Cota 1061

Updated Friday, November 14, 2008 10:07 am TWN, AFP
The China Post

LIMA — Peru on Wednesday extended for another 60 days a state of emergency in three central Andean regions plagued by guerrilla and drug-trafficking violence, Defense Minister Antero Florez said.

The measure gives the army control of Ayacucho, Cuzco and Junin regions where most of Peru’s cocaine trade originates and the remnants of the Shining Path rebel group team up with drug-trafficking gangs to fight government forces.

The 60-day extension was decided during a regular cabinet meeting after the ministers heard reports of persistent drug trafficking and guerrilla violence in the region, despite a military crackdown launched in August, Florez said.

Wed Oct 22, 8:24 PM

Yahoo News Canada

By Diego Ore

LIMA (Reuters) - Suspected members of the Shining Path guerrilla group stole dynamite from a Peruvian mining camp of U.S.-based metals company Doe Run, government officials said on Wednesday, in the insurgency’s third attack this month.

At least 30 armed members of the rebel group invaded the site where Doe Run is exploring for minerals in the coca-rich Huancavelica region of Peru’s southern Andes early Monday. They also took radios, food and medicine.

At least 17 people have died in two assaults the Shining Path has carried out this month against the army. The attacks come as Peru prepares to host world leaders for the APEC summit in November.

In the first attack, the group ambushed soldiers by placing explosives on a dirt road and then setting them off with detonator cord as a convoy of military trucks drove by.

“I can confirm there was an incursion,” Defense Minister Antero Flores told Reuters.

Later, he warned mining companies to take more precautions.

“Companies have to be much more effective with their security measures, especially when they have dynamite and similar materials, so that they aren’t at risk of being taken by delinquents,” he said in Congress, according to Peru’s state news agency.

Vice President Luis Giampietri said, “this is an isolated event. We can’t lose sight of that, but the materials must be recovered.”

Doe Run declined to comment.

President Alan Garcia, whose approval rating has fallen to 19 percent, has been sending soldiers to Peru’s coca-growing regions since August in an effort to destroy what is left of the Shining Path, which security officials say includes about 300 guerrillas.

The Shining Path, which led a deadly insurrection that started in 1980, largely collapsed in the early 1990s after its leadership was captured. At its height, it routinely robbed dynamite from Peru’s numerous mines.

Holdout members of the group remain active, though the government says they have mostly abandoned their Maoist ideology in favor of running drugs.

The Shining Path has killed about three dozen police, soldiers and anti-narcotics workers since Garcia began his term two years ago. Peru is the world’s second largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, after Colombia.

(Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by David Wiessler)

Items About Areas That Could Break Out Into War

Strategy Page

October 15, 2008: For the second time in a week, Shining Path terrorists attacked an army patrol. This time the leftist terrorists killed two soldiers and wounded five. The Shining Path, believed destroyed fifteen years ago, but diehards hung on in the jungle, and now are growing again, propelled by drug money.

October 11, 2008: Drug trafficking has once again re-energized Peru’s guerrilla gangs. Shining Path gunmen associated with drug traffickers ambushed four Peruvian military trucks near Vizcatan, in the Apurimac-Ene river valley, killing 16 people. The firefight went on for hours after the ambush. The military refers to the jungle river area as the Vrae (Spanish acronym). The Vrae’s chief crop is coca leaves. Security forces increased their presence in the Vrae region in August, and began what the government called “offensive operations” against Shining Path camps in the area.

The Peruvian drug trade links several wars. On September 8, police arrested 20 people they accused of working with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. They also seized two and a half tons of cocaine in the same operation. The national origin of the people arrested tells a geo-strategic story: 13 Peruvians, three Colombians, four Mexicans. Shining Path to FARC to Sinaloa? Probably. The drugs go north, and so does the drug network.

How strong is the Shining Path? In 2006 the government estimated Shining Path fielded around 300 fighters, but no one was certain. The police did keep turning up new weapons, likely paid for by drug lords. Now the government estimates Shining Path has 600 fighters. These fighters aren’t rebels. They are mercenaries serving in a mercenary combat force tasked with guarding coca fields.

October 10, 2008 - 19:52
Andrew Whalen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LIMA, Peru - Peru’s military says 12 soldiers and two civilians are dead after Shining Path rebels ambushed a column of military trucks in the southeastern mountains.

The military high command is calling the bomb and gunfire attack the deadliest in years by the rebels. A military statement says 14 soldiers and three civilians, including a five-year-old boy, were wounded in Thursday evening’s attack.

Peru’s conflict with the guerrillas had been largely dormant after the once 10,000-strong Shining Path was virtually eliminated in the 1990s.

But about 300 members of the Maoist-inspired group remain active in the area, funding themselves from the cocaine trade.
Hoping to eliminate them, Peru’s military sent 1,000 troops to the region last month.

Its chief, Gen. Otto Guibovich, told The Associated Press last week that it was the first time troops have been dispatched to the region since the Shining Path’s remnants moved there more than a decade ago.

The military’s statement said the civilians were riding with soldiers in trucks that were returning to the Cochabamba Grande base in Huancavelica province when they were ambushed near the town of Tintaypunco.

Carlos Tapia, an expert on the Shining Path, told the AP he does not think Thursday’s ambush indicates the group is resurgent.

“These Shining Path rebels are like those Japanese that continued fighting (the Second) World War on a few Pacific islands after Japan surrendered,” he said.

In days prior to the ambush, one soldier and five rebels were killed in fighting in the area and 15 suspected guerrillas were captured, the military said.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed from 1980 to the mid-’90s in the Shining Path’s brutal effort to impose a communist regime on Peru.

The insurgency was quashed by a democratically elected president, Alberto Fujimori. His rule ended in scandal in 2000, however, and he is now on trial for human rights violations.

The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 09/18/2008 07:14:00 PM MDT

Denver Post

LIMA, Peru—The leader of Peru’s notorious Shining Path leftist rebels rejected an ultimatum to surrender and demanded to negotiate a political accord with the Peruvian government, in an interview aired Thursday by Peruvian broadcaster Radioprogramas.

Filomeno Cerron Cardoso, who goes by the nom de guerre “Comrade Artemio,” said the group will never lay down arms or surrender in the face of “widespread military repression” from the government.

“We completely reject the ultimatum” issued by national police chief Octavio Salazar, Artemio said in a radio broadcast originally recorded Wednesday at a local station in the Huallaga Valley where the rebels still operate.

“We still insist that what is needed is a political solution, what is needed is a general amnesty and national reconciliation,” Artemio said.

The Shining Path devastated Peru, which saw nearly 70,000 people killed from 1980 to the mid-’90s during the rebels’ efforts to impose a Maoist communist regime. It faded after its leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured in 1992, though it continues to operate in much smaller numbers on money collected for protecting the drug trade.

Artemio said his group is “taking steps toward peace,” but that President Alan Garcia’s “dictatorial” government does not want it.

“Instead it wants the peace of the cemeteries. It wants everyone dead,” he said.

The interview is Artemio’s first since he appeared in a ski mask, flanked by 70 guerrillas in a taped television interview in November 2006.

Ruling party Congressman Yonhy Lescano told Radioprogramas that a general amnesty is out of the question and reiterated that the group must lay down its arms.

Lima (ANTARA News/Xinhua) - Peruvian police seized 2.5 tons of pure cocaine and arrested 20 suspected drug traffickers last week in an anti-drug operation, Peru`s interior ministry said on Monday.

The cocaine, worth 125 million U.S. dollars, was found over the weekend in a storehouse in southern Lima, tucked inside some 200 bumpers that are put around boats for protection while docked.

Interior Minister Luis Alva told local media on Monday that it was the first time for Peru police to detect cocaine hidden in boat bumpers, which is difficult to find with x-ray machines and drug control dogs.

He added that the 20 arrested suspects were Mexicans, Colombians and local Peruvians.

Peru is the world`s No. 2 coca grower after Colombia. It produces about 300 tons of cocaine every year, which amounts to nearly one third of the world`s total.

Last year, the country burnt 20 tons of seized cocaine.
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COPYRIGHT © 2008

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Related Article:
Peru arrests 20 over ties to Mexican drug cartel

Washington Post

Reuters
Monday, September 8, 2008; 5:04 PM

LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian police have arrested 20 people suspected of working for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel and seized 2.5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in boat bumpers, Peru’s interior ministry said on Monday.

The seizure, valued at $125 million, included the arrest of four Mexicans, three Colombians and 13 Peruvians. The bust was the strongest sign yet the powerful Sinaloa cartel is making inroads in Peru, the world’s No. 2 grower of coca behind Colombia.

The cocaine was found over the weekend in a working-class neighborhood of Lima, tucked inside some 200 bumpers that are put around boats for protection while docked.

Over the last few years, traffickers leaving Peru have largely abandoned clandestine air travel for sea transport, which is harder to track.

Police say they are making more drug busts than ever, thanks in part to millions of dollars in anti-drug spending.

Last year, officials found and burned 20 tonnes of cocaine, worth more than $2 billion — a record high for the Andean country. Police have burned 20 tonnes of the drug so far this year.

But coca cultivation in Peru is also on the rise. It increased some 4 percent last year, according to the United Nations.

Farms in remote jungle areas that grow coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, are often guarded by remnants of the Shining Path, a leftist insurgency that terrorized Peru for much of the 1980s and 1990s. The organization largely collapsed after its leaders were arrested and jailed.

Drug violence has claimed thousands of lives in Mexico over the past few years in clashes among rival drug gangs and the government. The Mexican cartels smuggle South American cocaine into the United States.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Dana Ford; Editing by Terry Wade and Eric Beech)

Tue Aug 12, 2008 5:43pm EDT

By Simon Gardner and Eduardo Garcia

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Frustrated by the way the United States spends money to fight cocaine production in Bolivia, the government has decided to take over the program, the country’s anti-drug tsar said on Tuesday.

“We’re planning to nationalize the war against drug trafficking,” Felipe Caceres told Reuters. “We will still welcome cooperation in the future, but the Bolivian government will decide how that money will be spent.”

“It’s a question of sovereignty, of dignity,” added Caceres, President Evo Morales’ deputy minister of social defense and controlled substances.

Caceres, who like Morales owns a plot for growing coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, advocates cultivation of the plant for traditional uses such as making tea and fighting altitude sickness and hunger.

But as South America’s poorest country distances itself from its colonial past with Morales’ reforms and seeks to break away from U.S. influence, the government also wants to be the leading voice in the domestic war against narcotics.

Bolivia is the world No.3 cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.

The United States has contributed about $25 million to interdiction efforts this year. It also funds programs to encourage coca farmers to switch to alternative crops like peppers, bananas, citrus fruits and coffee.

“The policy of the U.S. government means that of all the money that should go into helping improve conditions for coca farmers, 85 percent of it goes into vehicles, salaries, they live in hotels with swimming pools … it goes into their pockets,” Caceres said.

“We are not rejecting U.S. aid. But the aid is not going to the coca farmers, who are prepared to produce other products and leave the coca leaf behind,” he added. “At the moment, the U.S. cooperation is autonomous. … We want to reverse that situation.”

Caceres said Bolivia was looking to other potential partners like Russia for hardware like helicopters.

“We welcome the idea that the Bolivian authorities will be willing and able to put forward funds from Bolivia to also deal with this issue,” said David T. Johnson, visiting from the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, after meeting Morales.

“Our data shows that approximately 88 percent of our funding goes directly to assist Bolivian authorities and working to deal with counter-narcotics issues.”

COCA CULTIVATION GROWING

Morales has adopted a “zero cocaine, but not zero coca” policy, which gives tens of thousands of farmers permission to grow their own coca plot for legal uses, which the United States has described as “permissive.”

According to the United Nations, Bolivia allows the cultivation of 12,000 hectares (nearly 30,000 acres) of coca for traditional uses, though output is nearly 29,000 hectares (71,660 acres), or approximately 104 metric tons of coca a year. That compares with 48,600 hectares (120,000 acres) farmed in the mid-1990s.

Caceres estimates that 65 percent of coca production is for traditional, legal uses. The balance goes into the cocaine trade.

Morales believes that 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) is an appropriate production level. Caceres says it will take at least five years to reduce the national crop to that amount.

He says demand for Bolivian cocaine has surged, with much of it destined for Latin American countries and Europe. But he says much of the cocaine confiscated in Bolivia is from Peru, bound for Brazil, the United States and Europe.

Coca is prevalent in Bolivia. It is sold at street markets by women in bowler hats and colorful shawls. Indigenous people in the Andes often have a wad of coca bulging in their cheek like chewing tobacco. Witch doctors use the leaves to tell fortunes. In the building where Caceres’ office is located, pictures of dark green coca leaves and a poster advertising a coca festival adorn the walls.

Caceres would like Bolivia to find ways to export coca legally.

“There are 14 alkaloids in the coca leaf. Only one of them is cocaine. If we take cocaine out of coca, then we can export it. That is the plan.”

(For more stories on Bolivia’s recall election and political crisis)

Lima, Aug. 01 (ANDINA).- The institutions involved in fighting against drugs in Peru and Ecuador will sign today a cooperation agreement to create a joint prevention and control mechanism against drug abuse and trafficking, as well as drug-related crimes such as smuggling of chemical inputs and money laundering.

The agreement will be signed by the directors of Ecuador’s Council for the Control of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Consep), and Peru’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (Devida).

The signing of this agreement came after the recent Second Meeting of Border Coordination of relevant institutions for the fight against drugs in Peru and Ecuador, carried out in the northern Peruvian city of Tumbes last June.

The major topics to be covered are related to prevention, interdiction and integral and sustainable alternative development, which is of great interest to Ecuador because it promotes a preventive development strategy to reduce the cultivation of coca in its territory.

The agreement provides advice and training for Devida technicians and specialists, while an Ecuadorian delegation will visit Peru’s areas where alternative development programs are executed.

It also considers a joint participation of Ecuador and Peru in major international fora, and to achieve greater openness of markets for alternative products.

(END) NDP/GCO/EEP

Reuters

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