American Militias Resurge as UAE Eyes Post-War Gaza Control

The United States is usually regarded around the world as the very picture of stability, a global superpower that has gone 160 years since its last civil war and is currently performing a peaceful transfer of power, despite extreme domestic polarization. Despite the all-too-common occurrence of mass-casualty attacks for a variety of reasons, tangible threats to nationwide stability are very few and far between. However, in an expansive report published recently by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica, one vigilante freelancer has managed to provide one of the best looks America has gotten in years at a lingering threat operating just under its nose: domestic militias.

Historical Context and the Evolution of American Militias

Independent, self-run militias are not a new phenomenon in the United States. In fact, they trace their long history and claim justification for their existence using the North Star of America’s own Constitution. The Second Amendment, of an original ten when the nation was founded, indicates that a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Back then, civilian militias were seen as a reliable way of keeping the new American government from descending into authoritarianism or tyranny. It was a logical next step to address the many Americans who had won their independence by way of the long insurgency that was the American Revolution. Today, though, militias bear little actual resemblance to the farmer-musketeers of old.

Instead, they are local, private groups—functionally paramilitaries—that might be part of a nationwide movement, or might just be their own autonomous entities. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are around 200 known, active militia organizations of varying sizes in the United States today, down from a peak of 334 back in 2011. The largest of them are national groups, including the two biggest, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, each estimated to include thousands to tens of thousands of followers nationwide.

The motivations of these militias are widely varied. The Oath Keepers, for example, are made up mostly of former and active military and law enforcement personnel, and their fundamental intention is to disobey military or police orders that they feel violate the United States Constitution. Militias exist at many points across the American political spectrum.

Examples include the black separatist movement known as the Not Fucking Around Coalition, or a wide range of white nationalist groups operating at the state and local levels. Broadly, militias do not tend to carry out violent attacks at a particularly high frequency, but they draw major inspiration from violent incidents that involve people fighting for causes similar to their own, like the standoffs of the 1990s at Waco and Ruby Ridge. American militias went through a renaissance in the 2010s, first helped along by a broad animosity toward then-President Barack Obama and inspiring acts like a large-scale anti-government standoff in Nevada in 2014.

Then, they showed up in force for events like COVID-19 lockdown protests, and counterprotests against racial-justice rallies, as well as the events of January 6, 2021, at the United States Capitol Building.

Undercover Infiltration of the Three Percenters

Over the last few years, America’s militias have largely gone dark, dealing with more frequent investigations and arrests, and getting better at concealing their physical and digital presence in response. As a result, the inner workings of these groups, as they operate today, have been largely a mystery, even as fears rise across the United States that they may become a source of ongoing domestic extremism, and even perpetrate terror attacks. Those fears have been especially potent across the more liberal half of American electoral politics.

However, much of the mainstream American conservative movement has taken notice too, out of concern that these militias—often, though not always, extremely conservative themselves—could co-opt, manipulate, or undermine American conservatism more broadly. All of that speculation, in the last few years, has been without any real window into what is actually going on inside these groups. According to ProPublica’s reporting, a recent treasure trove of information comes by way of one man, a wilderness survival trainer named John Williams who made it his mission over the last two years to infiltrate and rise through the ranks of right-wing militias undercover.

His primary targets were the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. He was so successful in his covert work that he ultimately became the top commander of one of the groups for the entire state of Utah. The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not know he was doing it, nor did local or state police, nor did his friends or family.

All the while, the documents and recordings he collected were passed directly to ProPublica for a story that was published on January 4th. From tens of thousands of files to dozens of hours of secretly recorded conversations and years of private militia chat logs and videos, Williams was able to provide extensive documentation for the piece authored by Joshua Kaplan. In his years undercover, Williams collected substantial evidence to indicate that although these militias went dark after the investigations following the January 6th Capitol riot, they certainly did not disappear.

After first making contact with the Three Percenters when a local leader hired him to conduct survival and escape training, Williams maintained his associations until after the January 6th riots, after which time he stepped up his involvement considerably. What he found, while building and maintaining his cover as a brash, often condescending survivalist, was a militia in the Three Percenters that was actively focused on going underground. As Three Percenter Utah leader Orion Rollins put it to him in a text message, it was time to learn and become as untraceable as possible.

As he taught, he would not just learn about the group’s infrastructure; he became a vital part of it, quickly rising to become the group’s top intelligence officer in Utah, responsible for a range of tasks including hunting down double agents like himself.

Paramilitary Infrastructure and Intelligence Operations

Operating as an intelligence officer, Williams cataloged the identities and motivations of militia leaders, exposing a surprising cross-section of American society. This included an Air Force Master Sergeant and reservist who actively recruited Air Force troops to the movement, as well as a retired detective who introduced himself as the sitting, current national director of the Oath Keepers. This director claimed the prior leader and founder, Stuart Rhodes, had explicitly tasked him with saving the organization from total destruction.

Also among the more surprising members were an OB-GYN who led a subsidiary for the UnitedHealth Group insurance company, a sitting city prosecutor, and various other professionals holding positions of public trust. From his highly placed position as a trusted member of the Three Percenters, Williams coordinated direct collaboration efforts between the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers on intelligence and reconnaissance matters. He attended armed training exercises where militia members learned to carry out ambushes using semiautomatic weapons and improvised explosives.

Furthermore, he witnessed direct collaboration between Oath Keepers and high-ranking members of local law enforcement, and learned about the Oath Keepers’ long-term ambitions to grow into a parallel political and paramilitary organization in the coming years. He learned about the drive to market the militias as the “McDonald’s of patriot organizations,” listening in on discussions detailing their expansive network of state and local influence, which even included ties reaching the Utah state attorney general. Williams developed an intimate knowledge about how the group strategically engaged in rallies and counter-protests.

He personally served as a so-called “gray man,” an operative charged with blending into crowds and calling for armed backup if it seemed like a physical fight were about to break out. He gained access to lists of local journalists that the groups deemed problematic because of what, and how, they reported, reviewing full dossiers and home addresses for many of the targeted reporters. He also witnessed both left-wing and right-wing extremists spying on each other, participating in an intricate operational dance conducted at the local level with no official involvement from law enforcement agencies.

In one specific instance, he was told of a massive treasure trove containing contact information for forty thousand former Oath Keepers, a database the group fully intended to use to bring many of those former members back into the fold. Eventually, as the top leader of the Three Percenters in Utah, Williams utilized his access to expose militia connections with high-ranking law enforcement officials across several states. All the while, benefiting from additional organizational data, he discovered the Three Percenters were recruiting up to fifty new applicants a day across America.

In private chats, leaders actively debated whether they should commit acts of terrorism, while at the Texas border, members were already rounding up immigrants in armed patrols. What Williams witnessed was a group rapidly adapting to survive in a changing operational environment, building a deep and highly localized influence network, and working autonomously in the state of Utah—in a process that other chapters in other states were likely engaged in as well.

Domestic Implications and the Political Landscape

Williams penetrated a new generation of paramilitary leaders, a cadre that included doctors, career law enforcement officers, and government attorneys. Sometimes their operations were frightening, sometimes bumbling, but they were always heavily armed. It was an environment where a man would casually propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a pragmatic debate about the logistics of the operation rather than moral outrage.

In short, Williams observed not just a few gatherings of jittery, strung-out conspiracy theorists, but a businesslike, highly organized operation with concrete strategic goals and a growing functional ability to see those goals realized. Williams ultimately fled the area and went underground in 2023 due to growing concerns that his cover had been blown and that he might be killed. He expects that members of the militias he infiltrated or associated groups will actively attempt to end his life.

The report clearly lays out a militia landscape in America that has not been effectively dismantled by federal authorities, but is instead quite robust and continuing to strengthen its capabilities. The narrative underscores that if the United States faces any clear, large-scale domestic security threat, it comes from these well-armed, well-populated militias. They have demonstrated a concerning level of access and comfort with local and state justice systems, networks that can very quickly be repurposed toward violent aims.

The timing of the report points to a broader systemic concern regarding how these groups will interact with the changing political climate in Washington. Regardless of whether or not the incoming administration explicitly embraces or rejects these militias, America’s largest militia organizations very clearly embrace the political movement surrounding President-Elect Donald Trump, as well as the man himself. Most experts on domestic extremism agree that anticipated blanket pardons for January 6th rioters will send a loud and clear message to these militias.

Such actions would likely indicate that the incoming administration will protect those militias that fall ideologically in support of its political movement. The real-world effects of that message, however, represent a question that is much harder to answer. Perhaps the feeling of carte-blanche approval for their acts will further embolden militias, causing them to plan and carry out future attacks with far greater impunity.

Conversely, it is entirely possible that the prospect of a safe, friendly administration will lead these militias to take a strategic step back, perceiving that the threats they organize to oppose have now been diminished or will otherwise be handled through official government channels. Perhaps they may even attempt to directly collaborate with the federal government, an ambition that far-right militias near the US-Mexico border are already on record hoping to fulfill by assisting with anticipated mass deportation efforts, though the transition team has officially denied any plan to rely on outside groups for such operations. According to these groups themselves, their ambitions go far beyond just sitting on the sidelines, and there are absolutely no guarantees that the sidelines are where they will stay.

The UAE Pushes for a Role in Post-War Gaza

While the war-torn Gaza Strip is amidst headlines centering on elusive ceasefire deals, rapid Hamas recruitment, and the tragic discovery of deceased Israeli hostages, one particularly important geopolitical development has largely flown under the radar. The primary reason for this obscurity is that it does not deal directly with the state of the Israel-Hamas War as it exists today, but rather with the complex landscape of what comes after the fighting stops. According to a Reuters exclusive report published on January 7th, the United Arab Emirates is engaged in active, high-level discussions with both Israel and the United States around the future of Gaza’s reconstruction.

Specifically, the UAE hopes to play a leading, active role in the governance, security, and reconstruction of Gaza after the Israeli military eventually withdraws, and to maintain that role until a Palestinian administration is structurally able to take over. Reuters cited a dozen unnamed diplomats and other Western officials as direct sources confirming the contents of the report, serving as a clear indicator that these quiet diplomatic discussions appear to be well underway. The UAE’s core objective does not seem to be gaining permanent unilateral control of the Gaza Strip, but it appears oriented toward a temporary mandate that is not too far off from direct administration.

The UAE’s vision for Gaza’s future would involve heavily collaborating with Israel, and Israel’s prime international backer, the United States, in governing the devastated territory. This arrangement would theoretically hold until such time as a newly reformed version of the Palestinian Authority, which currently oversees the West Bank, would be deemed ready and capable to assume total control. On a surface level, this diplomatic proposal may logically seem like a set of good, well-reasoned ideas to manage the monumental task of Gazan reconstruction.

After all, Hamas certainly will not be the organization to whom Israel willingly passes control of the territory, and both Israel and the United States will inevitably be deeply involved in whatever happens on the Gaza Strip. However, the likely deeper meaning of the Emirates’ ambitious proposal becomes strikingly clear when analyzing both the elements the plan deliberately leaves out, and the current, chaotic state of affairs on the ground. First, the plan would specifically leave out direct involvement from other major Arab World nations like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

Each of these regional powers has a close working relationship with the United States and at least an informal, functional relationship with Israel, making their exclusion a significant geopolitical choice.

Strategic Calculus and Regional Geopolitics

There are deeply uncomfortable realities inherent to Israel’s current strategy for post-war Gaza, which is to say, there is fundamentally no concrete plan. While there are quite a few unofficial plans currently in circulation—calling for everything from indefinite direct military occupation, to renewed Jewish-Israeli settlement, to the formation of a brand new administration that would involve thoroughly vetted, non-Hamas civil leaders—neither Israel nor the United States has adopted any formal approach to dealing with Gaza after this war ends. Furthermore, Israel is actively reorienting its military focus toward Iran and the Houthi movement in Yemen.

Concurrently, the incoming United States administration appears broadly non-interventionist and disinterested in the immediate state of Gaza, meaning both nations will likely prefer to focus their political capital on other pressing strategic priorities. In broad strokes, what the UAE appears to be offering is a comprehensive management service. The Emirates will effectively take administrative control of Gaza, subject to strategic direction from Israel and the United States, thereby taking the catastrophic humanitarian situation off Israel’s hands for the near to medium term.

This process will almost certainly be dictated much more by what the UAE chooses to implement internally than what Gazans or the broader Arab world might actually prefer. According to the Reuters report, the UAE plan thus far is severely lacking in granular details. UAE officials have since publicly emphasized that significant reform of the Palestinian Authority, its empowerment, and the establishment of a credible roadmap toward a Palestinian state are essential prerequisites for the success of any post-Gaza plan.

The specific phrasing of a “post-Gaza plan” carries an eerie diplomatic weight when issued by a UAE official regarding the territory. For the sake of preserving at least a bit of diplomatic optimism, the United States State Department has confirmed that the UAE is indeed intimately involved in ongoing talks on postwar reconstruction, and that a wide range of ideas and discussions remain under active consideration. The infrastructural and humanitarian issues that the Emirates are apparently spotlighting are unquestionably urgent ones.

Gaza has been utterly devastated after more than a year of continuous, high-intensity war with Israel, and reconstruction there is universally expected to be a monumental endeavor demanding tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to successfully accomplish. The Emirates fundamentally agree with Israel that Hamas is dangerous and deeply destabilizing, and that the Palestinian Authority currently governing the West Bank is in desperate need of systemic reform, making the UAE a logical participant in these high-level diplomatic conversations.

Human Rights Concerns and Implications for Gaza

The geopolitical alignment driving this proposal is robust. The UAE and the United States are close allies, with the UAE recently designated as Washington’s second-ever Major Defense Partner, standing alongside only India. The Emirates also formally normalized their relations with Israel courtesy of the 2020 Abraham Accords.

Israeli sources speaking to Reuters indicated that although the UAE has been broadly critical of Israel’s wartime conduct and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is still actively seeking deep Emirati involvement in post-war Gaza. It is highly likely that the incoming administration in the United States will align even closer with the Emirates. This is evidenced by the announcement of a $20 billion Emirati investment in the US on the exact same day as the publication of the Reuters report, alongside close, long-documented financial ties between the incoming administration’s business interests and the Emirates more broadly.

However, this sweeping diplomatic initiative is heavily soured by the troubling reality that the United Arab Emirates operates with a highly controversial human rights record under the surface. The UAE is a key regional ally and the primary financial backer of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organization that the United States recently recognized as the active perpetrators of an ongoing genocide in Darfur. The UAE serves as the main global destination to launder smuggled conflict gold from Africa, much of it flowing directly through the RSF.

Furthermore, international experts note the UAE has initiated a proxy war with its next-door neighbor and fellow US ally, Saudi Arabia. Emirati shipping firms are actively involved in large-scale, coordinated efforts to help Russia and Iran skirt Western economic sanctions on oil exports, and UAE intelligence officials have been credibly accused of running secret torture camps and clandestine prisons in Yemen. Domestically, the Emirates are under constant, intense fire from international humanitarian groups.

They face severe allegations regarding the use of forced disappearances, the systemic torture of arbitrarily detained individuals, extrajudicial executions, and the mass, structural exploitation of migrant workers. This exists alongside heavily publicized, intense restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and women’s rights. These are severe operational problems that even the United States openly recognizes, despite having officially elevated the Emirates to a Major Defense Partner just months prior.

Some sources interviewed by Reuters explicitly claimed that Emirati officials had actively advocated the use of private mercenary groups to unilaterally keep the peace in Gaza, despite the widespread allegations of severe abusive behavior that follow most prominent mercenary organizations operating in the 21st century. What the UAE is proposing would effectively grant it direct administrative control over the Gaza Strip, backed entirely by a global superpower that seems to have no tangible intention of holding it to any high humanitarian standard. The Emirates could solve a multitude of immediate problems at once for Israel: managing physical security in the Gaza Strip, offloading the immense burden of the responsible treatment of Gazans, and entrusting Gaza’s future governance to a nation that Israel can trust to operate in ruthless search of profit rather than ideological opposition.

For the United States, it makes ruthless pragmatic sense to offload the optical nightmare of Gaza to the UAE, or to UAE-backed mercenaries, ensuring any resulting humanitarian issues will not directly impact America’s bilateral relationship with Israel. Ultimately, this plan functionally treats the territory as a lucrative geopolitical holding left in the hands of a highly suspect regional power, fundamentally prioritizing strategic convenience over the welfare of 2.3 million displaced civilians.

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