The reality is that these groups, “movements,” and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are appendices of their governments and draw their “activists” from the armed forces, security services, and government militias. They carry out their repressive deeds disguised as “civil society,” in an attempt to mask the behavior of governments that want to avoid being recognized by the international community for what they really are: autocracies that violate global norms, trample human rights, and brutalize their critics. They have even earned their own acronym—GONGOs—for “Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organizations.” Their rise is forcing us to rethink our benign definitions of NGOs and civil society to accommodate armed groups of civilians and even, most provocatively, terrorists.

In some ways, there is nothing new about this phenomenon: the deployment of “militias,” “paramilitaries,” and “mercenaries” is as old as warfare itself, and their use in proxy conflicts between nation-states is also a longtime practice. What’s different now is that globalization and the spread of democracy have empowered civil society around the world as never before, which in turn has contributed to the proliferation of NGOs. These groups can join and be supported by global networks of like-minded organizations, financiers, and volunteers. Yes, disguising soldiers as civilians and recruiting civilian insurgents are old practices. But in the twenty-first century, they've acquired unprecedented potential as tools of war.

A complex manifestation of this phenomenon can be seen in the violent backlash against the Assad dictatorship in Syria and the pro-Shiite government in Iraq. In both countries, what began as spontaneous protests against political exclusion and repression quickly escalated into bloody conflicts. Now we watch as each country’s military fights civil society—a well-armed civil society. But armed by whom? The answer is as opaque as the organizational structure of these insurgencies. Still, it is obvious that the rebels would not have acquired the vast amounts of ammunition, money, and combatants that they have without the active support or tacit complicity of other governments.

The twisted reality is that Shiite-led Iran on one side, and Sunni-led countries in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere on the other, are facing off militarily in Syria and Iraq. Not directly, with their own uniformed armed forces, but rather through … civil society—armed groups that, for lack of better words, the media customarily calls insurgents, activists, rebels, extremists, and terrorists. They are, of course, some or all of these things. But they are also armed forces who, though wearing the uniform of no country, constitute the frontline of a conflict that has taken more lives than any other this century thus far: the battle between Sunnis and Shiites.