Non-state groups get new arms from states
Armed non-state groups, especially large ones, are increasingly acquiring weapons from other states. Global arms transfers involving non-state groups are statistically tiny, as compared to those among states, but current trends suggest such groups are also buying sophisticated military hardware, including ballistic missiles and attack drones.
Historically, non-state groups have seized arms. In most cases, from those they are fighting to depose, based on political or other goals. Defining a non-state group is complicated — freedom fighters in the colonial era would fall in the category. Today, what matters to researchers is whether a group is “an independent actor” in the international arena.
Before it lost the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a non-state group: it controlled parts of the country, with a political objective of breaking away.
The Taliban, which controls Afghanistan since 2021, might constitute a non-state group, because it is not recognised by many countries as a legitimate government. The United Nations (UN) describes it as “de facto authorities.” But, it is a state actor.
The erstwhile Wagner Group, many of whose former members are in Mali since 2025 to support Russian interests, is not a non-state player even if the mercenaries were once hired to fight. Neither would the United States (US) companies that provided protection to regional governments in Iraq earlier comprise non-state players.
In a 2025 report on global arms transfers, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said, the volume of major arms transferred between states over 2021-25 was 9.2 per cent higher than in the previous five-year period (2016-20).
The Houthi group in Yemen that controls Sanaa since 2014 and has targeted international shipping lanes in the Red Sea more recently, ordered attack drones (Shahed, Sammad), anti-ship (Qaher) and anti-tank (Dehlavieh) missiles, as well as surface-to-air (Saqr), surface-to-surface/anti-ship (Raad, Fateh,Quds) and surface-to-surface (Qiam) missiles — all from Iran — over the past 10 years. The Hezbollah group, which operates from southern Lebanon, ordered 25 units of the Iranian Almas-1 anti-tank missile between 2023 and 2025. In Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that is at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces ordered 25 FK-2000 surface-to-air missiles and one FK-2000 self-propelled air defence system from an unknown supplier last year. The FK-2000 is Chinese-made.
Some non-state groups might come close to state actors in the quality of weaponry, Siemon Wezeman, senior research fellow, arms transfers programme, Sipri, told the magazine.
The Houthis have ballistic missiles that can reach Israel from Yemen, he said, adding that Hezbollah has similar missiles, of shorter ranges (Lebanon borders Israel).
“That’s rarer because the missiles have to come from a state supplier.”
The missiles are expensive, and even if they are free, guided by geopolitical considerations of the supplying states, the groups need to operate them.
Even so, they are in the inventory of three non-state players.
Some non-state groups reportedly work as proxies. To what degree is unclear.
“They often have their own national agenda but they also have foreign allies who happily use them, not just for influence in their own countries, where the conflict is happening, but also to expand the conflict,” Wezeman said, giving the examples of the Houthis, who have attacked the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, other than Israel, in the past.
When a conflict expands, other states get involved, as seen with the US and Britain in the Red Sea in 2024. The Houthis are connected to Iran, despite Iran’s denial, Wezeman said.
In Myanmar, such groups have used Chinese-made weapons for long. “China has denied that, but we have seen portable air-defence missiles, which are of Chinese origin,” he said.
Non-state groups in Syria, before Bashar al-Assad’s regime ended in 2024, got arms from the US, the world’s largest weapons exporter. Wezeman said the Libyan National Army , which is under a UN arms embargo, has received weapons from Russia and the UAE, which has also supplied drones to the RSF.
While small non-state groups continue to seize arms from their states or buy from the black market or illegally overseas, large ones get them from other states, both overtly and covertly. A state usually hesitates to supply arms to non-state actors because they have less control over territory and weapons’ inventory than state actors. But that hasn’t stopped either side from making deals.
First Published: Sep 10 2026 | 4:10 AM IST
