Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

140 • DELLE CHIAIE, STEPHANOsuch as the Gray Wolves, and left-wing death squads, such as theRevolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (formerly knownas Dev Sol) and the Turkish People’s Liberation Front, were operatingsimultaneously.Death squads seem to function best as repressive tools when theirtargets are limited to the leaders of the opposing groups. Once deathsquad activity becomes random, killing not only opposition followersbut also the usually politically uninvolved public, then the lattergroup becomes more politicized and emboldened to resist the sponsorsof the death squads.Moreover, once death squads cease to be sponsored by a state orparty, they sometimes revert to becoming freelance entrepreneurialkillers. Such was the case with the members of the disbanded OR-DEN group in El Salvador, and such is the case with Brazilian policeofficers today, many of whom have reverted to vigilante actionsagainst petty criminals and homeless street children.Death squad activity has also become more visible in the MiddleEast and Africa. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, deathsquad activity has appeared among the various Kurdish, Shi’a, andSunni groups, each seeking to consolidate control over portions ofIraq. After the election of a Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government inearly 2006, the Baghdad police and security forces became Shi’adominatedand allegedly have tolerated death squad activities aimedat driving Sunnis out of Baghdad neighborhoods. Both the BadrBrigades associated with former al Da’wa Party members and theMahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, in particular, are suspected ofdeath squad activity.In Darfur, in western Sudan, the Janjaweed, armed gunmen ofnomadic Arab groups, have been involved in death squad activitiesdirected at non–Arab African farmers in the region. Beginning in2003 the Sudanese government began using the Janjaweed as counterinsurgencyforces against black Africans in the western regionssuspected of disloyalty to the central government. In the succeedingyears, they killed up to 100,000 civilians and have displaced tens ofthousands of villagers as well as destroying their homes and farms.DELLE CHIAIE, STEPHANO (1936– ). Italian neo-Fascist terroristand founder of the Avanguardia Nazionale. This group carried outa bombing campaign from 1969 to 1973. It merged with the Black