Tactics and Psychology of Popular Warfare

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Narcoterrorism

Sendero Luminoso not only relied on the support from the Peruvian people and politics but, like any other organization, depended upon financial support as well. This kind of support can be credited almost entirely to the group’s involvement and manipulation of the demanding cocaine trade of South America during the 80s and 90s in Peru (Steinitz, 2002).
The term narcoterrorism was first termed by Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde Terry in 1983, at the height of the internal conflict in Peru, and concerns the type of terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso represented during that time. Narcoterrorism is understood as the terror-inducing machinations of narcotics traffickers to affect governmental policies or society through the use of violence or intimidation (Tarazona-Sevillano, 1990). The term coined in connection to the Peruvian internal crisis is increasingly being used to describe modern terrorist organizations who become involved in drug trafficking as a means for funding their operations, like the Shining Path. Some well-known narcoterrorist organizations include such groups as the AUC of Colombia, the Taliban, and Hamas (Cuba & Pallet, 2004).
Merely a few years after the 1980 commencement of its operations, the Shining Path began to involve itself in the cocaine trade in the Upper Huallaga Valley (Switzer, 2007), one of the three most intense places of coca plant (raw plant ingredient used to chemically produce cocaine) cultivation in the world, along with the Llanos of Colombia and the Bolivian Chapare region, and constitutes Peru’s largest coca region (Cuba & Pallet, 2004).
By the late 80s the group began to lag in its economic resources and put considerable efforts into controlling the entire Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru (Cuba and Pallet, 2004). The Shining Path thus began to operate in earnest to control the Valley, and thereby, almost the entire cocaine trade of Peru.
This was done through the group’s ability to provide protection for the coca farmers, or cocaleros, against the oftentimes violent drug cartels which represented their usual customers, and offer favorable compensation for the coca plants. The cocaleros therefore willingly paid taxes to the organization for their services. The group also enabled the cocaleres to farm coca outside of the law and thereby produce and sell more of their crops (Steinitz, 2002). By the late 80s and early 90s, both the cocaine industry and Sendero Luminoso’s operations were booming, and Peru boasted the title of the world’s largest producer of the coca plant. The coca leaves were processed in Peru, and then flown by traffickers approved by SL, primarily to Colombia, where the plants were chemically converted into cocaine and shipped-out internationally (McClintock, 1998). Some researchers even attest that in the late 80s, the Shining Path had managed to reach a virtual financial equilibrium with the Peruvian military during that time due to their operations in the cocaine trade (Kay, 2008). Sendero Luminoso was making anywhere from $15 to $100 million USD a year on coca during those years (Tarazona-Sevillano, 1990).
Many of the cocaleros were originally from Ayacucho and primarily peasant and/or Indians, a factor which enabled Sendero Luminoso to recruit a great many of the farmers as senderistas. With the added forces of the many cocaleros of the mountainous Andes, the group amounted to approximately ten thousand senderistas throughout Peru during its peak years in the late 80s and early 90s (Mealy & Austad, 2010).
Despite enormous successes in the cocaine trade, the Shining Path’s smalltime rival, the MRTA, likewise involved itself in narcoterrorism. The MRTA also operated in the Huallaga Valley and the southern coca regions of the country where SL came to lay claim to in the mid-1990s. As in regards to other areas of control the Shining Path was unwilling to cooperate or tolerate the presence of the MRTA on its turf, as was therefore continuously struggling to eliminate the group from the cocaine scene (Mealy & Austad, 2010).
Nevertheless, the MRTA presented no real threat or consequence for the Shining Path as the drug traffickers in both the southern coca regions and the Huallaga Valley generally maintained a practical outlook on the situation. Sendero Luminoso, which represented an altogether more powerful organization than th MRTA, was usually able to make the cocaleros feel better protected, and thereby managed to effectively maintain the sway of the cocaleros’ loyalties throughout the insurgency (Tarazona-Sevillano, 1990).

READ McEliece scheme using quasi-cyclic alternant codes

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Definition.
1.3 Problem Discussion .
1.4 Purpose
1.5 Research Questions
1.6 Thesis Outline
2 Method .
2.1 Research approach .
2.2 Validity and reliability .
3 Paving the Path
3.1 Peruvian Civil War
3.2 Targets of the Shining Path
3.3 Tactics and Psychology of Popular Warfare
4 Concluding Analysis
4.1 Discussion
4.2 Conclusion
Reference List
Further Research