Pubdate: Fri, 22 Mar 2002
Source: National Review Online (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 National Review
Contact: http://www.nationalreview.com/letters/send_NRO-letters.shtml
Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/
Author: Dave Kopel and Mike Krause
Note: Both authors are with the Independence Institute; Krause is a U.S. 
Coast Guard veteran who served as boat coxswain for drug patrols in the 
Caribbean Sea.
Note: Exception for Web published column made by MAP Editor based on content

LOSING THE WAR ON TERRORISM IN PERU

The U.S. Government Has Undermined The War On Terrorism In Peru.

Saturday, President Bush will visit Peru, to bolster the war on drugs and 
the war on terrorism. Congress has tripled antidrug aid to Peru this year, 
providing $156 million. Yet Peru's past and present troubles demonstrate 
how the war on drugs has undermined the war on terrorism and will continue 
to do so. The drug war has created an environment ripe for narco-terrorism, 
enriched insurgent guerillas, and hindered rather than helped Andean 
government anti-insurgency efforts.

In Peru, the Maoist "Shining Path" (Sendero Luminoso) terrorists, 
perpetrators of thousands of murders in the 198s and 9s, are making a 
comeback in the coca-rich Upper Huallaga Valley and in Lima. The Shining 
Path is being joined there by the far-left FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia) terrorists. The FARC and Shining Path come bearing gifts of 
poppy seeds, money, and protection to recruit Peruvian farmer into their 
drug-running racket.

Peru is also in the midst of a government-corruption scandal uncovering 
decades of misdeeds by some of our closest drug-war partners 97 including 
bribery, drug running, arms dealing, and death squads. This corruption has 
bolstered the image of anti-government guerillas.

Over the last two decades, Peru fought a bloody and brutal war against the 
Shining Path guerilla terrorists, with 3, Peruvians killed by one side or 
the other. The goal of Shining Path was the destruction of the existing 
government and replacing it with a totalitarian socialist utopia; being 
Maoist, the Shining Path had no hesitation about slaughtering peasants who 
got in the way.

The war culminated in the 199s during the early days of the presidency of 
Alberto Fujimori, when thousands of suspected Shining Path were captured, 
including, with CIA help, Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman.

The success against Shining Path was accompanied by the destruction of 
Peru's constitutional democracy. In 199 Fujimori launched a coup, dissolved 
the courts and Congress, erased constitutional protections, and instituted 
military tribunals. The results were what one would expect in a country 
with a tradition of corrupt and brutal government. Of the over 3,9 
Peruvians convicted in the secret courts, more than 6 have since been 
released by a review commission.

The Fujimori government proved to be as vicious as the Shining Path. The 
U.S. State Department's human-rights reports on Peru explained: the 
military and the police continue to be responsible for numerous 
extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detentions, torture, rape and 
disappearances - Besides beatings, common methods of torture include 
electric shock, water torture and asphyxiation - Credible reports indicate 
the total number of female detainees raped in the past few years (by police 
and military forces) to be in the hundreds - Violence against women and 
children are continuing problems.

At the time, Fujimori enjoyed popular support for his extreme measures, as 
Peru was under siege from the Shining Path. But he continued to abuse 
dictatorial power; he was eventually forced from office, and has fled to 
Japan to avoid being put on trial in Peru.

Another prong of Fujimori's war on Shining Path was to call off U.S.-backed 
coca-eradication programs. The Shining Path was thus deprived of income 
from drug-trade protection rackets and deprived of peasant support.

Fujimori had learned the lessons of the previous decade in Peru. As a 1991 
Cato Institute report details, counter-insurgency efforts against the 
Shining Path in the 1980's were undermined by the U.S.-driven 
counter-narcotics efforts:  In 1984, President Belaunde Terry declared the 
Upper Huallaga Valley an emergency zone and dispatched the military with 
the mission not to fight drugs but to fight Shining Path -  With no reason 
to oppose security personnel and no need for guerilla protection, coca 
growers withdrew their support and even revealed the identity of Shining 
Path members. The guerillas retreated and the coca industry in the valley 
boomed (ironically enough resulting in a lowering of coca prices, a goal of 
U.S. drug strategy).

 From 1985-1989 the new (leftist and populist) government of President 
Garcia cooperated closely with U.S. DEA officials to carry out successive 
eradication and interdiction campaigns, and Shining Path gained control of 
as much as 9% of the Huallaga Valley.

The resurgence of Shining Path prompted President Garcia to prioritize 
counter-insurgency over counter-narcotics. He left coca farmers unhindered 
and even promoted a coca-growers cooperative.

At the same time, the Peru military "conducted at least 3 offenses against 
Shining Path Guerillas, killing 7 guerillas (more than half the number 
killed nationwide that year) and greatly improved security in the towns of 
the upper Huallaga Valley. But U.S. officials, concerned that (General 
Alberto Arciniega) had done nothing to fight coca cultivation, pressed the 
Peruvian government for his transfer."

In other words, the U.S. government under the first Bush administration 
pressured Peru to get rid of the general who was smashing the Shining Path 
terrorists.

Stated another way, in order to protect foolish Americans from putting the 
wrong substance up their noses, the American government undermined the war 
on terrorism in Peru.

In recent years, Peru has acceded American demands to prioritize coca 
eradication. A flood of American money has attempted to convince Peruvians 
not to cultivate coca. From 1995-1, USAID alone provided $17 million to 
Peru in alternative development funding.

Yet these efforts are hindered by the laws of economics. The Americans have 
provided alternative crop subsidies for coffee, a crop whose production 
costs exceed market value. In contrast, the price farmers get for coca 
leaves is at an all time high of $3.5 per kilo compared to 4 cents per kilo 
in 1995. (The Economist, "Spectres stir in Peru", Feb. 14, 2002.)

Half the population of Peru lives in poverty. Not the American "below the 
poverty level" lifestyle of color television and so much food that obesity 
is a serious problem. Peru has Third World poverty, with starvation and 
abject desperation.

The hard reality is that farmers in Peru are being starved out by a 
militarized anti-narcotics strategy. They can't see why they should be 
prevented from growing an export crop that feeds their families. In Peru, 
coca consumption dates back to the days of the Incas, with coca consumed by 
chewing coca leaves. The effect is not all that different from caffeine 
consumption. In the United States, though, the illegality of coca forces 
sellers to sell the product in a much more concentrated (and, therefore, 
much more concealable) forms: powder cocaine and crack cocaine. The 
psychoactive effects and dangers are much greater, of course. Similarly, 
American prohibition of alcohol caused a consumption shift away from beer 
(large volume, low "kick") to gin (low volume, high "kick").

It is unrealistic to expect that Peruvian farmers trying to feed their 
families are going to care much about how American drug laws change the way 
that coca in consumed in North America. The farmers are ideal targets for 
terrorists who offer to protect the coca crop and to buy it. Now, the 
terrorists are convincing the farmers to plant poppy seeds too.

The "starve a Peruvian peasant to save an American coke-head" strategy has 
been largely unsuccessful. According to the U.S. State Department, from 
1995 to , coca cultivation in Peru was reduced from over 1, hectares to 
around 34, hectares. The Peruvian Center for Social Studies disputes this, 
claiming about 7, hectares under cultivation in 1. Peru's new drug czar, 
Ricardo Vega Llona, suggests that the previous estimates of acres under 
production may have been far too low. In any case, it is undisputed that 
coca production is thriving, partly because producers have learned how to 
plant more crop per acre.

As has been the case for decades, prohibition makes cocaine amazingly 
profitable, which in turn allows narco-traffickers to move their operations 
with relative ease in response to eradication and interdiction efforts.

Why on earth, then, would we continue with policies that virtually 
guarantee income for the narco-traffickers and the terrorists who tax them, 
while eradicating and fumigating the incomes of farmers who then have to 
turn to those same terrorists for protection?

And if starving farmers in a country full of narco-dollars and insurgents 
seems ripe ground for recruitment, a country where farmers starve for the 
drug war while corrupt government officials use the drug war to line their 
pockets is even riper.

The U.S. State Department's 1999 narcotics report on Peru claimed: The 
government of Peru has denounced all forms of public corruption - There 
have been no known cases of systemic institutional, narcotics related 
corruption within government entities in the last few years, nor are there 
any senior level government officials known to be engaged in drug 
production, distribution or money laundering.

Apparently someone forgot to tell this to our longtime drug war partner 
Vladimiro Montesinos, the de facto head of the Peruvian National 
Intelligence Service (SIN) and the director of his own anti-narcotics 
division (DIN).

While a panel of judges views hundreds of videotapes (or vladitapes as they 
are known in Peru) of Montesinos bribing government officials and 
politicians, Montesinos currently sits in a Lima jail cell charged with 
over 8 crimes ranging from money laundering, organizing death squads, 
protecting drug traffickers, and illegal-arms trafficking (selling ten 
thousand AK-47s to the Colombian FARC terrorists). So far over $ million 
(including over $5 million in U.S. banks) of Montesinos's illicit fortune 
has been tracked down and seized.

Among the more than 7 high-ranking military and intelligence officials 
arrested in association with the scandal is retired General Nicolas 
Hermoza, Chief of the Armed Forces Joint Command through most of the 
nineties. Hermoza has pled guilty to profiting from illegal arms deals, and 
is fighting charges of running a drug-flight protection racket.

General Hermoza was America's partner in "Airbridge Denial" 97 the program 
to shoot down planes suspected to be carrying drugs. It turns out that 
General Hermoza was making sure that his favored traffickers got through 
unhindered. Not so fortunate was an airplane full of American missionaries, 
who were killed in a shootdown last summer. Although bad publicity from 
killing a plane of innocent Americans led to a cessation of the shootdown 
program, resumption is being planned.

What about Mr. Montesinos, the man who shipped AK-47s to the FARC 
terrorists? He was the cornerstone of the American drug war in Peru. He was 
also the prime support keeping Fujimori's dictatorship in power long after 
it had lost popular support. In January, at the request of the new Peruvian 
government, the U.S. released a decade's worth of diplomatic cables on the 
relationship between the U.S. and Montesinos: Like it or not, he is the go 
to guy, short of the president himself, on any
key issue, particularly any counter-narcotics issue (1999) "Nothing that 
the government does on intelligence, enforcement and security issues occurs 
without his blessing."

It has been reported that the CIA gave $1 million to Montesinos for his 
Narcotics Intelligence Division (DIN) from 1990-2000.

Yet as the declassified documents show, Washington was aware as far back as 
ten years that our "go to" guy might be working both sides of the street as 
a narco-trafficker and a supporter of the "Colina" death squads in the 
nineties. A 1991 embassy cable acknowledged, Fujimori's "senior advisor on 
national security matters (Montesinos) is however linked to past narcotics 
corruption."

A 1993 document details a Peruvian army officer who could "identify 
officers who belonged to the special group (an army intelligence/SIN death 
squad) testify about the group's killings and link (Montesinos) to the 
Barrios Altos (in which 15 people were murdered) and other killings."

U.S. officials have justified the ongoing relationship with the known 
murder, drug smuggler, and terrorist gunrunner on the grounds that although 
"Montesinos carries a significant amount of baggage with him," he is "A 
valued ally in the drug fight."

But of course, he was only valuable insomuch as Washington, D.C., made the 
drug war in Peru a priority over human rights and antiterrorism.

Fujimori was ousted by the Congress in for "moral incapacity." Peru's new 
president, Alejandro Toledo, is a Stanford-educated economist who worked 
for both the World Bank and the United Nations. Mr. Toledo will have to 
deal not just with homegrown Peruvian guerillas but migrating Colombian 
insurgents as well.

On March 13, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on "Narco-Terror: 
The worldwide connection between drugs and terrorism." At the hearings, 
America's top drug warriors emphasized the relationship between drug 
trafficking and terrorism.

Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and 
Law Enforcement Affairs, testified that Shining Path's ability to "cut a 
brutal swath" through Peru in the past was "largely funded by levies it 
imposed on cocaine trafficking." He continued: "in 1 the SL (Shining Path) 
had a slight resurgence in areas like the Huallaga and Apurimac Valleys, 
where cocaine is cultivated and processed, indicating that the remnants of 
the group are probably financing operations with drug profits from security 
and taxation services."

A February 8 STRATFOR Intelligence brief reports that, thanks to an 
expanding alliance with Colombian drug traffickers and the FARC, "Shining 
Path is trying to re-build its numbers and weaponry by working in the 
heroin trade. Peru is poised to become one of the world's heroin producers."

STRATFOR continues: "Although it is a shadow of its former self and does 
not present a major threat to the Peruvian armed forces or government, 
Shining Path is starting to build up its capacity to carry out low 
intensity urban bomb attacks, kidnappings and political assassinations."

If history is any indication, a further expansion of U.S. law enforcement 
and military anti-narcotics in Peru will only drive traffickers and growers 
under the wing of both the Shining Path and FARC, allowing them the 
resources to become a major threat again in Peru. A vicious cycle requiring 
more and more U.S. involvement appears very possible.

Terrorists in the United States cannot overthrow our government, but they 
are far stronger in South America. The drug war in the United States 
attempts to protect American consumers from the consequences of their own 
bad choices, but the effect of this effort to protect North American fools 
is to put fragile South American governments in danger of being destroyed 
by terrorists.

After September 11, it is time for the destruction of terrorism to be 
America's foreign policy. No other goal should be allowed to interfere. It 
is time to stop letting the drug war hinder the war on terrorism. 
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MAP posted-by: Beth