Death Squads

Death squads are sometimes regarded as relics of the dictatorships that dominated much of the world in the twentieth century. But their role in carrying out killings for aims supported by the state or society is very much alive in a post–Cold War world comprising weak states, civil conflicts, and a flourishing private security sector. In every region of the world, death squads continue to be an effective form of terrorism used against targets ranging from common criminals to separatist rebels.

The criteria used to categorize armed non-state groups include their origins, composition, organization, affiliation, tactics, objectives, and adversaries. Among these characteristics, three distinguish death squads: tactics, structure, and affiliation. Most centrally, all death squads share a focus on killing targeted opponents or, less frequently, random citizens. In most cases, they have structures based on a small unit size and operational flexibility. The rationale for such tactics and structures is connected to the third distinguishing characteristic, affiliation. Minimizing size and maximizing flexibility allow their identity to be obscured, heightening the political impact of killings by magnifying their lack of predictability and obscuring links to known individuals. In fact, as Julie Mazzei points out in her book Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?, the term death squad is adopted by a group “to insinuate virtuosity and legitimacy, and by opponents to indicate malevolence and illegitimacy.”

Death squads’ diversity also explains their continuing utility. With a diversity of aims, for example, many conflicts are fueled by a large number of death squads. In India, dozens of Sikh-affiliated death squads all oppose the Indian government but have very different ideologies and political goals. In Kashmir, different death squads are supported by Pakistan and other Islamic governments, with some aiming to join Pakistan and others to form an independent state.

Like other non-state armed groups, death squads are usually formed with a triad of political, economic, and security backing. Political actors provide ideological motivation and public cover, while economic actors and security officials provide material and meeting locations. By facilitating the movement of people and goods, globalization has enabled the kind of cross-border training and trafficking that sustains death squads. In particular, the huge international arms market allows many squads to acquire military-caliber weapons. Over 100,000 people were killed by military-affiliated death squads in Algeria in the 1990s, for example, many by illegally imported arms.

The most virulent death squads, though, still tend to emerge from the state's need to subcontract out killings during a period of civil war. In the 1990s, a powerful death squad known as the Tigers attacked non-Serbs throughout Bosnia, spreading widespread terror and death. Another set of genocidal death squads are Sudan's Janjaweed (loosely translated as “devils on horseback”), which have carried out mass killings in Darfur [Page 154]with the support of a government whose public denials only thinly veil its support.

Even when a civil war ends, the death squads that perpetuated it often mutate into new manifestations geared toward emerging arenas of conflict. These new and more discreet forms fall into one of four major types. The first is death squads organized to kill socially marginalized people. Since 2000, the mayor of Davao in the Philippines has openly supported death squads that have summarily executed hundreds of people from among what he calls “society's garbage,” including small-time drug dealers, young toughs, and street children. The city's squads are arranged into small cells and usually led by former or current police officers, who often compile lists of targets with city officials.

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