PERU | Upgrading the air force. During an early-May visit to Seoul President Ollanta Humala and his South Korean peer Lee Myung-bak agreed to raise the bilateral relationship to the status of ‘integral strategic association.’ Humala announced that he expected prompt conclusion of negotiations to buy KT-1 training aircraft from Korean Aerospace Industries, and operation expected to cost about US$200m. In 2010 South Korea donated eight mothballed A-37 attack aircraft for counterinsurgency operations to Peru. In April this year the two countries signed two agreements on defence cooperation. At home it was reported that the French firm Dassault Aviation was…

Colombia’s ‘new paramilitary’ organisations, or Bacrims as the government calls them, have struck alliances with Mexican drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) and are fighting each other for the control of areas along the northern border with Venezuela. This development has been revealed in a recently published study, which also claims that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), while still a threat in those regions, have been overtaken by these alliances as the main menace. The study, entitled ‘La frontera caliente entre Colombia y Venezuela’ (‘The hot border between Colombia and Venezuela’), was conducted…

A string of setbacks and mishaps in the war against the Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrillas has led to the resignations of the interior and defence ministers, the replacement of the military high command and a proposal that congress should allow President Ollanta Humala to legislate by decree on matters of public security. On 8 May an army non-commissioned officer (NCO) was killed by sniper fire at the antiterrorist base of Mazángaro, Junín. On 9 May a police helicopter pilot was killed and 18 officers were injured when the aircraft crashed to the ground next to the Tambo river in Mazamari,…