Views: Syria and the Challenge of De-Militianisation in the Middle East and North Africa

Syria will become the test case of whether states hollowed out by militias and warlords can ever be resuscitated. 1 The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) currently features seven states that may be described as 'militianised', in that they have been captured and instrumentalised by nonstate armed groups, the warlords who preside over them, and their external sponsors.Three of those states -Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen -remain affiliated to varying degrees with what is left of the Iranian-led 'Axis of Resistance'," which also included another largely militianised state, Syria, until the Assad regime fell on 8 December 2024.Competing fragments of two other failed states, Libya and Sudan, have fallen under the sway of warlords beholden to external actors other than Iran.In the 'two Palestines', Hamas in Gaza operated fleetingly, though never entirely, as an Iranian proxy from the 2010s through October 2023, while in the West Bank, under the cover of a fictitious 'Palestinian Authority', Fatah-affiliated security forces have long since become a militia proxy of Israel, regularly targeting militants on the latter's behalf -or at the request of the United States government, as happened most recently in Jenin in mid-December.This assorted collection accounts for a substantial portion of the Arab land mass and is represented in all the subregions of the Middle East, from North Africa (Libya and Sudan) to the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) through the Fertile Crescent (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq).With a combined population of approximately 175 million citizens, militianised states account for some thirty-seven per cent of the total Arab population of 473 million. Militianisation vs. Militianised StatesMilitianised states abuse and impoverish their populations, threaten their neighbours, and endanger regional and global security.If the risks they pose ever are to be addressed effectively, one first must understand the dynamics that give rise to militianisation and then help entrench it.These dynamics present striking similarities across cases, as all militianised countries share three basic