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A soldier of India's elite Assam Rifles stands guard at the India Gate, New Delhi.

Paramilitary designates forces whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military force, but which are not regarded as having the same status.^[1] The term uses the Greek/Latin prefix para- ("beside"), also seen in words such as paramedic.

The term paramilitary is subjective, depending on what is considered similar to a military force, and what status a force is considered to have. The nature of paramilitary forces therefore varies greatly according to the speaker and the context. For instance, in Northern Ireland, paramilitary refers to any illegally armed group with a political purpose, but in Colombia, paramilitary refers specifically to illegally armed groups which are considered right-wing (e.g. AUC), while illegally armed groups considered left-wing, such as FARC are referred to as guerrillas.^{[citation needed]}

Depending on context, paramilitaries can include:

• Military forces outside the army, e.g. gendarmeries and forces such as the Indian Paramilitary Forces and People's Armed Police.
• Some units of National Intelligence Services that are composed of civilian agents tasked with covert action in areas that are difficult or sometimes illegal for Military Forces to operate, such as the Special Activities Division of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
• Some Internal Security, Border Protection and Law Enforcement organizations that are not considered part of the regular Military but are similar in training, equipment and/or organization, such the Internal Troops of the Russian Interior Ministry (MVD), or the Egyptian Central Security Forces.
• Illegal forces which consider themselves military but which governments consider terrorist, e.g. Provisional IRA, Ulster Volunteer Force, AUC, guerrillas.
• Private armies and militias.
• Militarized preexisting government agencies, such as SWAT teams.^[2]
• Auxiliary services of regular armed forces, such as the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary and the adult portion of the Civil Air Patrol.
• Youth groups and movements that can be considered 'militarized' to various degrees, the Hitler Youth movement being perhaps the most notorious example. Innocuous modern examples include military cadet movements like the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, the American Civil Air Patrol and India's National Cadet Corps.

• Private military company
• Police
• Mercenary
• Military
• Militia
• Irregular military
• Military dictatorship
• Vlaamse Militanten Orde
• Weimar paramilitary groups
• Indian Paramilitary forces
• Paramilitary organizations
• Rebel militia groups
• Atholl Highlanders
• SS SA and Blackshirts
• Internal security
• Special Weapons and Tactics
• Territorial Defense Forces (Yugoslavia)

• Human Rights Watch, Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links
• Paramilitary News
• Global Security
• List of Paramilitary Groups

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