Arms manufacturers won. And they're still winning. No matter how we frame our thoughts.

The army and the foreign support did a lot of heavy lifting there. Discounting them is like saying that the American Civil War was won by a bunch of escaped cotton pickers. Sure, those escaped cotton pickers fought alongside the armed forces of some twenty-ish American states but they participated so we can attribute victory to them.

To bring the logic to the extreme, WWII was singlehandedly won by a French tennis player. Sure, his contribution consisted of finding American soldiers to rescue prisoners from the SS during the Battle of Castle Itter but he fought against the Third Reich and we'll just look past everyone else who did. (If that isn't absurd enough for you, I also could've nominated an SS officer as the war's winner, also from the same battle. It was a very weird battle.)