32 Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights to adopt this doctrine, but the Southern Cone Hearing provided a useful insight for the Panel into what this meant in practice, and its modern-day parallels. The Southern Cone military saw the Cold War era not as a metaphor, but a real war. Indeed, for some, it was the “third” world war, taking place between two irreconcilable blocs – the Christian West and the expansionist Communist East. This “war” was both global and local in nature. The Southern Cone military saw violent leftist groups as malignant agents of international communism who were the “enemy within”. In this existential conflict, it was the duty of the armed forces – by whatever means – to defeat the enemy militarily, and to obliterate any manifestation of the enemy’s ideology, culture and traditions. The Argentinean military government and its supporters often referred to the “dirty war” waged against its supposed enemies, one where all the usual rules no longer applied. Likewise, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, who seized power on 11 September 1973, declared the country in a “state of war”. These governments, and other Southern Cone neighbours, came to regard all those who were not active supporters of their regimes as supporters of the “enemy”. One Argentinean General is reported to have said: “First we will kill all the terrorists; then we will kill all who helped them, and then we will kill all who did not help us.” 38 There was a high degree of cooperation between military governments in the war on communism, where values, including human rights and the rule of law, were subordinated to the war, and the strategy and tactics of the “national security doctrine”. Tens of thousands were killed, “disappeared”, or tortured, and societies remain deeply divided to this day. The “war” on communism was not confined within the boundaries of the countries concerned. Testimony to the Panel explained how the security forces and intelligence services of the different countries carried out joint operations in each other’s territory, and sometimes abroad, against suspected subversives. Operation Condor, as it was known, operated through an exchange of intelligence information between States, identification of “subversive” or “terrorist” persons, as well as torture, execution, detention and/or clandestine transfer of political opponents to their countries of origin. In its Hearing in Argentina, the Panel was told how a military junta seized power in March 1976, and initiated the “Process of National Reorganisation”, by dissolving Congress, purging the judiciary, and enacting repressive laws. The junta prohibited all political, trade union and other social and professional organisations. The notions of terrorism and subversion were defined in the broadest terms so as to include anyone who recommends by any means, to alter or suppress the institutional order and social peace of the Nation, by ways not established by the National Constitution 38 Tom J. Farer, “The two faces of terror”, in American Journal of International Law, Volume 101, Issue 1, 2007, pp. 363-38, citing Lindsey Gruson “6 Priests killed in a campus raid in San Salvador”, New York Times, 17 November 1989.