NAXAL / MAOISTS threats and movements

[Fighter488]

http://img408.imageshack.us/i/crpfcremation20100419.jpg/
Farewell, mate CRPF men pay tribute to a fellow soldier who died in the April 6 attack


dantewada

Death Of Illusion​

In their deadliest blow ever, the Maoists render state might a mite impotent

Saikat Datta


The air in the jungles of Dantewada district must have been thick with the foreboding of doom, but the jawans of CRPF’s Alpha company were perhaps too tired to notice. Setting up camp in a shaded clearing about six km from their base camp in Chintalnar, all these men of the 62nd Battalion would have been craving for was a few hours of sleep. As they slept, however, two companies of 220 men of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) crept up, surrounded the virtually unguarded camp and assumed positions on the dominating features around. At around 5.25 am on April 6, the 34th hour of an ongoing area domination exercise undertaken unilaterally by the CRPF, they fired the first shots.

It was two companies of 220 PLGA men—not thousands—which attacked the men sleeping in a clearing.

In the next 30 minutes, the battle became a turkey shoot as the Maoists killed the startled CRPF men at will, showering them with a merciless hail of bullets. As some CRPF personnel managed to radio back for help, a fresh team of Bravo company set out for Chintalnar. Unfortunately for them, the Maoists had anticipated the arrival of reinforcements as well. Not only had the PLGA cadres laid IEDs and pressure mines along the road that would lead to the Alpha company camp, they had also set up machine guns at tactically sound positions.

So, as the bullet-proof vehicle sent from the CRPF base camp wended its way through the route considered safe by security forces, it came across a typical ambush tactic—a tree trunk blocking the way. As the special police officers (SPOs) jumped out to clear it, the Bravo company commander decided to take the other route, perhaps forgetting in his nervous haste that it was prone to Maoist-laid mines. Within minutes, the vehicle drove over a powerful pressure mine and was blown to smithereens.

By the time the first reinforcements could arrive at the Alpha company’s makeshift camp, 76 men, including deputy commandant Satyavan Singh, assistant commandant B.L. Meena and the lone representative of the Chhattisgarh police, head constable R. Siyaram Dhruv, lay dead. The attack, which had begun with intensive fire from all sides, progressed to PLGA men lobbing grenades at the CRPF jawans. Several petrochemical bombs too were lobbed into their midst, burning several CRPF personnel alive. Those who survived probably pretended they were dead even as the Maoist attackers quickly gathered the weapons of the fallen CRPF men and melted away into the jungle.
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For a nation at war with itself, the April 6 attack was in many ways the tipping point in the battle between the Indian state and the CPI (Maoists) for the tribal heartland. It does come as a loss of face to Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s offensive—Operation Green Hunt—which began across six states last year. But more than inflicting a tragic loss of men and material—the Maoists picked up six light machine-guns, several two-inch mortars with high explosive (HE) ammunition, over 70 AK-47s and INdian Small Arms System (INSAS) rifles and a few pistols, grenades and ammunition—they displayed a hitherto-unseen lethality. Questions on the overall strategy must naturally follow. But for the moment, confounding security officials are the contradicting statements and circumstances that have surfaced around the attack. Among the several disturbing questions that have arisen on the precise circumstances leading up to the attack are:

•Was this a CRPF “operation” as is being claimed by many officials? An area domination exercise, counter-insurgency experts say, is not an operation as the nation is being led to believe. It is a routine exercise undertaken by security forces to keep up the pressure against insurgents. Operations, on the other hand, are conducted on specific intelligence inputs where the presence of insurgents is known to the security forces. So why is Alpha company’s foray into the jungle now being described as an “operation”?

•Was this a “joint operation” involving both the CRPF and the state police? The home minister says so but facts on the ground clearly indicate otherwise. Only one representative of the state police was included in the exercise, a mandatory requirement for any CRPF exercise since they are a central paramilitary force and have no investigative powers, nor local intelligence. The Alpha company set out with only head constable Siyaram Dhruv of the state police and basically walked around in the jungles for two days before being gunned down. A joint operation would have meant careful planning by the CRPF and state police, a joint force and a clear objective instead of a fishing expedition such as this one.

•Why didn’t the Maoists lose any of their cadre in the return fire? Simply because the CRPF men were caught completely unawares. They had camped in the open, laid out their camping sheets, indicating that most of them were asleep when they were attacked. Standard procedure also demands that a few men stand guard while the others rest. In this case, were the guards too sleeping after the long trek through the forest? Thirdly, the classic response to an ambush demands that the men under attack disperse to minimise casualties before mounting a counter-assault. Instead, the CRPF men were all bunched together. The PLGA cadres also had adequate time to pick up the weapons of the fallen men without being challenged, let alone being attacked in a counter-offensive.

•Did the CRPF’s newly inducted DIG (operations) of Dantewada, Nalin Parbhat, overestimate the capability of his men and underestimate that of the Maoists? Parbhat, who hails from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, came on deputation to the CRPF with a terrific reputation of being an operationally sound officer in the Maoist-affected districts of Karimnagar and Warangal. In launching this exercise, however, Parbhat probably failed to appreciate that the CRPF was not as effective as the Andhra police or their Greyhounds.

•Did Parbhat ignore intelligence warnings? He probably did. Parbhat came to Dantewada just six days prior to the launch of the area domination exercise. Earlier intelligence inputs generated by the state’s Multi-Agency Centre (a joint intelligence outfit of the Intelligence Bureau, the state police, and CRPF and BSF intelligence) had sent in several reports stating that PLGA cadres had been sighted in the area. In fact, an April 4 input from the IB had said that security forces could possibly be ambushed between Chintalnar and Chintagufa. Incidentally, Chintalnar is also the unofficial capital of the region designated by the Maoists as Dandakaranya. Intelligence also indicated that Ganeshanna and Ramanna, two top PLGA officials, were in the region planning a major attack. All this information was ignored by the Alpha company as it set out from its base on Sunday evening.​

While a systematic effort is under way to brush these issues under the carpet, the uncomfortable fact is that the CRPF is perhaps just not ready to take on a major offensive against the Maoists. Last year, it was hit nearly 68 times by the Maoists while the state police rarely saw an attack on their positions. Worse, it took CRPF director-general Vikram Srivastava two days to land at the site of the attack and visit his troops at the base camp. While morale has plunged new depths, the overall CRPF leadership seems to be still missing from ground zero.
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Death blow Bodies of slain paramilitary personnel in Dantewada

This attack, however, could be the turning point in the offensive against the Maoists. Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwa Ranjan told Outlook that the offensive will continue. “We will continue to build our troop levels and plan our operations better.” While CRPF DG Srivastava declined to comment on the incident, he expressed his grief at the death of his men in Tuesday’s attack.

That won’t deflect basic questions on the CRPF, though. Its preparedness is limited by a defensive mindset and its standard operating procedures dictate that its troops won’t operate beyond eight km of their base camps. The men are also unfamiliar with the terrain since they are largely drawn from the states of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Bihar and are unfamiliar with jungle warfare. The troops do undergo a refresher course before being deployed in the state, but it has clearly proved to be inadequate in the light of Tuesday’s gruesome strike.

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Arrow-struck A CRPF jawan recovers at Jagdalpur hospital

As for the two PLGA companies which attacked the personnel, intelligence reports indicate they dispersed with their captured weapons and have returned to the forests of Malkangiri district in Orissa. As per procedure, all captured weapons must be submitted to the central committee before being reassigned to their cadres. A smaller group is believed to have fled towards the dense forests of Abujmarh bordering Maharashtra.

Will the attack become the harbinger of more bloodshed, as the state renews its pledge to wipe out what PM Manmohan Singh termed the gravest security threat to India? A systematic escalation of violence seems inevitable—but without tactical soundness or the desire to keep the tribals away from the crossfire, it may achieve nothing. A one-man inquiry committee headed by former DGP E.N. Rammohan has been set up. But the biggest challenge in not letting this become an unending cycle of violence will be to match deployment with efforts to wean the adivasi away. High rhetoric will not suffice.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265013

 

[Fighter488]

politics

The Hard, The Soft And The Medium​

The government has realised that democracy cannot allow violence against our own

Smita Gupta






On April 4, Union home minister P. Chidambaram flew into Lalgarh, the hub of Maoist activity in West Bengal’s West Midnapur district. Chatting with the villagers there, he asked what they wanted. “Unnayon (development),” they chorused, an official who accompanied the minister told Outlook. The minister’s response? If the people helped the government eliminate the Maoists from the area, he told them, development would come to Lalgarh. Later that day, he asked officials why the state government had not yet tackled the Maoists—after all, the Centre had provided the manpower, money and resources.

The home minister’s responses that day, a senior police officer engaged in anti-Maoist operations told Outlook, summed up the Centre’s approach to the Maoist problem—one that left 76 CRPF jawans dead in the jungles of Dantewada, in Chhattisgarh, less than 48 hours after the minister’s Lalgarh visit. “Mr Chidambaram is very sincere and earnest,” the official said. “But he must understand this isn’t a corporate problem, where an input guarantees an output. You rarely get a solution just by upgrading technology.”

The Maoists can’t be tackled without using the security forces. But that alone will not bring about a solution.

It’s early days yet for a studied change in strategy. For now, a stunned government is engaged only in an autopsy of the Dantewada carnage. Indeed, that evening, the National Security Council met under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and discussed the issue in the presence of, among others, the Union home minister, the defence minister and the three service chiefs. “The policy (on dealing with the Maoists) has to be regulated from time to time,” the prime minister said, 24 hours later. “But we are too close to the incident to review it. All options are open.”

Earlier that day, after laying a wreath in memory of the dead jawans in Jagdalpur, the nearest major town from the site of the ambush, a sombre home minister said, “I’d urge that, even as we grieve, we remain calm, hold our nerve and not stray from the carefully chosen course we have adopted since November 2009.” This, home ministry sources said, indicates that the current strategy would continue. However, the home minister added a new element, suggesting the government could “revisit” its decision not to deploy air power, pointing to his desire to raise the pitch of the current battle.

Publicly, the prime minister said the “air power” question could be examined, but the view in both South Block and North Block was the same: it was a bad idea. Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik was the first to react. He said he was opposed to deploying the air force against the Maoists because the armed forces are trained for lethal operations to kill the enemy, not fight “our own citizens”. And officials in both the prime minister’s office and the home ministry told Outlook that if the proposal came to the cabinet, it would be shot down.

Indeed, before the current phase of anti-Maoist operations began in November 2009, the home minister’s “maximalist approach” had been beaten down at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security on October 8 last year. “The home minister was told his plans were too ambitious and would have to be scaled down,” sources had told Outlook then. Within the Congress, too, there was disapproval of the militarist approach, with party functionaries quoting general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who had praised the Andhra Pradesh model for tackling Maoists. “It took central welfare schemes to problem-hit areas. But the Chhattisgarh government is not reaching out to the trouble-hit areas,” he had said.

Today, the official line is bland, with only a gratuitous swipe at opposition-ruled states where Maoist activity is flourishing marking it out. “Whatever has happened in Dantewada is a challenge to our democratic system,” said Congress general secretary and media cell chairman Janardan Dwivedi. “All state governments must tackle this problem seriously and cooperate with the Centre.” Interestingly, the BJP, usually quick to criticise the upa government, has backed the home minister, a senior party functionary told Outlook, possibly because Chhattisgarh is a BJP-ruled state. “He (the home minister) understands the problem and is trying to do something compared to his predecessor (Shivraj Patil) who refused to act,” said Arun Jaitley, the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

“For intelligence, you need friends. If you ill-treat people and cut off their food supply, you only create a Maoist.” Brig B.K. Ponwar, Insurgency expert

An escalation of the battle against the Maoists may suit the public mood and the BJP, and even though Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan exhorted the government to “wipe out this terrible scourge...with all the strength at our command”, the party is wary. “When casualties mount, the natural tendency is to overreact. But that would be a mistake. We have to make a distinction between the Maoists and ordinary tribals. Every Maoist is not a tribal; neither is every tribal a Maoist,” a party functionary told Outlook. Senior party leaders also say Chidambaram must talk a little less and desist from communicating with the Maoists through the media, or to make an appeal for talks “on such a grave issue via mobile phones and SMSes”.

Instead, police officers, intelligence officials and army officers with experience in dealing with insurgency stressed the need for a change in tack to defeat the Maoists. They pointed out that without security, it was difficult for the administration to provide development; but at the same time, it would not be possible to win the battle without winning over the population. “Every tribal is not a Maoist supporter, but many tribals have only seen the Maoists. The policemen, who are looking at an invisible enemy, and have no one in the Maoist camp, need to make friends with the people to gather intelligence,” says Brig B.K. Ponwar, a veteran counter-insurgency expert who runs the Counter Terrorism & Jungle Warfare College in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district. “But if you ill-treat the people, cut off their food supplies, you not only don’t make friends, you end up creating a Maoist.”

Currently, of course, the government is only too aware it is working blind. Home secretary G.K. Pillai went to the extent of saying there was no intelligence lapse, because there was no intelligence from the jungles in the first place. And the home minister was at pains to stress that the CRPF mission was not one based on intelligence; it was an “area domination exercise”, aimed at familiarising the jawans with the territory.

“What happened in Dantewada is a challenge to our democratic system. All state governments must respond to it.” Janardan Dwivedi, Cong spokesman

But clearly, intelligence is key to any success the government may have against the Maoists—and hence the need to have a friendly outreach among the people, along with efforts to contain the Maoists. Indeed, this is an issue on which at least two chief ministers of Maoist-affected states have locked horns with the Union home minister—Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Jharkhand’s Shibu Soren. It was not merely the desire to win elections, Nitish said, that had made him “oppose tough action”, but his 30-year-old political career in a Naxalite-affected state that had taught him that “alienated elements” had to be dealt with through “peaceful, democratic ways”.

Apart from intelligence, senior police officials engaged in anti-Maoist operations feel there is a serious need to pause and review strategy, not just do an autopsy of this particular operation. “The Maoists are fighting a very intelligent battle,” a senior police officer engaged in anti-Maoist operations told Outlook. “One, they are fighting this at the political level, subverting sections of the intelligentsia; two, at the developmental level; and three, through a military campaign. Ours is only a military campaign. So we need to diagnose the problem, have a conceptual framework, then a road map. We aren’t chasing dacoits, we must remember.” Force alone, he said, would be counterproductive. Is the government listening?


www.outlookindia.com | The Hard, The Soft And The Medium

 

[CONNAN]

No time for war​

Samar Halarnkar, Hindustan Times
Email Author
April 07, 2010
First Published: 23:11 IST(7/4/2010)
Last Updated: 23:20 IST(7/4/2010)

First, a disclaimer: I have a deep, emotional connection with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which lost 76 troopers in the forests of Dantewada on Tuesday.

My father retired from the CRPF. I’ve lived in their rough camps. I made friends with soldiers from every corner of India, from Kashmiris to Malayalees to Manipuris. I pored over self-loading rifles and 9mm carbines. I felt their silent pain when a soldier fell in some corner of India, the body shipped home to, usually, an uncomprehending family in rural or small-town India.

This is the great irony of the growing Maoist attacks on security forces. The men they kill — and get killed by — are not unlike themselves, living and dying in that ill-visited twilight zone between Third World Destitute India and First World Emerging India. Second World India is a violent place, inhabited by people with guns but without real power; locked in feuds over resources, influence and power.

These feuds simmer across India, largely ignored as a few commas in eternal India, boiling over into our lives only when the attacks are so brazen as to make it to breaking-new tickers; when the attacks are so bloody as to make us shift uneasily nervously and wonder: Can they reach us?

Well, that is their plan.

The Maoist strategy, as I wrote last month, is deadlier than jihadi terrorism. The plan is not to terrorise but capture India, starting with a takeover of the countryside and isolating the cities. The Intelligence Bureau (IB), the domestic intelligence agency, has struggled to track Maoist penetration of labour unions and colleges. The IB believes such an infiltration is underway, the precursor to the Maoist dream of ruling India.

Hours after Tuesday’s attack, a friend from Pakistan said: “The Naxals are beginning to sound like India’s version of the Taliban!”

Should we declare war against the Maoists as Pakistan has against the Taliban? Should we call in the army, send in tanks to Lalgarh and helicopter gunships to Dantewada?

As lofty as the Maoist ambition is, as brutal as their growing attacks are, this would be a grave mistake.

First, despite what we think, the scale and intensity of Naxal attacks do not match the Taliban’s ceaseless offensive. Air force strikes, US drones and the Pakistani army have reduced the frequency and ferocity of attacks, but the Taliban’s bloody strikes continue. I do not have the precise numbers, but the Taliban claim more lives in a month than the Maoists do in a year.

Second, however abhorrent I find Arundhati Roy’s description of the Maoists as “Gandhians with guns”, and however deep my anger at them, the fact is their rebellion emerged because of the horrific inequities and injustices that prevail in second- and third-world India. In Dantewada — the site of Tuesday’s massacre, in the heart of the so-called Maoist “liberated zone” — no more than 30 per cent of the people are literate, less than half the national rate. India’s tribals are dispossessed and discriminated against, and unless their lot improves, the security forces will be occupying armies, the Maoists, liberators. India could indeed use a scorched-earth policy and do what the Sri Lankans did to the Tamil Tigers — if we want to conquer our poorest people.

Third, the Maoist insurgency is based not religion but on an ideology of violent revolution first propounded by, obviously, Mao Tse Tung, as a revolutionary peasant struggle against the State and exploiting classes. In a religious, rapidly urbanising nation, a Maoist class struggle, however violent, will always struggle to find sympathisers in cities. The Taliban can strike metropolitan areas because they have support there.

Maoist areas of influence now spread across nine Indian states and, theoretically, a third of the nation’s area. Yet, it is an insurgency that grows because of our ineptness at spreading economic development and not making the urgent course corrections that the surge against the Maoists needs.

It is easy now to talk of war, but the Maoists have already made that declaration. We didn’t notice, and so never prepared. It is important now to nuance armed responses, review our failing battle plans, training and processes — and bring into our national discussion the injustices being inflicted on the tribal areas.

That is the war India needs.

Consider the CRPF. With 208 battalions (that’s more than 15,000 men and women), the CRPF is one of the world’s largest paramilitary forces. As the name suggests, it’s supposed to be a federal reserve, to be called up when needed.

A third of the CRPF’s battalions are supposed to be in stand-down mode, training and recuperating. With India in a state of continuous ferment, there is no reserve left. The unofficial acronym for the force is ‘Chalte Raho Pyaare’. Keep moving my friend, a reference to the unceasing movement of its battalions from one trouble spot to another.

Most Indian police and security forces are overstretched.

These forces need reform, modern counter-insurgency tactics and equipment. It is inconceivable that 1,000 or more Maoists could take an Indian security unit completely by surprise. They need not helicopter gunships but drones. It’s obvious that intelligence agencies have little or no penetration of battlefield Naxal formations. How difficult is to have drones sweep areas before and during troop movements? As for tactics, the CRPF units violated a cardinal rule of such operations: never return the same way you went.

As Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, something has gone “seriously wrong”. Let’s find out what that is before talking of war.

No time for war- Hindustan Times

chillout dude posted a dozen articles time waste all the articles you posted in this thread are discussed
ALREADY DISCUSSED IN MANY THREADS POSTIN ALL THE ARTICLES WHICH ARE ALREADY DISCUSSED IN THE SAME THREAD WASTE OF TIME

MEGA REPOST
SOURSES

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/54696-maoists-fire-dantewada-massacre-probe-team.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53676-home-minister-offered-resign-after-dantewada-attack-sources.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53321-73-killed-maoists-ambush-crpf-team.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53755-dantewada-massacre-crpf-men-fought-till-bullets-ran-out.html

 

[Fighter488]

Police-CRPF ring sold arms to Maoists ​

Dantewada Probe Busts Racket; 7 Held For Supplying Ammo, Spares



Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui & Vishwa Mohan | TNN



Lucknow/New Delhi: The big question after every big Naxal attack is how Maoists manage to arm themselves to strike with such ferocity. Part of the answer may have been found, with UP cops stumbling on a massive ring involving UP police and CRPF men which allegedly supplied weapon parts and ammunition to Maoists.
In a crackdown on Friday, the Special Task Force (STF) of UP Police arrested seven men, including three serving and one retired armourer of the state police and two Central Reserve Police Force personnel for allegedly stealing government issue weapon spares and bullets and giving them to criminal gangs and possibly Maoists. The seventh person was the son of one of the cops.
‘‘Though it’s yet to be established if the arrested people were supplying ammunition and arms spares to the Maoists, we are sure the supplies were not meant only for gangsters,’’ said additional director general, STF, Brij Lal, who led the operation.
More than 5,500 live rounds, 245 kg of bullet shells, nearly 2.5 quintals of ‘used cartridges’, 16 bullet magazines and around 100 kg spares of Insas, AK-47 and self-loading rifles (SLRs), 9mm and .38 and .303 bore, apart from Rs 1.73 lakh cash were recovered from their possession, raising suspicion that the huge quantity of ammunition was meant for guerrilla outfits like the Maoists.
The modus operandi of the gang was to convert the ‘used cartridges’ into live ones at different firing ranges in UP. The gang inflated the number of rounds fired during practice and reclaimed more bullets from the armoury and sold these.
According to sources, the STF operation came after probes by central security and intelligence agencies into the Dantewada massacre threw up pointers to such a supply chain. Searches were conducted at 26 locations across eight districts of UP.

Black Sheep


The following were recovered from the arrested men:

5,500 live rounds 245kg bullet shells 2.5 quintals of ‘used bullets’ 16 bullet magazines 100kg spares of Insas, AK-47s, SLRs, 9mm, .38 and .303 bore Rs 1.73 lakh cash

‘Extra bullets from practice sessions sold to Maoists’


Lucknow\New Delhi: CRPF director general Vikram Srivastava told TOI that the paramilitary force was in constant touch with the UP Police and was extending all help to the probe into the sale of arms and ammunition to Maoists.
‘‘We have already suspended three CRPF personnel (including the two arrested ones) and ordered an immediate Court of Enquiry,’’ Srivastava said, adding that UP cops in Basti, Moradabad, Lucknow, Allahabad, Jhansi and Gorakhpur might also be involved. ‘‘A third CRPF personnel — Chote Lal Verma — was detained. He was, however, not arrested as no recovery was made from him,’’ said an officer. On the modus operandi of the gang, STF SSP Naveen Arora said the armourers told police that the shells provided by Yashodha were mixed with those spared during the firing practice sessions at the police academy and CRPF group centres. ‘‘For example, 800 rounds were fired in a training session. The spent shells of these used cartridges, as a rule, are surrendered to the armoury. They mixed 200 shells that they had showed in the records the total rounds used in the session as 1,000,’’ Arora said.

 

[Fighter488]

chillout dude posted a dozen articles time waste all the articles you posted in this thread are discussed[/B]
ALREADY DISCUSSED IN MANY THREADS POSTIN ALL THE ARTICLES WHICH ARE ALREADY DISCUSSED IN THE SAME THREAD WASTE OF TIME

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/54696-maoists-fire-dantewada-massacre-probe-team.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53676-home-minister-offered-resign-after-dantewada-attack-sources.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53321-73-killed-maoists-ambush-crpf-team.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/53755-dantewada-massacre-crpf-men-fought-till-bullets-ran-out.html

THANKS FOR THE ADVICE!

You better RE-CHECK the date and time of these posts and compare them. I NEVER repost an article of any PDF member.

Those who posted the articles you mentioned started different threads rather than discussing it here and they better know WHY?

Fighter

 

[Fighter488]

Naxals killed 474 security men, 391 civilians in last 3 years, SC told​

Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN, May 19, 2010, 01.13am IST

NEW DELHI: The barbaric killing of civilians by Maoists in Chhattisgarh on Monday may have generated shockwaves, but it was certainly not a one-off instance of the extremists targeting unarmed non-combatants. In fact, the Maoists had already killed 391 civilians in a space of just three years when the blew up the bus.

The chilling statistic is part of the report the Chhattisgarh government submitted to the Supreme Court just days after the April 6 massacre of 76 security personnel in Dantewada by Maoists.

The report put the number of security personnel killed till then by the Left extremists in the state in the same period at a huge 474.

"The state is going through the worst phase of Maoist violence," the Raman Singh government told the SC this month while responding to a PIL filed by sociology professor Nandini Sundar, historian Ramachandra Guha and retired bureaucrat E A S Sharma, who had sought a ban on the anti-Naxal militia `Salwa Judum' and prosecution of its activists for alleged excesses.

Reporting incidents of Naxal attacks in Dantewada, Bijapur, Kanker, Rajnandgaon, Dhamtari, Bastar, Narayanpur, Balrampur and Durg districts, the state gave a break-up of casualties for the last three years upto April 30 this year.

A total of 880 persons have been killed, who included 356 police personnel, 118 Special Police Officers (SPOs) and home guards, 391 civilians and 15 government servants. With Monday's landmine blast claiming 31 more lives, the toll has now crossed 900. ​

What is equally troubling is the cache of arms amassed by Naxals after their successful attacks on security forces. Naxals not only picked up the best of the weapons -- INSAS rifles, Ak-47s, SLRs, LMGs and mortars -- but also removed bulletproof jackets from the bodies of security men and distributed them among the leading cadre.

The PIL petitioners had alleged that the government's relief and rehabilitation measures were shoddy and half-hearted in the Naxal-affected areas where the civilians were caught in the cross-fire between the security forces and Maoists.

The state, in its affidavit filed through standing counsel Atul Jha, had detailed the developmental measures taken in every affected district in addition to the compensation scheme implemented in those areas.

It said: "The success of the relief and rehabilitation measures initiated by the state and the central government have been widely appreciated by the victims except the Maoists and their urban sympathizers."

"From reliable sources it is learnt that the Maoists have instructed their cadres and sympathizers to attack the relief and rehabilitation policy of the government by indulging in false propaganda at various forums to discredit the government initiatives such as counselling, maitree organizations, Janta Durbar, police mela, surrender and rehabilitation policy, gram raksha dal, lok adalat etc to alleviate the grievances of the common people," it said.

"Furthermore, it is also reliably learnt that Naxal front organisations want to somehow control even the development activities initiated by the state," the Raman Singh government had told the SC.

The SC asked it to respond to the suggestion from the petitioners for appointment of an independent committee to monitor the relief and rehabilitation measures.

Naxals killed 474 security men, 391 civilians in last 3 years, SC told - India - The Times of India

 

[Fighter488]

The Naxalite Insurgency In India ​

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

By Kristian A. Kennedy for Geopoliticalmonitor.com

While many western observers would point to violent secessionism in Kashmir as the direst threat to Indian national security, the government of India has identified the Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgency as its most significant security challenge. A vast swath of India, from West Bengal in the northeast to Andhra Pradesh in the south, has come under the influence of the Naxalites -- the "Red Taliban" as they have been called. In recent years the Indian government has stepped-up its counter-insurgency initiatives in an attempt to contain and rollback the movement's influence. In fact, New Delhi has even redeployed security forces from Kashmir to central and eastern India in response to this development.

Who are the Naxalites?


Taking its name from the 1967 peasant revolt in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari, the Naxalite movement is a left-wing guerrilla force that is seeking to overthrow the Indian government. Since the time of the Naxalbari revolt the movement has taken on various forms and its support has fluctuated from one decade to the next. Its most recent manifestation is the result of a 2004 decision by two Maoist groupings, the People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre, to join forces to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). This post-2004 incarnation of the Naxalite insurgency has been one of the most sustained -- and perhaps the most lethal.

While India's other communist parties participate in electoral politics, the CPI(M) follows Mao's dictum that power flows from the barrel of a gun. The CPI(M) has declared, and government officials have acknowledged, that the Naxalites are conducting an insurgency in accordance with Mao's "protracted people's war" strategy [1]. The Naxalites view Indian society through the lens of Mao's theory of the developing world's rural poor as a pivotal revolutionary force in the class struggle. They have sought to build support among the region's lower castes, adivasis (tribal groups), and other sectors of the peasantry by establishing insurgent strongholds ("liberated zones") in districts where government authority is weak. The Party's cadres expand their influence outwards from these bases, and in doing so, they broaden their popular base through political mobilization. The targets of the Naxal class struggle are the region's upper castes, "feudal" landlords, commercial interests, and the security forces.

India's Maoist Redux


Naxalism presents a seeming paradox: the country with the second highest growth rates of the major economies finds itself in the throes of a largely agrarian rebellion inspired by an ideology that has lost its lustre in much of the world. In 2006 India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, pronounced Naxalism to be "the single biggest internal security challenge" India has ever faced [2].

Why have the Naxalites come to loom so large as a security challenge? First, a large area of the country has fallen under varying degrees of CPI(M) influence. According to one estimate, approximately 40% of India's territory is under some form of Maoist influence [3]. Just as the Maoist Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") of Peru emerged in the poor, mostly indigenous city of Ayacucho and spread outward to other areas of the Andean sierra, so the Naxalite centre-of-gravity is an area of the country that comprises several of India's most underdeveloped states -- a "Red Corridor" that includes Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa. Although establishing concrete numbers of supporters is a challenge, the Research and Analysis Wing, India's intelligence service, estimates that CPI(M) armed cadres number about 20,000 [4]. Tenuous government control, the destruction of public infrastructure, the sabotage of industrial interests, and ambushes of state security forces all pose a significant challenge to internal stability in areas of eastern and central India. A study published this month counted the Maoist insurgency as an obstacle in the way of India's emergence as a world power [3].

Government Responses


In November 2009 the Indian government announced a plan to bolster the anti-Naxalite efforts of affected states with a national counter-insurgency strategy. The strategy, which the Indian prime minister characterized as an approach that will "walk on two legs," combines a campaign to hold and clear Naxal strongholds with development projects to address what Singh acknowledged as "the sense of deprivation and alienation" in the region [2]. Known unofficially as Operation "Green Hunt," New Delhi forecasts that the campaign to re-assert government authority and win back the support of affected sectors of the population in the Red Corridor will take two years.

The spread of violence has spurred the growth of non-state anti-Naxal groupings. The most notable among them is the Salwa Judum in the state of Chhattisgarh. Like the Naxalites, these groups seek to recruit from the state's tribal groups, leaving civilians caught between competing groups on the left and the right. State officials in Chhattisgarh have actively supported the use of the Salwa Judum to counter the Naxalites, an approach that is not without controversy and as a result has generated criticism from India's Supreme Court and the central government in Delhi [5].

Foreign Support


It is difficult to establish the degree and scope of external involvement in the Naxalite insurgency. Nepalese and Filipino Maoist outfits have long been suspected of providing rhetorical and material support to the CPI(M). Following central government claims of possible arms transfers from Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) publicly admitted to having ties with the CPI(M) but did not detail its involvement [6]. Similarly, Indian and Filipino intelligence services allege that the Communist Party of the Philippines, a faction that is waging its own guerrilla war in that country, has established links with the Naxalites [7]. New Delhi also contends that it has evidence that remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are providing training to CPI(M) cadres in India [8].

Looking forward


New Delhi confronts a major challenge in the Red Corridor. Working in conjunction with the governments of affected states, the central government faces the task of winning hearts and minds in geographically isolated and economically dislocated regions of the country. It must do so even as the Naxalites work to mobilize the masses, escalate their class war, and broaden the Maoist footprint on the subcontinent. While the chances of a Naxalite seizure of power appear remote, the insurgency will continue to hold back much-needed development. It remains to be seen how effective the current counter-insurgency strategy is at strengthening the writ of the state and extending development in the region.


This article was published by Geopoliticalmonitor.com and reprinted with permission.


End Notes


[1] South Asia Terrorism Portal. "Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist)." http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/CPI_M.htm; Pillai, Gopal K. "Left-Wing Extremism in India." Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses. Left-Wing Extremism in India | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

[2] Prime Minister's Office. "PM's speech at the Chief Minister's [sic] meet on Naxalism." April 13, 2006. Prime Minister's Office.

[3] Mahadevan, Prem. Rising India: Challenges and Constraints. Zurich, Switzerland: Center for Security Studies, 2010. Rising India: Challenges and Constraints / ISN.

[4] Malhotra (Ret'd), Col. Chander. "Red Terror." South Asia Defence & Strategic Review. February 10, 2010. South Asia Defence & Strategic Reveiw.

[5] Press Trust of India. Hindustan Times. "Govt disapproves of 'non-state' law enforcers like Salwa Judum." December 17, 2008. Govt disapproves of 'non-state' law enforcers like Salwa Judum- Hindustan Times Sinha, Bhadra. Hindustan Times. "SC against tribal force fighting Naxalites." February 6, 2009. SC against tribal force fighting Naxalites- Hindustan Times.

[6] The Hindu. "Naxals get arms from abroad: Chidambaram." October 24, 2009. The Hindu : News / National : Naxals get arms from abroad: Chidambaram Deccan Herald. "Nepali Maoists confirm support to Indian Naxals." November 3, 2009. Nepali Maoists confirm support to Indian Naxals.

[7] Mandal, Caesar. Times of India. "Filipino insurgents in league with Maoists." April 12, 2010. 'Filipino insurgents in league with Maoists' - India - The Times of India.

[8] Srivastava, Siddarth. Asia Times Online. "India probes Maoists' foreign links." November 11, 2009. Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.



The Naxalite Insurgency In India | Eurasia Review

 

[Fighter488]

ToI editorial dated 31st may 2010.

Fighter

Cult Of Violence ​

Maoist terror has no place in a democratic society




Evidence available so far points to the involvement of Maoists in the derailment of the Gyaneshwari Express on Friday. Posters of PCPA, a Maoist-backed local outfit, that claimed responsibility for the sabotage were found at the accident site, though a spokesperson denied its involvement. Maoists have in recent times targeted public transport, especially trains, in their strongholds. Railway tracks and stations are routinely attacked when Maoists declare a bandh. From targeting security personnel as well as those they saw as informers earlier, there’s a shift towards indiscriminate killing now. Clearly, the Maoist terror has to end.
The Maoist movement has evolved into an insurgency, at least in its strongholds in central and eastern India. The government must devise countermeasures accordingly. Half measures like local militias will not help. A well-trained and well-equipped police and paramilitary force with the ability to source information about local Maoist activity is necessary to fight the battle. There’s no need to deploy the army but its expertise could be sought to train and provide logistical back-up for police personnel. There ought to be, as well, proper coordination among the various agencies involved in anti-Maoist operations. The Maoist challenge is not merely about the rights of adivasi people; it’s essentially about what ought to be the nature of the Indian state. A democratic state as envisaged in the Indian Constitution is unacceptable to Maoists. The adivasis, a victim of the inefficiency and callousness of elected representatives and public officials, are only used as a front to promote an ideology that is inherently undemocratic. The plight of the adivasi community can, and must, be addressed through democratic means.
The government’s strategy, of course, should not be limited to military action in areas dominated by Maoists. A fight against insurgency is also a fight to win the hearts and minds of people. Issues that have bothered the adivasi community must be engaged with sympathetically and developmental initiatives designed accordingly. Maoist cadres willing to shun violence and work with the government and the civil society could be encouraged to join the social mainstream. Apart from effective police action, another reason for the failure of the Maoist rebellion in Andhra Pradesh was that a number of party members, fed up with the endless violence, took up rehabilitation packages offered by the government and left the movement.
The Centre, in consultation with the state governments, must formulate a multidimensional strategy to end the Maoist terror. There is a false opposition between security and development in our public discourse. These paradigms can, and ought to, coexist in the government’s vision of the battle against Maoists. That, by no means, is an impossible task.

 

[Fighter488]

ToI feed dated 5th June 2010.

Fighter

‘Iron’ic? Story of the GREAT INDIAN LOOT ​

DEVELOPMENT WITH A HUMAN FACE HAS BEEN THE CREDO OF OUR DEMOCRATIC POLITY. BUT THE RIGHTS OF MILLIONS OF SONS OF THE SOIL ARE OFTEN HELD HOSTAGE TO CORPORATE GREED. THE COUNTRY’S RICHES CLEARLY NEED TO BE DISTRIBUTED BETTER

There Are Many Factors Behind The Rise Of The Maoists. A Skewed Mining Policy That Alienates Tribals While Allowing Miners To Rake In Super Profits Is A Key Reason




Shankar Raghuraman | TIG




Take a look at the accompanying map and you can’t but notice the extent of overlap between India’s thickly forested areas, the regions with the bulk of the country’s most important mineral wealth and the territory over which Maoists are dominant. Is this just a coincidence? No, that would stretch credulity.
So what connects the Maoist menace with forests and mining? Clearly, forests give a guerilla force its best chance of taking on the might of the state. But any guerilla army needs more than just thick foliage. Insurgents thrive where the local population is sympathetic to them or at least not sympathetic towards the state.
That’s where mining comes into the picture. There has been a long history of traditional forest dwellers being denied the right to live off the forest, a process that cannot but lead to alienation. Add to that a mining policy regime that has allowed massive scaling up of mining in the same areas for super profits, and it is not difficult to see why many tribals believe the state is hostile to their interests, but in tune with corporate interests.

http://img689.imageshack.us/i/getimagead.jpg/

Mining projects have repeatedly led to localized protests. In many cases, the administration has muttered darkly about agent provocateurs from outside fishing in troubled waters. In states like Orissa, Maoists have been accused of exploiting local resentment for their own ends.
To understand how mining policy has actually helped the Maoists, let’s take the specific case of iron ore — crucial for Chhattisgarh and Orissa and not insignificant for Jharkhand, all states with a serious Maoist problem on their hands.
At the turn of the millennium in 2001-01, India exported iron ore worth a measly Rs 358 crore. By 2008-09, that figure was up to Rs 21,725 crore, a sixty-fold jump in just seven years.
Driving this export of ore were several factors. One was the decanalisation of exports of ore with an iron content of 64% or less in the late 1990s. The other was China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for iron ore in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As a result, the international price of ore — with 63% iron content — soared to $200 per tonne in March 2008, more than four times the price five years ago.
Indian ore exporters thus had a ready and profitable market. The icing on the cake was provided by the royalty rates charged by the government. The rates fixed in October 2004 varied from as little as Rs 4 per tonne for low-grade ore to a maximum of Rs 27 per tonne for the highest grades. There was also no export duty.
To see what this meant, check out what the Karnataka Lok Ayukta had to say on the allegations of illegal mining in the Bellary region of the state. Its report submitted in December 2008 pointed out that when the export price was hovering around Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000 per tonne, the state government was getting between Rs 16 and Rs 27 by way of royalty. The extraction cost to the miner was, by the state’s own admission, of the order of Rs 150 per tonne. The Lok Ayukta noted that even if the transportation cost was estimated at Rs 250 per tonne, the total cost for the exporter would be not more than Rs 427 per tonne.
Since the export price of the ore even in a slump was never lower than Rs 1,500 per tonne, that would leave a neat profit of Rs1,073 per tonne. Out of this, the state was getting at best Rs 27.
So outraged was the Lok Ayukta by these calculations, that the report went on to advocate a complete ban not just on export of ore but also on its trading, saying it should be reserved only for captive mining by domestic steel producers.
A committee appointed by the planning commission in 2005 to examine the national mining policy, observed that “the margins available in the mining sector have been very substantial and are widely expected to continue being so in the foreseeable future”. It recommended in December 2006 that royalty rates be reviewed. A subsequent study group suggested that the royalty be pegged at 10% of the sale price of ore.

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It took another two years before the ministry finally notified the new rates in August 2009. But there was a catch. The “sale price” which was to form the basis for the ad valorem rates would be determined by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) on the basis of the average of sale prices reported by non-captive producers.
To see why this made a mockery of the 10% rate, just look at the numbers for February 2010, the last month for which the IBM has put up the sale prices on its website. The all-India sale price average for lumps of 62-65% iron content was Rs 1,760 per tonne. The highest sale price for any state for this grade of ore was put at Rs 1,949 per tonne.
Against this, the average international price prevailing in February for Indian ore of 63% iron content bound for Chinese ports was $128 per tonne, which is closer to Rs 6,000 per tonne. Even allowing for transportation costs, which can be significant, clearly there is a wide gap between the price at which the royalty rate is being applied and what the exporter is actually getting.
Why do these details of iron ore extraction and sale matter? Because the enormous margins involved — in exports as well as domestic sales — mean that the scope for sleaze and the temptation for illegal mining are huge.
And this is where the connection with Maoists lies. Not only has rapacious mining turned the tribal away from the state, it has reportedly provided a steady source of funding for the Maoists through extortion. In short, by promoting this variety of crony capitalism, the state has shot itself in the foot.
So, what’s the way out? When TOI recently asked a Union minister whether it would be a good idea to auction mines to raise more revenues for the states, which could then put a chunk of it back into development work for the local community, the minister’s response was, “But why allow exports in the first place?”
That’s the language of Left radicals, but when it comes from a minister, it’s an indication of how serious the problem has become.
Since 2007, the government has imposed export duties on iron ore that have varied between zero and 15%, but are we in for a further tightening of the screws?

 

[Fighter488]

FOREST ALIENATION​

60% of India’s forest land lies in the 187 adivasi districts, which in turn comprise 33% of the country’s geographical area But, 62.9% of adivasis are either landless or own less than 1 hectare of land
Successive governments worked to turn their lands into reserved or protected forests, alienating the adivasis

To give an example from just one state, Andhra Pradesh, official records note that 77,661 acres of land in ‘reserve forests’ were under cultivation by adivasis prior to the enactment of the Forest Conservation Act in 1980

The case of Orissa is more bizarre. Revenue land settlements carried out during the 1970s in Orissa did not survey hilly land with over 10 degree slope and declared them (including their unsurveyed villages
and cultivated lands) as state-owned forests or ‘wastelands’. These areas were predominantly inhabited by the state’s 7 mn adivasis. In fact, 44% of Orissa’s supposed ‘forest land’ is actually shifting cultivation land of adivasis whose ancestral rights have simply not been recognised. 55% of Orissa’s supposed ‘forest’ area is under the revenue department, and in areas surveyed for revenue settlements this land is not recorded as ‘forests’

While the popular impression is that large tracts of forest land were lost to encroachment in the 1960s-90s, the truth is that between 1961 and 1988 the total land under the forest department’s control nationwide did not decrease but increased by 26 mn hectares (from 41 million hectares to 67 million hectares). During this period, the area falling within reserved forests, in which people have limited or no rights, increased from 26 mn hectares to 46 mn hectares
Many of those displaced were treated as encroachers on their own land

An estimated 1,500 villages or 65,000 families or 325,000 people reside in just the 30-odd tiger reserves of India. A 1989 report estimates three million people live inside the 600-odd protected areas that exist in India today. In a majority of cases, their rights have still not been settled

The UPA, in its last tenure, after great reluctance enacted the Forest Rights Act to hand over the traditional forest dwellers their stolen rights. The Act has been repeatedly violated by the government itself. From Dec 2006 till date, in just two states — MP and Chhattisgarh — the government diverted 46,235 hectares of land in violation of the Forest Rights Act. This is larger than the area of the Mumbai municipal corporation

 

[Fighter488]

Delhi targets rebels with a cause ​

By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The Indian government has hit back at civil society groups who claim its "war against Maoists" is targeted at tribals living in the conflict zone rather than the rebels, accusing them of being rebel sympathizers.

The Home Ministry last month warned "civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intellectuals and the general public" that "supporting the CPI [Communist Party of India - Maoist] ideology" would attract action under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) of 1967.

Section 39 of the act states that "any person who commits the offense of supporting a terrorist organization with inter alia intention to further the activities of such groups would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or with fine or with both".

The Maoists were declared a terrorist organization under the UAPA in June last year. Operations against them have been ongoing for several years but in November last year the government launched a coordinated military offensive called "Operation Green Hunt".

The operation, which is focused on five states in central and eastern India - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal - aims ostensibly to eliminate the rebel group, which the government claims want to overthrow the Indian state.

Violence between security forces and the Maoists have since reached unprecedented levels. In April, a Maoist attack on security forces in Dantewada claimed the lives of 76 troops, while a roadside bomb destroyed a loaded bus there in May, killing at least 40. The deadly derailment of a passenger train in West Bengal on May 28 killed some 140 people, but the rebels have denied involvement.

Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has come under criticism from civil society activists for Green Hunt's objectives and strategy. For example, Supreme Court advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan says it seems the operation is aimed not at weakening the Maoists, but at driving out tribals from their homes so mining firms can exploit natural resources on their lands.

"Green Hunt is creating a civil war situation in mineral-rich areas, where tribals live. It plans to drive them out of here so that mining corporations can enter and begin extracting minerals that the military offensive is aimed," he told Asia Times Online.

Such criticism has raised the hackles of Chidambaram, mining corporations and proponents of the military offensive. Bhushan says anyone who criticizes the government's approach towards tribals or calls for an end to Green Hunt has now been deemed a "Maoist sympathizer".

Bhushan is one such activist, Others who share the tag include Booker Prize winner and human-rights activist, Arundhati Roy and Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties.

The historian Ramachandra Guha, Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and retired bureaucrat E A S Sarma, who petitioned the Supreme Court challenging the Salwa Judum - a government-sponsored vigilante group that fights Maoists in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh - have also been named alongside a host of other civil society activists.

The government appears to equating those who are open Maoist supporters with those it labels as sympathizers.

"The government is adopting the [former US president] George W Bush approach," says Sharanya Nayak, an activist who works on rights issues with tribals in Dantewada and Koraput in Orissa. "It's 'if you are not for us, you are against us' again," she said.

Nayak claims the government's definition of a rebel sympathizer is so "open-ended", that "anyone working for tribal rights will get branded as pro-Maoist". She said this was the case with Binayak Sen, a doctor who was working among tribals in Chhattisgarh and is a well-known human-rights activist. Sen was arrested in 2007 under the UAPA and the even more draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA) before being released last year on bail.

Himanshu Kumar, a "Gandhian" who runs the legal-aid NGO Vanavasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada, has also been repeatedly targeted by the police. His office was burned down last year. Hundreds of tribal activists, including minors, have been jailed for allegedly waging war against the state in Maoist areas.

The Home Ministry has named 57 organizations it says are working "for the cause of the Maoists". "The outfit [CPI-Maoist] has 57 front bodies working among the peasants, laborers, women, students, tribals, backward castes, etc, which supplement the activities of the armed cadres and mobilize the masses ostensibly for the cause of the people, but primarily for the cause of the party."

While some of the organizations may have links with the rebels, most are the NGOs operating not underground but in the public domain. Many are working to improve the rights of India's most marginalized groups.

Among those on the Home Ministry's watch list are the PUCL and the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), which have functioned as human-rights watchdogs for decades. The PUCL and PUDR have both been sharply critical of Maoist attacks on civilians. Other organizations like the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM) have fielded candidates in state elections.

Thirty of these 57 organizations have been put on a watch-list of higher alert. These include the Bandi Mukti Morcha, a human-rights organization in West Bengal which is led by noted litterateur and social activist Mahasweta Devi. The Bandi Mukti Morcha has been vociferous in its criticism of the West Bengal government, which has been accused of grabbing land from rural poor to sell to private firms.

The Eighty-five-year-old Mahasweta Devi, a recipient of several of India's highest civilian and literary awards and the Magsaysay prize - Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize - has challenged the home minister to arrest her. "But he has to prove my Maoist connections first," she says.

Roy, whose essay "Walking with Comrades" led the Chhattisgarh government to contemplate legal action against her under the CSPSA, has now dared the government to arrest her. "I am on the side of the Maoists," she has said, adding: "I do not care ... pick me up, put me in jail."

Chidambaram and the mainstream media have accused the "sympathizers" of being pro-Maoist and pro-violence. But this ignores that organizations like PUCL and PUDR have criticized the Maoists for their recent deadly wave of attacks.

Political observers say the government's attempt to silence civil society activists is an error since these people - unlike most politicians or bureaucrats - have travelled in the conflict zones and engaged with a cross-section of society. Civil society workers would know Green Hunt's flaws and impacts better than anyone else.

Retired director general of police, K S Subrahmanyam, has suggested that Chidambaram should start listening to civil society and human-rights groups instead of relying heavily on intelligence inputs from police. Subrahmanyam says the latter are focused on security and oblivious to the larger issues of structural imbalances, development issues and displacement that many believe underlie the Maoist problem.

Although the government is taking aim at what is calls "Maoist sympathizers", it seems that no activity has fueled the expansion of the Maoist's violent activities more than Operation Green Hunt and the mining operations in tribal areas. Both have fed tribal alienation and anger, likely pushing youth to join the the rebels.​

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF08Df01.html

 

[CONNAN]

THERE ISZ ALREADY A STICKY THREAD RUNNING WHY AGAIN TO START A NEW ONE

 

[Fighter488]

THERE ISZ ALREADY A STICKY THREAD RUNNING WHY AGAIN TO START A NEW ONE

This is the oldest thread. It is not a new one.

 

[Mansanpk2009]

Indian Nuclear proliferation: Nukes threatened by Naxals Pakistan Ledger


In the light of the report linked above and numerous other reports suggesting the fall of Indian Nuclear Assets to the hands of Naxals/Maoists, Indian National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon faced tough question regarding Indian Nuclear Security in the Summit in Singapore.

 

[Mansanpk2009]

Why Dantewada's key to the battle against Maoists: Rediff.com India News

Shankar Menon was unable to satisfy the conference members on the issue of Indian Nuclear Security in the light of Naxals insurgency