Any Sendero Luminoso Experts Here?
I'm using it as one case study for my "high value targeting" paper I'm doing for the RAND Insurgency Board (and will later have the Strategic Studies Institute publish). Time is short and I was wondering what would be the best one or two sources on SL, preferably article or chapters rather than books.
Steve, I haven't read the book but
it is a mixed bag of authors. A number of them are academics of both the left and the right. Among the better ones are Enrique Obando (former civilian #3 man in the Peruvian Defense Ministry) and Carlos Ivan DeGregori. The latter is also in Scott Palmer's Shining Path of Peru. Renique's writing on SL is incompetent and an ideological apology. Palmer's book is, i think, the definitive work - Scott was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Unversity of Huamanga when Guzman was founding SL and teaching there. Guzman mounted a campaign to force Scott to be transferred.
I think that Max and my analysis is probably the best (and really the only) one to focus on the Peruvian COIN ops with good coverage of both SL and GOP strategy.
Have to agree with this bit...
The other critical factor in the defeat of SL was its brutality which cost it nearly all its legitimacy in the Sierra and in Lima. That brutality turned the local people - districts and their dependencies - to arming themselves and forming the rondas. That the army, after some resistance, accepted the rondas and helped arm them and provided some communication capability was decisive in the Sierra. Cooperation with the police and govt worked in Lima for the people.
While working on my Masters In International Relations, I wrote a paper on SL, and what jumped out at me was that they essentially turned what appeared to be victory into defeat by relying almost solely on violence. There were several reports that predicted the success of SL, yet in the end, they lost the war. While they proclaimed to be a "Maoist" type insurgency, they never really adopted that philosophy, and instead of forming a relationship with the local people, their extreme brutality forced the locals into cooperation with the army, no small matter since the army was also implicated in many human rights abuses at the time. They also showed very little acumen when dealing with Perus indigenous people, and ignored their customs and culture in favor of communist doctrine. At one point, an SL leader said that he expected a million deaths during the "struggle." They killed community service workers to make the plight of poor Peruvians even worse, and widening the gap between rich and poor, ostensibly to cause the poor to rise against the rich. This however, backfired on them in a big way.
George
State of Peru: narcosenderistas, terrorism...?
Recent years saw an increase in reports on Sendero Luminoso activities, now tied to drug trafficking. Last year was quite violent, especially with the military operations in the Valle de los Ríos Apurímac y Ene (VRAE). (See here some glamorizing of the Operaciones VRAE).
The situation may well deteriorate, but apart from mentions of incidents in the news, there is not a lot of coverage.
This piece criticizes the strategy chosen in the VRAE, as opposed to Alto Huallaga (i.e. military operations instead of police work).
I'm curious about people's thoughts on the issue, especially:
1. How big is the risk of this becoming a larger conflict?
2. ... and related: could/would this hurt Peru's economy, break the growth trend?
3. Why isn't there more attention to this in the international press?