Word: upper
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Meeting with Latin American police officials last spring, George Bush vowed to pursue drug traffickers "to the ends of the earth." If the Upper Huallaga Valley in Peru can be considered one of the ends of the earth -- and as an area of mostly trackless jungle, it qualifies -- the President was speaking literally. Today two U.S. State Department bulldozers are cutting a landing strip on the banks of the Huallaga River 300 miles northeast of Lima. From this base, the Peruvian National Police and U.S. drug-enforcement agents will mount paramilitary strikes on the valley's coca-processing centers...
...Drug Enforcement Administration people may be joined by U.S. military advisers. Under a plan promoted by William Bennett, director of national drug-control policy, the advisers are to train Peruvian soldiers in the art of "low-intensity" warfare against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas who control the Upper Huallaga. The insurgents finance their rebellion in part with fees from coca growers and refiners in the valley; U.S. intelligence reports say that lately they have directly gone into the coca-refining business...
...candidate; the Medellin provincial police chief, and a local judge. The focus of the U.S. effort, though, would be on Peru, where attempts to eradicate the coca crop have been stalled since February because of attacks by guerrillas and traffickers. Some 34 eradication workers have been killed in the Upper Huallaga Valley since 1983. In May a DEA agent, five State Department contract employees and two Peruvian eradication officials died in a plane crash there. Until six months ago, the Peruvian army kept to its barracks in the Upper Huallaga, leaving Sendero insurgents free to terrorize the local populace...
...thing, Peruvian army officials say their primary mission is to defeat the Sendero movement. "Wherever drug traffickers get close to the guerrillas, we will get them," says one. "But don't ask us to go against the people growing coca." Another obstacle is corruption. DEA agents and Upper Huallaga residents say traffickers pay "landing fees" to certain police officials to use local airstrips...
...with Operation Snowcap, a hemisphere-wide program that shifts emphasis from crop eradication to search- and-destroy missions against clandestine labs, airstrips, riverboats and warehouses. Last year DEA chief John Lawn, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Watson and Peruvian officials agreed to build a secure base for Snowcap activities in the Upper Huallaga. The deal called for the U.S. to haul bulldozers to a settlement called Santa Lucia, where an airstrip would be cleared so that cargo planes could land supplies. The State Department, however, objected to having U.S. Army Engineers air-drop the bulldozers; diplomats warned against political backlash if American...