About the Book Death squads have become an increasingly common feature of the modern world. In nearly all instances, their establishment is tolerated, encouraged, or undertaken by the state itself. The state thereby risks its monopoly on the use of force, one of its defining characteristics. Using ten case studies from around the world, the book hopes to answer that question and to explain not only their development, but also why they can be expected to proliferate in the early twenty-first century.
Murder is their primary or even sole activity.
Except in the rare case where an insurgent group forms them, death squads operate with the overt support, complicity, or acquiescence of government, or at least some parts of it. In many cases, government security forces have participated directly in the killing. Yet at the same time, death squads may be privately constituted, almost always involve the support and participation of elements outside of government, and develop considerable independence from their backers. Except in unusual circumstances, organizations or units involved in killings of combatants in the context of war between sovereign states, even where irregular resistance forces are involved, do not fall under this definition, although the killing of noncombatants may indeed do so. Arthur D. Brenner is Assistant Professor of History at Siena College.