Civilians detained by the Armed Forces in the central jungle

Civilians detained by the Armed Forces in the central jungle. From 1989 onward, the Armed Forces and the Police reformulated the counter-subversive campaign based on a more effective strategy than previous ones. Psychosocial operations and, above all, intelligence operations became the center of the new design. It was in these non-strictly-military domains of the internal war that the most significant advances were made in the fight against Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA, both in winning popular support and in neutralizing the subversives' capacity for action. Elimination or capture actions were far more selective than before, and military advances were accompanied by psychosocial actions and systematic organization of civilian self-defense forces; nonetheless, human rights violations, though less numerous, became more premeditated and systematic. Other consequences of this process were that the Armed Forces assumed roles belonging to democratic institutions, and that Fujimori and Montesinos used the pretext of fighting terrorism to destroy institutional order on April 5, 1992.