Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations by Jenna Jordan

Author:Jenna Jordan [Jordan, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.1 Leadership decapitation against Shining Path’s leadership, 1983 –2015

While the Peruvian policy toward Sendero focused almost exclusively on carrying out a military response, a political response was critical to defeating Sendero. McCormick argues that the army was not well trained and was ill equipped to defeat a rural-based counterinsurgency campaign.41 Unlike Sendero, which had a strong bureaucracy, the military was weak logistically and did not have a broad base of popular support.

Sendero Luminoso underwent repeated targeting efforts by the Peruvian government since 1983. (See Figure 6.1 for data on the number of the Shining Path leaders that have been arrested and killed from 1983 to 2015.) While the capture of Sendero’s top leader, Abimael Guzmán, is often treated as one of the most successful instances of decapitation, this chapter tells a different story. Part of the debate over evaluating the efficacy of Guzmán’s arrest can be traced to different standards by which to evaluate the success of counterterrorism measures. Sendero was weakened in 1999 with the arrest of Durand, but the organization regrouped a few years later, with a different focus, different goals, and different tactics. In the years following Durand’s arrest, the organization was nearly inactive. The group resumed activities, carrying out more frequent attacks in 2013, but after a series targeting efforts in 2012 and 2013, the organization was nearly defeated. At this point, however, the group was driven less by ideology and more by profit. In this chapter, I examine twenty-three cases of decapitation against Sendero Luminoso in order to understand variation in its efficacy as a counterterrorism policy.42

Beginning in 1983, just after the organization began its military operations, Antonio Díaz Martínez, the organization’s number three, was arrested. Laura Zambrano Padilla, known as Comrade Miche, believed to have been head of Sendero’s military operations in Lima, was arrested in July 1984 and again in 1992 at the time of Guzmán’s capture.43 In October 1986, Claudillo Bellido Huaytalla, number three in the organization’s hierarchy, was killed with twelve other leaders who were preparing to hold a regional assembly.44 After these targeting efforts, many speculated that the group was being run from inside prison. In June 1986, 256 Sendero members were killed in prison uprisings, and Peruvian authorities assumed that the movement would disintegrate. However, Sendero adjusted to these losses and continued its armed campaign. After the events of 1986, authorities began to grasp the complexity of the organization—that the group’s leadership was not “limited to a few individuals but extends through a well-trained hierarchical structure.”45 To be promoted, it was essential to exhibit a strong sense of loyalty and love for the organization, which resulted in a leadership cadre with a strong ideological motivation. Leaders were recruited from the large pool of recruits and worked their way up the organizational hierarchy. Through this process, they came to appreciate the significance of local support to the functioning of the organization.46

In August 1987, Freddy Rea, a chieftain in four southern states in which some of the most intense fighting occurred, was arrested along with three other rebels.

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