Peru's military have scored another success against Shining Path (Photo credit: Powless via Flickr)

The capture last week by the Peruvian government of Florindo Eleuterio Flores-Hala – one of the key remaining leaders of the Shining Path insurgency – made headlines around the world, briefly pushing Peru and Shining Path back into the international spotlight.

During the 1980s the Shining Path group followed an explicitly Maoist political agenda and controlled large parts of rural Peru, making the organisation briefly one of the world’s most prominent Communist guerilla movements.

Conflict between the group and the government, killing thousands in the 1980s and ’90s, however steadily sapped the group’s popularity, while political and economic reforms by the government, assisted by harsh counterinsurgency measures during the administration of Alberto Fujimori, steadily drove a wedge between the group and its original support base. (more…)