Author: Ajai Sahni
Publication: Outlook
Date: November 22, 2004
URL: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20041122&fname=ajai&sid=1&pn=2
In the first operation of this magnitude
in Uttar Pradesh; in the first major strike since the formation of the
CPI (Maoist), 17 policemen were killed in cold blood on November 21, 2004.
In the first operation of this magnitude
in Uttar Pradesh; their first major strike since the unification of two
major Left Wing extremist (Naxalite) groups -- the Communist Party of India
- Marxist-Leninist Peoples' War (or Peoples War Group, PWG) and the Maoist
Communist Centre -- under the banner of the Communist Party of India -
Maoist (CPI-Maoist); and one of their most significant strikes against
Security Forces since the commencement of the 'peace process' in Andhra
Pradesh, militants of the CPI-Maoist ambushed and killed 17 policemen in
cold blood on November 21, 2004, at a culvert in the Chandauli District
of India's largest (and among its worst- governed) state(s).
A reported eyewitness account of
one of the survivors is chilling: Some 31 personnel of the PAC Provincial
Armed Constabulary (PAC) and from police posts in Chandoli and Mughalsarai
were traveling in a convoy of two jeeps and a truck. The jeeps managed
to pass the culvert, but as the truck crossed over, a landmine went off.
However, none of the men died in the explosion. They were injured. The
policemen in the jeeps fled in fear on seeing an estimated 50 to 150 Naxalites
gunning for the survivors. The Naxalites then rounded up the wounded and
killed each one by shooting them in the head.
Police authorities in the state
have blamed the incident on an 'intelligence failure', admitting that they
were several portents of escalating Naxalite violence in the area. On November
19, the Naxalites had attacked a Forest Department outpost in the District
and had killed two forest guards. Later, the same night, they had set fire
to the hut of the sarpanch (village head) of the Laharui village in the
district. The Inspector General of Police (Varanasi zone) was to visit
the site of these incidents, and the ambuscade was on his projected route.
November 21, moreover, was the first death anniversary of a prominent MCC
'commander' in the area, Gauri Harijan, and the Naxalites were expected
to execute a major strike to 'commemorate' the occasion.
The 'failure of intelligence', however,
is more an abject failure of common sense. The Chandauli incident is only
a clear declaration of intent that the Maoists remain committed to a radical
extension of the areas of their violence and consequent influence, even
as the state government seeks to appease them in Andhra Pradesh, encouraged
by the Union Minister of Home Affairs who has articulated the desire to
extend his indulgence to those he regards as 'our children' who need to
be shown the 'right way'. The Home Minister is apparently undeterred by
the fact that many of 'our children' - particularly their top leaders,
with whom the government wishes to 'negotiate' a solution - are well into
their sixties, and have spent the better part of the last four decades
in the enterprise of murder, intimidation and terror.
The dramatic expansion of Naxalite
activities from just 55 Districts across nine states in the country in
November 2003, to as many as 156 Districts in 13 states (of a total of
602 districts in the country) by September 2004, has been outlined earlier.
However, there is little sense of urgency in even the highly affected states,
and virtually no sense of a crisis in the states that are presently marginally
affected or targeted by the Naxalites. Chandauli now demonstrates how abruptly
an area can be carried across the threshold, from a moderately, marginally
affected or targeted area, to an area of escalated violence.
It is useful to see the sheer spread
of the existing Maoist network beyond the 'core states' of Andhra Pradesh,
Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Bihar.
Beyond these states of Naxalite
dominance, the sweep of Naxalite ambitions is manifested in the sheer dispersal
of the areas of their current mobilisation. Among the 'marginal' states,
they are concentrated in six districts in Uttar Pradesh (UP), bordering
Bihar - Bihar itself is now almost completely covered. Mirzapur, Chandauli
and Sonebhadra in UP are moderately affected, while Gorakhpur, Ghazipur
and Ballia are targeted. Mirzapur had witnessed the murder of two private
security guards at a stone crushing company in the Chahawan village on
June 30, and an MCC activist and some weapons had been seized in the Sonebhadra
district in September. More significant than incidents and arrests, however,
have been the reports of continuous mass mobilization in the region, and
the state's police is at least apprehensive in its movement through the
affected areas.
The infant state of Uttaranchal
(formed in November 2000 after a bifurcation of Uttar Pradesh) has five
of its 13 districts, in areas bordering or proximate to Nepal's Far West
Region, already 'targeted' by the Maoists. Significantly, an unspecified
number of weapons and ammunition were recovered at a Maoist training camp
- believed to have been set up for the Nepalese Maoists by the Indian group
- in the Champawat District on September 6. Earlier, on August 30, five
suspected Nepalese Maoists had been arrested in the Saufutia forests of
the Udham Singh Nagar District.
In West Bengal - the state shares
borders with Naxalite affected areas in Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, and
also has to contend with ethnicity-based insurgencies in its North, bordering
Assam, as well as a sensitive, extensive and demographically destabilized
border with Bangladesh - as many as 16 of a total of 18 districts are now
afflicted by Maoist activities. On October 16, six personnel of the Eastern
Frontier Rifles (EFR) were killed in a landmine attack in the Ormara forest
in West Midnapore district. In another major incident on February 25, eight
SF personnel, including five from the EFR, were killed and four injured,
when a powerful landmine exploded at Golabari in Midnapore district. Intelligence
sources indicate that the Maoists are now poised to unleash a wave of terror
in the state. West Bengal was the source and primary focus of the original
Naxalite movement (the name derives from the village of Naxalbari in the
Darjeeling district of North Bengal), which commenced in 1967, and was
comprehensively crushed by the early 1970s. The state had been largely
free of Naxalite activities after 1973 till the end-1990s.
Madhya Pradesh has five affected
districts, primarily in the tribal belt in the South of the state, bordering
some affected areas in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh. Maharashtra itself
has six affected districts - at least two 'highly affected', another three
marginally, and one that is 'targeted'.
In India's South, Karnataka currently
has 12 affected districts all along its North-East and South. Four districts
located roughly along its Eastern region, are now affected in Tamil Nadu.
Three districts - along its borders with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and
the coastal district of Ernakulam, are currently under the Naxalite area
of operation in Kerala.
To these, of course, are to be added
the 99 districts in the 'heartland' states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand,
Chattisgarh and Orissa.
Nor, indeed, is this sum of the
problem. Beyond these districts already designated by intelligence agencies
as variously afflicted by Naxalite activity, is a much wider network of
covert mobilization. Indeed, districts are added virtually by the week
- as the pace of expansion over the past year demonstrates.Unconfirmed
reports indicated Naxalite 'political activity' in a sampling of supposedly
'unaffected' states across the country, including Haryana and Punjab in
the North and Gujarat and Rajasthan in the West, far from the current areas
of concentration in India's East and South.
Ominously, the students' wing of
the CPI-ML (the parent entity of the Naxalite movement) won the president's
post in the Students' Union election at Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal
Nehru University in October this year. It is useful to recall that some
professors at JNU are quite proud to list Baburam Bhattarai, the 'ideologue'
of the Nepal Maoist movement, as an alumnus of this University.
In the meanwhile, the union and
state governments continue to fail to impose the law of the land across
expanding regions of violence, choosing, instead, to strike unprincipled
deals with continuously proliferating violent groups in the deluded expectation
that they can stanch the bleeding from a thousand self-inflicted wounds.
They continue, equally, to fail to do what governments are intended and
elected to do - provide the rudiments of governance, security, justice,
development and basic welfare services - in ever widening areas. Appeasing
violent groups has now become the natural response of a political leadership
that has a bad conscience, is in bad faith, and is itself substantially
criminalized. In the meanwhile, the uniformed services -- the police, the
paramilitaries and the Army -- continue to pay a limitless price in lives.
Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive
Director, Institute for Conflict Management Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence
Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
