User:Compassionate727/Drafts/Civil Defense Patrols (El Salvador)

Civil Defense Patrols
Dates of operation	c. 1980 – 16 January 1992
Active regions	El Salvador
Allies	El Salvador United States
Opponents	FMLN

The Civil Defense (Spanish: Defensa Civil) was a network of village-based patrols in El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War that served as a front for the Organización Democrática Nacionalista and the Salvadoran Army.

Formation

The Civil Defense was formed when the recently-installed First Revolutionary Government Junta abolished the paramilitary Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN) in late 1979. The Salvadoran Army, rather than disarm and disband the organization's patrols and intelligence network, incorporated them into its own structure. Some of these patrols continued to refer to themselves as ORDEN.

Roles

Like its predecessor ORDEN, the Civil Defense in its early years existed to infiltrate villages and find, track and murder left-wing activists whom the patrols labeled as "communists" and "subversives". To this end it worked with and sometimes under the command of the Armed Forces, including the Treasury Police, National Police and National Guard.

Beginning in 1983, the government of El Salvador promoted participation in the Civil Defense as part of a "hearts and minds" strategy backed by the United States, with the goal of isolating and protecting the civilian population from Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, allowing them to reside safely in war zones. In such instances civilians usually received financial and economic aid from the United States, which was sometimes withheld to coerce participation in patrols. Efforts to expand participation were resisted and largely failed due to fear by civilians that participation in civil patrols made them and their villages targets for the guerrillas and that the government was incapable of adequately defending them. By late 1987, the number of Civil Defense patrols in conflict-heavy areas had diminished substantially.

Activity

Civil Defense patrols extensively engaged in forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, with some members of the patrols also publicly identifying as members of death squads. Murders committed by Civil Defense patrols were often indiscriminate.

In the early 1980s, Civil Defense patrols engaged in multiple massacres. On 14 May 1980, patrols self-identifying as ORDEN participated in the Sumpul River massacre that left 600 people dead. On 22 February 1983, members of a local patrol cooperating with the military murdered 74 identified "subversives" in Las Hojas.

In 1980 and 1981, Civil Defense fought alongside the National Guard during attacks on peasant cooperatives, during which they engaged in razing, mass abductions and mass murder.

Beginning in 1982, the FMLN increasingly targeted the Civil Defense, often inflicting heavy losses on smaller, isolated or under-equipped patrols. Between 1982 and 1984, several patrols were destroyed and never re-formed due to villagers accurately believing that the existence of patrols in their villages made them targets.

As a result of the government's efforts in the mid- and late-1980s to recast the Civil Defense as a protective force, the number of serious human rights abuses perpetrated by patrols declined, though they continued until the end of the decade.