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This article appeared in the November 17, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

RIM: Narco-terrorist
merchants of death

Name: Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).

Also known as: A World to Win, Organizing Committee for a World Without Imperialism Contingent (WWIC).

Headquarters: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX, United Kingdom. Originally, RIM was headquartered at Russell House, Nottingham, England, and RIM's journal, A World to Win, was published for several years by Russell Press at the same address.

Date of founding: March 12, 1984.

Location of operations: United States, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Peru, Colombia, Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.

Major terrorist actions:

Spring 1985: French police arrest TKP-ML member Muzaffer Kacar in Strasbourg with a cache of explosives that had been stolen from a Belgian NATO facility in 1982.

Aug. 3, 1986: German police carry out a nationwide raid on Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) safehouses following a series of terrorist incidents.

See also separate dossiers of RCP and Shining Path.

Trademark terror signatures: Narco-terrorism; high-level political assassinations; mass murder; large-scale guerrilla warfare.

Leaders:

  • Robert Avakian (see RU/RCP profile).

  • Abimael Guzmán, a.k.a. "Chairman Gonzalo" (see Shining Path profile).

Groups allied nationally and internationally:

Formally affiliated with RIM:

Central Reorganization Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)

Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)

Communist Party of Afghanistan

Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) [BSD(ML)]

Communist Party of Peru (a.k.a. Sendero Luminoso, Shining Path)

Communist Party of Turkey-Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML)

Haitian Revolutionary Internationalist Group

Marxist-Leninist Communist Organization of Tunisia

Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

New Zealand Red Flag Group

Proletarian Party of Purba Bangla (PBSP, Bangladesh)

RedWorker Communist Organization (Italy)

Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Revolutionary Communist Union (Dominican Republic)

Union of Iran Communists (Sarbedaran).

Allied terrorist organizations:

Zapatista National Liberation Army, (EZLN, Mexico)

Kurdish Workers Party (PKK, Turkey)

Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA)

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka)

Red Cells (RZ, Germany)

All India Sikh Student Federation

Direct Action (France)

Euskadi and Freedom (ETA, Basque provinces of Spain)

Communist Combatant Cells (Belgium)

Red Brigades (BR, Italy)

EOKA-B (Greece)

National Revolutionary Union of Guatemala (URNG).

Motivating ideology: Initially hard-core Maoist, now also supports ethnic separatism and radical environmentalism.

Known controllers and theoreticians: See RU/RCP and Shining Path profiles.

Current number of cadre: Combined membership of all the member-organizations of RIM numbers is in the thousands.

Training: Military and paramilitary training camps exist in every theater of operations. A joint training camp for TKP-ML, ASALA, and EOKA-B reportedly exists in Trodos Mountains in Greek Cyprus.

Known drug connections: RIM is genuinely a "narco-terrorist international." Virtually every member organization and close affiliates are engaged in narcotics trafficking to finance paramilitary operations. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka is a major trafficking organization (see EIR, Oct. 13, 1995). Shining Path's base of operations in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru is one of the world's largest coca producing regions; and the Senderistas provide "security" services to narcotics cartels in return for tens of millions of dollars per year in payments. ASALA has been identified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as part of a vast heroin-smuggling ring between the West Coast of the United States and Scandinavia, known as the "Shoemakers Ring."

Known arms supplies: Drug revenues allow access to large supplies of weapons and explosives via traditional black market routes; the "Bulgarian Connection" provides weapons to member organizations operating in South and Central Asia; "afghansi" networks provide weapons to LTTE, Sikh, and Kurdish groups.

Known political supporters/advocates: International human rights lobby mobilized to defend Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán following his arrest in Peru in 1993. Center of Concerned Asian Scholars, a large academic front group based at Cornell University in New York, headed by RCP founder Clark Kissinger; Indigenous World magazine, headed by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, RCP founder.

Sympathizers of RIM: East India Defense Committee; Cultural Association of Turkish Workers; Committee of Support for the Popular War in Peru; Federation of Turkish Workers in Germany.

Known funding: Member organizations are largely financed via revenues from illegal narcotics sales, weapons trafficking, kidnapping, and "peoples' taxes" (i.e., confiscation of land and property, and extortion of payments in theaters of operation).

History: RIM was founded March 12, 1984 at a conference in London called the "Second International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations." LTTE and Sikh organizations participated in the founding conference, and maintain collaboration with RIM, though not formally affiliated. Member organizations were actively involved in mobilization against American Euro-missile deployments in the early 1980s, and have been instrumental in destabilizations in West Germany and Turkey, via TKP-ML and PKK networks.

In spring 1985, at a meeting in Athens, the leadership of the TKP-ML met with representatives of ASALA and PKK to coordinate operations against the Turkish government, although the groups themselves sometimes engage in murderous rivalries.

Shining Path was integrated into RIM's European-based terrorist operations in November 1985, when two Senderista leaders, Maximiliano Durand Araujo and Hildebrando Pérez Huaranca traveled to Paris, Brussels, and Libya as part of a RIM delegation.

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