Counter‐insurgency strategy, the PCP‐Sendero Luminoso and the civil war in Peru, 1980–1996

Abstract This paper examines the main trends occurring in the counter-insurgency campaign waged since 1980 by the Peruvian state against the Partido Comunista del Peru-Sendero Luminoso. The argument is structured around the counter-insurgency model advocated by Robert Thompson, which is employed to illustrate how and why the Peruvian state was losing the civil war in the 1980s and has registered a far greater degree of success in the 1990s.