Strategic Partnerships: State-Militia Engagement in the Lebanese Civil War

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security II

Abstract

Until recently, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — a majority ethnic Kurdish militia fighting on multiple fronts — enjoyed extensive backing from the US. Now, following a sudden shift in US policy, the SDF is scrambling to secure alternative external support in the face of an impending Turkish onslaught. Militias engaged in domestic conflict sometimes rely on one main supporter but often receive support from multiple external states at once. States that often pursue divergent policy objectives. For example, General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army receives ongoing support from Russia, France, Egypt, and the UAE. A more nuanced understanding of how militias navigate their external support environment is critical for building durable peace settlements and regional stability.

Militias that implement diversification strategies clash with the conventional wisdom which views them as mere state proxies. According to the conventional wisdom militias that receive state support function as an extension of its foreign policy and are endowed with limited agency. This narrow perspective restricts analysis by conceptualizing pairs of militias and state supporters as the only relevant participants in mainly state-driven relationships. A survey of domestic conflicts across the region, from Iraq and Syria to Yemen and Libya, reveals that this view does not capture the full spectrum of complex interactions between militias and their external state supporters.

This paper seeks to answer the following questions: Why do some state-militia partnerships prove durable while others are relatively short-lived? Why do some militias have one primary external state supporter while others implement a diversification strategy through relations with multiple states concurrently? I argue that if external states provide sufficient support then militias will choose to maintain partnerships with them. Strategic uncertainty requires militias to weigh their immediate domestic security concerns over all else. Decreasing levels of state support coincide with deteriorating relations. States seek militia partners that can perform a service. Militias need state investors that provide sufficient resources for them to fight and win. Militias will diversify their investors to hedge against the decay of single partnerships.

This paper uses a multi-stage mixed-methods research design that offers a middle-range theory of state-militia partnerships. Using levels of external state support as the explanatory variable, this project constructs a typology of state-militia partnerships. The typology will then be applied in the context of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). First, a dataset covering the universe of state-militia partnerships in Lebanon will be constructed from primary and secondary sources. This dataset will then be analyzed using the exponential random graph model and its extensions to visualize and test hypothesized partnership types over time. Next, the process by which hypothesized partnerships form and decay is traced through qualitative case studies of Lebanese militias and their state partners, with a particular emphasis on militias that employ a diversification strategy.

Author

• Dylan Maguire, Northeastern University