Assessing Damage, Urging Action serious violations of international human rights and/or humanitarian law, and in a general climate of impunity. The clearest examples of the negative impact of the military response to terrorism were supplied to the Panel at the Hearings in Latin America, especially in relation to the Southern Cone, but examples were provided of similar problems arising in countries such as India, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. In Peru, the military’s tactics to defeat Sendero Luminoso, and other armed terrorist groups, resulted in serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including extra-judicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commission confirmed these findings and considered that the armed forces were responsible for crimes against humanity in the course of the armed conflict.34 Part of the problem of entrusting the armed forces with primary responsibility for countering terrorism is that this often leads to the privileging of purely military concerns at the expense of seeking alternative options and even solutions. The Panel was told that when military forces were entrusted with the responsibility of defeating terrorism, this often delayed the pursuit of other political, social or economic remedies. Moreover, military involvement meant that civilian and judicial scrutiny became severely limited, de jure or de facto. This inadequate scrutiny often resulted in impunity for gross human rights violations. This risk of impunity for military personnel was raised at the South Asia Hearing.35 For example, in India, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which applies to certain States such as Jammu and Kashmir, requires that cases against members of the military only be prosecuted before military courts, and are subject to authorisation by the Central Government.36 The Panel was told that such authorisation was rarely granted on the grounds that prosecution might damage the morale of the military. Participants from India argued that, in practice, the AFSPA had long facilitated the military to carry out extrajudicial killings (staged as “encounter killings”), and other serious human rights violations, with impunity. 3.1 The “national security doctrine” In the 1970s and 1980s, the military in a number of Latin American States adopted what came to be known as the “national security doctrine”.37 They were not the first 34 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, op. cit., General Conclusions, No. 55. 35 See the summary of the EJP South Asia Hearing; See also the regional overview provided in the written submission to the EJP by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. 36 Section 6 of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), India. 37 During its Southern Cone Hearing, the Panel heard that the national security doctrine incorporated French counter-insurgency concepts (used in Algeria and Indochina in the 1950s), was spread by the US through the training of Latin American armies in “the School of the Americas” in Panama, and implemented in Latin America progressively from the 1960s. 31