LIMA, Peru – Two top commanders of Peru’s Shining Path group were killed during a clash with government troops in southeast Peru according to President Ollanta Humala.
Alejandro Borda Casafranca, and Martin Quispe Palomino were killed by a covert force formed to track down top rebel leaders. “The intelligence sources that have participated in this action have confirmed that the dead terrorist criminals are the number one and number two of the Shining Path’s military structure,” Mr. Humala said, referring to Mr. Borda Casafranca and Mr. Quispe Palomino, respectively.
After a firefight, their bullet-riddled and burned corpses were found in a house in an isolated township of Ayacucho, south of Lima. President Humala said a third rebel believed to be Casafranca’s close colleague was also killed in the military operation.
The announcement is a victory for Humala’s administration, which has struggled to combat remnants of the Shining Path in the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, or VRAEM. President Humala has made bringing peace to the VRAEM one of his top priorities since coming to office in July 2011. He has pledged to root out the Shining Path and increase the state’s presence in the region.
The VRAEM, the most densely planted coca-growing region in the world, is the last remaining stronghold of the Shining Path. The group is believed to still have 300 to 500 members in the area located in southern Peru.
Peru’s terrorism and security analyst Jaime Antezana said that the killing of the two rebel leaders was the government’s first successful blow in recent years at the top military ranks of the group. Antezana said the two men were deeply involved in the rebels’ management of coca leaf cultivation, as well as the processing and transport of cocaine.
Last year, security personnel captured one of the group’s original leaders in the Upper Huallaga Valley, Peru’s other major cocaine producing region located north of the VRAEM. He was sentenced to life in prison in June.
Shining Path’s insurgency began in 1980. Inspired by Maoism, the rebels tried to lead a “People’s War” to overthrow what they called “bourgeois democracy” and establish a communist state. They took control of Peru’s rural regions and some urban areas by the early 1990s, raising fears in the U.S. government that it might someday take power. However, its founder, Abimael Guzman, was captured in 1992 and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. The conflict resulted in some 70,000 deaths.
The group has largely been crushed by the army, but remnants of the group remain, and they often attack military patrols in jungle areas. Security forces say the group has allied itself with drug traffickers and now finances itself by growing and smuggling coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.
For more information please see:
Al Jazeera– Peru says Shining Path leaders killed – 14 August 2013
Los Angeles Times – Peru commandos kill two Shining Path leaders – 13 August 2013
The Wall Street Journal – Peru President Says High-Ranking Shining Path Members Killed – 12 August 2013
Reuters – Peru says top two Shining Path rebels killed in jungle shootout – 12 August 2013
BBC – Peru’s security forces kill three Shining Path rebels – 12 August 2013
