The Middle East After the Age of Militias

It’s that time of year again. World leaders make the trip to New York to speak before the international community at the UN General Assembly’s 81st General Debate. Ahmed al-Sharaa returns for his second address at the General Debate, while Nawaf Salam and Ali Faleh al-Zaidi make their debuts, representing Lebanon and Iraq, respectively. The former rebel commander, former ICJ president, and businessman lead countries with complex and unique politics; however, they all repeated a familiar word in their addresses: the state. State sovereignty, state institutions, state control of weapons, and state authority. Over the last couple of decades, these governments have often not been the only actors with the power to decide when and where violence occurs. Is the region witnessing a return of the state?

 

How Did We Get Here?

Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria all faced different trajectories to reach a similar political condition. Lebanon faced a 15-year civil war that devastated the country, culminating politically in the Taif Agreement of 1989. Taif was a step toward restoring formal state institutions and called for militias to disarm, yet a central question remained unresolved in practice: Who gets to maintain armed authority over Lebanon? This period saw overlapping military presences in Lebanon consisting of different state actors, non-state militias, and foreign armed forces.

On the other hand, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the collapse of the old security apparatus, leaving behind sectarian conflicts, insurgencies, and various militias fighting for power. At the same time, these militias became intertwined with various political parties, security structures, and patronage networks, adding more layers to the complexity of the weapons question in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Syria faced an uprising beginning in 2011 that developed into a civil war and saw a complex combination of armed forces, foreign interests, and competing chains of command. Even as Damascus reasserts itself under new rule, it still faces the challenge of turning a civil war landscape into a unified state structure.

Despite their diverse historical and political contexts, all three countries arrived at a similar political condition: the state remained on the map but struggled to maintain the power to wield force.

 

How Is State Authority Being Built?

Despite all three countries attempting to rebuild state authority, each faces a different type of state-reconstruction problem.

Lebanon still struggles to control decisions of war and peace and lacks a monopoly over force within its borders. The Lebanese government and UN officials have framed this struggle around trying to achieve two objectives simultaneously: Israel must respect Lebanon’s territorial integrity and Lebanon must exercise full control over weapons on its own territory. However, the issue isn’t that simple; we still need to ask whether this objective is possible when actors outside of the government can independently make decisions that expose the country to war. Hezbollah argues, on the other hand, that its weapons cannot be separated from Israeli military activity in Lebanon and highlights the need for a broader national defense strategy. Implementing this vision may still leave Lebanon exposed to external military activity. This leaves Lebanon with a dilemma of trying to gain exclusive responsibility for national defense while not being able to guarantee the country’s defense.

Prime Minister al-Zaidi is working on disarming powerful armed factions, yet many are resisting his disarmament push, and integration might not truly resolve the underlying problem. But how does Iraq absorb an armed faction that has already absorbed a part of the state? These intertwined factions may formally sit under the state, but it’s not easy to tell who has command and where their loyalty lies. Nor does formal integration necessarily dissolve the independent political and economic networks of these factions. Baghdad is therefore attempting to gain state authority, but what does that mean when the state is built from networks that previously fragmented it?

Damascus also aims to consolidate the state as part of its political project. Al-Sharaa aims to build national security institutions out of the organizations that existed during the civil war. This year saw the Syrian Democratic Forces formally dissolve under a roadmap to incorporate its fighters into the new military. However, many former factions still retain local command networks and wartime ties, even as the new military was organized in part to prevent national fragmentation. Additionally, the state has difficulty achieving authority over areas like Suweida and southwestern Syria. What underlies the Syrian effort is whether giving former factions a new uniform has truly created a national army.

In trying to understand the state-building, we see three separate cases: the state versus armed actors, armed actors within the state, and armed actors becoming the state. Despite the differences, each country faces the same question: Can there be a single state authority over the exercise of violence?

 

But Why Now?

The UN speeches give us insight into the importance of state-building; opportunity and exhaustion give us good explanations for the timing of such decisions.

The balance between governments and armed actors has become more fluid. We are seeing opportunities that didn’t exist a few years ago. In Syria, the fall of Assad created a new order and opened a chapter in which Syria could be unified again. In Iraq, despite resistance from armed actors, disarmament being a serious agenda shows growing fluidity in the relationship among the state, armed groups, and outside actors. Recent regional conflicts also give Iraq an opportunity to once again have a unified voice. Outside actors are increasingly discussing strengthening the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Lebanon has openly placed the question of exclusive state authority at the center of its political agenda. Across all three cases, the costs of the previous system have also made alternatives more appealing. The balance between governments and armed actors may not have necessarily tipped, but we see the doors to new political opportunities opening that may previously have been closed.

Opportunity alone does not explain this trend; divided coercive authority has shown costs that are too difficult to ignore. The previous system allowed some communities to protect themselves, gave political movements room to organize, and allowed outside actors to exercise influence. Yet these benefits have increasingly come with difficult costs for national security. The costs become clearest in deciding who gets to take a country to war. Who can credibly prevent attacks from within its borders? Who controls military escalation? Who negotiates ceasefires? Who guarantees that foreign investments in infrastructure don’t become a part of the battlefield? This creates a new appeal for the state that is less about ideological commitment and more about exhaustion with the consequences of fragmented authority.

These military consequences also affect economic state-building. Long-term investment needs credible guarantees that the state can control its own territory. Fragmented authority creates difficulties in building infrastructure, attracting foreign capital, and negotiating agreements. Although armed factions can build economic networks, governments trying to go from wartime survival to long-term reconstruction have stronger incentives to centralize.

 

When Is This Not the Case?

Looking south toward Sana’a underscores how exhaustion and fragmentation do not always yield a consolidated state.

Yemen highlights how a desire for order may not always produce an agreement over who should provide it. The three examples above all had something in common: a political project aimed at reconstructing a central state framework. Yemen’s deeply contested political order can leave factions with stronger incentives to defeat one another than submit to a common state framework. Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon are at a different stage, where a political project aimed at reconstructing a central state framework is clearer. Another underlying aspect in our cases is that state consolidation does not occur in isolation. Regional actors may make fragmentation more profitable or facilitate the consolidation of state power.

Returning to a centralized state isn’t the natural endpoint of prolonged conflict. Fragmentation can persist even if the costs are burdensome, especially when who inherits the state, and under what regional conditions, remains unresolved.

 

Is the State Really Returning?

Perhaps the state is returning first as an aspiration. The political language used by Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq reveals an aspiration for the state to return as the supreme authority over organized violence. But we have yet to see if that language can be translated from aspiration to reality. Yemen also shows a clear example of where that’s not the case. The question remains unresolved: Who gets to make decisions about war and peace? But what’s clear is that in parts of the Arab East, governments are insisting on a clear, straightforward answer: the state. Yet the harder question is whether the political forces produced by decades of fragmentation will actually be contained within the state, or whether they will simply reshape the state from within.