Table Of ContentDeath Squads
in Global Perspective
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Death Squads
in Global Perspective
Murder with Deniability
Edited by
Bruce B. Campbell
and Arthur D. Brenner
palgrave
macmillan
*
DEATH SQUADS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Copyright© Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner, 2000.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM in 2002.
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ISBN 978-1-4039-6094-8 ISBN 978-0-230-10814-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230108141
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Bruce, 1955-
Death squads in global perspective : murder with deniability I Bruce
B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21365-4 (cl) 978-1-4039-6094-1 (pbk)
1. Death Squads. 2. Brenner, Arthur David. II. Title.
HV6322.C36 2000
303.6'25-dc21 00-021797
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First Publishedby Palgrave Macmillian: October 2002
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Preface vii
1. Death Squads:
Definition, Problems, and Historical Context 1
Bruce B. Campbell
1
HISTORICCAALS ES
2. "To Induce a Sense of Terror":
Caudillo Politics and Political Violence
in Northern Nicaragua, 1926-34 and 1981-95 2 7
Michael J. Schroeder
3. Feme Murder:
Paramilitary "Self-Justice" in Weimar Germany 57
Arthur D. Brenner
I1
DEMOCRARTEICG IMET RANSITIONS
4. Window on the Past: A Declassified History
of Death Squads in El Salvador
Cynthia J. Amson
5. State of Siege: Political Violence and
Vigilante Mobilization in the Philippines
Eva-Lotta Hedmarz
111
SOCIALC ONTROL
6. State Terrorism and Death Squads
in Uganda (1971-79)
Edtuard Kannyo
7. From Petrus to Ninja:
Death Squads in Indonesia
Robert Cribb
8. Modernity and Devolution: The Making of
Police Death Squads in Modern Brazil
Martha K. Huggins
n'
NA~IONAELT,H NICA, ND RELIGIOUIDSE NTITYC ONFLICT
9. The Rise and Fall of Apartheid's
Death Squads, 1969-93
Keith Gottschalk
10. India's Secret Armies
Patricia Gossman
11. Territoriality and Plausible Deniability:
Serbian Paramilitaries in the Bosnian War
James Ron
Appendix: Death Squad Cases: A Short Summary 313
Bibliography 325
About the Contributors 349
Index 353
WHILED OING HIS DOCTORAL RESEARCH IN THE LATE 1980s for a biog-
raphy of the Weimar German pacifist and professor Emil J. Gumbel,
the leading chronicler of political violence in Weimar Germany,
Arthur D. Brenner was struck by the parallels between the paramil-
itary organizations of the 1920s and the Latin American death
squads that were much in the U.S. news at the time. Some biblio-
graphic searching, however, revealed no comparative studies of
death squads, and by the time he completed his Ph.D. in 1993, he
had determined to compile a collection of scholarly essays on death
squads around the world. Early the following year, the editors met
at an academic conference and discussed the idea, which led shortly
thereafter to an agreement to collaborate on this book. Bruce B.
Campbell had already been working on German paramilitary
groups for some time, and was trying to work out a larger explana-
tion of why paramilitary organizations exist and what purpose they
serve. This research proved very useful in looking at death squads in
a new way and blended well into the project.
Once we had the basic idea of editing a comparative study of
death squads, we began the challenging task of finding likely con-
tributors. This was a long process with many difficulties. We are,
after all, both specialists in the history of Germany in the twentieth
century. While it was not too difficult to identify scholars working
on the well-known death squads of Central and South America,
other parts of the world proved more difficult. Some specialists
were accustomed to conceptualizing the objects of their study in
frameworks that did not include the concept of "death squads."
This left us not only trying to find the right people and the right
channels of communication in fields well outside our expertise, but
also attempting to persuade some colleagues to think about their
subjects in new ways. The search was exciting, and the contacts we
had with our contributors and a host of others along the way
proved very enriching. There were, of course, the usual difficulties
involved with bringing a book to press, but some were not so usual.
We deeply regret the untimely death of Prof. Gregory Gugel, who
was engaged in preparing a chapter for this book on South African
death squads in Namibia at the time of his passing. We sorely miss
the ebullient personality that shone through his letters and e-mail
messages.
If we have other regrets, they are in the nature of "the one that
got away." We wanted to include more case studies from Africa and
Europe and tried in vain to arrange for a study of the early Ku Klux
Klan in the United States. As with historical cases from before the
1950s, a variety of circumstances conspired to negate these plans. Per-
sonal and professional commitments prevented several scholars who
had expressed an interest in contributing to the book from doing so.
As we began to research death squads more and more, we were
rapidly confirmed in our initial belief that death squads are a major
problem worldwide. We also discovered that they are not simply a
product of the Cold War but have, in fact, been active for much
longer than we had at first expected (see the chapter by Bruce B.
Campbell, below, for more on the subject of chronology).
The book begins with a theoretical essay (Chapter 1) by Bruce
B. Campbell. It prepares the way for the case studies that make up
the rest of the book by presenting a working definition of death
squads and a review of the literature. Beyond this, it points out sev-
eral problems in current understanding of how and why death
squads exist and proposes a historical framework for considering
them that should help resolve some difficulties in how death squads
have been defined and conceived to date. He links the appearance of
death squads to a crisis of the modern state and considers them as
one instance of a much wider process of "subcontracting" that char-
acterizes nearly all states in the twentieth century.
The case studies are divided into four sections. The first covers
two historical cases that demonstrate the existence of death squads
well before World War 11. Michael J. Schroeder's essay, "'To Induce
a Sense of Terror': Caudillo Politics and Political Violence in North-
ern Nicaragua, 1926-34 and 1981 -95" (Chapter 2), examines po-
litical gang violence and death squad activity in the mountainous
Segovias of north-central Nicaragua during two non-contiguous pe-
riods of state crisis: the aftermath of the 1926-27 civil war and the
Sandino rebellion that followed (1927-34), and the Contra war of
the 1980s and its aftermath in the 1990s. He situates the origins and
characteristics of the violence within the broader contexts of state
formation and crisis, patron-client relations, local-regional caudil-
lismo, and imperialist intervention. Schroeder argues that collective
action and organized political violence that can be characterized as
death squad activity form an integral part of modern Nicaraguan
history and that any effort to better understand that history must
pay such practices close and abiding attention.
Following this is Arthur D. Brenner's essay, "Feme Murder:
Paramilitary 'Self-Justice' in Weimar Germany" (Chapter 3). It con-
cerns the murderous "self-justice" practiced by illegal paramilitary
units between 1920 and 1923 in order to protect the clandestinity
of military activity that contravened the Versailles Peace Treaty. The
narrow subculture in which the death squads were active and the
limited scope of "crimes" for which they meted out punishment
helps account for the relatively low number of victims they claimed.
The author argues that a central characteristic of the modern state-
its division of vast responsibility horizontally, across many agencies
at any given level, and vertically, into national and regional author-
ities with considerable responsibility and autonomy within their
spheres-was a crucial factor in facilitating the emergence of death
squads and in giving the state the impunity it desires when it creates
or tolerates these forces.
The second section looks at cases in which death squads were used
by ostensibly democratic regimes undergoing periods of transition.
These chapters suggest conditions that make the appearance of death
squads likely in other places in the future. Chapter 4, by Cynthia J.
Arnson, discusses one of the best-known and representative appear-
ances of death squads. "Window on the Past: A Declassified History
of Death Squads in El Salvador" reexamines the internal conflict in El
Salvador from 1979 to 1991 in light of important information recently
declassified by the United States government. This new information
provides valuable information about the origins, structure, financing,
practices, and personnel involved in death squad activity there. The ar-
ticle documents how death squads operated out of officially consti-
tuted security bodies, including the police, National Guard, army, and
air force, and how privately organized and financed groups main-
tained close connections to official forces. The article also evaluates the
role of the U.S. government in reporting on and attempting to curb
death squad activity.
