jaysh al-Izza. Among the rebels in Syria, the Southern Operations Room appears in December 2024. It was the first group to enter Damascus and was actually a patchwork of older southern groups, some of which, as Dr. Holmes says, had signed reconciliation agreements with the Syrian regime after 2015 and the Russian interference.
“Those groups actually turned against Russia and Assad after the HTS launched this offensive in the north,” adds Dr. Holmes. “To my knowledge, they’ve received some support from Jordan because they are close to the Jordanian border in the south of Syria.”
Palestine
The Palestinian liberation struggle has its roots in the last century. In Gaza, of course, the most important group is Hamas. Although the exact number of its members is unknown, the military arm of the Al-Qassam Brigades is estimated to have 25,000 members by 2023. During the 15 months of conflict with Israel, Hamas has been weakened, but new members continue to replenish the organization’s ranks. Its actions in the last two years have focused on the rivalry with Israel –covering 95% of the conflicts for the period 2023-2024, according to ACLED’s analysis.
Hamas’s main allies are Hezbollah and also the former Assad regime in Syria, while, as reported in a series of analyses in the international press, Shiite Iran offers military and financial aid to the Sunni organization, despite their religious divide, according to international analysts.
Dr. Eleftheriadou characterizes Hamas as a nationalist-religious movement within political Islam, whose Palestinian, national-liberationist dimension is equal to its Islamic identity. “This means that Hamas is trying to find allies, even allies who do not belong to its religious denomination, because it does not have enough of them. Therefore, it is willing to accept help from whoever is willing to provide it,” she explains.
A case in point is the organization’s relationship with Syria, which was severely disrupted by the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the regime’s excessive violence against the Sunni population.
ABED RAHIM KHATIB / Shutterstock
The second largest armed group in Palestine is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Unlike other organizations, the character of this organization is strongly militaristic. It is believed to be financially supported mainly by Iran and partly by Syria. Unlike Fatah and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad abstains from politics and has criticized both groups’ occasional contacts with Israel. The PIJ’s relations with Hamas, while not the best, are characterized by cooperation.
Armaments: Israel and the others
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on international arms transfers to Israel, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine. What does the data on the quantity and origin of transfers show?
Yemen
In Yemen, the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, maintain a close relationship with Lebanese Hezbollah, from whose officials they received financial and military support in the form of advisors in 2013 and 2014, according to Stanford University.
The Houthis began as a religious group that took on its current form under the leadership of Hussein al-Houthi and later his brother Abdul-Malik, gaining military and political supremacy in Yemen, where they control the capital Sana’a and the northwestern provinces. The Houthis hold a significant portion of Yemen’s national arsenal and, with Iran’s help, have access to advanced technology and equipment, according to ACLED’s Yemen Conflict Observatory.
However, they maintain a degree of economic autonomy, controlling the treasury and customs duties at the port of Hodeidah. They identify themselves as members of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance and are involved in the fight for the liberation of Palestine, in support of which they have carried out hundreds of attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea in recent months.
While the Houthis rule the north, groups in southern Yemen are trying to stop them. The Southern Transitional Council (STC) is a political organization that governs Aden in southern Yemen. It was formed in May 2017 primarily with the aim of secession in the south, and works with the anti-Houthi camp.
The STC commands the military groups known as the Elite Forces (e.g., Shabwani Elite Forces and Hadrami Elite Forces) and the paramilitary group Security Belt Forces. The first, the Elite Forces, was formed in 2016, formally for the purpose of counterterrorism, but with the real goal of organizing tribal militia involvement in the Yemeni civil war.
Although officially under the Ministry of Defense, all three non-state agents are believed to be funded and trained by the United Arab Emirates. Six out of ten incidents involving the STC are against other non-state agents. In particular, 31% of them are affiliated with AQAP, the branch of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, for the latter, these incidents account for more than 85% of its activity over the past two years.
Iraq
The Islamic State (IS) –also known as ISIS or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)– is a Salafi-jihadist armed group. In addition to its presence in Iraq and Syria, IS claims operations in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, the Philippines, Somalia, and Nigeria, and has branches in the Khorasan region (which includes parts of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), Yemen, and Egypt.
Taking advantage of the turmoil in the Middle East in the 2010s, the Islamic State managed to become one of the most important organizations in the region. Financially, it is a self-sustaining organization with a few independent donors from the Gulf States. It finances its operations through the exploitation of natural resources, namely oil and gas (especially during the Syrian civil war), the taxation of local communities on its territory and criminal activities.
According to a September 2020 report in the Wall Street Journal, it was estimated that the Islamic State’s assets could potentially exceed $300 million. It does not cooperate with other groups in the region unless they accept their integration into the Islamic State through an oath of allegiance.
In 2016, the alliance of Western forces with Iraqi Kurds, the Iraqi government, and Shiite militias significantly weakened the Islamic State. However, both Dr. Elefteriadou and the ACLED data show that there are active efforts to rebuild the jihadists in Iraq and Syria, with attacks increasing by 34% in 2024 compared to 2023.
Dr. Holmes explains that “Turkey’s increasing attacks through the Syrian National Army against the SDF Kurds –who are guarding the camps where thousands of ISIS fighters and their families live– are forcing SDF members to divert from guarding these camps to protecting their own areas and their own families.”
“Both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have always thrived and benefited from conditions of instability and lawlessness,” Dr. Eleftheriadou notes. “We should expect that they will try to take advantage of the situation that is developing in the Syrian region.”
Research/Report: Chrysoula Marinou
Mapping: Kelly Kiki
Translation: Evita Lykou
Read all articles and analyses of the Special Report: “Armories of the Middle East” here.
This article was first published on Feb. 22 by the weekend edition of the newspaper “TA NEA”.
