The Peruvian experience

Peru, an impoverished South American country, remained plagued with the menace of terrorism for fifteen long years. The Peruvian problems started with the emergence of Maoist terrorist organisations Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in 1980 and Tupac Amaro in the late 1970s.
The more lethal of the two was Shining Path, led by Abimeal Guzman (aka Presidente Gonzalo), a former university professor of philosophy. Guzman’s ideology was a mix of Marxist-Leninism with a strong blend of Maoism. He wanted an armed revolutionary movement against the state to install a communist system based on ‘pure communism.’ Since the movement had its origins from the southern poverty-ridden and most disadvantaged region of Ayacucho, therefore Ayacucho nationalism appeared to blend with the Maoist ideas propounded by Guzman.
Shining Path, though ideologically Maoist, had a slightly different version of Maoism than the regular one. Guzman’s idea was to bring about a cultural revolution in Peru to establish dictatorship of the proletariat without any revisions, which he believed many other communist countries had earlier done. Guzman called it New Democracy.
The Peruvian government faced tremendous difficulties in tackling the situation since over time Guzman’s organisation had become a personality cult with thousands of armed fighters launching terrorist attacks against government and civilians across Peru. In more than 6,000 incidents of terrorism by Shining Path more than 60,000 Peruvians lost their lives with billions of dollars of economic and infrastructural losses. More than half of rural Peru had become a no-go area for the government. The Peruvians had no resources to take any counterterrorism measures.
Terrorism is generally considered a weapon of the weak, with very little resources required to conduct acts of terrorism. Simply put, terrorism is cheap whereas counterterrorism is very expensive. But the Peruvian had faith in the leadership of their then prime minister Alberto Fujimoro (elected in 1991) who was hell-bent on destroying Shining Path. After getting elected in 1991, Fujimoro, a man with a will but few resources at his disposal, critically analysed the structure of Shining Path in order to defeat it. He managed to conclude that the whole organisation revolved around the leader: Guzman. Shining Path’s slogan was, “There is no No 2. There is only Presidente Gonzalo and then the party. Without Presidente Gonzalo, we would have nothing.”
The Fujimoro counterterrorism plan was simple: Get Guzman. A new task force comprising 500 security personnel was established with one sole purpose – to arrest Guzman. After one year of hard work and scores of covert operations the task force was able to arrest Guzman from an apartment in Lima, the capital of Peru, a hideout which could not have been guessed easily as most of Shining Path operations were in rural or semi-rural areas and it was hard to believe that its supreme leader was living a life of luxury in the capital’s downtown area.
With Guzman behind the bars, the organization started to struggle and many of its leaders were arrested immediately after Guzman’s arrest. Shining Path was on the back foot. Fujimoro capitalised on this golden opportunity. Further concrete counterterrorism policy measures were employed in order to reverse the momentum of Shining Path. Emergency was declared by parliament. The National Intelligence Service was empowered and overhauled, and police were tasked to tackle terrorism in urban areas and military in rural areas.
To protect villages from the onslaught of vengeful Shining Path militants, ‘committees of self defence’ were established across Peru. Some harsh and controversial measures were indeed taken by the Peruvian military by destroying villages sympathetic to the cause of Shining Path. There was a sudden surge of terrorist attacks after the arrest of Guzman but it was immediately dealt with by government efforts at all levels. After Guzman all hopes were lost for any revival of Shining Path. In subsequent years terrorist attacks continued to fall and more leaders were either killed or arrested.
Shining Path is still active in Peru but the new generation of leaders have not been able to revive its days of glory. There have been terrorist attacks in Peru in the last few years but without any significant damage having been caused.
The Peruvian experience of tackling Shining Path can be taken as a poor man’s effort to counter terrorism. Pakistan, equally poor in resources and dealing with a plethora of terrorist groups, could take a leaf out of Peru’s book to minimise the level of terrorist threats. Peru’s counterterrorism experience is affordable and manageable. Pakistani policymakers could study and evaluate the Peruvian measures and carefully apply some of those here.
The writer is a senior police officer with a PhD in terrorism studies.