| Editor's note:
The following commentary, prepared under the auspices of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, Pa., fits well into the category of controversial inquiry offered by Curt Jones in the previous 'issue' of American Diplomacy. Jones, a former senior U. S. diplomat, raised challenging issues of social equity and the related responsibility internationally of the United States. The experience of the long siege at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Peru has again focussed these issues in our consciousness. (It bears repeating that American Diplomacy and its Editorial Board do not necessarily share any of our writers' opinions.) |
| LEARNING FROM LIMA |
O n t h e a f t e r n o o n
of April 22, siesta time in Lima, combined forces from Peru's army, navy, air force, and police stormed the Japanese ambassador's residence, thus ending the 126-day hostage crisis that began when the building was taken over by members of the Marxist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) on December 17, 1996.
Peru's hostage crisis was the longest in the history of the Americas; fortunately, it ended with one of the most successful rescue operations in the history of anti-terrorism. Only one of the seventy-two hostages died: Supreme Court Justice Carlos Giusti, who suffered a heart attack following a wound. No less remarkably, only two members of the attacking force lost their lives. By contrast, all fourteen MRTA terrorists were killed, some allegedly after trying to surrender.
Aptly, and ironically, the operation was dubbed Chavín de Huántar, which is the name of a pre-Columbian civilization whose ruins include a number of tunnels. The name's aptness comes from the significant role that tunnels have played in the MRTA's history. Specifically, in 1990, forty-eight of the groups' jailed leaders tunneled their way to freedom -- a feat celebrated by the Left everywhere. The irony of the operation's name comes from the role that tunnels play on the 22nd of April, when the military used tunnels dug under the ambassador's residence to free the hostages and largely destroy the MRTA.
Given the fact that the rescue operation involved units from all three services of the armed forces, plus the police, the ingredients for failure were certainly present, as previously demonstrated by the United States' experience with mixed-force rescue operations in Grenada and Iran. What neutralized the dangers inherent in a mixed force was President Alberto Fujimori's personal, hands-on leadership of the crisis, exercised through the National Intelligence Service, which he controls. Thus, Fujimori's immediate, persistent, and successful campaign to take credit for the operation was not only politically expedient, it had a grounding in the facts of the case.
Yes, Fujimori needed a boost in public opinion, given his steady drop in polls and a number of recent scandals plaguing his intelligence services and security forces. But he earned one, not only through his oversight of the operation, but through his strength under months of pressure to give in to the kidnappers, pressure multiplied many times over by his brother Pedro's presence among the hostages.
Military forces -- anti-terrorist as well as terrorist -- will likely study this operation for a long time to come. And so they should. But the political and psychological implications of April 22 deserve to be studied no less. For the events in Lima raise important political and moral questions, including questions about the true values of some self-proclaimed human-rights activists and social-democratic politicians; questions about the attitudes and policies of different governments; and questions regarding the remnants of the violent Left in Latin America and elsewhere.
| Q:What has the Peruvian hostage crisis demonstrated about the Latin American Left? |
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For example,
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More disturbing still were the statements by two former presidents from Latin America: Carlos Andrés Pérez of Venezuela and Raúl Alfonsín of Argentina. Given their past high offices and democratic credentials (social democratic, to be sure), one would expect these men to shun any links to anti-democratic terrorists, however leftist. Yet Perez called the Peruvian action "assassination," and Alfonsin described it as "barbaric."
It is a question, in need of urgent answer, why two such prominent Latin American politicians would want to place themselves in the dubious company of the Basque ETA, the Turkish PKK, the Colombian ELN, and other terrorist groups who came forth to honor the MRTA "martyrs." Those who pursue an answer to that question will likely find it in the general moral bankruptcy of the Latin American Left -- whether democratic or not. Notice that the Salvadoran FMLN, an alleged convert to democratic politics, had no scruples about echoing the Pérez/Alfonsín line. Where is the outcry about MRTA's record of kidnapping? (It turns out that one of the female terrorists, according to the terrorist's mother, had been kidnapped by the MRTA at the age of 12 and brainwashed for the past four years.)
| Q:How will the events in Lima affect the attitudes and policies of other governments? |
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The countries of Western Europe, too, need to consider their policies on terrorism, for it was in Western Europe, among the unreconstructed communists and radicals of Spain, Italy, and Germany, that the MRTA had its strongest public relations and "solidarity" network. And it is from her safe "asylum" in France that the mother of Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, the now-dead terrorist leader, has the chutzpah to announce that she will sue Japan for the "murder" of her murderous son. Why Japan? Because, perhaps, as Willie Sutton would have put it, that is where the money is. The governments of those countries may now wish to restrict their notion of asylum so as to exclude terrorist activists, including those who engage in propaganda and incitement, even if such activities affect "only" a poor and remote Third World country like Peru.
As for the United States, the Clinton administration consistently supported Fujimori's decisions, perhaps because that provided a vicarious demonstration of toughness against terrorism. Unfortunately, Washington may not continue to have the luxury of applauding tough antiterrorist measures abroad. Given the reflexive anti-Americanism of the Latin American Left, one consequence of the events in Lima may well be to make Washington (rather than Fujimori) the target of demonstrations and, possibly, terrorist attacks. To a lesser extent, that could also apply to Tokyo.
| Q:Where does the violent Left stand now in Latin America? |
Nevertheless, the MRTA as an organized group, small to begin with, will likely survive only in the imagination of the nostalgic and marginal European and Latin American political fringe.
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