Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

DEATH SQUADS • 139that the Peruvian government had revived an infamous military deathsquad, La Colina, which had targeted university teachers and studentssuspected of supporting the Sendero Luminoso (SL) insurgents.Examples of death squads can also be found outside Latin America.Many of the Ulster Protestant militias, such as the Red HandCommandos and the Ulster Volunteer Force, have been accusedof acting as anti-Catholic death squads. South Africa’s military CivilCooperation Bureau was closed on 31 July 1990 following revelationsthat it had sponsored death squad activities. In Turkey a governmentscandal in December 1996 revealed that the Turkish government hadbeen hiring members of drug-dealing gangs to kill suspected dissidentsas well as Kurdish clan members to provide “village guards”to kill off Kurdish separatists. Turkey had previously suffered fromdeath squad activity between leftists and rightists that led to a militarytakeover in 1980 to restore order and political stability.While death squads are usually state-sponsored groups, in caseswhere the state is relatively weak a marginally stronger politicalgroup or economic elite could sponsor its own death squads withouthaving to rely on the state. Such was the situation in El Salvador followingNovember 1979, when a weak transitional government wasunable to control its own security personnel involved in death squadsthat were financed and run by Salvadoran oligarchs opposed to agrarianand social reforms. Likewise, the Medellín Colombian cocainecartel formed its own death squad, Muerte a Secuestradores, tokill off leftist guerrillas who had been interfering in the smugglers’operations.Although the term “death squad” has usually been used onlyto describe right-wing terror groups, there are leftist regimes andgroups that have sponsored their own death squads. In El Salvador,the Clara Elizabeth Ramírez Front acted as a selective hit squadwhile the People’s Revolutionary Army, one of the groups withinthe Farabundo Martí Liberation Front, was used to kidnap andmurder officials of the Salvadoran government. In the Philippinesthe Communist New People’s Army has been using death squadsknown as Sparrow Squads to murder Philippine government andmilitary authorities as well as U.S. service members. The PeruvianMaoist group Sendero Luminoso has also engaged in selective andsystematic murder of its opponents. In Turkey, prior to the militarycoup and crackdown of September 1980, right-wing death squads,