Far-right terrorism has re-emerged as a serious security issue in the United States. What are is the drivers behind this phenomenon?

The recent violence in Charlottesville Virginia, perpetrated by white supremacists and neo-Nazis that had gathered for a “Unite the Right” rally, has refocused attention on right-wing terrorism in the United States.  During the rally, James Alex Fields Jr., a possible neo-Nazi sympathizer, drove a car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators, killing one person and seriously wounding 19 others.  The car attack has been described by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Republican and Democratic elected officials alike as an (alleged) act of right-wing domestic terrorism, and the U.S. Justice Department has promised to open an official civil rights investigation of the incident.

What are the macro-causes of domestic right-wing terrorism in the United States?  In a published study, I attempted to address this question by statistically evaluating all identifiable “right-wing” terrorist attacks in the United States for the period 1970 to 2011.  My goal was to try to determine the economic, social and political factors that drive right-wing terrorism.  In the study, terrorism is defined as an act of premeditated political violence perpetrated by nongovernment organizations intended to influence a wider audience.  I identified domestic terrorist incidents as “right-wing” if they were perpetrated by groups or individuals that were motivated by racist, white supremacist, antiabortion and violent, extreme antigovernment ideologies.

It is important to distinguish the events in my analysis from hate crimes, which are spontaneous rather than premeditated or strategically-calculated acts, and from legal, nonviolent far-right political activities.  The groups and individuals in the analysis are outside of mainstream politics in the United States and have deliberately adopted the use of violence to achieve their goals, rather than nonviolent political strategies such as voting, lobbying and forming protest movements.

The drivers of US far-right terrorism

James Alex Fields, Jr., who conducted the Charlottesville car attack. Image credit: Rodney Dunning/Flickr.

It does not seem that right-wing terrorism is driven by economic grievances or distress.  Across the board, socioeconomic factors that are commonly argued to produce resentments that fuel right-wing terrorism were not significant.  For example, right-wing terrorism is not more likely to occur in U.S. states that have a larger percentage of their populations below the poverty line or that have higher levels of unemployment or income inequality.  I specifically examined two economic factors commonly argued by scholars to be associated with the rise of violent right-wing extremism: the structural decline of blue-collar manufacturing and the “Farm Crisis” that took hold of the United States in the 1980s.  Both of these are said to have produced strong resentments that violent right-wing groups exploited to garner recruits, thereby becoming more active and dangerous.  Neither of these factors, however, do a good job predicting when and where right-wing terrorism occurs in the United States.

States that have suffered heavy industrial manufacturing job losses in a given year or a decline in family farms due to foreclosure do not disproportionately experience right-wing terrorism.  The apparent lack of a direct relationship between economic distress in the United States and right-wing terrorism mirrors findings for terrorism writ-large, globally.  Other studies of economically-aggrieved countries or individuals have not found them to be more terrorism-prone.

I also examined a series of social factors.  The propaganda of right-wing extremist groups often mentions immigration, growing ethnic diversity and the decline of white demographic dominance in the United States as motivating threats.  Far-right protestors in Charlottesville illustrated this by chanting “You Will Not Replace Us!” and “Blood and Soil!”  However, I did not find actual racial and ethnic diversity on the ground to be a statistically significant driver of right-wing terrorism.

Nationwide, the increase in the nonwhite population, and the growth of the nonwhite Hispanic or Latino population, in the United States, bears little relation with ebbs and flows of right-wing terrorist attacks.  Similarly, states with rapidly growing nonwhite population were not found to experience more right-wing attacks.  This does not foreclose the possibility that growing ethnic diversity in the U.S. is a driver of right-wing terrorism.  However, it is possible that the perceived rather than actual threat of demographic change and growing diversity fuels violent extremism.  This effect might be better revealed by a study of individual attitudes as drivers of terrorism.

Related to fears among violent right-wing extremists that whites are being “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants and others is the belief among extremists that traditional male roles have been undermined by the empowerment and enhanced personal autonomy of women in contemporary America.  I investigated this by testing two measures of women’s status: the national rate of female participation in the workforce and the rate at which women seek abortions.  Both of these are frequently-used measures of actual women’s empowerment and are also potent political and cultural symbols of women’s equality.  I find both to be associated with a significant increase in right-wing terrorism.

Holding constant other factors such as past experience of right-wing terrorism at the state level, unemployment, income, population, urbanization, size and growth of the economy and region of the country, I found that for each five percent increase in women’s employment nationally, the U.S. states experienced a 50 percent increase in rates of domestic right-wing terrorist attacks.  Similarly, for every increase of 10 medical abortions per 10,000 live births, a state experienced a 24 percent increase in right-wing terrorist attacks.  Of course it is possible that this latter abortion rate finding is simply reflecting abortion clinics being targeted by anti-abortion extremists.  However, when I removed attacks on abortion clinics from the data, the abortion rate in a state still is a statistically significant predictor of terrorism. This suggests that the controversy of abortion itself is a driver of all types of right-wing terrorism.

Figures 1 and 2 help to illustrate these effects.

Figure 1. Impact of Women’s Employment on Right-Wing Terrorism

Figure 2. Impact of Abortion Rates on Right-Wing Terrorism

Finally, I considered some political and policy factors that have been hypothesized to drive right-wing terrorism. There are several schools of thought on the impact that partisan control of government might have on violent right-wing extremism.  One holds that when Republicans win elections and hold public offices, violent far-right extremists increase their activities because they feel emboldened.

The other school argues that Democratic Party control, and policies that Democratic politicians frequently seek to enact such as gun control or enhanced social policies that increase the size of the federal government, antagonizes right-wing extremists, prompting them to strike back by launching terrorist attacks.  I tested for both and found that right-wing terrorist attacks were more common when a Democrat controlled the White House, and increased dramatically after the elections of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

In fact, Democratic control over the White House increases right-wing attacks by almost 73 percent.  Figure 3 presents the different projected rates of right-wing terrorism under Democratic versus Republican presidencies.  The partisan effect, however, seems limited to national politics.  Partisan control over state government does not significantly affect patterns of right-wing terrorism.

Figure 3. Predicted Right-Wing Terrorism Under Democratic and Republican Presidencies

This particular finding is interesting given the argument that U.S. President Trump has emboldened right-wing extremists through his rhetoric and his policies and policy proposals.  However, the impact of the Trump presidency cannot be assessed by the study as the analysis does not cover terrorism after 2011.  The data I used to conduct the original analysis has not yet been updated through 2017, when Trump assumed office.  It will be critical to retest the role of partisan control over the White House once this data is available.

While who controls the White House is found to affect patterns of right-wing terrorism, the national partisan effect seems to not be linked to specific federal government policies.  Policies such as increases in federal income taxes or the 1994 federal ban on the sale assault weapons – both of which were an anathema for right-wing extremists – are not statistically significant predictors of attacks.

Conclusion

The sum of these findings is that several of the more symbolic factors, such as reaction against the empowerment of women or control over the government by an ideological “enemy,” that are significant drivers of terrorism rather than structural economic factors, demographic change or government polices enacted.  This finding is, perhaps, not so surprising.  On a general level, symbolic issues are frequently important motivators for terrorists world-wide.  Consider, for example, the symbolic importance of cleansing Muslim society from the influence of Western culture for a movement like Boko Haram in Nigeria or reconstructing an imagined Caliphate for the Islamic State (ISIL) movement.  More specific to the phenomenon of right-wing terrorism, the results underscore the potency of the U.S. President as a (singular) symbol of government and political direction of the country as well as the cultural impact of changing women’s statuses.

It is also important to consider that the study is very much a preliminary investigation into the drivers of domestic right-wing terrorism.  The study focused on the most basic structural factors that precipitate right-wing terrorism.  Future research might look beyond structural precipitants to examine factors that facilitate the motivation, planning and execution of right-wing terrorist attacks, such as the role played by social media, hate speech online, etc.

Author’s Note: Graphs of marginal effects of a 5-unit change (Women’s Employment), 10-unit change (Abortion Rates) and 1-unit change (Republican to Democrat) on counts of right-wing terrorist events. In models, state unemployment rate, inequality, population, population growth, urbanization rate, area, gross state product per capita, growth of gross state product per capita, region (Midwest, South, West) and previous year right-wing attacks are controlled for.

James A. Piazza is Liberal Arts Research Professor of Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University. Piazza’s research focuses on terrorism, counterterrorism, political violence and intra-state armed conflict. His published work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics,International Organization, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Public Choice, Journal of Peace Research, Political Psychology, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Political Research Quarterly, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Interactions, Defence and Peace Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. He can be contacted at . His website:  http://polisci.la.psu.edu/people/jap45

Following the 1998 peace agreement, Northern Ireland has been promoted as a model for peacemaking. Human rights discourse played a role as a cause and cure of the conflict.

Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Northern Irish conflict has captivated imaginations far beyond the island. Following the 1998 peace agreement, the region has been internationally promoted as a model for peace-making. Politicians from the region have shared wisdom of the Northern Ireland peace process in far-flung countries in conflict, including the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some of the lessons exported from Northern Ireland’s peace process are general prescriptions, such as the necessity of engaging with enemies or the need for multi-party talks to include even the smallest parties. Broader lessons promoted about Northern Ireland’s peace process are claims about the role of human rights in conflict resolution. During the peace process, a popular history emerged with rights—political, economic, and human— occupying a central role as a cause and cure of the conflict.

Human Rights as Political Narrative

The broad outlines of this narrative are: after partition in 1921, the new state in Northern Ireland systematically denied civil and economic rights to Catholics and maintained Protestant dominance. In the late 1960s, when peaceful civil rights demands were met with both loyalist and state violence and state reforms failed, the republican movement was forced into armed struggle. During the conflict, the British state engaged in human rights violations, further compromising the legitimacy of UK governance. In the late 1990s, republicans, unionists, and the British state settled the conflict by agreeing to new political institutions that ensured equal rights for all.

However, human rights lessons from Northern Ireland’s peace process are not quite as tidy as this narrative suggests. My longstanding ethnographic and historical research in the region suggests caution about the comforting certainties of this causal account. In the 1960s, grassroots advocates protested that nationalists’ civil rights were systematically undermined since partition, and throughout the conflict, “first generation” rights to speech and association, or freedom from torture, were violated and remain deeply contentious. At the same time, human rights were absorbed into the conflict, and became another arena for ethnopolitical contest. In the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), an explicit commitment to human rights was envisioned for the new political arrangements. Yet as the agreement was implemented, rights politics have often been vehicles for the claims of nationalists and unionists, rather than universal human subjects.

Ethnopolitics and Human Rights

“Time for Peace” mural, Whiterock Road, Belfast. Image available under the GNU Free Documentation License via Wikimedia Commons.

Since the GFA, the tendency to argue ethnopolitical conflicts in terms of human rights has intensified, to the detriment of both wronged parties and broader understandings of human rights. A compelling example of how human rights were an incomplete solution to the conflict emerged early in the post-GFA era, in 2001, when a dispute in Ardoyne, north Belfast, resulted in shocking, violent loyalist protests at the Holy Cross Primary school (a Catholic girls’school). In June 2001, loyalists from the Glenbryn estate began picketing Holy Cross Primary School in nationalist Ardoyne, north Belfast. The school entrance was located just on the Glenbryn side of a famous “peace line.” Police in riot gear were deployed to protect small girls as they walked to school past lines of enraged adults. The dispute continued for four months, with violent conflicts during the summer break and a resumption of the pickets when the new term began in the autumn. Riots spread throughout north Belfast that autumn and winter, along with attacks on children travelling to other schools.

Families of the distressed children eventually backed an unsuccessful challenge of police conduct under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, and under Articles 3, 8, 13, and 14 of the European Convention. That case, P.F. and E.F. v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 28326/09), was eventually ruled inadmissible by the European Court of Human Rights. Its long legal journey ended in 2010, when the European declared that, horrific as the protests were, there was no evidence of European convention breach.

The dispute and legal proceedings very nearly derailed the new Human Rights Commission formed under the GFA.  In 2002-3, six members resigned or withdrew from the commission, citing multiple reasons related to the commission’s lack of authority and resources, its approach to drafting a Bill of Rights, and, most notably, its approach to handling the Holy Cross protests. Although the commission as a whole voted not to become involved, its casework committee committed the commission to supporting the families’ lawsuit. Individual commissioners took contradictory public positions and became increasingly divided. Meanwhile, the commission was perceived as part of an ethnopolitical conflict rather than as public advocates for either the protection of vulnerable people or fundamental rights.

The Holy Cross protest was not resolved by human rights institutions or advocacy; some might argue that it has never been resolved. The situation revealed several problematic dimensions of treating human rights as a cure for conflict. One difficulty is that human rights laws concern the conduct of state actors. Paramilitary organizations, neighborhood associations, and transnational corporations do not sign human rights treaties.

Human Rights in the Good Friday Agreement

Another issue making it difficult for human rights law or advocacy to provide a resolution to conflict was how the GFA itself situates human rights principles in relation to power-sharing as a means to manage conflict. One innovation of the GFA is that it makes human rights central to the settlement, with the entirety of section 6 devoted to “Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity.” However, the GFA is more strongly oriented by political scientist Arend Lijphart’s consociational model. This model prescribes the management of conflict through power sharing among parties defined in ethnic or communal terms. Thus, the GFA situates human rights within a broader logic that privileges collective political rights. This conceptual maneuver mirrors the way political rhetoric and everyday life absorb human rights claims into regional ethnopolitics, rather than creating a transformative alternative to ethnopolitics.

In the Holy Cross conflict, protagonists framed the dispute in terms of collective rights and alleged that these rights were being differentially allocated by the state. Families of the girls argued that the protests subjected them to inhuman and degrading treatment—violations of their human rights. Furthermore, they said, police did not use force to stop the protests because the girls were Catholic, but they would have ended any such protest by nationalists. Loyalists claimed that free assembly was an unconditional right, irrespective of sectarian content or whether violence might be a consequence.

Unfortunately, the kinds of conflicts and challenges for human rights politics raised in the Holy Cross conflict are neither unusual nor uncommon in Northern Ireland. For example, in Donaldson v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 56975/09) the European Court of Human Rights refused to hear the complaint of a republican prisoner that his human rights were violated when the prison service did not allow him to wear a lily (a symbol of the republican struggle for a unified Ireland) outside his cell. Disputes over rights to display emblems may appear frivolous outside the region, but they are part of a broader process, in which human rights laws and institutions have been insufficient to resolve the disputes that emerge from Northern Ireland’s longstanding political conflict.

Enduring Lessons and the Everyday Life of Rights

In my 2014 monograph, I explore at length how rights politics have often functioned war by other means over time, rather than providing a comprehensive resolution to conflict. I conclude that advocacy such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality movement have been more transformative in human rights terms than attempts to balance ethnopolitical rights. This cautionary point about how human rights politics have been received, reinterpreted, and transformed in the Northern Ireland context is not intended to dismiss the peace process’ significant achievements, including the profound diminution of political violence, paramilitary demobilizations, and decommissioning.

Nevertheless, the successes of the process also require recognition that throughout the fitful implementation of the GFA, political polarization intensified, past violence and political symbols have been repeatedly contested, and riots surrounding parades and symbolic matters like flags have become dangerous and costly recurrent events, intimating, for some, a return to conflict. Violence casts a long shadow across the present peace; prosecutions and re-investigations of past murders and atrocities continue, recent killings like the murder of Kevin McQuigan last summer destabilize power-sharing institutions, and ministers continue to warn of resurgent paramilitary activity – such as a recent upsurge in bomb attacks.

Understanding the role of human rights in everyday politics in both the past and present is necessary for making nuanced claims for human rights advocacy and law in conflict resolution. Northern Ireland’s tremendous reduction in violence must not be dismissed, but it is important to recognize that the settlement also sustains a form of ethnopolitics that is not always congruent with the goals of human rights advocacy. As the politics of the conflict continue to structure the settlement, it is fair to ask how transformative human rights politics have been. Such an approach can make us conscious of perilous conditions that constrain the present fragile peace, and highlight achievements that are durable and transferrable for the future.

Dr. Jennifer Curtis is Honorary Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Human Rights As War By Other Means:  Peace Politics in Northern Ireland, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her work focuses on how grassroots social movements appropriate and alter rights advocacy and law. She has conducted long-term ethnographic research in Belfast, Northern Ireland and in the United States.  She is currently completing an ethnographic monograph on race, sexuality, and civil rights in red state America, based on fieldwork in Missouri. The book explores the local and national significance of #BlackLivesMatter, movements for LGBT equality, and anti-equality movements, within the broader historical context of racialized violence, slavery, and inequality in the American South.

The types of mediation techniques used by an international organization (IO) to settle an international crisis are crucial.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) mediation during the Cod Wars represents an interesting case.

The Cod Wars were a series of disputes between Britain and Iceland lasting from the 1950s to the 1970s over fishing rights in Icelandic waters. The two states were part of NATO and this was the first time two NATO member states had come close to armed war. During the crisis, NATO adopted a combination of both formal and informal mediation techniques, which proved to be instrumental in resolving the Cod Wars conflict. This episode carries important lessons regarding the role of mediation in international relations and conflict.

War, mediation and international organisations

War primarily occurs when states perceive that the likely calculated benefits of combat outweigh the expected costs. In turn, scholars and practitioners have paid extensive attention to identifying the mechanisms that alleviate a crisis. The Democratic Peace, institutionalism, trade agreements and economic cooperation are some of the mechanisms that foster peace, because they tend to improve states’ relations by creating interdependence give incentives to cooperate rather than fight.

Also, ties that states create between themselves or through third-party actors help in crisis alleviation because of the strong network structure that is thereby created. This is where the role of international organizations (IOs) comes into play. States can lower their military tensions in favor of expectations of future gains, based on the cooperation with their co- members in the same IO. If a crisis escalates between co-members of the same IO, the latter seeks to assist its members and restore peace and thus, the IO is turning to a mediator.

A member state usually agrees to abide by the rules of the IO. For instance, members in NATO should commit to the following article:

“The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.”

(North Atlantic Treaty; official texts; 1949)

A mediator that enters a conflict aims to become part of the conflict by manipulating the actors’ behavior and, thus, the choices of the opposing parties.

We do not know what would have happened if NATO had not mediated the Cod Wars. Nonetheless, we learned lessons from NATO’s approach in the Cod Wars that could potentially be used in other instances.

The Cod Wars

Image credit: Issac Newton/Wikimedia.

The UK and Iceland share waters over the Atlantic Ocean in the north. Both the UK and Iceland became charter members of NATO in 1949, with the reservation that they would never take part in offensive action against another NATO nation. Note, though, that the UK and Iceland have had interactions over fishery rights starting even before the 17^th century. The Cod Wars comprised of a protracted series of conflicts between Iceland and the UK that began in 1945. The conflict was initially triggered by Iceland’s one-sided extension of its territorial waters.

There was variation in NATO’s responses towards the crises.  For instance, NATO did not intervene in the first crisis of the Cod Wars (1952-1956). NATO only intervened in later instances, but with different techniques. That is, NATO employed a series of formal and informal mediation techniques over the course of the Cod Wars. A “formal technique” is any official action taken by the mediator that is visible to the public, for instance, all the actors involved in the conflict are aware of that action. Transparency can help the mediator increase their leverage in the conflict and help credibility. An “informal technique” is any action by the mediator that is not visible to the public and to one or both of the disputants. Formal and informal mediation techniques clearly have different advantages.

Public (formal) actions can pose threats to the disputants’ reputations to convince them to stop fighting. On the other hand, informal techniques can improve parties’ mutual understanding and improve their relationship. This usually occurs when the mediator provides a neutral, low-key, safe, and non-judgmental environment. Informal mediation can also give parties opportunities to have earliest talks before reaching an agreement. But while formal mediation by an IO has more leverage and salience, it can also be restraining because it is limited by the organization’s rules, norms, and regulations. And while informal mediation is more flexible, it lacks credibility and thus leverage, as “power through the public” is not used in informal mediation. Mingling both techniques would then seem to be the most successful strategy.

The Cod Wars comprised of four distinct crises, with mostly low tensions on both sides. NATO obliges its co-signers to resolve any mutual conflict peacefully. If the parties are not able to resolve the issue bilaterally, NATO intervenes. Different techniques generated different outcomes to a crisis: either recurrence or non-recurrence of the crisis. A failure to sufficiently address the issues arising from the belligerents’ incompatible goals at the post-conflict stage can ultimately lead to a recommencement of conflict. This happened in the case of the Cod Wars in the first three crises. The first pre-conflict incidents occurred between 1945 and 1948 when Iceland gained the control of its territorial waters. The situation then escalated to clash in the 1950s and became a higher-level crisis in 1952, without NATO intervention. In 1952, the crisis was initially “resolved” and the post-conflict period commenced in 1954. The second crisis began in 1955 and was resolved in 1961, following NATO’s use of formal and informal mediation techniques, with peace lasting for almost eleven years. When tensions exploded again in the early 1970s, NATO used informal mediation to resolve the crisis, but peace was short-lived and conflict recurred beginning in 1975. On this occasion, NATO intervened using both formal and informal mediation. The final crisis ended in 1976, and peace has endured.

A combination of formal and information mediation techniques proved effective for the Cod Wars settlement. When NATO employed formal and informal mediation techniques in a combined manner, it was able to help the parties achieve the most durable resolution. Formal and informal techniques enabled NATO to be flexible (informal) and build trust among the parties but still use the legitimacy (formal) of its organization to gain leverage in the bargaining process.

Conclusion

NATO’s mediation efforts in the first three crises can be seen as failures because the peace that followed each intervention was of short duration. Of course, mediation success is not only determined by the mediator’s strategy, but also by the disputants’ desire to end the crisis. In the case of the Cod Wars, the UK faced risks to its international reputation. Iceland arguably had more leverage because of the strategic significance of its military base and because of the Soviet Union’s interest in developing an alliance with the country. Iceland triggered each crisis of the Cod Wars and eventually achieved all its claims. Nonetheless, in the final crisis, it was Iceland — economically troubled and politically volatile — that requested NATO’s intervention.

Mediation strategies previously employed are to be considered as lessons for future instances, not only to not repeat the same mistakes but also learn from previous success. Take, for example, the Beagle Conflict of 1978 between Argentina and Chile with the Vatican as the eventual mediator. Although the Cod Wars is another isolated conflict that pertains to specific circumstances and features, one could consider relevant generalizations that apply to other/future instances, mostly regarding the mediation strategies used. It is indeed the case that co-members of IOs do not experience frequent conflicts. That said, strategies followed by NATO in the Cod Wars can be employed by individual mediators, countries that act as third party interveners, or other IOs regardless of the shared ties among the countries. Third party interveners who benefit from leverage and resources should have the flexibility to address the issue at stake under different mediation strategies which will depend on the interests, the positions, and the needs of the belligerents.

Zorzeta Bakaki is a Lecturer in the Government Department at the University of Essex. She studied Political Science and Public Administration at the Law School of the University of Athens. She received a Master of Science in International Relations from the University of Essex.  Zeta also obtained her PhD from the University of Essex. Her research interests are international relations, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of conflict management and resolution, international cooperation and environmental politics.

El Salvador’s gang history dates back to the 1960s. At the time, numerous neighbourhood-based groups provided marginalised urban youths with the means to hang out, party, take drugs, and fight their rivals. These gangs constituted a nuisance for the affected residents but did not represent a public security threat. The situation drastically changed when the Central American civil wars ended and the United States stepped up its deportations of offending non-citizens, including members of Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and Calle Dieciocho (18^th Street). Both gangs had been formed in Los Angeles’ immigrant barrios, a haven for Central American refugees some of whose children responded to difficult circumstances by joining existing gangs (such as the Dieciocho) or forming their own group (Mara Salvatrucha). Tired of the stresses of gang life, many deportees arrived in their country of origin hoping to make a fresh start. Faced with poor reinsertion opportunities, however, they continued with what they knew best. Their comparatively nice dress, money, and tales of gang exploits held a fascination that local adolescents found hard to resist. Soon the imported gangs absorbed their smaller counterparts and continued to grow, since widespread social exclusion made El Salvador fertile ground for gang proliferation. Over time gang members resorted to greater levels of violence and drug activity, but the country long lacked a full-fledged gang policy.

In 2003 – eight months before the 2004 presidential elections – President Francisco Flores of the conservative ARENA party launched Plan Mano Dura (“Strong Hand”), ostensibly to dismantle the gangs and curb the number of homicides, most of which had been attributed to these groups. Backed by considerable media publicity, the measure entailed not only area sweeps and joint police-military patrols, but was also accompanied by a temporary anti-gang law that permitted the arrest of suspected gang members on the basis of their physical appearance alone. Both the nature and the timing of the initiative suggested that it had been designed to improve the ruling party’s electoral position rather than to ensure effective gang control. Plan Mano Dura enjoyed huge support among a population that had become weary of permanent insecurity, but human rights defenders, judges, and opposition politicians criticised it for its abuses and neglect of prevention and rehabilitation. The measure helped ARENA win the elections, but the incoming administration of Antonio Saca responded to the earlier criticism by incorporating prevention and rehabilitation into his Plan Super Mano Dura. These alternative approaches, however, were a largely rhetorical concession since suppression remained the dominant strategy. Contrary to the official discourse of success, Mano Dura was spectacularly ineffective: the homicide rate escalated, and the gangs adapted to the climate of repression by toughening their entry requirements, adopting a more conventional look, and using heavier weaponry. More importantly, confinement in special prisons allowed gang members to strengthen group cohesion and structure. Moreover, the large-scale incarceration of gang members fuelled the need for more resources for both the inmates and their families and resulted in an upsurge in extortions, particularly in the transport sector.

By June 2009, when the government of ex-journalist Mauricio Funes and the FMLN (the former guerrilla army) came into power, the gang problem had become intractable. MS-13 and Dieciocho clicas (subgroups) sprawled hundreds of marginal urban communities, their members committed a variety of crimes – ranging from threats, robbery, injuries, auto theft, and the illegal carrying of firearms to drug sales, extortions, rapes, kidnappings, and homicides – and their violence had become increasingly diffuse and brutal. The Funes government announced a comprehensive crime policy comprising social prevention, law enforcement, rehabilitation, victim support, and institutional and legal reforms. The strategy, however, is underfunded (state coffers had been plundered by previous administrations), and gangs are being tackled through the overall crime policy rather than a specific gang programme. The police – now under a new command – has stopped conducting mass raids in gang-affected zones and begun to strengthen its investigative capacity. These are promising steps, but events on the ground soon pushed policy in another direction. Public demands for a quick reduction of homicides and media coverage alleging government incompetence led President Funes in November 2009 to deploy the army. Military participation in public security tasks is no recent development. At present, however, the army has been given broader powers, permitting it to conduct patrols, perform searches, and arrest criminals caught red-handed as well as to maintain perimeter security at the prisons. In what appears to be a face-saving gesture, the Funes administration adopted a gang strategy that exhibits ominous parallels with the earlier Mano Dura policies. Meanwhile, prevention and rehabilitation have once again taken the backseat.

Sonja Wolf is a Researcher at the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia in Mexico City, where she conducts research on security and migration issues in Mexico and Central America.

Image source: VCK xD