(To be read in continuation of my earlier article of February, 14, 2005,titled TheGhosts of Mao)
The police forces of different states and the intelligenceagencies have had several successes to their credit in dealing with essentially urban terrorism, initially of the Khalistani terrorists in Punjaband subsequently of the jihadi terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K)and other parts of India. But, they continue to face serious difficulties incontrolling the spreading fire of the rural terrorism of the Maoists.
There are many reasons for this. The first is the fact that the Maoists--whohave taken to terrorism on ideological grounds--have genuine root causes fordoing so--the continuing pockets of abject poverty, particularly in the tribalareas across central India, and the failure of the state to implement aneffective programme for the economic development of the tribal areas. As aresult of these root causes, Maoist terrorism enjoys considerable popularsupport unlike the Khalistani terrorism, which did not, and the current jihaditerrorism, which does not either.
The second is the understandable ambivalence of the political leadership indealing with Maoist terrorism and its reluctance to authorise thecounter-terrorism agencies to use the same methods against the Maoists as theydo against the jihadi terrorists. This ambivalence arises from the fact thatlarge sections of the elite and the public, which do not approve of Maoistterrorism, have nevertheless a strong empathy for their ideology and objectives.
The ideology and objectives of the jihadi terrorists are medieval. They are sought to be justified on grounds of alleged historical wrongs committed againstthe Muslims. Those of the Maoists are not. They do not want to take the societybackwards as the jihadi terrorists do, but forward into an era of egalitarianismand prosperity.
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The reluctance of the state can be attributed to the differingbackground of the two kinds of terrorism. Jihadi terrorism is to a large extentforeign inspired, foreign funded and foreign trained and armed. It is being usedby Pakistan as a weapon to achieve its strategic objectives against India. Alarge component of foreign mercenaries--mainly Pakistanis--is involved in it.Counter-terrorism as applied against the jihadi terrorists is seen by thepolitical leadership and the intelligence and security agencies as part ofour continuing confrontation with the Pakistani Armed Forces in order tomaintain the secular character of our pluralistic society. There is noinhibiting factor--either at the political or the professional level--coming inthe way of effective counter-terrorism against the jihadi terrorists.
The Maoists, on the contrary, are sons and daughters of our own soil, who feelneglected by the state, the political leadership, the governmental agencies andthe better-off sections of our society and abandoned to the clutches of abjectpoverty and misery while the rest of the society is marching forward towardsincreasing prosperity. Their ideology--Maoism--is not native to our soil. But,this has caught their imagination since our own political leadership and elitehave not been able to place before them an alternative ideological model, whichwould end their economic and social marginalisation. The Chinese and the NorthKorean Communist Parties were actively involved in supporting our Maoists till1979. Since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party has stopped supporting them--atleast materially. One does not know whether the support from the North KoreanCommunist Party continues. One should not be surprised if it does, through theMaoists of Nepal.
The indigenous character of the Maoist terrorists and the absence of theinvolvement of foreign mercenaries come in the way of the professionalism of ourrural police, which has to be the cutting edge of our counter-terrorismstrategy. They also come in the way of the success of our intelligence agenciesin collecting rural intelligence comparable with their success in collectingintelligence in the urban areas. The rural police constables, who have to be inthe forefront of the counter-terrorism campaign against the Maoists, often comefrom the same social and economic milieu as the Maoists. One cannot blame themtotally if this comes in the way of their performance.
Fears caused by the ruthlessness of the methods used by the Maoists and thereluctance to operate against them caused by the fact that they are products ofthe same milieu as the Maoists should at least partly explain the hesitation ofthe people of the affected areas to come forward to join the police force in therequired numbers. This is despite the prevalence of large-scale unemployment inthese areas and the attractive emoluments offered to the police personnelvolunteering for duty in the terrorism-affected rural areas.
According to a recent media by Mr V.K.Duggal, the Home Secretary on March31,2006, (The Hindu of April 1), there were 17,000 vacancies ofConstables in the state of Bihar, 6,000 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,000 in Jharkhand. He did not explain to what extent these vacancies were due to thenon-availability of candidates with the required minimum qualifications and towhat extent due to the reluctance of the local people to serve in theMaoism-affected areas.
The intelligence agencies find themselves handicapped due to two reasons.Firstly, the Maoists have not been using modern means of communications to anysignificant extent . Extensive use of modern means of communications, as thejihadists do, increases the vulnerability of the terrorists to detection andneutralisation. When they avoid the use of modern means of communications, theflow of technical intelligence (TECHINT) is sparse.
Counter-terrorism against the Maoists is, therefore, much more dependent onhuman intelligence (HUMINT) than counter-terrorism against the jihaditerrorists. Urban sources do not have much hesitation in reporting to the Policeon the activities of suspected terrorists--whether indigenous or Pakistaninationals. The large urban population strengthens their anonymity and gives them protection against reprisals by the terrorists.
In the case of the largely rural Maoist terrorism, the villagers have often areluctance to report against their co-villagers. Moreover, in thinly-populatedvillages, the advantage of anonymity is weak and there is less protection forvillage sources against reprisals by the terrorists.
How weak is our intelligence capability against rural Maoist terrorism would beevident from the fact that in recent months the Maoists have operatedsuccessfully in large numbers, with the assembling of the terrorists and theirmoving on the road towards the targets remaining undetected and unthwarted. Inone incident in the state of Bihar on November 13, 2005, about 1000 armedMaoists raided a jail and rescued their comrades detained there. It is difficultto say how much of this was due to the absence of intelligence and how much dueto the complicity of sections of the police personnel.
Our Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is largely an urban-based organisation, hasvery little capability for preventive intelligence collection in the ruralareas. We have to depend on the rural police for this purpose. The ability ofthe rural police to collect intelligence depends to a considerable extenton its mobility (patrolling) and its relationship with the village communitiesin the affected areas. Fears caused by the frequent use of landmines with devastating effect by the Maoists and the failure of the States to provide thepolice with adequate mine detection and clearing capability have affected themobility and rural patrolling. This has also an impact on police-communityrelationship. A police force, which is not able to remain in regular touch withthe villagers, cannot collect much worthwhile intelligence.
The defining characteristics of the jihadi and Maoist terrorists differ insignificant aspects. Since there is a regular flow of funds, modern arms andammunition and communication sets to the jihadi terrorists from Pakistan, theydo not have to depend on raids on the posts of the security forces for thereplenishment of their weapons stocks. Bereft of external sources of supply, theMaoists have to depend on frequent raids on the security forces for replenishingtheir stocks.
The jihadi terrorists, who operate in very small numbers, avoid control ofterritory and the setting up of "liberated areas", since territorialcontrol would need the availability of large manpower. The Maoists, on the otherhand, operate in large numbers--with sometimes their operating numbers going upto many dozens and in one instance 1,000--and believe in setting up"liberated areas" in which they have their own tax collection andjudicial machineries.
While the jihadi terrorists continue to wage their unconventional war in apurely unconventional manner, the Maoists are waging their unconventional war inan increasingly conventional manner. The Maoist movement is more like that ofthe Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka--a mix of terrorism andinsurgency, of unconventional and conventional capabilities.
While the jihadists have been increasingly using improvised explosive devices (IEDs)for some years now, in preference to hand-held weapons, the Maoists have beenusing a mix of the landmines to prevent the mobility of the rural police andhand-held weapons to raid the posts of the security forces and capture arms andammunition.
While the jihadi terrorists kill civilians indiscriminately, the attacks of theMaoists on civilians are more targeted--against those whom they look upon astheir class enemies or exploiting classes such as landlords, forest contractorsand money-lenders as well those collaborating with the security forcesagainst the Maoists.
The inability of the state to deal with the Maoist insurgency-cum-terrorismeffectively so far can be attributed to the absence of a mix of political andoperational strategies. The political strategy has to identify and address theroot causes of the spreading Maoism. While the spread is alarming, it is not yetout of control. There are still large areas in the tribal belt where the peopleare not supporting the Maoists and are observing law and order. The state has sofar failed to undertake a crash development of these areas, which have not yetbeen infected by Maoism, in order to prove to the people that they can achievetheir justified economic and social objectives through peaceful means, withouthaving to take up arms against the State. Simultaneously, there has to be animprovement in rural policing and intelligence collection in order to thwart theefforts of the Maoists to bring these areas too under their sway.
The areas, which have already gone under the effective control of the Maoists,need a different strategy, with the emphasis more on the professional andoperational aspects of counter-terrorism than on the political and economic. Theobjective is to wrest control of these areas from the Maoists. This would bepossible only through expanding and strengthening the police presence in theareas, creating in the IB and the intelligence wings of the Police an improvedcapability for intelligence collection in the rural areas and strengthening thecapability of the police and the para-military forces to counter the modusoperandi of the Maoists such as their devastating use of landmines.
Concerned over the spread of Maoist terrorism and insurgency, suggestions areincreasingly being made for giving the police a military edge through trainingin jungle warfare techniques etc. We should definitely improve the technicalcapabilities of the police in matters such as mine-detection andneutralisation, but we should not militarise the methods of operation of thepolice.
The growing interest in some of our officers--serving and retired--in the highlymilitarised British and American methods of dealing with insurgency andterrorism needs to be curbed. The former British occupying power in Malaya usedand the current American occupying power in Iraq uses highly militarisedmethods. They were/are operating against foreign nationals in foreign territoryand had/have, therefore, no qualms about the kind of methods they were/are usingto suppress the insurgency-cum-terrorism.
Our Police and para-military forces are operating in our own territory againstour own people. We have to temper effectiveness with self-restraint. We had touse the jungle warfare methods in Mizoram and certain areas of the North-East inthe 1960s and the 1970s because of the involvement of Pakistan and China inkeeping the insurgency sustained in those areas. We cannot unintelligently usethose methods in our tribal heartland in Central India.
Modernisation of the police forces' rural counter-terrorism andcounter-insurgency capability, yes; but, militarisation, no.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), CabinetSecretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute ForTopical Studies, Chennai.
