Obama: Pay Attention To Peru

The Jamestown Foundation has written an eye opening article about Peru and the problems brewing there. If we act earlier enough, we may be able to help their government stomp out a terrorist group before it gains back the strength it used to have in the '80's and '90's. Here is an introduction:

Peru’s Sendero Luminoso: From Maoism to Narco-Terrorism.

[Written] By: Frank Hyland

One of the most brutal and destructive terrorist groups worldwide since its emergence in 1980—Peru’s “Shining Path” (Sendero Luminoso - SL) —continues to carry out attacks on Peruvian military, police, and civilian targets in 2008. Almost ten years after the group splintered during a “no-holds barred” offensive by Peruvian security forces, government officials and citizens alike express concern that a return to the past, when almost 70,000 Peruvians and others died, may be in the offing (see Terrorism Focus, September 11, 2007).

The article goes on to describe who the leaders are/were, where they are located, what they have done in the past and are doing in the present, and the threat they pose to Peru, its neighbors, and the United States.

He makes a very compelling case that while they are small, they should be wiped out. My words, not his. When we first learned about Osama bin Ladin, if only we had taken steps then to wipe out his group! This is what Peru and we are facing at this moment. We cannot take our eyes off the ball when it concerns any country. Especially countries who are our allies, or our enemies for that matter.

In closing he states this:

Conclusion

It is the Peruvian peasantry that finds itself caught in the middle of the conflict between guerrillas and responding police and military units (ipsnews.net, November 6). There are concerns in the Peruvian government that many of these people may begin evacuating the Huallaga region to avoid a resurgence of the brutal warfare that characterized the area in the 1980s and 1990s, when more than 70,000 Peruvians were killed. President Alberto Fujimori’s “dirty war” effectively destroyed the SL, leaving only several hundred fighters left in the bush. Despite a widespread impression the movement was finished, the Shining Path’s transformation into a group providing security for narcotics traffickers while pursuing its goal of a Maoist state seems to have refueled the conflict.

What should concern the Government of Peru, its neighbors, and the United States most is that Colombia’s FARC traveled a very similar path to its present position of being a state within a state because it was not opposed in its nascent phase. Like the FARC in Colombia, Sendero Luminoso has and will continue to have the money to fund its revolutionary aims in Peru through involvement in narcotics production.
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Files: TM_006_023.pdf.

To read his article without using the .pdf link, go here.

I hope you read this article. It may a little long, but it is very important. This is something we can stop before it becomes another al Qaida. Wouldn't you like to prevent another 9/11/2001? I know I would...

May you walk with the LORD always, and when you cannot take another step, may He carry you the rest of the way until you can walk along side Him again.

Cross-posted @ The Talon and Rosemary's News and Ideas. Digg!