Violent guerilla group threatens stability across India

For The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010 04:38PM
Appeared in print: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010, page A7

India’s Maoist guerillas have held monthlong celebrations in December to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. Yet another surreal feature of India’s landscape!

If the name of the guerilla group sounds oddly familiar, well, it is only one word removed from the name of China’s military force — the People’s Liberation Army.

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the leaders of China’s Communist revolution, were ardent proponents of guerilla warfare. Mao deemed such violence a necessary component of a revolutionary war, and he described this warfare as “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”

India’s guerillas are keen on following Mao’s preaching, despite the fact that his demise paved the way for the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping, which have transformed China in rapid fashion into a global economic powerhouse.

According to the Maoists, the base force of about 30,000 guerillas have all been trained in the technical skills needed for making and planting improvised explosive devices — the notorious IEDs that Americans face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Maoists are not fighting for imaginary reasons. Easily identifiable pockets of poverty and deprivation are home to millions of people in India, including members of tribal groups.

The traditional home of many of India’s tribal groups is also rich in various minerals, such as bauxite and iron ore. The guerillas contend that the disadvantaged tribal groups are being forced to relocate without adequate compensation and then become unskilled contract workers in a new economic system — which further increases their insecurity and severely threatens their traditional ways of life.

For the reborn Maoist guerilla groups in India, also known locally as Naxalites, the Indian government is the principal enemy.

State support for industrial activities then results in the government apparatus and its employees becoming targets for the guerillas.

Even tribal groups are targeted if the guerillas deem that they have worked with the government and businesses.

Maoists are estimated to have a presence in more than half the state of Orissa, where I am attending an academic conference in its capital city.

Recently, the Maoists blew up an abandoned police station using land mines. An IED blasted an ambulance in a remote forest road in the hills, killing five people, including two women and two children.

Over the years, the Indian government has been fighting fire with more fire. There are allegations that the government has even sought, and received, advice and training from Israel because of its experience with fighting terrorists.

In a controversial article earlier this year, noted writer and social activist Arundhati Roy described the government’s response as war.

Roy asked: “When a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its borders, what does that war look like?”

The war, by all accounts, has been bloody. But despite its superiority in numbers and technology, the Indian government is nowhere near a significant victory over the rebels. It is no surprise that the highly focused guerillas are able to outmaneuver the government’s paramilitary forces.

We Americans know this all too well from our lengthy and costly engagement in Afghanistan and the earlier experience in Vietnam, where our military superiority was negated by the opponent’s ability to merge into the local geography.

Perhaps realizing the futility of such a war, the Indian government recently announced an “integrated action plan” through which significant resources will be committed for a “quick resolution of problems concerning health care, drinking water, education and roads” in 60 districts — equivalent to American counties — where the Maoists are a significant presence.

In 2010-11 alone, the 60 districts combined will get the equivalent of $350 million from the Indian government.

The government’s renewed effort to address the economic insecurity of the poor is certainly a move in the right direction. Of course, it is only a proverbial slip between the cup and the lip.

I wish for a quick and peaceful resolution of these problems in India. And I am all the more thankful for my serene life by the Willamette River.

India's Naxalite group's ten year anniversary :(

In an opinion piece last week, I noted how the Maoists (Naxalites) are active in the poor, Third World, parts of India.  Well, apparently it is the ten-year anniversary of ...

When Naxalites announced the formation of the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) a decade ago, security agencies dismissed it as an attempt by the rebels to regroup their cadres and propaganda to boost their perceived military strength....

Now, the security forces are bracing themselves for intensified attacks in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal as the Maoists have announced month-long celebrations coinciding with the 10th anniversary of PLGA formation. All these years, the celebrations were only week-long. “This means bigger strikes can be expected in Maoist-affected States,” authorities concede.

Modeled after the People's Liberation Army, which is the military force in ... yes, China, which has ditched Mao.  The Red Army is the role model for this group, which is not good news at all ... It is awful that the poor are being left behind, and awful that their advocates are these guerillas.  And awful that the Indian government can't seem to recognize the underlying poverty and disenfranchisement as the issue, but responds with guns.

Since its inception, the PLGA has waged a relentless war against the security forces, and in the last decade, the rebels killed 2,000 security personnel, injured as many, and snatched nearly 2,500 weapons and one lakh rounds of ammunition, a Maoist document says.

A clear hierarchy has helped the Maoist military wing improve its strike capabilities. ...

On the organisational level, the PLGA has developed from a force of one or two platoons to having companies and a battalion now. ...

Another achievement of the PLGA has been transfer of technology. The technology for making and planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) has been successfully imparted to the large 30,000 base force. “The making and use of IEDs has now taken a mass form,” another Maoist document discloses.

IEDs!!! If that does not make it clear that this is a war inside India.  And then there is a war in another of India's fronts: Kashmir.

Sticks and stones do break bones

The caption for this from the source:
A youth attempts to throw a teargas shell back at the police during protests against the alleged killing of a young boy

So, where did this happen?
The Palestinian territories?
Lebanon?
Iran?

Naaah ... this is from India.  Yes, India.  supposedly the land where every young person is busy taking customer calls from around the world!

All is not well in India, and this is one of those many areas where the Indian government has been dealing through brute police/army force, many times going over the line into abuse of power.

Anyway this itself is from Kashmir--a few miles away from the capital city of Srinagar.

Kashmir has been an issue, unfortunately, ever since the creation of India and Pakistan, and this was back in 1947!  Sopore itself has been bubbling ever since the nasty series of tragic events.  One of my graduate school colleagues--who was a Muslim--was from Srinagar.  I wonder if she ever returned to Kashmir even for brief visits; I would doubt that ...

What is the latest situation in Sopore?

With street battles spreading in the valley, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday sent a high level team to Baramulla district to help local administration take measures for restoring peace in the violence hit North Kashmir towns.

"Street battle"--that says it all.  Here is one angle on the internal issues, the use of armed forces, and the neighboring countries:

The blockade in Manipur has been in place for almost two months and people are suffering unimaginable hardship even as the governments. The Naxal issue has gained criticality in the aftermath of a proactive policy adopted by Home Minister P Chidambaram.
The Army is already playing an active role in both Kashmir and the North East and now it may be called upon to contain the Naxal menace also. In the midst of this turmoil the Army, which is the sole savior and sentinel of the nation''s integrity, is facing a grave challenge from a number of forces that are trying to weaken its intrinsic fabric.
Whether this is part of a grand design or the machination of different powers and lobbies who have their own axes to grind, cannot be ascertained, but what is very obvious is that the cumulative effect is quite alarming.
The increasing involvement of the Army in quelling social and political dissent in the country provides the first and most critical chink in its armour. Interestingly, the divisive ideologies of Islamic Jihad and Maoism that the country has to contend with are direct imports from its two neighbours, China and Pakistan.