External Actor Influence on Non-State Actors and Its Impact on Syria’s War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33445/psssj.2026.7.3.1Keywords:
External Sponsorship, Non-State Actors, Syrian Civil War, Proxy Warfare, Hezbollah, Conflict DynamicsAbstract
This article examines how external sponsorship of non-state actors affected the trajectory of the Syrian civil war between 2011 and December 2024. It compares two sponsorship relationships: the United States–Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) partnership and Iran’s support for Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian armed groups. The comparison focuses on four dimensions: mechanisms of external support, the degree of sponsor influence over the supported actor, effects on territorial and military capacity, and implications for conflict management and political settlement. The study employs a qualitative comparative case-study design and thematic analysis of academic publications, policy reports, official documents, and specialist analyses. Sources were selected for their relevance to the research question and assessed through source triangulation, with particular attention to consistency across scholarly, governmental, and specialist accounts. The findings indicate that the two sponsorship models produced different patterns of influence. U.S. support for the SDF was comparatively conditional and operationally focused, particularly on countering the Islamic State, while the SDF retained significant political objectives of its own. Iranian support for Hezbollah and allied militias was more deeply embedded in a broader regional security network and was closely connected to the survival of the Assad government. Both relationships altered local balances of power and complicated the prospects for a negotiated settlement, but the evidence does not support treating external sponsorship alone as the cause of the war’s duration. Rather, external support interacted with domestic fragmentation, regime strategies, regional rivalries, and the changing territorial balance. The article argues that proxy relationships are best understood as mechanisms that reshape the incentives and capabilities of conflict actors rather than as single, independent causes of conflict prolongation. The study is limited by its reliance on secondary sources and its focus on two sponsorship relationships.
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