July 24, 2003, 10:30
Peru is to arm thousands of poor farmers and peasants in its southern Andes to help the military stamp out resurgent Shining Path guerrillas, Aurelio Loret de Mola, the Defence Minister, says.
The government is screening so-called "ronderos" - villagers who patrol their communities to ward off the rebels - so they can aid soldiers hunt down columns of the Maoist group in difficult jungle mountain terrain.
"The strategy is to renew the weapons of the village self-defence committees and give them ammunition," Loret de Mola said late on Tuesday. "It is not a question of arming them for the sake of it, it is about trying to organise ourselves as Peru did in the past,"he said, adding the military would be working with them in the field from September.
Guerillas regrouping
The guerrillas are slowly regrouping. Some are as young as 12, according to villagers and the government. Last year, the guerrillas killed 10 people in Lima with a car bomb just days before a high-profile visit by George W. Bush, the US president. The rebels kidnapped and later released more than 70 workers building a gas pipeline in June,and killed five soldiers and two civilians in an ambush this month.
The help of farmers and peasants was vital in helping battle the Shining Path in the 1980s and 1990s, when tens of thousands of people were killed in the civil war. But with the guerrilla group dormant for much of the past decade following the 1992 capture of its leader, farmer organisations fell apart, as did the village patrols' weapons.
The government believes there are just 135 active ShiningPath guerrillas in the area around Ayacucho - what it calls the "remnants" of what was once one of the most brutal rebel forces in Latin America, and says the group has enslaved women and children for logistical backup.
Hundreds of supporters
Analysts estimate there are are up to 450 Shining Path militants still free across Peru, as well as hundreds more non-armed members who provide support. Thousands of rebels are in jail after a major offensive by now fugitive ex-President Alberto Fujimori all but stamped the group out in the 1990s.
Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimates the Shining Path killed around half of nearly 30 000 people who died or disappeared during two decades of war between rebels seeking communist revolution and security forces, but says the overall death toll could be as high as 60 000. - Reuters
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