Commission ruled out “any possibility that these were isolated incidents or excesses by the soldiers or their immediate superiors. Everything confirms that these deaths fell within a pattern of conduct, a deliberate strategy to eliminate or terrorize the peasant population of areas where the guerrilla was active, in order to deprive the latter of this source of supplies and information, as well as the possibility of hiding or blending in among the population.”53 According to the Truth Commission, it cannot be claimed that this pattern of conduct can be attributed solely to the local commanders, and that the senior commanders were unaware of it, because the massacres of peasant populations were denounced repeatedly, with no evidence of any effort to investigate them.54 70. Similarly, the Office of the El Salvador Ombudsman established that the “massacres occurred within the framework of military operations, one of the objectives of which was the mass extermination of civilians, including women, children and the elderly, as part of an aberrant military strategy known as ‘scorched earth’ executed by the State of El Salvador” mainly from 1980 to 1982.55 The scorched earth strategy consisted of “the indiscriminate annihilation of one or several villages during a single operation,” followed by destroying or setting fire to the crops, homes and possessions of the victims who had previously been executed or who had fled the area,56 and “its evident objectives were to massacre civilians, cause mass enforced displacements and destroy the people’s means of subsistence, because it sought the ‘dismantling’ of essential social relations in those communities that could provide logistic support to the guerrilla”;57 in other words, they sought “to take the water away from the fish.” Thus, it can be said that “the phenomenon of the massacres occurred deliberately as part of a strategy systematically planned by the Armed Forces of El Salvador; [thus] it cannot be argued that the innumerable mass executions of the civilian population were isolated acts of violence of which the senior authorities of the Armed Forced and the Government in power were unaware; to the contrary, they were inserted in and were a central part of a specific counterinsurgency policy of the State.”58 Consequently, “the massacres […] were not the result of eventual abuse by certain units of the Salvadoran army or of mid-level officers who committed excesses.”59 71. The military counter-insurgency operations had a significant effect on the civilian population with a high cost in terms of lives, and resulted in the concept of the “displaced person.”60 At August 1982, the National Commission to Assist Displaced Persons (CONADES)61 53 Cf. Report of the Truth Commission for El Salvador, From madness to hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador, 1992-1993 (evidence file, tome II, annex 1 to the submission of the case, folio 1208). 54 Cf. Report of the Truth Commission for El Salvador, From madness to hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador, 1992-1993 (evidence file, tome II, annex 1 to the submission of the case, folio 1208). 55 Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1319). 56 Cf. Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1358). 57 Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1361). 58 Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1358). 59 Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1358). 60 Cf. Report of the Truth Commission for El Salvador, From madness to hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador, 1992-1993 (evidence file, tome II, annex 1 to the submission of the case, folio 1101). See also Special report of the Ombudsman on massacres of civilian population perpetrated by State agents in the context of the internal armed conflict in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, issued on March 7, 2005 (evidence file, tome II, annex 4 to the submission of the case, folio 1360). 23