Lotsa info. on the Internet[font size=6]S.[/font]
Here's one article I posted this year:
March 18, 2015
U. S. Interventions in Venezuela, Peru, and Paraguay
by W. T. Whitney
. . .
The U.S. military, for example, is implementing a scheme of collaboration with Peru. The Peruvian Congress passed enabling legislation in January and February. Some 3500 U. S. Marines will be in Peru for short or long periods during the coming year. Their purpose, according to an official Peruvian military source, is instructional. The first contingent of 58 U.S. troops arrived on February 1 and will stay for a year working in five districts. Two weeks later, 67 more marines arrived for a six-week stay. On September 1, 3200 soldiers will disembark from the amphibious assault vessel “America.” That ship visited Peru in September 2014.
On September 1-6, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington calls at Puerto Callao in Peru. The U. S. Fourth Fleet, reactivated in 2008 to support missions of the U. S. Southern Command, has operational control of both vessels.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/18/u-s-interventions-in-venezuela-peru-and-paraguay/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
US Troops in Peru's Coca Zone
Thu Feb 26, 2015
It has been making practically no headlines outside Peru, and hardly any within, but a force of US Marines has apparently been mobilized to the Andean country—specifically to the conflicted coca-growing jungle region known as the VRAE, or Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers. Peru's Congress quietly approved the deployment in a resolution Jan. 29. The first contingent of 58 soldiers arrived on Feb. 1, and a second of 67 troops on Feb. 15. They are to stay for a year on what is being called a "training" mission. A much larger contingent is to arrive in September, a total to 3,200 Marines, for a six-day joint exercise with Peruvian forces. (Defensa.com, Feb. 19)
A small Marine Corps "security cooperation team" returned to the US in late November following a six-week training mission in Villa Rica, a district in central Oxapampa province, Pasco region—an area apparently chosen because its high jungle terrain is similar to that of the VRAE. The mission was apparently to train Peruvian marines for operations in the VRAE, where remnant Shining Path guerillas are said to be working with local narco gangs. Gen. John Kelly, head of US Southern Command, visited the VRAE in September to discuss sharing counterinsurgency skills with Peruvian forces. In a Lima interview with Marine Corps Times, Kelly cited the example of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), long faced by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also used by the guerillas in the VRAE: "What a better way to do it than by joining the experiences our marines face in the VRAEM with what Marines experienced in their conflicts? By putting them together and exchanging those ideas, we increase our knowledge of the problem and find better ways to prevent this type of weapon."
But the deployment is meeting some protest in Peru. Alberto Adrianzen, the country's representative to the Andean Parliament, told TeleSUR the decision to accept the Marines "confirms that the Peruvian government is following a position of not looking for a South American mechanism for defense, which is what many nations propose, but a special relationship with the United States.”
http://www.hightimes.com/read/us-troops-perus-coca-zone
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
2015-01-05 | Military
Marines Prep Peruvians to Combat Insurgents, Drug Cartels
By Gina Harkins (As first appeared in Marine Corps Times)
The hard-fought combat lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan are being used in the mountainous jungles of Peru, where U.S. Marines have been helping military forces battle insurgents and drug traffickers.
A small Marine Corps Forces South security cooperation team returned to the UnitedStates in late November following a six-week training mission in Villa Rica, a district in Peru’s central Oxapampa province. It’s a mountainous area filled with dense jungle terrain, similar to that in the VRAEM — a Peruvian region where multiple river valleys meet that remains a stronghold for a local insurgency group called the Shining Path. Peruvian Marines have an ongoing fight against the group, which has made a resurgence in recent years since they’ve partnered with drug cartels in a country that is the top global producer of cocaine.
The Peruvians have turned to the U.S. Marines for counterinsurgency tips to fight these local threats. Adm. Luis De La Flor Rivero, the commandant of the Peruvian Marine Corps, told Marine Corps Times that combating the insurgency and cartels in the VRAEM was their No. 1 priority. Every six months, he deploys about 600 of his Marines there.
In a move similar to what U.S. Marines saw during the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, De La Flor Rivero said he’s working to increase the size of his force from 3,500 to 6,000 Marines in order to boost his troops’ dwell time between deployments. As more Marines are sent to fight in the VRAEM, the training they conduct with the U.S. Marines is vital, he said.
More:
http://dialogo-americas.com/en_GB/articles/rmisa/features/2015/01/05/feature-02
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
U.S. Military Presence in Latin America Increasing
July 1, 2015 COHA
Jim Baer, Peru, U.S. Military
By: Jim Baer, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Protestors in Lima, Peru demonstrated in March against the anticipated arrival of the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that will spend several days in port at Callao as it returns from Asian and Australian waters, as well as other U.S. military that have arrived to assist Peru’s military assets with anti-drug activities. Some anti-drug activists, like Raul Ramos, claim that U.S. “plans are mainly to maintain U.S. hegemony and its control over our natural resources, as it always pointed out that we are their backyard.”[1] Opposition to the increasing presence of U.S. troops in Latin America demonstrates the complicated nature of the war on drug traffickers and of the domestic politics of a number of Latin American countries and the United States.
For more than sixteen years U.S. policy toward drug production and drug trafficking in Latin America has focused on a militarized response. In the late 1990s when Colombian President Andrés Pastrana sought assistance for a strategy to combat the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and its involvement in the growth and production of cocaine, the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton took on the initiative to push for an emphasis on a militarized strategy. Plan Colombia, as it was called, brought increasing amounts of U.S. military aid to the theater. The United States has claimed success, and a United Nations report has shown coca production has been reduced by about 50 percent in Colombia.[2]
Both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations have continued with the basic premise that a military response is necessary when combating drug trafficking, and this had led to some opposition by those who feel that the military approach has brought on increasing violence, ignores many of the other social and political problems, and gives too much power to the military. “Despite overwhelming evidence of continued failure to protect human rights the State Department has continued to certify Colombia as fit to receive aid. In effect, the U.S. has continued a policy of throwing ‘fuel on the fire’ of already widespread human rights violations, collusion with illegal paramilitary groups and near total impunity,” states an Amnesty International report.[3]
Faced with increasingly violent and powerful drug cartels operating in Central America and a resurgence of the Peruvian Shining Path guerilla movement that draws continued revenue from drug sales, the U.S. has increased its military presence in Latin America.[font size=3]
“In the last few years, the U.S. has been ramping up its military operations throughout Latin America in what the AP called ‘the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War.’[/font] The buildup has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $20 billion since 2002, for troops, ships, clandestine bases, radar, military and police training and other expenses,” wrote Dana Frank in the Los Angeles Times in 2013.[4]
More:
http://www.coha.org/u-s-military-presence-in-latin-america-increasing/
= new reply since forum marked as read
