Peru’s Military Short-Circuits Maoist Rebel Offensive as Election Nears

A stinging counterattack by the Peruvian armed forces appears to have wrested the battlefield initiative from Maoist guerrillas here in the central Andes.

Guerrillas of the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, are expected to try to interrupt the voting in Sunday’s presidential election here and in Lima, but officers say military pressure has short-circuited the guerrilla offensive--so far.

“There is still more fighting to do, but the terrorists are losing the war,” Gen. Wilfredo Mori, who commands a 13-county emergency zone, told a reporter. “They are not progressing. Instead, they are getting weaker. The people are not supporting them.”

Clashes with army patrols in the countryside have cost the guerrillas experienced battlefield commanders in recent months, Peruvian sources say. Police raids in mountain cities and in Lima appear to have damaged the guerrilla command and communications structures.

Civil Defense Units

Further, according to civilian and military observers here, armed civil defense units, formed with military encouragement in isolated settlements, have curtailed the guerrillas’ scope of action and their ability to recruit new followers.

In some settlements where Sendero attacks have been frequent, as in the Trigopampa area west of Ayacucho, families farm by day and then meet at dusk to sleep in rough-hewn hilltop compounds under collective guard.

About 90% of all rural settlements now have civil defense teams, whose members stand guard at night and serve as guides for army patrols. Communities that refuse to form civil defense units are subjected to close military scrutiny.

About 5,000 people have been killed since the rural-based insurgency began in 1980 under the direction of a former university professor.

1,500 People Disappeared

In counterpoint to the rural terror, about 1,500 people in the Ayacucho region have disappeared since 1983, Ayacucho’s attorney general, Jose Moises Cravero, said in an interview. Most were last seen as they were being taken away by hooded gunman, and in many cases, relatives insist that these gunmen were members of the security forces.

“This year, as the amount of guerrilla activity has decreased, so have the disappearances,” Cravero said. “To date for 1985, we have 66 new cases.”

The outcry from international human rights organizations is seen in some circles here as having helped reduce the number of disappearances.

Sendero Luminoso announced an offensive against the elections, beginning in late February and lasting through July, when the new president is to be inaugurated. To date, however, the guerrillas have little to show for their plan, which came to light as the result of Sendero documents that surfaced in Lima.

The presidential campaign proceeded uneventfully and ended officially Thursday night.

Election Runoff Likely

Alan Garcia, candidate of the center-left party called the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, or APRA, is expected to win the nine-candidate race but fall short of an absolute majority. If no party receives a majority, there will be a runoff in June between Garcia and the runner-up, who is likely to be Alfonso Barrantes, candidate of a Marxist coalition.

Sendero Luminoso has demanded a three-day work stoppage in the Andes beginning today, but officials here doubt that it will be effective. Still, they expect a sharp increase in guerrilla activity between now and Sunday night, when the returns come in. A Sunday night blackout in Lima, of the sort the guerrillas brought off when Pope John Paul II was here in February, would surprise no one.

“Things have been much quieter lately, but if the terrorists don’t try something major against the election, it will be a great failure for them,” Gen. Mori said.

Guerrilla Attacks Off

Guerrilla attacks in the Andes, most typically against outlying and poorly defended settlements, have declined markedly from a peak last July, analysts here say.

But clashes between poorly armed guerrillas and army patrols have increased. There were sharp clashes, with losing results for the guerrillas, in February in the Huancavelica area northwest of Ayacucho. The army has also reportedly intercepted guerrilla columns on the jungled eastern slopes of the Andes in Huanta county, where guerrillas have been especially active for the past year.

Significantly, guerrilla activity has all but dried up in recent months in the mountains around Ayacucho, the colonial city of 60,000 where the insurgency was born. The guerrillas, in effect, are being forced to operate in areas where their preparations have been recent and slight.

Overall, Peruvian analysts say, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of Sendero attacks in seven of the 13 counties in the emergency zone. In three others, the guerrillas are under increasing military pressure.

Licking Their Wounds

Also, the guerrillas appear to be licking their wounds after losing encounters with army patrols in the high jungle areas around the cocaine boom town of Tingo Maria farther north.

The guerrilla fighters tend to be Quechua-speaking Indians from the poorest and highest parts of the central Andes, but their leaders are more apt to have middle-class and urban intellectual backgrounds.

Army ambushes have added to the sporadic, hit-run nighttime clashes that are the trademark of the Andean insurgency, and these are thought to have claimed a number of experienced Sendero commanders in recent months. One battlefield veteran, a former professor of literature named Hildebrando Perez, was seriously wounded--perhaps killed--in February, Peruvian sources say.

Other key urban cadres have been arrested in police raids in recent months, among them Laura Zambrano, known as Commandante Meche, who is thought to have commanded Sendero activities in Lima.

Lower-ranking guerrillas have been jailed in recent raids, one of which--in Lima--netted a hand-tooled leather trunk being prepared for Sendero founder Abimael Guzman to mark the fifth anniversary of the guerrilla struggle. Of Guzman himself, there has been no sign.