Mara War

Mara War
Part of the Creeperian Conflicts
Clockwise from top left: Soldiers of the ECCP, army soldiers in a shootout with MS, army soldiers operating a technical, patrolling FRENAMI soldiers.
Date 15 October 1979 – present (44 years, 6 months and 4 days) Location Throughout Creeperopolis, with occasional spillover across international borders into El Salvador, Rakeo, Salisford, Sequoyah, the State of the Church Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Creeperopolis Armed Forces National Police Intelligence Directorate Supported by: El Salvador New Gandor Paleocacher Quebecshire Rakeo Salisford Sequoyah State of the Church	Paramilitaries and gangs Mara Salvatrucha Creeperian Mafia Los'Sureños Los'Norteños Los'Conformistos Los'Zetas Los'Negros Amadio 18th Street Gang Los'Muchachos AUC Death squads FALANGE FRENAMI MANO ECCP MDA
Commanders and leaders
Alexander II Augusto Cabañeras Gutiérrez José Guerrero López Gustavo Leigh Guzmán César Mendoza Durán Santiago Azaña Yagüe Jonatán Muñoz Juderías Alexander Zorita Arboleda José Sáenz Morales Diego Holguín Dávila Danilo Medina Sánchez Jeremías Dueñas Cañas Former: Adolfo V # Romero III # Alfonso VI † Emmanuel Cabañeras Videla X Miguel Guerrero Guzmán # Orlando Letelier Sanz # Benito Aparicio Capmany # Enrique Agramonte Leoz # Josué Manzanedo Seco # Pedro Espiga Ordóñez # Rubén Franco Alcabú  Martín Gutiérrez Sánchez # Ramón Illescas Galán  Felipe Cambeiro Cavallería Agustín Lanusse Melendez # Fortunato Galtieri Castelli # Carlos Menem Menem	Ismael Zambada García Ignacio Coronel Villarreal Juan Esparragoza Moreno Rafael Caro Quintero Joaquín Costilla Sánchez Heriberto Lazcano Zapata Eugenio Valencia Salazar Valentine Ngobo Shabunga Salvador Mancuso Gómez Carlos Mancuso Gómez Former: Salvador Berrocal Rouco † Alexander Ramírez Umaña  Gonzalo Inzunza Andrade † Román Saavedra Saelices † Antonio Cárdenas Guillén  Nazario Moreno González † Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes † Omar Treviño Morales # Miguel Treviño Morales # Héctor Beltrán Leyva  Arturo Beltrán Leyva  Luís Sánchez Arellano † Vicente Carrillo Fuentes # Martín Arzola Ortega  Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda † Francisco Saynez Mendoza † Rafael Ojeda Durán  Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri  Gustavo Duarte Carpio Raúl Lorenzana Méndez José Koné Ochelo Alfredo Bránzer Guacanza Former: Adolfo Rivera López # Enrique Rivera López # Pedro Saelices Carballo # Frederico Duterte Sáenz † Israel Guevera Monte # Orlando Xirau Pinto †
Strength
500,000+ dedicated soldiers 50,000+ dedicated police	at least 150,000?
Casualties and losses
28,311 confirmed dead	250,000+ estimated dead
1.7–2.4 million dead as a result of organized crime

The Mara War, also referred to as the Creeperian Drug War and the Paramilitary War, is a major ongoing asymmetric military conflict occurring in Sur, primarily in Creeperopolis. The high-intensity conflict being fought between the Creeperian government, anti-government paramilitaries (composed of drug cartels, criminal gangs, etc.), and various semi-government aligned death squads, began on 15 October 1979 with a declaration of war which, issued by Creeperian Emperor Adolfo V, which called for the "elimination" of Creeperopolis' criminal gangs which had grown powerful enough to effectively govern some parts of the country.

The Creeperian government has stated that the primary purpose of the conflict is to "destroy terroristic paramilitary and criminal threats to the Fatherland." Since the declaration of war, dozens of criminal organizations eventually evolved to form into paramilitaries to directly challenge the government, with some groups openly stating their intentions are to topple the Creeperian government entirely. Additionally, various anti-paramilitary groups formed which primarily target and murder members of the paramilitaries, earning them the label of being death squads. The death squads, because of their intentions of eliminating the paramilitaries, have effectively become semi-aligned with the Creeperian government, as the government effectively ignores the actions of the death squads so long as they target the paramilitaries and not civilians or government forces.

Despite government efforts to bring the conflict to an end, it has gone on for over 44 years, making it one of the longest ongoing armed conflicts, and has resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 1.7 million to 2.4 million people, making it the deadliest ongoing armed conflict (including deaths as a result of organized crime). Legally, however, the Creeperian government does not consider members of the paramilitaries to be human beings which allows people to murder them without any legal consequences in some sort of effort to deter individuals from joining the cartels and encouraging people to take justice into their own hands. This official policy of the Creeperian government has been almost universally condemned by the international community as a severe violation of human rights. As a part of Creeperopolis' campaign to dehumanize paramilitary members, anyone arrested by the Creeperian government who is discovered to be a member of a paramilitary is automatically given a 70-year prison sentence, while those convicted of a violent crime are imprisoned for life or executed, with some being extrajudicially executed by the military or police.

Background

Alfonso Cabañeras Moreno (MINDEF) initially supported the formation of gangs in the 1950s.

Following the conclusion of the Creeperian Civil War in September 1949, a period of low-level insurgent-like conflict began in Creeperopolis, known as the "Partisan Resistance", between the right-wing Creeperian government established by the Catholic Imperial Restoration Council (also called the Romerists) and left-wing guerrilla movements who were mostly composed of former soldiers of the National Council for Peace and Order (also called the Miguelists). Many Creeperans believed that the internal conflict which had raged in Creeperopolis since 1933 had not yet completed, and as such, some Creeperans formed and joined self-defense groups composed of armed civilians who would protect their group's members from guerrilla attacks. Overtime, said self-defense groups evolved into criminal gangs and began engaging in criminal activities and violence against rival gangs.

Initially, the Creeperian government welcomed the gangs, seeing them as vigilante groups protecting civilians from partisan attacks. In 1952, Minister of Defense Alfonso Cabañeras Moreno stated that the self-defense groups and gangs "are a useful tool for the government to fight off the Miguelist threat to the Fatherland. While some have attacked the government, most haven't, and although some have engaged in criminal activities, so long as they are an unofficial ally against Miguelism, the self-defense groups may stay." During the early and mid-1950s, the Creeperian National Police (PNC) recorded several instances of open combat between partisan groups and gangs throughout southern Creeperopolis, where most of the partisan resistance was occurring.

After the end of the partisan resistance in 1957, however, the government began to take a more strict approach on the criminal gangs and the activities they engaged in, as they were no longer inherently anti-partisan forces and were becoming true criminal organizations engaging in violent crimes against civilians and government officials such as murder, rape, kidnapping, battery, armed robbery, among other crimes. The Creeperian government issued notices to the departmental police forces to take a "stricter stance" against criminal activity being undertaken by the self-defense groups and gangs.

Prelude

Early governmental anti-gang actions

On 16 February 1958, Segismundo Peralta Llano, the mayor of Tuxtla Martínez, was kidnapped by a criminal gang. The Zapatista Departmental Police (PODEZA) launched a large-scale operation to search for the mayor, however, the police eventually found Peralta Llano's decapitated body on the outskirts of Panachor three days later on 19 February. Above his corpse, on the wall next to which his body was found, the police found graffiti reading "Territorio 18" (translated as: "18's Territory"), in reference to the 18th Street Gang which was established sometime in the early-1950s. The succeeding mayor, José Sierra Queipo, announced that the 18th Street Gang would be "eradicated" as a "punishment" for Peralta Llano's assassination, marking the first time any level of the Creeperian government took direct action to attempt to eliminate a criminal gang.

Combatants

Paramilitaries

List of notable paramilitaries

• 18th Street Gang
• Amadio
• Creeperian Mafia

• Los'Conformistos
• Los'Negros
• Los'Norteños
• Los'Sureños
• Los'Zetas
• Los'Muchachos

• Mara Salvatrucha (MS)
• United Self-Defense Forces of Creeperopolis (AUC)

Death squads

List of notable death squads

• Anti-Deltinian Armed Forces of Liberation – War of Elimination (FALANGE)
  • Creeperian Catholic Protection Army (ECCP)
  • Militarist Nationalist Front (FRENAMI)
  • Movement of Organized Nationalist Action (MANO)

• Atlántidan Defense Militia (MDA)

See also

Creeperopolis portal Terraconserva portal

• List of wars involving Creeperopolis
• List of wars of the Creeperian Conflicts

External links

Media related to the Mara War at LCN Wiki

• Mara War (NSIndex; 6 October 2019) Creeperopólis
• Mara War (IIWiki; 1 March 2020) by Creeper