AT LEAST 24 Maoist rebels and a senior police officer died in a fire-fight in central India yesterday, underscoring prime minister Manmohan Singh’s concern over what he believes is the “biggest internal security challenge ever” to the country’s security.
Hundreds of commandoes and police personnel encircled over 100 armed Maoist rebels near their stronghold in Chattisgarh province, 450km south of the capital Raipur, engaging them in one of the fiercest gun battles this year. Senior police officer Girdhari Nayak said the gunfight continued until late yesterday evening.
Earlier in the week, Mr Singh warned India’s provincial police chiefs that the campaign against Maoist rebels, formally banned in June 2009, had failed to curb their insurgent activities that were on the ascendant in many provinces.
“I would like to state frankly that we have not achieved as much success as we would have liked in containing this menace” said Mr Singh at the high-powered conclave of lawmen in New Delhi.
“It is a matter of concern that despite our efforts, the level of (Maoist) violence in the affected states continues to rise” the Indian PM declared, adding that the insurgents’ influence in civil society and the intelligentsia added to the problems complexity.
Earlier federal home minister P Chidambaram told the police directors general that Maoists exercised “significant pockets of influence” in 20 of India’s 29 provinces. He warned the police chiefs that Maoists had upgraded their weaponry, including the deployment of improvised explosive devices and considerably honed their guerilla tactics. They were also increasingly attacking economic targets and infrastructure projects, scaring away potential overseas investors.
According to the independent South Asia Terrorism Portal, 1,933 people had died in Maoist-related violence since 2007 that included 681 security forces personnel and 578 rebels.
Security officials said that in their areas of operation Maoist cadres levy taxes, dispense justice through “kangaroo” courts and determine the educational syllabi and moral behaviour of locals.
Since their emergence in eastern India in the late 1960s they have been quietly but doggedly pursuing the four-path strategy of their “People’s War” of agitation and propaganda, creating “liberated zones”, followed by armed struggle in rural and then urban areas in order to establish their sovereignty.
Like the spokes of a wheel, the closely-knit and ideologically-committed Maoists have cut deep into the hearts of central, eastern, western and even southern India, successfully waging an armed struggle to annihilate “class enemies” by adopting the guerrilla warfare tactics of China’s Mao Zedong.
Maoist cadres comprising tribal people, low-caste Dalits, peasants and landless labourers aim to economically, socially and politically empower the poor and dispossessed.
The Maoists eventual aim is to establish a “people’s government” in their areas of control by progressively dominating the countryside through coercion and indoctrination, and by encircling, but rarely attacking, cities. Although when they have done this from time to time, it is with chilling brutality.
Over the years the government’s response in dealing with the Maoists has been a tardily applied combination of heavy force, anti-terrorism legislation and, in some badly afflicted regions, arming and training local militia to fight the insurgents. The latter measure has proved to be counterproductive creating another extortionist force operating under state patronage.