Go Arm Me: How Militant Fragmentation Affects External Support

Over the last fifty years, civil conflicts have grown increasingly complex due to the proliferation of new armed groups and rebel fragmentation. Yet, existing research on external support for armed groups often ignores this multi-actor dimension, overlooking the unusual amount of discretion sponsors have in deciding whom to support in any given target state. This paper explores how multi-militant conflict environments impact foreign state sponsorship decisions. Conventional wisdom predicts that shared ethnic and ideological ties increase the likelihood of external support for an armed group because these ties signal a lower risk of misuse (agency slack). In contrast, this paper highlights how an increasing number of armed groups in a conflict setting can decrease the importance of shared ties between state sponsors and militants. We argue this change occurs because multi-militant environments reduce a group's willingness to misuse support and improve a sponsor's options to shift support if misuse occurs. We utilize a mixed-methods approach to examine this logic, drawing on an original dataset of 1,402 armed groups and qualitative evidence from Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule. The results advance understanding of the consequences of conflict fragmentation and external support for non-rebel actors.