Abstract
The official state military establishment of Suriname is small, numbering about 4,000 at its height in the mid-1980s. However, in order to consolidate their political power, sow terror, and gather intelligence, the military and its (then) left wing supporters augmented their forces with irregulars and auxiliaries. These were armed, funded, and coordinated by the military command, although not always answerable to them; such groups were variously called the People's Militia (Volksmilitie), and were patterned after the Cuban model. A terrorist strike force was established within the formal military ranks, and five civilian insurgent groups were created to advance military control over interior populations and territory.
Suriname is a Caribbean country sharing generally in the political-economic legacies of plantation slavery that rendered Caribbean societies highly pluralistic and socially fragmented. For a desperate period in the 1980s the military had become the ultimate arbiter of power in a state that is still far from becoming a nation.
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