Militias has become important proxies in contemporary conflicts. Militias are paramilitary organizations with different military capacities. Pro-government militias are militias that are sponsored by a state and used as proxies to apply coercive force against rivals in the domestic and foreign spheres. Militias allow states greater flexibility in promoting foreign affair, avoiding international law repercussions, and intervene in other countries’ conflicts. 

Despite of that our understanding of these actors is very limited. Militias come in different forms and sizes and information on them is scarce. In this project we will create a dataset that would allow us assessing the scope or pro-Iranian militia intervention across the Middle East.