While intuitively, states supporting rebel groups should be liable to sanctions, this is anecdotally only sometimes the case. This mixed picture presents a puzzle to research on both sanctions and external support. Drawing on recent work on indirect governance, we argue that it emerges as a result of different modes of external support. We thus distinguish between delegation, which maximizes rebel supporters’ control over rebels but increases public visibility and reduces plausible deniability, and orchestration, where rebel supporters cannot directly supervise and control rebels, but enjoy low public visibility and maintain plausible deniability. Using data on external rebel support and sanctions in the period 1975-2017, we find that in line with expectations, delegation is associated with an increased probability of senders being sanctioned whereas orchestration exhibits a statistically insignificant and substantively negligible association. This research contributes to our understanding of sanction drivers, rebel supporters’ paths to avoiding sanctions, and strategic considerations in their choice of support modes.