A paramilitary is a military that is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces.^[1] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934.^[2]

Though a paramilitary is, by definition, not a military, it is usually equivalent to a light infantry or special forces in terms of strength, firepower, and organizational structure.^[3] Paramilitaries use combat-capable kit/equipment (such as internal security/SWAT vehicles), or even actual military equipment^[4] (such as long guns and armored personnel carriers; usually military surplus resources), skills (such as battlefield medicine and bomb disposal), and tactics (such as urban warfare and close-quarters combat) that are compatible with their purpose, often combining them with skills from other relevant fields such as law enforcement, coast guard, or search and rescue. A paramilitary may fall under the command of a military, train alongside them, or have permission to use their resources, despite not actually being part of them.^[4]

Under the law of war, a state may incorporate a paramilitary organization or armed agency (such as a law enforcement agency or a private volunteer militia) into its combatant armed forces. Some countries' constitutions prohibit paramilitary organizations outside government use.

Depending on the definition adopted, "paramilitaries" may include:

• The auxiliary forces of a state's military or government, military reserve forces, such as national guard, presidential guard, republican guard, state defense force, home guard, civil guard, imperial guard, and royal guard forces
• Private military contractors and mercenaries
• Irregular military forces, such as militias, partisans, resistance movements, freedom fighters, rebel groups, liberation armies, guerilla armies, militants, insurgents, and terrorist groups.

• Semi-militarized law enforcement units within civilian police, such as police tactical units, SWAT, Emergency Service Units, and incident response teams
• Gendarmeries, such as the French National Gendarmerie, Dutch Royal Marechaussee, Egyptian Central Security Forces, European EUROGENDFOR, Turkic TAKM, and Chilean Carabineros de Chile
• Border guards, such as the Australian Border Force, Indian Border Security Force, Bangladeshi Border Guard Bangladesh, and Turkish village guards
• Security forces of ambiguous military status, such as internal troops, railroad guard corps, and railway troops
• Branches of government agencies such as intelligence agencies tasked with law enforcement, tactical support, or security operations, such as the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Center and Global Response Staff, or the U.S. Department of Energy's Federal Protective Forces

• Lithuanian Riflemen's Union

• Armed, semi-militarized wings of political parties and similar political organizations.

• Category:Rebel militia groups
• International Association of Gendarmeries and Police Forces with Military Status
• List of Serbian paramilitary formations
• Militarization of police
• Police tactical unit
• Fourth-generation warfare
• Violent non-state actor
• Military urbanism
• Private army
• Fascist paramilitary
• Guerrilla warfare
• List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel
• List of paramilitary organizations
• Bangladesh Ansar
• Border Security Force

• Golkar, Saeid. (2012) Paramilitarization of the Economy: the Case of Iran's Basij Militia, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 38, No. 4
• Golkar, Saeid. (2012). Organization of the Oppressed or Organization for Oppressing: Analysing the Role of the Basij Militia of Iran. Politics, Religion & Ideology, Dec., 37–41. doi:10.1080/21567689.2012.725661
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2020). Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-882524-1.

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