The real reasons of the violentists to take over an airport

The seizure of an airport will always be more news than the interruption of a highway or 50 subversive speeches delivered in a public square. And the violentists know this very well and, of course, the Movadef.

In the harshest times of terrorism, there were no violent events against the airports by terrorists from Sendero Luminoso or the MRTA. And, beyond blocking the entrance to the regions to cut off the supply or prevent the arrival of reinforcements from the Armed Forces, there are reasons linked to a strategy about which little has been said.

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This far-left strategy is relatively new. In 2017, when Pedro Castillo commanded the Conare-Movadef, his hosts of teachers assaulted the airports of Cusco, Jauja, Juliaca and Arequipa. Didn’t he remember?

Five years later, history repeated itself but with more violence. On December 11, 2022, the Apurímac airport was looted and burned and the runway was destroyed. That terminal received military flights and was used for the airlift of patients who had to be transferred to Lima in an emergency.

On December 12 it was the turn of the Arequipa airport. The violentists even destroyed part of the perimeter fence and eliminated the night lighting system for the landing of the planes. Three days later, they entered the Ayacucho airport runway, despite warnings from the Armed Forces. Here comes the fact that this air terminal also serves as a gateway for the forces of order that operate in the Vraem. Its stoppage benefits the narco-terrorist hosts.

“The attack on an airport is not a spontaneous event nor is it decided in the heat of a march, but rather it is previously planned: how it is going to attack, who is going to attack, how far they are going to go and what level of violence they are going to employ”, comments to Perú21 the ex-Minister of the Interior ruben vargas.

“They seek to generate, abroad, a negative public opinion so that other governments denounce that in Peru there are unattended social marches. They also seek to create anxiety in the rest of the country and hold the government responsible for it,” says José Luis Gil, a former GEIN official.

AIRPORTS, NEW TARGETS?

Rubén Vargas warns that the strategy used by the extreme left is called “propaganda based on facts”, which is often not understood by governments or intelligence agencies.

“It means that their ideology and their need to put themselves on the political agenda are not channeled, now, through a speech or a pamphlet, but through a fact. And that fact always has to be related to critical assets or strategic facilities. For them, attacking a critical asset is worth more than 50 speeches because it is the system’s own media apparatus that will be in charge of disseminating it”, explains the former Minister of the Interior.

José Luis Gil indicates that the political objective that the violentists incited by groups like Movadef now have is to generate citizen reaction. “They do not have a mass and they do not have a people, but they seek to generate it by creating situations of alteration of the citizenship to channel the indignation towards the streets and that contributes to overthrow the government,” warns the former intelligence agent.

“That is the strategy that extremist Marxism uses, and who knows this method? The Movadef. Why attack an airport and not the food market? Because attacking the airport will become a media event of alarm and anxiety”, points out Vargas.

Law enforcement is mandated to protect critical national assets. These are the resources, infrastructures and systems that are essential and essential to maintain and develop national capacities or that are intended to fulfill that purpose. The affectation, disturbance or damage of any of these resources would generate serious damage to the nation.

“In an attack against an airport, extreme tension is generated between those who attack and the forces of order. There will necessarily be a violent reaction from the public forces, and in this scenario the extremist group seeks the social cost, that is, deaths and injuries. When this is generated, the next act is to denounce human rights violations and murder and they become the victim of this equation. But in reality, if the government knew the actors well, they would realize that it is a political ambush. Because they generate extreme tension, and the public forces and the government fall like candles because the first thing they impose is a heavy hand and the Movadef extremists celebrate it because they are looking for a more heavy hand so that there are more deaths and injuries. That is the perverse game that the political class fails to understand,” says Vargas.

Movadef knows how to encourage the perverse narrative that all those who participate in the marches are terrorists and turn their gaze towards the masses far from them. The former Minister of the Interior explains that, when the airport is attacked, peaceful protest marches take a backseat and everyone is put in the same bag. “What is left, the protest march or the attack on the airport? The airport; then, the reaction of the system is: terrorists attacked the airport and turn the thousands who marched in their legitimate right to protest into the extremists who attacked the airport. This perverse game must be known to separate the chaff from the wheat or to take water away from those piranhas”, points out the also constitutional lawyer.

KEEP IN MIND

• The disturbance of the security of an air terminal would prevent its free operation and a good number of national and foreign citizens would be affected.
• The Ayacucho airport is key for the transfer of military personnel and equipment to Vraem.

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