The arms purchase was a response to the US arms embargo ; the Árbenz Government resupplied the Guatemalan armed forces, because it was convinced that a U. S .– sponsored paramilitary invasion was imminent.

After the defeat of the regular military, or when one is lacking, continued opposition to an invasion often comes from civilian or paramilitary resistance movements.

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d ’ état ( 18 – 27 June 1954 ) was the CIA covert operation that deposed President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán ( 1950 – 54 ), with Operation PBSUCCESS — paramilitary invasion by an anti-Communist “ army of liberation ”.

The Guatemalan paramilitary invasion was contingent upon the confirmation, by the secret intelligence agencies of the US, that President Árbenz was a Communist ; lack of proof cancelled Operation PBFORTUNE.

Hence, to facilitate unencumbered authorization of the paramilitary invasion, the propaganda campaign of Operation PBSUCCESS exaggerated US Government fears of a Communist Guatemala realised by the régime of President Árbenz, and so facilitated the right-wing counter-revolution that installed Col. Castillo as President of Guatemala in mid-1954.

In the post – War US, the departure of the cautious Truman Administration ( 1945 – 53 ) and the arrival of the adventurous Eisenhower Administration ( 1953 – 61 ), abetted by the right-wing Cold War national political climate, rekindled Presidential interest in covert operations, which reanimated CIA advocacy of a paramilitary invasion of Guatemala to depose President Árbenz and his government.

Because of the continual bureaucratic postponements of the paramilitary invasion, the CIA worried that their Guatemalan army of liberation, or any other Guatemalan armed rebel-group, might prove over-eager and prematurely launch a coup d ’ état.

Faced with dwindling supplies of matériel, and having noted the unusually armed borders of Honduras, El Salvador, and other neighbor countries, President Árbenz acted upon the intelligence indications of an imminent paramilitary invasion of Guatemala — confirmed by a defector from Operation PBSUCCESS — and bought matériel in the Eastern Bloc.

A case officer said that the Central Intelligence Agency did little to hide knowledge of its paramilitary invasion of Guatemala from the American public, “ The figleaf was very transparent, threadbare .” The New York Times celebrated the Guatemalan coup d ’ état as “ the first successful anti-Communist revolt since the last war .” Moreover, in the same newspaper, Milton Brackersan misinformed readers, that “ there is no evidence that the United States provided material aid or guidance ” to the anti-Communist freedom fighters, and that “ the overturn meets only part of the problem of Communism.

CIA intelligence analyses, of some 150, 000 pages of Guatemalan Government and Labor Party documents, found no substantiation of the key geopolitical premise ( Soviet political involvement ) that justified the secret US paramilitary invasion of Guatemala, and the deposition of the elected Árbenz Government.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld ( 1953 – 61 ), said that the paramilitary invasion by which the US deposed the elected Guatemalan government violated the human-rights stipulations of the UN Charter ; moreover, the usually pro – US newspapers of West Germany, condemned the Guatemalan coup d ’ état.

In January 1991, Searchlight-as part of a series of often contradictory articles variously alleging that Column 88 was the paramilitary wing of the British nationalist movement or a " honeytrap operation set up by British Intelligence "-claimed that Column 88 was part of the European Gladio " stay-behind " network, set up and trained by special forces units ( such as the British SAS ) to conduct sabotage and assassinations in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in October 1950, the CIA inserted SAD paramilitary teams into Tibet to train and lead Tibetan resistance fighters against the People's Liberation Army of China.

SAD paramilitary teams entered Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

" Throughout August the army and its paramilitary ally, the ' Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti ', continued to presumably murder some Aristide supporters while organizing parades of " volunteers " to fight an invasion.

A seminal event occurred in August 1968, when Ceauşescu highlighted his anti-Soviet discourse by vocally opposing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia ; a highly popular measure with the Romanian public, it led to sizable enrollments in the PCR and the newly-created paramilitary Patriotic Guards ( created with the goal of meeting a possible Soviet intervention in Romania ).

The Albanian Militia was an Albanian fascist paramilitary group formed in 1939 following the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939, part of the Italian Blackshirts ( MVSN ).

The Dignity Battalions are a paramilitary militia created by Panama's government in the 1980s to help defend Panama against both invasion by the United States and internal subversive activity.

On August 21, 1968, Ceauşescu's Bucharest speech condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia led many inhabitants to briefly join the paramilitary Patriotic Guards-created on the spot as defense against a possible Soviet military reaction to Romania's new stance.

From April to August 1964 Karayiannis commanded and organised the Cypriot National Guard, whose stated mission was to defend the island against possible Turkish military invasion, and to counter the paramilitary forces of the Turkish Cypriot group known as Turkish Resistance Organization or TMT.

Scorpions A paramilitary force of Iraqis, set up by the United States Central Intelligence Agency prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the three decades following 1969, the Army was heavily deployed in Northern Ireland, to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary ( later the Police Service of Northern Ireland ) in their conflict with republican paramilitary groups, called Operation Banner.

However, with increasing bonhomie between the Indian government and the Burma junta and KIA becoming the main source of training and weapons for all northeastern rebel groups, R & AW initiated Operation Leech, with the help of Army and paramilitary forces, to assassinate the leaders of the Burmese rebels as an example to other groups.

Other considerations of the rules of international law, particularly those prohibiting the use of force and the acquisition of territory, are also relevant in that the Soviet authorities and, subsequently, the Azerbaijani government applied use of military and paramilitary force in ethnic cleansing initiatives like Operation Ring, while the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh established militia forces to resist further pogroms and defend the civilian population by repelling Azeri forces.

The attack, which initially had the approval of the Haganah ( the principal Jewish paramilitary group in Palestine ) and was conceived of as a response to Operation Agatha ( in which widespread raids, including one on the Jewish Agency, had been carried out ), was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era ( 1920 – 1948 ).

It has been alleged that a Colombian paramilitary organization known as Alianza Americana Anticomunista may have cooperated with Operation Condor.

Operation Nachshon exposed the poor military organisation of the Palestinian paramilitary groups.

Pakistani President Ayub Khan launched Operation Gibraltar in August 1965, during which several Pakistani paramilitary troops infiltrated into Indian-administered Kashmir and attempt to ignite an anti-India agitation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Wilson is best known for leading Congress into supporting Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) covert operation which, under the Reagan administration, supplied military equipment including anti-aircraft weapons such as Stinger antiaircraft missiles and paramilitary officers from their Special Activities Division to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

These actions were hence linked to Operation Gladio, a large paramilitary network, created and supported by NATO, which was active in many European countries to counter all kinds of communist operations.

In September 1951, the US State Department approved Operation PBFORTUNE, a paramilitary coup d ’ état against the Árbenz Government.

He was the second CIA officer to die as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the first being paramilitary officer Mike Spann on November 25, 2001.

Christchurch had been chosen as the site for a United States paramilitary base to access Antarctica, code-named " Operation Deep Freeze "-it had the only airfield large enough to handle the huge transport planes.

Intent on killing top republicans, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Stone attacked the paramilitary funeral which was being held at the Milltown Cemetery for the three IRA members killed 10 days earlier in Gibraltar by the Special Air Service ( SAS ) in what was termed Operation Flavius.

In Operation Demetrius in June 1971, 300 paramilitary suspects were interned without trial, an action which provoked a major upsurge in violence.

The object of Akcja Łom ( Operation Crowbar )— Kasparek was unaware of the cryptonym — coordinated with operations by Hungarian paramilitary forces, was to subvert the Nazi-German-aligned regime of Avhustyn Voloshyn and restore that easternmost, smallest region of Czechoslovakia to Hungary.

Moreover, in CIA cryptonymic practice, the PBSUCCESS and PBFORTUNE operational names were unusual, because most operational names either were arbitrary-word titles or misleading titles that were meant to hide the true temper of paramilitary actions.

Although the Eisenhower Administration ( 1953 – 61 ) had been spying on the Árbenz Government, interpreted his liberal politics and agrarian reform as dangerous to US economic interests, and had planned a coup d ’ état in 1952, there was no feasible excuse for a paramilitary régime change.

The Combat Groups of the Working Class ( German: Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse, KdA ) was a paramilitary organization in East Germany, founded in 1953 and abolished in 1990.

* Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse, ( KdA ) or in English " Combat Groups of the Working Class " a paramilitary organisation in East Germany, founded in 1953 and abolished in 1990.

An 87-day siege of a Croatian city by the Yugoslav People's Army ( JNA ), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August – November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence

* 1941 – World War II: Serbian paramilitary forces defeat Germans in the Battle of Loznica.

* 1948 – Fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, killing over 100.

* 1990 – More than 127 Muslims are killed in North East Sri Lanka by paramilitary troops.

* 1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.

* 1997 – Protestant paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

* 1997 – Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas are massacred by paramilitary forces.

The Guatemalan Civil War ( 1960 – 96 ) involved the government, right-wing paramilitary organizations, and left-wing insurgents.

Duvalier's paramilitary police, officially the Volunteers for National Security ( Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale – VSN ) but more commonly known as the Tonton Macoutes, named for a Vodou monster, carried out political murders, beatings, and intimidation.

* 2000 – Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia.

* 1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.

* 1990 – Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian " stay-behind " clandestine paramilitary NATO army, which was implicated in false flag terrorist attacks implicating communists and anarchists as part of the strategy of tension from the late 1960s to early 1980s.

* 1976 – Massacre of students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom, by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.

* October 30 – Greysteel massacre: Three members of the UDA, a loyalist paramilitary group, attacked a crowded bar in Greysteel, Northern Ireland, with firearms, killing eight civilians and wounding thirteen.

* December 27 – Ulster loyalist paramilitary leader Billy Wright is assassinated in Northern Ireland, inside Long Kesh prison.

* August 10 – The UK government bans the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation that had been legal for 20 years.

* September 12 – The Lotta Svärd women's paramilitary auxiliary is founded in Finland.

* April 15 – The United Kingdom's Prince of Wales visits the Japanese paramilitary youth group Seinendan in annexed Korea.

That failed coup d ’ état – known as the Tanquetazo (" tank putsch ") – organised by the nationalist Patria y Libertad paramilitary group, was followed by a general strike at the end of July that included the copper miners of El Teniente.

* Republic of Niger – Young Pioneers ( Niger )/ Jeunes Pionniers ( 1961 – 1974 ) non-communist youth paramilitary group, one of several set up in post independence Africa, funded by and modeled on the Israeli Nahal (" Fighting Pioneer Youth ").

Željko Ražnatović (, ), widely known as Arkan ( Аркан ; 17 April 1952 – 15 January 2000 ) was a Serbian career criminal and later a paramilitary leader who was notable for organizing and leading a paramilitary force in the Yugoslav Wars.

" Organization of the Secret Army " or " Secret Armed Organization ") was a short-lived, French dissident paramilitary organization during the Algerian War ( 1954 – 62 ).