DRUGS-PERU: Shining Path Lashes Out Against Coca Eradication

By Ángel Páez Reprint | | Print |

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Dec 27 2005 (IPS) - The day after eight antidrug police officers were killed by Shining Path insurgents in the town of Aucayacu in the jungles of the Peruvian valley of Alto Huallaga, new graffiti appeared along the walls lining the main freeway in the capital: “Fujimori Yes, Terrorism No”.

‘Fujimoristas’ never tire of pointing out that former president Alberto Fujimori – now in prison in Santiago, Chile awaiting the results of an extradition process – defeated the Maoist guerrillas during his two terms in office (1990-2000).

But the rebels who began to wage guerrilla warfare in 1980 were not completely eliminated, as Fujimori claimed.

The armed individuals who killed the police in the Dec. 20 ambush belong to one of the two Shining Path groups that survived the Fujimori regime.

Under the leadership of Alberto Cerrón Palomino, known as “Comrade Artemio”, the group is active in the Alto Huallaga valley in the central province of Huánuco, where 34 percent of the country’s coca plantations are concentrated.

The other Shining Path group is led by Ronaldo Huamán Zúñiga or “Comrade Alipio”. It operates in the Ene and Apurimac river valleys in southern Peru, where coca plantations have expanded significantly, and now account for 29 percent of the national total.

On Dec. 5, Alipio’s column killed five police in the town of Palma pampa. Less than a month earlier, a new antidrug base partially financed by the U.S. government had been installed in the town, and the United States provided four helicopters for the exclusive use in the fight against the drug trade.

The Shining Path groups led by Artemio and Alipio have stepped up their activities in response to the increased presence of security forces in the valleys where small farmers grow coca – the raw material used to produce cocaine, which has experienced a boom over the past year.

But rather than a new wave of activity by Shining Path, as the Fujimoristas suggest, the latest actions by the groups led by Artemio and Alipio, which are only active in the coca production zones, should be interpreted as a reaction by groups financed by drug traffickers to the beefed-up government antidrug operations, according to some analysts.

President Alejandro Toledo, who has closely implemented the U.S. anti-drug strategy, which is based on forced, rather than voluntary and compensated, eradication, while largely ignoring the social aspects of the problem, responded to the attacks by declaring a state of emergency in the areas where the insurgents are active.

He also set up a government team to build infrastructure in the towns where the Maoist guerrillas operate, and promised to finance agricultural projects to offer alternative sources of income to coca farmers who abandon their illegal crops.

But experience has shown that if farmers fail to find markets for their alternative products, they are unlikely to abandon coca, which guarantees them a higher income.

Sources at the National Directorate against Terrorism told IPS that Alipio’s group consists of 150 armed fighters, while Artemio’s is made up of 60. They do not represent a danger to the State, as Shining Path did until 1992, when its founder, Abimael Guzmán, was captured along with most of the organisation’s leadership.

Fujimori took credit for Guzmán’s capture. However, it was carried out by an elite police unit created towards the end of the administration of Alan García (1985-1990), which operated outside of the National Intelligence Service run by Fujimori’s security chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who is now in prison and facing trial in a number of cases of corruption and human rights violations.

In a communiqué, the Sendero group that killed the police officers in Aucayacu claimed responsibility for the murders, which it said it committed to “break the siege of annihilation against the popular war.” The group denied that it had received money from drug trafficking.

But in the trial currently underway against Guzmán and other Shining Path leaders, including Óscar Ramírez Durand, the latter testified that he had received funds from drug traffickers in exchange for protection.

Ramírez Durand also said that Artemio and Alipio remained active even after Guzmán ordered Shining Path members to lay down their arms because they provided armed protection for coca plantations and cocaine production in the valleys where their groups operate.

The presidential candidates for the April 2006 elections, the right-wing Lourdes Flores, retired army colonel Ollanta Humala, and former president Alan García, lambasted the government for “sacrificing” the police officers and for lacking a realistic, effective antidrug policy.

Alipio and Artemio’s men are apparently seeking to become the defenders of the country’s coca farmers, who during the Fujimori regime organised protests, roadblocks and other actions against the elimination of their crops.

In 2003, Toledo met in the government palace with a group of coca growers, and promised to implement a programme of voluntary eradication of the crop. But little to no effort was made in that direction.

To the contrary, the president ordered the intensification of forced eradication efforts this year, after a report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy expressed concern over the increase in coca and cocaine production in Peru, and called for more rigorous action.

Toledo was forced to toe the line because in 2002 he had signed the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), in effect through 2006, by which the United States conditions a series of trade benefits on success in antidrug efforts.

Lima was also in the final stretch of the negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States, which depended on compliance with the antidrug targets set by the ATPDEA.

Failing to take vigorous action in the face of the skyrocketing of coca and cocaine output would have stood in the way of the free trade deal, one of Toledo’s most cherished objectives.

Between January and November this year, the antidrug authorities confiscated 11.3 tons of cocaine, a record in Peru.