Peru may have bypassed Colombia as the biggest producer of coca (a South American plant used to make cocaine) with over 128,000 tons produced in the country last year, but that doesn't mean the country won't give up the fight against narco-trafficking.

According to officials, Peruvian authorities transported four tons of liquid cocaine to Lima on Oct. 14 after anti-narcotics officials, with the support of U.S. drugs agents, seized a huge drugs haul and arrested 15 suspected international traffickers in a series of raids in northwestern Peru, International Business Times reports.

Authorities also announced that the 15 suspected traffickers who were arrested in the raids include: four Colombians, two Argentinians, one Mexican, one Israeli and seven Peruvians, all of whom were arrested between October 8 and October 12.

According to the El Comercio daily, Peru's elite Dirandro narcotics unit, supported by the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Agency, netted the containers of liquid cocaine following a two-year operation that took authorities to the northern Peruvian port of Paita.

The Peruvian authorities busted a very costly international operation -- the drugs were destined to be shipped to Europe where cocaine is estimated to fetch up to $50,000 U.S. dollars per kilo on the black market, El Comercio adds.

The cultivation of coca, which is the only source of income for some Peruvian farmers, has been an ongoing, controversial issue for the country.

According to United Nations data, more coca now grows in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene Rivers (known as VRAE) than any other region on the planet, NBC News reports.

Change is on the horizon, which may further fuel turmoil in the next year.

Peru's president, Ollanta Humala, is dedicated to taming and taking control of the VRAE. His mission will include "forced coca eradication - sending in heavily armed police to uproot the plants by hand."

"Already, the government is preparing to expropriate more than 1,100 acres of farmland on the valley floor to build a new military airbase, and weathering attacks from the feared Shining Path rebels (a group who launched a civil war in the 1980s and early '90s that cost 70,000 lives) to pave the road into the VRAE," NBC News adds.

Rebels still launch occasional attacks, killing more than 100 police and soldiers in and around the valley since 2008.

"There will be serious conflict," said Fredy Linares, 48, from the village of Otari.  Linares is slated to lose the family farm, which "his father cleared from virgin forest three decades ago."

"There will be another guerrilla group. Not like Shining Path but a new one. No one is going to put up with having their crops destroyed. Of course, people are going to rise up."