Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

626 • SIKH MILITANTSstronghold, where 20 people were killed, and attacks on the town ofHuánuco. Apart from the SL’s desire to disrupt the elections, anotherreason for the increased SL activity in the hinterland was due to a withdrawalof counterinsurgency forces from there during a border disputewith Ecuador, which, however, had been resolved by 1995, allowingthe redeployment of forces to the Huallaga valley to respond to the SLrevival. In July 1999 Óscar Ramírez Durán, one of the remaining SLleaders, was captured by an army patrol in the jungles of Huancayo tothe east of Lima. Other attacks have continued by an SL remnant groupknown as Proseguir, or Onward, which operates in three fronts, onein northern Peru, another in southern Peru, and another in the centralzone. On 9 June 2003 an SL group attacked a camp of the ArgentineanTechnit company outside Ayacucho, seizing 68 hostages, who werefreed two days later by a military counterterrorist unit. In July 2003 theSL commander Jaime Zuñiga was captured, and by the end of 2003 sixSenderistas had been killed and 209 captured, although eight peoplehad been killed by SL attacks. On 22 December 2005 the SL attackedpolice in the Huánuco region, killing eight officers, but on 19 February2006 police ambushed and killed the leader of the 2005 attack, HéctorAponte. In an attack on 11 November 2007, police killed another SLcommander, and by the end of 2007 the group’s remaining strengthwas estimated to be only about 300.SIKH MILITANTS. A number of different Sikh religious extremistand ethnonationalist groups that had a common goal of creatingan independent Sikh homeland in the Punjab region to be known asKhalistan appeared in the 1980s. The more prominent of these groupsincluded the following:1. Babbar Khalsa: A small Sikh terrorist group originally formedfor the limited purpose of avenging the deaths of Sikh fundamentalistfollowers of Sant Jarnail Bhindranwale who were killed on 13April 1978 by Nirankari Sikhs after the latter had been attackedby Bhindranwale’s followers as heretics. The moving figure of thegroup was Bibi Amarjit Kaur, a widow of one of those slain, whobecame embittered toward Bhindranwale and refused to cooperatewith him. The group otherwise embraced the same goals held byBhindranwale of creating an independent Sikh homeland of Khalistanand assassinating perceived enemies of Khalistan among bothSikhs and non-Sikhs.