Summarize the environment in which death squads emerge and describe the tactics they employ

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• Death squads come into being when people who hold economic and political power believe that 1) their position is being threatened and 2) the threat is beyond the control of law and order.
• The purpose of a death squad is to eliminate opposition when a government is either unable or unwilling to do so.
• The tactics of death squads vary? they range from semi-official raids on governmental opponents to torture and secret murder.
• In a common scenario, uniformed members of a death squad will "arrest" a victim. The victim is carried away and there are no records. The arresting officers frighten lucky victims and torture and murder the unlucky ones.
• First, political elites must be entrenched in a society with a vested interest in maintaining societal structures? these elites have a history of employing armed force to protect their positions.
• Second, there must be a reform movement of some kind which threatens to break up elitist power structures with the redistribution of wealth and power.
• Third, the government must be either unwilling or unable to stop the reform movement.
• Finally, hard-liners among the political elites break away from their mainstream counterparts in the belief that moderate political elites are too soft and unable to stop the reform movement.
• One common base for death squads is to "protect the established order.".
• The only action that will maintain social order, the hard-liners believe, is physically eliminating opponents and destroying the mentality seeking reform.