Definition of Dirty War

There are things that a government, a state, cannot do to defeat an enemy. At least not officially. Not legally. But many states do.

The call war dirty It consists of the confrontation practiced by one state against another state, or a group of the state itself (political enemies, independence from certain regions, ...) with illegal methods.

It is, to understand us, an "anything goes" that dictatorial governments have used especially to eliminate dissent politics, but to which states of the so-called democratic states have not been shown.

Because, let's face it, all states have an arm of secret services that carry out tasks of intelligence with methods that often fall into the completely illegal.

The dirty war, unlike the conventional war, does not follow rules.

It is true that many times the war conventional Nor does it pay attention to the rules, as is the case of the Geneva Convention and the multiple violations that it has suffered in all conflicts with the murder of prisoners, or attacks of all kinds on civilians, but these rules exist.

That is why the dirty war affects anyone, military or civil, man, woman, elderly or minors. And, those who practice it, do not put limits to their subordinates.

Their objective, many times, is to spread terror among the opponents of a regime, for which they can reach use really brutal methods, such as kidnapping, torture, summary killings, or attacks on relatives of the objectives.

An example of a dirty war - not yet fully clarified - is the one carried out by the Spanish government in the 1980s against the terrorist group ETA.

Various elements of the government and state police forces created, completely illegally and apart from public and legal structures, a terrorist group that was dedicated to attacking members of ETA and their environment.

This group, called GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups) distinguished himself by perpetrating kidnappings, attacks and even torture of members of the terrorist band ETA, completely at the margin of the law. In fact, some of its members were tried a posteriori, although it has never been explicitly known And for sure if the orders from above came from the president of the Spanish government at that time, the socialist Felipe González.

Most dictatorships have practiced dirty warfare.

This has been the case of both ultra-right and ultra-left regimes, and with the aim of ending or, at least, dismantling, the endurance on the other side.

Photos: Fotolia - Ruslan / Luvchieva