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 their position is being threatened and 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, and these elites have a history of employing armed force to protect their positions.
• This combines with a second factor, a reform movement which threatens to break up elitist power structures with the redistribution of wealth of power.
• Third, the government must be either unwilling or unable to stop the reform movement.
• Finally, hardliners among the political elites breakaway from their mainstream counterparts based on 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 hardliners believe, is physically eliminating opponents and destroying the mentality seeking reform.