In many countries of the Middle East, militias are no longer just armed formations that arose in a moment of security turmoil. To a certain extent, over time, they have become integrated structures of influence: weapons, money, ideology, networks of interests, and the ability to penetrate or control state institutions. Therefore, the issue appears to be not only security-related, but also political, economic, and sovereign at the same time. This is because when weapons are combined with funding, ideological cover, and a regional influence, they convert into a parallel governance project, not into an emergency force that ends when its justifications finish.
These formations have took profit from years of chaos, from the collapse of trust between the citizen and the state, and from the chronic inability to build a productive economy that can absorb young people. When industry declines, agriculture is marginalized, and the horizon of real work narrows, carrying weapons becomes, for some groups, an alternative job that provides a salary, identity, and a sense of power. Thus, joining a militia is no longer just an expression of ideological conviction, but also a social need, a need created by a weak state and deepened by a political environment that found in sectarian mobilization and grand slogans an easier means for building modern institutions, production opportunities, and stability.
But the most dangerous thing is that the sponsors of this phenomenon, for example in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, did not deal with it as temporary fighting formations, but rather as the nucleus for building a parallel deep state, a state that controls the governments, influences decision-making, infiltrates administrations and imposes its logic on politics and the economy. When institutions appear to exist in form, while in reality they are run under the pressure of weapons, loyalty and financial networks, then the crisis is no longer a crisis of security breakdown, but a crisis of a state infiltrated from within.
A militia, which obtains legitimacy through weapons, then budget cover, and then its share of the parallel economy, is no longer concerned with the return of a fully empowered state, because the completion of the state means the shrinking of its vital space. Therefore, extortion, charges, and smuggling flourished, weapons being transformed from a pretext for protection into a tool of influence, while unemployment and marginalization were reproduced in a way that made the militia itself a refuge for many unemployed people, with unproductive salaries and a high national cost.
As for the declared slogans, such as defending their countries, protecting the faith, or resisting terrorism, they lost much of their meaning when the danger they were used to confront ended, and the armed structure continued to expand instead of shrinking. The terrorism against which the war was waged has declined as an existential threat since the declaration of victory over ISIS at the end of 2017, but the logic of mobilization did not decline. Rather, it was employed to justify keeping weapons outside the logic of the state, then to expand its role internally, turning it into a pressure card on national decision-making, and into a tool for intervention in files that have no relation to defending society or protecting sovereignty.
It is in this context that, in Iraq, their most dangerous role emerged: some of these armed forces did not merely disrupt the state from within, but rather acted as Iranian proxies in Iran’s conflict with the United States. Here, Iraq was no longer an arena for protecting itself, but rather became a platform for exchanging messages, exerting pressure, and settling scores. Whenever the confrontation between Tehran and Washington intensified, these proxies moved according to the rhythm of the regional conflict, not according to Iraqi interests. Thus, Iraqi sovereignty was shaken, and the country was again and again pushed to the brink of a war in which it had no stake. The political meaning of this is that weapons are no longer linked to the state’s decision, but rather to a decision that transcends it and uses its land, institutions, and resources.
The Kurdistan Region was not far from this path, and in many instances it was one of its most prominent targets. The attacks with missiles and drones on citizens’ homes, hotels, oil and gas fields, refineries, and Peshmergah forces were not merely isolated acts of hostility, but rather complex messages that, despite its crises, still represent a more stable, open, and viable model. What exacerbates the situation is that these structures have not been satisfied with security expansion, but has also entered politics, becoming capable of disrupting or influencing the formation of governments, protecting its networks within the administration and the economy.
In short, militias do not prosper solely in a vacuum, but also in a weak state, a paralyzed economy, mobilization rhetoric, and foreign intrusions. Therefore, the battle is not just against the surplus of weapons, but against the system that has transformed weapons into an economy, the economy into a source of loyalty, and loyalty into a substitute for the state. It is imperative, then, to confine weapons to legitimate institutions, because the destruction that has occurred was not exclusively due to the existence of militias, but also to their success in convincing many people that they are an unavoidable reality, when in fact they are one of the most prominent causes of the collapse.