MAOISTS SURGE AHEAD The Nation Under Siege 1 MAOISTS SURGE AHEAD - The Nation Under Siege 2 Contents At the Threshhold - Six Questions .... 5 1. Real Objectives of Maoists’ War .... 9 Principal Targets - National Unity and Indian Army .... 10 Right of Self Determination of Nationalities .... 11 “India an Imperialist Power” .... 12 Charu Majumdar’s Thesis .... 12 2. Strengths and Capabilities .... 16 Maoists’ advance in Nepal .... 17 Strategic alliance with Jihadis .... 17 Arming the PLGA .... 19 Flow of Funds .... 22 Propaganda Blitzkrieg .... 22 3. PLGA to Peoples’ Liberation Army .... 24 Stages of Guerrilla War .... 24 Tactics of Guerrilla War .... 24 The Central Military Commission .... 26 Forces - Base, Secondary, Main .... 27 Battles - Guerrilla, Mobile, Positional .... 29 4. Brutal Killings, Genocide and Destruction of Infrastructure .... 30 Bihar .... 30 Chhattisgarh .... 33 West Bengal .... 37 Jharkhand .... 41 Maharashtra .... 42 Orissa .... 44 Andhra Pradesh .... 46 Madhya Pradesh .... 48 5. Security Forces Targeted .... 49 Bihar .... 49 Uttar Pradesh .... 51 Chhattisgarh .... 52 West Bengal .... 58 Jharkhand .... 59 Orissa .... 60 6. Public Face of CPI (Maoist) .... 63 Civil Liberties and Human Rights Platforms .... 63 Revolutionary Writers Associations .... 65 Academics and Intellectuals .... 67 Media .... 70 7. The Political Response .... 73 Unified Command .... 74 Avaoidable Debate .... 75 Political Class in Frankenstein Mode .... 76 Appendix A. Resolution on Nationality Struggles .... 82 B. Resolution against Hindu Fascism .... 83 C. Front Organizations of Maoists .... 84 D. Naxal Insurgency : Major Developments since 1967 .... 86 4 At the Threshold - Six Questions T he Maoists had ambushed and completely wiped out an entire battalion of CRPF on 6 April 2010 at Chintalnar in Chhattisgarh. Even before the nation could recover from the shock they struck again on 29 May. Their diabolic explosion on the railway track at Khemshuli in West Bengal rammed the Mumbai bound super-fast express (Gnaneswari) into a goods train crushing to death 148 innocent passengers including women and children. Over 190 injured. These were not isolated incidents. They were part of a grand strategy to use terror as a political weapon for captur- ing the Indian State. Two powerful naxal groups, the Peoples’ War (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) operating in non-overlapping geographical regions merged together to form CPI(Maoist). The Union Home Ministry and various intelligence agencies haven’t studied in depth the implica- tions of this merger. Firstly, naxals attained an all-India status. The arrival of new political jargon, namely, ‘Pasupati to Tirupati’, ‘Red Corridor,’ etc was but a reflection of this newly acquired stature. Secondly, an improbable had happened. Terrorist outfits, all over the world, generally split, do not unite for various reasons. Added to these developments, the Insurgency got further boost because of the rapid advance of fraternal Maoists to the central stage in neighboring Nepal almost about the same time. Ever since the merger new areas came under Maoists’ influence. A decade ago, there was hardly any presence of their activity in West Bengal. But now, thanks to Singur and Nandigram, the districts of Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia have come under their grip. By 2006, the Maoist Insurgency has pushed the cross-border terror in Kashmir to second position. Look at the follow- ing figures: 5 No.killed during 2006-2010 Maoists’ War Kashmir Insurgency Civilians 2237 661 Security Forces 1297 511 Maoists / Militants 1200 1880 The above figures should not be viewed as mere crime statistics. These were not just ordinary murders. The impact of killing a security person would be different from killing a civilian. Each fatality on the side of security forces, leads to the elevation of another militant as guerrilla because a new weapon was added to the armory.* The above table also conveys that the Peoples’ Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) is expanding rapidly. Not just that. As the Union Home Minister, Chidambaram, admitted recently, the Maoists are in the process of converting PLGA into Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA). This development implies that the Maoists are getting ready to take on the security forces, even outside their zone of influence. The Maoists claim that they have begun ‘mobile wars’ in Andhra-Orissa Border zone. Some areas are totally under Maoist control, inaccessible to the Indian State. In hundreds of vil- lages of Malkangiri dt of Orissa only Maoists’ writ runs. The kidnapping of the Collector of Malkangiri in February 2011 amply unfolds the situation. In Abuzmarh of Chhattisgarh, the Maoists run a parallel government. They enforce conscription to strengthen guerrilla units. For over ten months in 2008-09 State withdrew itself from Lalgarh and Salboni area of West Bengal. Fifteen police stations were closed. This huge set back, in the first place, was due to the intellectual dishonesty on the part of the political leadership. The Centre and the states futilely search for the solution in development alone. Development is the primary responsibility of the Governments in all regions irrespective of the presence of Maoists. One should not be oblivious to the reality that the Maoists do not allow developmental activities in areas under their domination in order to maintain supremacy. Develop- ment at best serves as supplementary measure to insulate unaffected areas from the Maoist virus and to wean away future recruits. But it would not stem the rising tide of insurgency. The Maoists consider the State as their enemy. ‘Enemy’ is the epithet that they use in their literature and speeches against the government. As such they treat the State’s property as enemy’s property. They do not hesitate to destroy State’s or people’s assets such as railways (trains, engines, tracks, stations and communication equipment), telephones, roads, culverts, buses of public trans- port corporations and even schools and hostels. They do not view road as a means for development but as a facility for quick movement of enemy’s forces. They view school as a facility for stationing enemy’s troops. Look at what they have done to public properties in Chhattisgarh during the past two years. * A Maoist document titled Post Election Situation-Our Tasks of 12 June 2009, claimed that they had killed 2000 security personnel including Central Para-military Forces, injured about 2000 and snatched away 2,500 weapons, one lakh rounds of ammunition since the PLGA was founded on 2 December 2000. 6 PPPPPuuuuubbbbbllllliiiiiccccc AAAAAsssssssssseeeeetttttsssss DDDDDeeeeessssstttttrrrrroooooyyyyyeeeeeddddd bbbbbyyyyy MMMMMaaaaaoooooiiiiissssstttttsssss iiiiinnnnn CCCCChhhhhhhhhhaaaaattttttttttiiiiisssssgggggaaaaarrrrrhhhhh iiiiinnnnn 22222000000000088888-----99999 Schools 96 Roads 71 Other Public Assets 400 (The Hindu, Editorial, 19 May 2010) According to UNISCEF Report, the Maoists have either blasted or set on fire 300 schools in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Orissa during 2006-09 They had destroyed Railway properties worth crores of rupees in Jharkhand, Bihar, and West Bengal besides Chhattisgarh during the past decade under one pretext or other. Their growth was dependent on creating terror. Nation’s unguarded assets constitute soft targets for Maoists’ explo- sions. In Andhra Pradesh, during 1980s and 1990s, they had destroyed 94 assets of railways, 300 telephone exchanges, 500 government buildings and 1500 state owned buses. In 2010 there has been a spate of such attacks in other states. In April 2010 schools were blasted in Bihar. Tatanagar bound express was fired upon in West Medinipur dt. in May 2010. During the same month, a bomb went off under a train carrying oil through Bihar: 14 freight cars caught fire. On May 19, Maoists bombed a freight train near Jhagram. In February 2010, Railways were targeted 11 times In this context the following observations of Ajai Sahni, Executive Director, Institute of Con- flict Management, New Delhi, are candid enough: “…Development cannot be a counter-insur- gency strategy. It is the duty of the government to carry out developmental activities. But it is a much-longer-term programme than counter insurgency”. “People who are talking about this are basically saying that good health is a solution to disease. But when you look at India demographically and its cumulative developmental deficits, 836 mil- lion people (77 per cent of the population) are living on less than Rs.20 a day. More than half of them live on less than Rs.10. They are living on the edge of survival and are you telling me that the government has the capacity to bring this section to middle-class prosperity in 18 months?” “The model of development here is also not unidirectional. Even as it is benefiting many, it is actually harming many people. Rural distress has increased in the past decades. Why don’t you develop your areas where there is peace? In Delhi, the Maoists are recruiting students, retailers affected by the ceiling drive and multinational retail companies, people displaced or affected by SEZs, unorganized workers. If you have cancer, you have to treat it first. I cannot tell a cancer patient to go home and try to be in good health.” (Frontline, 6 November 2009) The inadequacies and poor responses felt in the political front were far more pronounced than the reverses in the security front. The Maoists and their pseudo-intellectual fellow-travelers are very clever people. They juxta- pose the failures of the system against their path of violence. They raise questions that the dumb, poor and marginalized, would like to ask the insensitive administration. The social unrest that erupted in several pockets across the country because of the Special Eco- nomic Zones and mega projects in power, steel, mining and coastal corridor sectors by the corpo- rate houses, wasn’t the creation of Maoists. Lakhs of acres of land was forcibly taken away from the marginalized farmers and tribals to pass on to the corporate giants in the name of industrial devel- opment. Not only Nandigram (Indonesian Chemical Company Salem), Salboni (Jindal), 7 Lohandiguda(Tatas), Durli (Essar), Nagarnar and Dilimili (NMD), Raoghat, Kalinga Nagar have become synonymous with the deprivation of the livelihood of the poor. The callous approach of the governments towards these so called growth projects has opened up new avenues for the Maoists to expand. Any comprehensive strategy to defeat the Maoists in their war cannot ignore the con- cerns of the poor. Whatever success that the security forces might achieve in this war, need to be consolidated by policy corrections in the economic front. The Political leadership has been committing a serious blunder in another aspect as well. They look to the other way when it comes to taking on Maoists ideologically. Maoists skillfully exploit the rivalries among the political parties and groups within them. Since 1982 onwards, the opposi- tion party in Andhra Pradesh whoever it were, unabashedly soft towards naxals. Sympathisers of naxals got elected to the Assembly alternately on TDP and Congress tickets. In the end it only strengthened the pernicious ideology. A major section of the media and journalists have been the biggest alleys of Naxals. Media reports on Maoist attacks were always biased.. They might not endorse the violence explicitly, but not a single editorial was written without riders giving respectability to the naxals. In this age of paid news, it not difficult for the Maoists to get the events published the way they want. Six Questions People of this country raise the following six questions in the context of Maoists’ rapid advance in several states: 1. Misery and underdevelopment in rural areas might be the root cause for Maoist Insurgency. But does economic development alone wipe out this scourge from the body politic of the nation? 2. The naxal insurgency has been in existence for the past four decades. How could it survive so long? How could it survive the collapse of Leninism in Europe and the advent of market economy in Mao’s China? 3. Can a political ideology be made ineffective without a public debate? Why the Indian political class is so shy and reluctant to take on the Maoists politically? 4. Why the intellectual sections in considerable numbers, be they academics, poets, writers, artists, and film directors lean towards Maoist ideology? Why the role of state-funded institutions such as JNU in spreading this pernicious ideology was not discussed in public domain? 5. Why large sections of the media eulogize Maoists? Was it because of the influence of Western media which has been consistently anti-India? 6. Why our intelligence organizations were so apathetic vis e vis Maoist Insurgency? Was it because of lack of proper orientation and training or because of the lack of political direction? Is our intelligence apparatus free from the ideological influences of Maoists? Is it free from infiltration? 8 1 Real Objectives of Maoists’ War * To seize power state by state * Principal Targets: National Unity and Indian Army * “India an Imperialist Power” T he CPI(Maoist) has explicitly stated in its Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution (One of the five documents adopted at the merger conference of the Peoples’ War Group and MCC in September 2004) that it wants to seize power state by state through armed struggle. They haven’t minced words: “The unevenness of development in India indicates that it is not possible to stage a simultaneous revolution (i.e., an armed in- surrection) throughout the country and that the line of area wise seizure of power through the strategy of protracted people’s war has to be adopted basing on the rela- tively backward and strategic areas of the countryside. This means revolutionary war has to begin in those regions that are rela- tively more backward and where the social contradictions are sharp. The strength of the armed forces of the reactionaries is quite in- adequate in the vast countryside of India and the inadequacy of the transport and communication system and other infrastruc- ture makes it inconvenient for the quick move- ment of the enemy forces. The people’s armed forces - the people’s army and the people’s militia, on the other hand, can ad- vance and retreat easily, according to the needs of the struggle, in the vast country- side, that is, there is enough room for their manoeuvre in face of a big military offensive by the enemy’s armed forces.” “Thus the vastness of the countryside, 9 the inadequacy of the transport and communication system and the isolation of the remote countryside from the military centers, and above all, the inadequacy of the reactionary armed forces in comparison to the vastness of the country and the popula- tion, if all these are taken into consideration, the military strength of the reactionaries is relatively weak in the countryside compared to that in the cities, and hence from the military point of view, the vast countryside is the most advantageous for the revolu- tionary people’s army to strike at the enemy. Hence, we can transform the vast tracts of the countryside into red resistance areas, guerilla zones, guerrilla bases and liberated areas by making use of the favourable terrain which is abundant in some regions of the Indian countryside. Liberated areas can also be established in the plains when the domestic and international situation becomes more favourable and the people’s army becomes powerful i.e., when the revolutionary war is at a high peak.” (The Central Task of Revolution – Seizure of Political Power by Armed Force, Chapter 6) * “Indian Army – A Paper Tiger” The ideologues of CPI(Maoist) rouse the morale of their cadres by creating false images such as “Indian Army is only a paper tiger”. They put forward a perverse logic that Indian Army’s interests are different from the interests of the people. Argues the above mentioned document: “It should, however, be noted that the enemy is superior only from the tactical point of view. In the strategic sense, enemy’s armed forces are only paper-tigers. Their interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the broad masses and hence cannot get any cooperation from the people. Their morale and combat capacity are quite low prima- rily because of their mercenary nature; and the contradiction between officers and soldiers also contributes to it considerably. Moreover, since the vast majority of them are peasants in uniform, the influence of the agrarian revolutionary war will have a deep impact on them.” And hence the Maoists theorize that it is possible to overpower the Indian Army: “However strong the enemy’s military power may be and however weak the people’s military power, by basing ourselves on the vast backward countryside-the weakest position of the enemy-and relying on the vast masses of the peasantry, eager for agrar- ian revolution, and creatively following the flexible strategy and tactics of guerrilla struggle and the protracted people’s war, - as a full meal is eaten up mouthful by mouthful, exactly in the same way, - by applying the best part of our army (a force few times stronger than that of the enemy) against different single parts of the enemy forces and following the policy and tactics of sudden attack and annihilation, it is absolutely possible to defeat the enemy forces and achieve victory for the people in single battles. It is thus possible to increase the people’s armed forces, attain supremacy over the ene my’s forces and defeat the enemy decisively. (The Central Task... Ibid., Chapter 6) Principal Targets - National Unity and Indian Army One of the important strategic considerations of CPI(Maoist) was based on the assuption that dispersal of Indian Army units to meet the challenges posed by insurgency movements in various parts of the country is imperative. This was again based on the fundamental ideological plank that India is not a national at all, but a conglomeration of nationalities kept together by the Indian * To a specific question “If you really have a pro-people agenda, why insist on keeping arms? Is your goal tribal welfare or political power?” by Tehelka, Mallojula Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji replies: “Political power. Tribal welfare is our priority, but without political power we cannot achieve anything. One cannot sustain power without an army and weapons” (Tehelka, 21 November 2009) 10