Terrorism and Mountaineering
Appalachia, June 2003
By Jeffery Parrette
There is nothing really novel about the interaction between “terrorists” and mountaineers. The mountains have always been the lairs or refuges of those not accepted by the dominant society. Forced into these inhospitable regions by their own weaknesses, they have often enriched their poor existence with a bit of robbery and rapine. In the more prosperous who penetrated their regions, they have indeed inspired terror; that is, they were “terrorists.” The examples are many. William Windham and Richard Pococke, braving the fastnesses of Chamonix in 1741 with a party of “eight masters and five servants,” felt obliged to carry a small arsenal, which they found no occasion to use except to test the echoes. Indeed, they found a kindly prior ruling over peaceful inhabitants who produced excellent honey. Nevertheless, Windham’s notes for subsequent travelers advised them “to carry weapons; it is a simple precaution and it may be useful sometimes; one is never the worse for it.”
Douglas Freshfield and his party in Suanetia on their first trip to the Caucasus in 1868 found at least one occasion for brandishing their revolvers:
Our final departure was a singularly dramatic scene, and gave promise at one time of a tragic ending. After an attempt on the part of the people to separate us…we succeeded in hoisting our slender baggage [onto a horse and our shoulders]. Then forming in close order and holding our revolvers in our hands we made ready for a sudden start. Meantime some of the inhabitants, yelling and jabbering, barred the way, others brandished swords, daggers, and pistols on either wall of the sunk lane which led through the village…The women, screaming and apparently endeavouring to restrain the passions of their relations, added to the picturesque confusion.
Things seemed to be getting worse and worse,…when a demand of some sort, shouted out by a man on the right-hand wall, suggested a simple stratagem. I flung a handful of kopeks into the crowd, and…we all made a push down the lane. The crowd scrambled and fought for the coppers, the men in the roadway yielded as the cold muzzle of the revolver touched their faces, and in less time than it has taken to describe the incident, we were outside the hamlet… [O]ur Mingrelian interpreter explained to us the voices on the wall: “Let us tie them up, let us rob, let us kill.”
Allowing for a certain amount of dramatic license on Freshfield’s part, this appears be a simple story of minor extortion. And many mountaineers’ tales about their encounters end this way. Of course, those encounters that do not may have no survivors to write books or dramatic articles for mountaineering magazines.
Perhaps the most extended period of mountain terrorism in the twentieth century was the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) movement in Peru. Born of a split in the Peruvian Communist Party in 1970, this Maoist group led by Abimael Gúzman Reynosa gained a considerable following among the rural Indians of Peru and controlled many mountain areas. The movement became violent and was charged with causing 25,000 deaths. Nevertheless, Shining Path members were quite conscious of their image abroad, and most of their interactions with mountaineers were marked only by a little genial brigandage or the holding of hostages for (quite reasonable) ransoms. Gúzman was captured in 1992, and the Shining Path lost influence and control.
