The Terrorism and Drug Connection in Latin America´sAndean Region

MONEY FROM THE ILLICIT DRUG TRADE has increasingly helped to finance terrorist groups worldwide, but perhaps nowhere has this development been more significant than in Latin America’s Andes.1 In recent years, funding derived from the cocaine and heroin industry has largely underwritten the terrorism of that troubled region. The principal Andean leftist groups with drug connections are the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Peruvian Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso [SL]). Colombian right-wing terrorists, referred to collectively as paramilitaries, also have longstanding ties to traffickers. Since 1997, the paramilitaries have often been known by the name of their main umbrella organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The drug-related money of these rural-based terrorists has come primarily