Maoists: India's growing worry

Why should Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh worry about absolute monarchy in Nepal? Well, for one because events in Kathmandu could impact the power of Maoists in the Himalayan kingdom.

And here lies the rub. For some time now, it has been established that Nepal Maoists have developed linkages — in terms of personnel, fire-power and operations — with Naxalites in India. And therein lies the problem.

As Naxalites strike, seemingly at will in a huge swath between Bihar and the Tamil Nadu border, police are getting jittery about the fallout of Nepal.

Chhattisgarh's director general of police last week convened a conference of the IGs of zonal police, including police chiefs from Bastar and Surgua regions, the two worst affected areas in the state.

Police officials say a crackdown on Maoists in Nepal will send ripples deep into the forests of Bastar and other areas of the state where Nepals Maoists are trained along with Naxalites who operate between Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) cadres have received military training in the training camps of MCC in West Champaran, Bokaro, Giridih, Chatra and Hazaribagh, according to government reports.

Obviously Nepali-looking armed Naxalites have been seen at Bijapur in Dantewara region and in Rajnandgaon, near the Wagah river on the Maharashtra border, said police officers. One such group was sighted recently in the jungles near Madian village, 90 kms from district headquarters of Rajnandgaon.

Police officers like IG of Bastar, Girdhari Nayak, say if a crackdown on Maoists in Nepal succeeds, it will weaken the training camps and give security forces in Chhattisgarh and nearby areas a better chance to wipe them out. But the bigger fear is that if the crackdown by the 78,000-strong Royal Nepal Army fails, then more and more recruits are likely to flow into India through Bihar and flock the camps for armed training.

Police officers here warn that Maoists cadres could also begin to operate from Uttranchal too.

The concept of compact revolutionary zone floated by Indian left extremists which earlier constituted Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orrisa, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, now includes Uttaranchal and Nepal.

The intelligence bureau has also reported that the prime motive of the Naxalites was to carve out a compact revolutionary zone from Nepal to Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh was a corridor for them.

Bihar:
The six affected districts are — Patna, Jehanabad, Gaya, Aurangabad, Nalanda, Nawadah, Bhojpur and Rohtas.The ultra-leftist groups active in Bihar are the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI (ML) Peoples War, Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Samiti.

Jharkhand:
Palamau, Garhwah, Latehar, Gumla, Chatra Hazaribag and Koderma are amongst the most affected districts. The MCC and its offshoot ‘Jharkhand Liberation Front’ are the most active.

Orissa:
Naxal activity limited to southern parts of the state including Malkangiri, Koraput and Kalahandi districts.

Chhattisgarh:
Almost all of its 16 districts, including the densely forested Bastar, have naxalite presence. PWG is main naxalite outfit active in the state.

Andhra Pradesh:
As many as 12 of the 23 districts of the state are infested with naxalism. These include Warangal, Khammam, Nizamabad, Midak, Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar, Adilabad, East Godawari and Karimnagar. About 18 naxal groups are active in the state. PWG is the most feared force and the most skilled in guerrilla and jungle among them

Naxals expand into 170 districts

The Asian Age India | Seema Mustafa and Venkat Parsa

New Delhi: Naxalite violence has overtaken terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and insurgency in the Northeast to pose a major challenge to India's internal security.

Alarm bells are ringing through the corridors of power as intelligence statistics register the rapid growth of the Naxalite movement from 156 districts in 13 states in September 2004 to 170 districts in 15 states by February 2005.

Dr Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management, a recognised authority on the issue, says the statistics now show that "the Naxalites are expanding at an average rate of two districts per week."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has expressed deep concern about a "virtual collapse of law and order in view of extortion demands, display of arms, encroachments on public property and the militant rhetoric of Naxal leaders at rallies and meetings". National security adviser M.K. Narayanan has said that the Naxalites have created a compact revolutionary zone from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh. Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee has described Naxal insurgency as the gravest threat to internal security. But, despite this assessment and a few high-level meetings, the UPA government has been unable to check the growth, or decide upon a strategy, to tackle what officials do not hesitate to describe as the "Naxal/Maoist menace".

Political leaders, including former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu, police personnel, as the latest attack on Friday in Karnataka effectively demonstrates, and landlords are the targets of the Naxal groups residing largely in the dense forest areas of states that have come to include Karnataka, Uttaranchal as well as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Soft targets, like the railways and government property, are also on Naxal hit lists with the violence now registering a sharp increase.

A detailed intelligence report assessing Naxalite violence and behaviour during the last general elections, available with The Asian Age, outlines the existence of 35 active Naxalite groups in the country. The report maintains that seven of these groups participated actively in the elections, nine led a boycott of the polls, and another 12 Left-wing extremist groups indulged in violence in different parts of the country. Those that participated in the Lok Sabha polls are listed by the intelligence report to include the CPML-Liberation, CPML-New Democracy (ND), CPML-Red Flag(RF), Communist Party of United States of India (CPUSI) and CPI-Marxist Leninist.

The Congress-led Andhra Pradesh government, for instance, decided to lift the ban on the Naxal groups in the state and carry on negotiations under the umbrella of a ceasefire. Two powerful Maoist groups, the CPI-Marxist-Leninist-People's War and the Maoist Communist Centre, took advantage of this to unite under the banner of the CPI-Maoist. One round of talks between the state government and the Maoist representatives has been held with the latter being escorted out of the forests by the police to Hyderabad and back after about a week. At least two days of this period were used by the Maoist leaders residing in the state guest house at Hyderabad to accept petitions from the people. The second round has not been held as yet because of the Maoists' refusal to lay down their weapons, with a move by the state government to distribute land amongst the landless poor reportedly angering the Maoists, who see in this a design to undermine their influence amongst the people. This was their demand, for which the state government is now taking credit.

Interestingly, during this period of supposed peace, a major Naxalite leader, Saketh Rajan, and an accomplice were killed in Karnataka in an organised police action. In retaliation, 150 heavily armed Naxalites attacked a police camp and killed six Karnataka state police personnel, a civilian and injured others at Venkatammanahalli village, near Bangalore, on Friday. The ceasefire applies only to Andhra Pradesh, another indication of the lack of coordination between the states, as well as the Centre, in dealing with the problem that all senior leaders have no hesitation in describing as "a major threat to India's stability".

Dr Ajai Sahni said the danger came from the fact that the movement was, one, not contained to a single or a few states, but recognised no state boundaries within the country; and two, it was highly ideological and indigenous. He was categorical that till date the Maoist movement in India was not being funded by another country - "No China, no ISI" - and that its functioning and methodology were determined by a "national trajectory". Interestingly, till date the government has drawn no real links between the Maoists in Nepal and the groups operating in India in terms of strategy and leadership. They all have their own leaders, factions, and follow the larger Maoist principle of functioning as autonomous units. There is evidence that Maoists who come into India from Nepal, and they are expected to do so in larger numbers now, use the groups here to provide safe havens, training facilities and arms that are used by them back in Nepal, and not in India. But they do not take their instructions from each other, or cooperate in determining strategy at any level.

Dr Sahni was worried, however, about the "message" that will be sent out if, because of the developments now, the Maoists are able to attain power in Nepal. He said that in such a case the groups here would be fuelled by similar ambitions and would escalate the level of violence against the state to hasten the "people's" revolution. "One Maoist victory will inflame ambitions," he said, and added that it would be extremely dangerous as it would be seen by the groups as a validation of the ideology of violence. He agreed that the Maoists in Nepal were not interested in reorganising the Indian Maoist groups, pointing out that the latter, in fact, were the "parents" although their growth in India had been relatively slower in the initial years than that of the "child" in Nepal.

Naxals in Bihar, Andhra on arms drive

The Asian Age India | Seema Mustafa and Venkat Parsa

New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the two most Naxal affected states in India, together account for at least 50 districts of high-intensity influence. Naxalite activity in the two states has retained a fairly uniform high over the last five years with the violence profile of the two major Naxalite outfits, People's War and Maoist Communist Centre of India, according to an intelligence report, being "primarily sustained by greater militarisation".

In Andhra Pradesh, the recent ceasefire was used by these two groups to merge into the Communist Party of India Maoist. This, according to a recent intelligence report, "is very dangerous as it would make it easy for them to identify common targets, like the police, ruling class, and minor Naxalite groups like the CPML-Liberation, besides joint movements, statements and actions, both overground and underground." The merger took place last September with the recent attack on a special police target in Karnataka being perceived as a manifestation of this unity. Six police personnel were killed in an attack 140 km from Bangalore on Friday by 150 Naxalites who had driven over in vans from Andhra Pradesh.

"In the Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh belt, the two groups that have retained their separate identifies together accounted for 90 per cent of the killings and 85 per cent of the total violence, according to intelligence information. These now operate under a full-time secretary of the "Central Military Commission" by the CPML-PW with the recent trend towards further militarisation also indicated by the "use of IEDs alongside refined field tactics like placement of Naxalite 'action teams' even in urban centres," according to the intelligence report. It has also recorded the fact that the People's War outfit has strengthened its People's Guerrilla Army and is in the process of developing "mortar and rocket launchers indigenously". The Maoist Communist Centre of India, the report states, "emphasises upgradation of military skills and conducted several military training camps in Bihar and Jharkhand".

The MCC has close links with Maoist insurgents in Nepal. But experts do not hesitate to point out that the relationship is not one of dependency as yet. There is information that on July 1, 2001 nine Naxalite organisations, from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, joined hands to form an umbrella organisation, the Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations, with the purpose of unifying the parties and the organisations. Though there are indications that the Indian Maoists have been providing training facilities and safe havens to their Nepalese counterparts, there is no evidence as yet of large-scale cooperation of the kind envisaged at the 2001 meeting. It is suspected, however, that the MCC is using the north Bihar region to get closer to the Nepal Maoists. Intelligence sources believe that the technology for the manufacture of landmines, which are increasingly being used by Naxalite groups, was given to the MCC and the PW by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But the evidence, again, is not sufficient to firmly establish this claim.

In Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalite leadership is drawn from educated, ideologically motivated and fairly well-to-do people. For instance, "mediators" between the government and the Naxalites are a revolutionary writer, Vara Vara Rao, balladeer Gadar, civil rights activist K.G. Kannabhiran and a well-known lecturer, Dr K. Balagopal, apart from many others from similar walks of life. The Naxalite movement cuts across castes with recent years indicating a sharp increase in recruitment, particularly because of the "extreme distress" conditions operating in Andhra Pradesh. Dr Ajai Sahni of the Institute of Conflict Management pointed out that former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu did a great deal for the Naxalites as his policies helped create the conditions of "extreme distress", as evident in the largescale suicides of farmers in the state, which directly helped left-wing extremist groups consolidate and expand.

In Bihar, the Naxalite movement has been overtaken by caste considerations with most of the left-wing groups coming into direct conflict with the upper castes in the state. The "extreme distress" factor in Bihar is more amongst the tribals and the lower castes, who have been particularly responsive to the parallel administration and security provided by the Naxalites in their districts. An upper caste response in the absence of governance has been the Ranvir Sena which, according to conservative estimates, commands 16,000 licensed and unlicensed arms, including AK-47s and grenade launchers. It has claimed credit for several massacres in the state and has close links with all parties, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

In both Andhra Pradesh and Bihar the Naxalite groups have been effecting their own strategy of "land reforms" to expand their base amongst the poor. The caste war in Bihar has been triggered off by the Naxalites' efforts to take away land from the upper castes and the landed rich and then re-distribute it to their supporters in the districts. Ironically, Andhra Pradesh was amongst the first states to bring in radical land reforms in 1971, but the slow pace of redistribution of surplus land helped the Naxalites consolidate their hold in the rural areas. In just one week of October 2004, the Naxalites occupied 1,142 acres of land in Kurnool and Prakashan districts. They redistributed 400 acres in Kurnool, 2005 acres in Guntur, 10,000 acres in Karimnagar and 3,800 acres in Warangal districts in what is perhaps the most revealing indication of a parallel government in the state. CPI-Maoist leader Ramakrishna boasted of having "liberated" 120,000 acres of land for the poor from different land owners.

The government's response varies from Union home minister Shivraj Patil's "these are our children gone astray" to Karnataka chief minister Dharam Singh's declaration after the recent assault on his policemen: "Earlier we had sympathy and we had a dialogue. Now no more sympathy."

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