diplostratics

What is the Chongqing Model?

2012-01-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

STRATFOR's paper on the domestic-consumption led growth model in China

Summary

The Chinese government is taking notice of recent economic and social successes in the inland city of Chongqing. Anchored by economic initiatives that promote domestic consumption, as opposed to the traditional export-oriented focus of China's coastal region, the so-called Chongqing model has been seen as responsible for the city's prosperity as growth slows in the rest of the country, and it appears to be under consideration for widespread implementation. However, a number of issues inherent in the model, including strong central control and massive government investment, will need to be addressed before it can become a viable, nationwide plan.

Analysis

Chinese state-run media recently published a series of reports detailing the economic success and social achievements of the southwestern city of Chongqing. The reports praised the so-called Chongqing model, which is characterized by its unique approach to stimulating both the economy and ideological passion in its citizens, saying it is a reflection of current Communist Party of China (CPC) doctrines. Also, Chinese leadership has been visiting the city in the past few months.

This praise suggests Beijing may be reversing its earlier perceptions of the Chongqing model -- and its architect, CPC Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai -- and may be a sign that both are gaining acceptance from China's political leadership. However, while the merits to the model are evidenced by Chongqing's successes, there will be constraints to its widespread implementation.

An Unorthodox New Direction

Chongqing, one of four Chinese municipalities administered by the central government, is located far inland from the country's political and economic center along the coast. Its heavy industry-based economy, its position as one of the Yangtze River's largest inland ports and its history as a political center in the 1930s-40s have made it the economic hub of Western China. However, the country's economic base has migrated eastward in the intervening years. The industrial upgrading of coastal cities since the mid-1980s and a massive reform of Chongqing's state-owned enterprises resulted in Chongqing lagging behind most first- and many second-tier Chinese cities economically. At the same time, factors such as deep-rooted corruption among the political and business elite, powerful organized criminal elements and high urban unemployment exacerbated by a large influx of rural migrants made it an environment conducive to social instability.

Upon his appointment to Chongqing in 2007, Bo implemented a series of initiatives to address both economic and social problems, including a massive crackdown on organized crime and the eradication of powerful political clans in the city. At the same time, Bo began a "Red campaign" that promoted CPC ideology by, among other tactics, advocating the teachings of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and mandating the recital of nationalist songs. These high profile, controversial initiatives made Bo a polarizing figure among Chinese politicians, but little attention was paid to Chongqing's development.

For the economy, Bo took the municipality's focus away from the traditional export-based model of Chinese coastal cities and began developing domestic investment and consumption through government-led infrastructure projects, favorable policy incentives and relatively equalized social allocation. With abundant labor and resources in the region, Chongqing is largely self-sufficient -- and thus largely shielded from external vulnerability: During the 2008 economic crisis the country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed to 9 percent, but Chongqing's GDP grew by 14.3 percent. Domestic consumption rose to about 50 percent of the economy, far above the national average of about 30 percent. Chongqing also became an attractive destination for foreign investment, which increased from $311 million in 2003 to $6.3 billion in 2010.

Importantly, this economic boom has not deepened the wealth gap among its residents, as has happened elsewhere. The social initiatives on which the Chongqing model is based encourage massive urbanization through relatively equalized wealth distribution and expanding coverage of social security networks (one official described these initiatives in terms of dividing a cake more equally, giving rise to the term "cake theory"). In 2011, household income for the Chongqing municipality's urban and rural populations increased by 15.5 percent and 22 percent respectively, significantly higher than the national average. Meanwhile, unlike in other Chinese cities where governments would make massive profits from land grabs, Chongqing allowed the rural population to retain ownership of their land even after urbanizing and helped them with temporary social welfare. As a result, the urbanization of 3.2 million people has not resulted in major unrest or grievances.

Beijing Takes Notice

The 2008 financial crisis accentuated the need for Chinese leadership to restructure the economy. For decades, China's economic model was based on a low-end manufacturing sector sustained by an abundance of inexpensive labor and booming external demand, as well as on support for small- to medium-sized private enterprises. However, the former was hit hard by its vulnerability to the global economy and increasing social instability resulting from a combination of low wages, rising unemployment and increasing costs of goods, while the latter was affected by growing governmental favoritism toward large state-owned businesses and centralized economic control.

With the coastal model risking failure, Beijing has taken notice of Chongqing's success, which appears to provide a solution to these issues in a way that appeals to renewed leftist sentiment in the central government. As China faces greater economic and social complexities, the central government may see the Chongqing model as something that can be applied across the country with regional modifications.

However, there are several issues inherent in the model that may impede its long-term success and widespread adoption. First, unlike in coastal regions where businesses and lower-level authorities are granted greater autonomy in their activities, the Chongqing model relies on a much more centralized economic authority, the city's municipal government, which retains strong control over fiscal revenues, local resources and economic activities. This control has allowed Chongqing to implement massive infrastructure projects to attract investment and, at the same time, disburse relatively equalized subsidies to the public to prevent social instability. Adopting the Chongqing model in other regions of China would require strong fiscal health and centralized support. That strong centralized command leaves the model vulnerable to misallocation of resources and wealth by those in power.

Meanwhile, despite the model engendering higher domestic consumption, the economy still is driven by massive government investment, which has resulted in large fiscal deficit and a government debt of up to 800 billion yuan ($126 billion), according to some estimates. This kind of investment has provided the city an interim economic boost, but it is unsustainable in the long term, posing financial risks and endangering development (in much the same way China's massive stimulus efforts in 2008-09 are continuing to affect the country). In addition, government-dominated investment activities are generally made via large business deals with powerful enterprises, which carry a higher risk of government-business relationships that could lead to corruption and the squeezing out of smaller private entities.

From a political view, the prominence of the Chongqing model comes from innovative local governance based on regional variance. But, as the government navigates through a leadership transition set for this year, the Chongqing model may also be an example that local politicians consider for the short term. The economic and social problems it has the potential to create must be addressed before it can become a viable, nationwide alternative to China's current economic model.

Kishenji, Maoists and the Battle Ahead

2012-01-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

Kishenji (Courtesy: NDTV)

Geopolitics, January 2012, pp 60 -64

http://www.geopolitics.in/jan2012.aspx

Uddipan Mukherjee

Squeezed between Palamau in the north and Gumla in the south, Latehar district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand is strategically located.Carved out of the old Palamau district, Latehar was created on 4^th April 2001. Nearly half of its area is under dense forest. Furthermore, it abuts on Chattisgarh to the west and hence becomes a fertile region for the Maoist infiltrators. Latehar’s hilly terrain makes it a perfect destination for a Maoist stronghold.

It was no wonder that within 24 hours, the Maoists claimed, with considerable equanimity, the responsibility of ambushing the convoy of independent Member of Parliament (MP) Inder Singh Namdhari at Latehar on 3^rd December 2011.

Though such attacks were highly expected, still a validation came from Sudhir, the Maoist spokesperson for the local committee. He said: “We own the responsibility for the attack on the police party to avenge the killing of our leader Kishan Da.”

Who was Kishenji?

By all means, he meant Kishenji instead of Kishan-da. Mallojula Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji alias Prahlad alias many more; was a top-rung policy-maker cum military leader of the ultra-left rebels. He was media-savvy. His popularity could be gauged when one finds an obituary-cum-analysis of this rebel leader at Foreign Policy, the US political magazine which hardly takes cognizance of India’s internal matters.

At 56 years of age, he was a senior Politburo member and part of Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-M). He has been reportedly killed by a mammoth operation by Indian security forces in the Jangalmahal area in West Bengal on 24th November 2011.The operation which hemmed in Kishenji was planned in concentric circles. A group of 1000 joint forces (paramilitary and state police combined) encircled Kishenji and his aide Suchitra in three circles. This made it almost impossible for the elusive leader to evade the clutches of the security forces.

Kishenji was a major decision-maker for the Maoists and was looking after the expansion of the group in the North-East. Presumably, he came from Assam a couple of days back and was convening meetings in West Bengal-Jharkhand border.

Fake or Real Encounter?

However, after his targeted killing (TK); from many quarters, some expected and one quite astonishing, allegations of fake encounter were leveled. Maoist ideologue and Telugu poet Varavara Rao, the family members of Kishenji and the human rights activists raised the banner of protest by alleging a fake encounter. Quite stunningly, Communist Party of India (CPI) MP Gurudas Dasgupta was obdurate enough to call up Union Home Minister in this regard.

Similar hue and cry had taken place in July 2010 at the time of CPI-M spokesperson Azad’s TK. Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Director-General K. Vijay Kumar was visibly angry with such malice being heaped at the paramilitary forces. Interestingly, the autopsy report confirmed Vijay Kumar’s assertion. According to it, bullets hit Kishenji in the chin, chest and head. One bullet was fired from a distance of around 500 metres. A team of forensic experts also found some gunpowder in his hand.

However, from the policy perspective of TK as a veritable component of counterinsurgency operations, whether the Kishenji encounter was staged or real, is probably, insignificant. Nevertheless, the following reasons may be elucidated to have brought his undoing.

First, he was recovering from an injury suffered last year from an attack by the security forces at Jangalmahal. Hence his physical fitness was under the scanner.

Second, penetrative intelligence network of the police (across provinces) was tracing him and the moment he came out of his hideout, he became vulnerable. In fact, after the close shave last year, he had cocooned himself.

Third, he was technology-savvy and that could have helped the police to track his position. He used to scan newspapers through internet.

Fourth, the closeness of the CPI-M with the Trinamool Congress (TC) before the assembly polls in West Bengal could have worked to the disadvantage of the former. The cadres of TC can now very well act as moles against the Maoists. In fact, there are reports that Kishenji might have been betrayed by his own rank and file.

It is doing the rounds that Bikash, a close confidante of Kishenji, had ultimately betrayed him. The Rs 19 lakh (US $40,000) reward announced on the head of the top Maoist is likely to be given to the person who provided the vital tip-off about his whereabouts in the last few hours leading to his elimination.

Sify.com quotes official sources that the Andhra Pradesh government had announced to give Rs 12 lakh to anyone who would give any information about Kishenji. The Chhattisgarh government too had announced Rs 7 lakh reward with a similar statement.

Bikash had supposedly developed differences with Kishenji. The former was expected to be the CPI-M West Bengal State Secretary after the incarceration of Kanchan alias Sudip Chongdar in December 2010. But, Bikash was replaced by another leader Asim Mondal alias Akash. Incidentally, it has been alleged by the Maoist rank and file that almost all major decisions in the eastern zone were unilaterally taken by Kishenji.

Even Kanchan, after his capture by the Special Task Force in 2010, hinted the same and a possible disintegration of the Maoist command structure in West Bengal. The dramatic surrender of squad leader Jagari Baske and her husband Rajaram Soren at the Writers’ Buildings in Kolkata is a further testimony to this fact.

What Next?

Well, Kishenji's demise would be a big jolt to the rebels. It would be hard to find a replacement soon as he had become almost indispensable in the eastern region. However, there is no reason to expect sudden spate of sporadic reprisals from the Maoists. Neither, could the annihilation of Kishenji be seen as the demise of the insurrection. Their General Secretary, Ganapathy, is still at large. However, what could be expected in the near future?

First, the Maoists would re-group and Ganapathy must be extremely cautious now. They had lost Azad in 2010 and now Kishenji. Senior leaders Narayan Sanyal and Kobad Ghandy are languishing in jail. Telugu Deepak and Kanchan are also incarcerated. Hence, Ganapthy now has to work with second-rung leaders.

As Snigdhendu Bhattacharya aptly points out in the daily Hindustan Times:

“The blow will be more for their eastern regional bureau of which Kishenji was the spokesperson and the top-most leader. His boss in the eastern bureau Saheb-da, alias Jhantu Mukherjee, was arrested a few months back.”

Second, by the very principle of guerrilla warfare tactics, the rebels would retaliate; albeit in a different venue, different time and different occasion.

That is exactly what happened at Latehar on 3^rd December 2011 when the landmine planted by the ultras burst. 10 security personnel and one 8-year old boy succumbed to the injuries. Namdhari, a former speaker of the Jharkhand Assembly, escaped unhurt.

Change of Tactics by the Maoists?

Now, what does this attack signify? Does this indicate any change of operational tactics or an overall change of strategic game-plan on the part of the Maoists? Are the Maoists too following the policy of TK as adopted by the Indian counterinsurgency forces?

Keeping in memory the previous attacks of the Maoists, it is not unlikely that the 3^rd December ambush was a TK. The Naxalites had attacked the convoy of then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu. Nevertheless, the noteworthy point is the landmine attack executed in October 2003 was in the pre-merger era.

From 2004 onwards, after the CPI-M formed as a unification of the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), such incidents have become rare. A notable exception, however, was the assassination bid on former Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in November 2008.

Since 2004, the Maoists are basically following guerrilla operations targeting the administration as a whole. Their primary motive is to acquire arms and ammunitions and demoralize the security forces. Personal vendetta, apparently, is not in their agenda.

Such a hypothesis was corroborated by Sudhir. He said that the attack on Namdhari was simply unintentional as they had no information about him in that police convoy. Their primary targets were the security personnel. So, going by the apparent veracity of the Maoists’ statement; it may be safely surmised that the present mode of punitive action that they are embarking is ‘deterrence’.

They are targeting the security and infrastructural architecture of the Indian state. A mass attack on a police or paramilitary convoy would likely, according to the Maoists, deter the security personnel to plan a TK assassination of any Maoist leader.

Interestingly, the Maoists’ method of deterrence sometimes works. After the hijack of a passenger train on 22^nd April 2009, as noted by Deepak Nayak for the New Delhi based Institute for Conflict Management, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) contingent, which arrived at the Latehar Railway Station to sanitise the railway route, was unwilling to move to the location of the hijacked passenger train. An unidentified RPF trooper, as per Nayak, had stated:

“There is no use entering the train hijack zone…...it is risky given that the Maoists target people like us who are in uniform.”

The report further informed that police officers, including the Superintendent of Police, preferred to work from their residences, fearing Maoist attacks.

The above was no isolated phenomena. In a gripping report authored by journalist V K Shashikumar for The Indian Defence Review; the sorry plight of a police sub-inspector is elucidated:

“What will I do if I leave the police force? How will I earn? My family wants me to quit police service. But when I am jobless and unable to provide for my family, will they treat me well? asked Rajendra Prasad, sub-inspector of Kajra police station. This police post is hardly 15 kilometres from the spot where four policemen were kidnapped after a skirmish with the Maoists on 29^th August 2010, in which 7 policemen were killed and 10 injured.”

The Counterinsurgency Policy and the Battle Ahead

Kishenji’s elimination signified that at last, the CI/CT (counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism) policy of the Indian security forces seem to work fine vis-a-vis the Maoists. The recent success of the forces at Saranda forests in Jharkhand; coupled with the annihilation of Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and now Kishenji speaks of the Indian CI/CT policy as toeing the line of Winning Hearts and Minds (WHAM)-based counterinsurgency policy plus Targeted Killings and Incarcerations or TK/TI approach. The latter suitably bolsters the WHAM-based CI/CT.

At the other end, the Indian state has kept the options of 'talking to the Maoists' an open agenda and is quite rightly moving to a position of strength before they 'talk' to the rebels.

It may be recommended that a carefully orchestrated dual strategy of TK-TI compounded with population-centric, WHAM-based CI operations needs to be implemented. The direct deployment of the army may be kept on hold. However, future prospects of the army being put into effect should not be ruled out altogether. Tribal militias need to be upheld.

But, they must be provided legitimacy through the process of official recruitment. Tribal militias are extremely significant for acquiring knowledge of the local terrain and for useful ground intelligence. Moreover, consistent attempts must be made to dissect the political unity of the ultras.

The path of ‘talks’ needs to be kept open as a viable option, but only when the government would be sure that the Maoist guerillas are in an awkward position to continue their present phase of ‘strategic defense’.

Mere proclamations of ‘ceasefires’ by the Maoists should not be taken as pre-conditions for opening talks as these temporary cessation of hostilities are used by the rebels to regroup, rearm, revitalize and recruit. Talks can only be initiated if the government is in a ‘position of strength’. And this could be achieved through sustained implementation of a strategic framework which houses TK-TI plus WHAM-based CI operations.

Talks? Not Always

While researching on insurgency, Martha Crenshaw observes that rebellions may systematically decline because of three features; physical defeat, decision of the group to abandon terrorist strategy and organizational disintegration.

In the Indian context, it may be hypothesized that some or all the above features may be achieved through talks. However, if talks do not provide the way out, then TK/TI along with WHAM-based CI operations must be employed. After all, the demise of the Maoist insurgency should be an acceptable endgame for the Adivasis, the government, the police and the paramilitary; apart from the core Maoist leadership.

If talks work, then fine. Otherwise, to quote notable military strategist Luttwak, there would probably be no harm if “war is given a chance”. It is true that development and governance are the keys to long-term tranquility, but the 'small war' must be won as a prerequisite.

Insurgencies – Trajectories in 2012

2011-12-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

2011 happened to be a singularly remarkable year insofar as insurgencies and terrorism were concerned.

The month of May marked the death of Osama bin Laden – a pinnacle of glory for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency (COIN). At the other end, the insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and other parts of the world felt the touch of the nadir; at least psychologically, if not materially and operationally.

In this backdrop, it seems verily pre-ordained that non-state actors are likely to lose steam in the New Year. However, it is pertinent to quote in this regard, the predictions of the National Intelligence Council of USA:

“The relative power of non-state actors is likely to have an upward trend by 2025.”

Hence, terrorism will likely continue, as per the prediction, but its appeal could lessen if economic growth emerges and consequent youth unemployment is reduced. As the resources on the earth would deplete, the surface of the globe shall be replete with acts of anarchism and disruption. Mundane problems will transcend to the realm of the transnational.

When a bubbling youth will be unable to accommodate himself within the structures of socio-economic and political framework of Pakistan; then the fertile plains of Punjab will continue to help germinate Islamist terror network.

It may be said that 2012 would certainly provide a range of technologies and scientific knowledge to the insurgents and terrorist networks. Under economic duress, conditions shall be ripe for radicalism and possible recruitment of youths into terrorist groups.

South and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa will remain as the potential areas of unrest. At the micro-level, fragility of the newly founded democracies of Libya and Kyrgyzstan would be tested. Even not so weak states would be pushed a bit. The likes of Chechnya and Dagestan will continue to trouble the Russians, albeit sporadically.

Such a nuisance may spin a web of transnational tie-ups in the campaign of COIN: the cold-war protagonists, along-with China - with its perturbation in Xinjiang and Tibet, may join hands in combating terror. At least in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf a plethora of counter-insurgents shall be seen to team up against the adventurism of the Somali pirates.

Nonetheless, the Af-Pak theatre may see only the American soldiers languishing; with their compatriots from other nation-states slowly evacuating as the basic reason for their camaraderie is no more. But the Russian interest will remain in Afghanistan - partly for historical reasons and partly, for the geopolitical.

It may not be frippery to predict that irregular warfare would rule the roost in 2012. In the process, urban areas would possibly be targeted more. Insurgencies are likely to be fuelled by various elements; viz. ideology, social, economic and political oppression, internally displaced peoples etc.

Communist insurgents in Philippines and India would stick to their faith in protracted people’s war. Peace talks may wane as those were mere facades erected by the communist insurgents to prolong their existence.

Dormant insurgencies, viz. in Sri Lanka, may shoot up if the Winning Hearts and Minds (WHAM) component of the COIN operations are not suitably put into practice.

Conflict resolution methodology would bank upon the dual techniques of pro-people COIN as well as targeted killings and incarcerations. Procedural law will keep on being implemented while the substantive part may be missing in the magistracy of the counterinsurgents.

The Maoist movement in India – government apathy, tribal insurrection or ideological dogmatism?

2011-12-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

The following is an interview given by me to Ms Vironica Fernandes, a post-graduate student of Media and Films at New York, USA in November 2011. She will be using this in her thesis & her film on Naxalites. The text is to appear in the coming issue of the WILL magazine.

Q1. Kindly layout the history of the Maoist movement in India briefly

ANS: The Maoist insurrection shot into prominence in India in the form of the Naxal uprising in a remote village of Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of the eastern Indian province of West Bengal. It was way back in 1967, when a sharecropper called Bigul kisan attempted to take hold of his land with a court order. He was thwarted by the goons of the zamindar. Thus, he and his fellow farmers retaliated with spears and other indigenous weapons.

The movement that followed was called Naxal rebellion. It was spearheaded by the intellectuals based in Calcutta. The initial phase of the movement faded away in a matter of 4 years with the incarceration & killing of its top leadership.

It disintegrated further with ideological schisms. However, in the 1980s, the mantle of leadership was transferred to the intellectuals of Andhra. Kondapally Seetharamaiah took hold of the leadership. By then, the Naxals had 2 major factions:

a. Maoist Communist Centre (active in Bihar-Jharkhand)

b. People’s War group (active in Andhra)

In 2004, the 2 factions re-united and formed the Communist Party of India (Maoist). After the re-union, the impact due to the rebels has gone up by leaps and bounds. Presently, they are active in almost 1/4^th of the Indian landmass.

Q3. How did you come about being an active voice to this movement? Explain to us your involvement/participation to give a voice to this movement?

ANS: I would define myself to be an ‘external’ viewer of this movement. I analyse, theorise and then strategize regarding this movement. I do not lend any ‘voice’ to this movement. I try to develop analytical tools to understand the reason behind this insurgency. I attempt to postulate the various modes of counterinsurgency and compare the Maoist insurrection in India with insurgencies in other parts of the world; specifically the communist upheaval in Phillipines.

To understand the plight of the tribal people of India run in parallel to the above study.

Q4. How exactly in one word would you term the current Maoist situation in India?

AND: Always difficult to describe the situation in one word. But if that’s the case, then let it be: “Grave”; at least as far as rural India is concerned.

Q5. What exactly is the current situation in the maoists areas? And can you give us some clarity on the spread of the Maoists in the country.

ANS: In the Maoist strongholds, they run their ‘own’ form of government: called the ‘Janathana Sarkar’. They call their areas as Liberated Zones. The interior districts of Chhattisgarh, parts of Jharkhand, Bihar, western part of West Bengal, eastern Maharashtra, Andhra-Orissa border are mostly ‘dominated’ by the Maoists.

In these areas, there goes on a constant struggle between the Maoist guerrillas and the police & para-military. And caught in the crossfire are the hapless tribals

(for reference: http://www.newslinemagazine.com/2010/02/caught-in-the-crossfire/)

As far as spread of the guerrillas is concerned, I guess I have spelt that out in Q2. To re-iterate, out of 604 districts in India, about 150 are Maoist-affected.

Q6. Is there a political structure that the Maoists follow? What is their hierarchy? What is their belief and ideologies if any that follow?

ANS: Yes. They believe in setting up a proletariat-led communist society.

They have adopted the doctrines of Karl Marx and the warfare tactics (guerrilla warfare) of Mao Zedong.

They believe in a vanguard party; having a strictly regimented structure with a General Secretary at the helm of affairs. Presently, it is Ganapthy, their general secy.

They want to dismantle the bourgeoisie–led democracy in India. They attempt to defeat the Indian state through guerilla warfare. Now they are in the stage of strategic defence. After that, they would go to the stage of strategic stalemate, before finally going into strategic offense.

Q7. The tribal villagers today feel torn between the police and maoists? How did this come about?

ANS: The Maoist movement, as I said previously, had started off in urban areas, specifically in Kolkata. Thereafter, the comrades desired to branch out in the rural areas. But that didn’t work due to mismanagement and wrong reading of the doctrinal principles of guerrilla warfare.

After 1980, the Naxal movement regained its strength. But this time it was from Andhra Pradesh. Now, they targeted the tribal zones of India in Central India and Andhra-Orissa border regions.

Once the movement gathered momentum in the Adivasi heartlands, it was natural that the tribals shall be the pawns for both the maoist guerrillas and the police.

Q8. The Maoist movement began for the people then how did it happen that the villagers also feel threatened by the moats in addition to the police?

ANS: See, it’s difficult to give a black-and-white answer to this qs. The leaders of the movement still claim that it is for the people, of the people and by the people. The people are to the guerrillas as water is to the fish.

So, never will the Maoist rebels want to be alienated from the masses.

What, however, happens is in a war zone, some villagers would necessarily be caught in the crossfire; willingly or unwillingly.

Nevertheless, is it state repression or naxal menace, which acts as a greater threat to the ordinary Adivasi, remains a matter of debate and research.

Q9. Have the movement today become less about the people?

ANS: Again, as I just said, opinions would vary. In fact, the Naxalites of the 1960s and 70s would vouch that the movement has become bloody and less pro-people. But the present Maoists are reluctant to accept that thesis.

Q10. What are your views on how the police are currently handling the situation out in these areas?

ANS: The police are involved in counterinsurgency/counter-terrorism operations. They normally try not to antagonize the rural populace. But the history of police forces in India is abysmal. Endemic corruption and political interference has marred the credibility of police forces in India.

Q11. Do you think the government and the police are justified in their actions? Or do you think the maoists are justified in their actions?

ANS: Again, we need to appreciate that this is a civil war. And in a war, atrocities are committed by both parties. However, that does not exonerate either party.

Q12. How does one expect the adivasis and the tribals in these regions to survive and fight the heavily armed government and the maoists?

ANS: Now, we need to understand that there are always NOT three parties to this war. I mean: not always the division of the war zone into Adivasis, Maoists and Security forces.

A clear-cut division is not always discernible. But those Adivasis who want to remain free of the fight against the state, join the state as either ‘informers’ or pump up the fight against the Maoists as militia in the form of Salwa Judum (in Chhattisgarh). Very recenty, Supreme Court of India has banned the Salwa Judum militia.

Q13. How do the Maoists fund themselves for their operations and equipments? Do they have external links and support?

ANS: Their main sources of funding are:

a. internal revenue collection from the Adivasis and the backward classes in the zones which have been ‘liberated’ from the Indian govt.

b. extortion from the MNCs which try to set up businesses in the liberated zones.

c. They also steal the equipments and ammunitions from the police, after an ambush/raid is successful.

There are always possibilities/allegations that the Indian Maoists may have external links/support; e.g from Nepal, China, Phillipines and even cross-border terrorists in Pakistan. However, no substantial proof have been posited as of yet.

In fact, WikiLeaks dismisses such link-ups; though even that assertion is NOT beyond doubt.

http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=715&u_id=136

Q14. What have been the various government approaches to tackle the maoists over the past few years? And how have the maoists and the people reacted to it?

ANS: Indian govt’s approach has been two-pronged:

a. Development & b. police-cum-paramilitary operations.

The Maoists have reacted sharply; continuing with their guerrilla war. The people have either joined the Maoists or the govt. or remained neutral.

A tribal militia called Salwa Judum was also set up to tackle the civil war. It has been banned by the Supreme Court.

Q15. What and how do you foresee the future for this movement?

ANS: As per my analysis, the Maoist movement would continue to flourish in the tribal/backward regions till governance could be restored there.

Since this is a low-intensity conflict, it shall continue for quite a number of years to come. Another 10 - 15 years of sustained fight could probably see the movement splurge into the Indian cities.

Till that happens, the Indian Maoists would be in no formidable position to challenge the might of the Indian state.

Q16. Are peace talks even possible today?

ANS: Peace talks took place in Andhra Pradesh in 2004. Didn’t work out. Even of late (2011, 14^th November’s news); the Maoists have spurned the offer of negotiations from the Chief Minister of West Bengal.

More thought on this could be gained from here:

http://www.udayindia.org/content_12march2011/cover_story.html

http://udayindia.org/content_21august2010/cover_story.html

Q17. The rich will continue to exploit the masses and the government will continue to support them. Where and how do you see this headed?

ANS: Well, this is true in many cases, but not always and outrightly. India basically suffers from the malaise of corruption. Democratic movements have shot up to counter such mal-administration. Naxal ideology could be seen as one of the forms of protestations.

For a heterogeneous country like India, disparities are bound to exist and no magic-wand seem to emerge in the foreseeable future.

Q18. The feeling is that, if there is anything else that the Indian government does not want the world to know about besides Kashmir is the Maoists movement. Comment?

ANS: Well, why only the Maoist movement, no democratic polity would like to expose its weaknesses. And India always has maintained the position of not interfering in other country’s internal problems and hence expects the same from others.

Q19. What according to you are the main problems and the solution to this long violent struggle?

ANS: As I have already said, there are no magic solutions. Problems have been already discussed, I presume.

However, the govt. ought to proceed with its winning hearts and minds counter-insurgency programme coupled with the targeted killings/incarcerations of the top Maoist leaders. That could provide dividends in the long run.

Q20. The middle class across the country seem to be ignorant about this issue and even if they are aware they seem to just brush this aside as another atrocity which they do not want to hear of (given that the media only feeds them information in bits and pieces so that they are not able to get a complete picture and hence kept in the dark)? Why do you think the middle class behave in this manner? What can be done to make them aware and question the information that is fed to them by the government and the media?

ANS: It’s a wrong assumption that the media news is mostly fed by the Indian state. Rather, the middle class is open to news from all sections.

However, it would be callow to expect the burgeoning Indian middle class to venture out of their confines of comfort in the cities and nourish the Adivasis.

Till, as I said, the insurgency hits the cities in a big manner, the middle class won’t be shaken from their comfort zones.

Maoists, North-East and China

2011-12-19T00:53:00.000-08:00

Uddipan Mukherjee

Centre for Land Warfare Studies

http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=1032&u_id=136

When Mohammad Kora was paid an amount of Rs 20 to carry a parcel, he hardly had inkling that it would turn out to be his nemesis. A poor rickshaw-puller by profession, Kora discovered the article to be an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in the hardest way.

The spot where the incendiary exploded on November 30, 2011, was about 50 metres away from City Convention Centre and the Manipur Film Development Corporation’s newly constructed auditorium which have been prepared for inauguration by Dr Manmohan Singh on December 03. In the process, the Sangai festival in Imphal received a jolt. Kora was attempting to plant the IED, albeit unknowingly, near the gate of the exhibition. But the IED burst in an untimely fashion.

Before breathing his last, Kora divulged to the police that the IED was given to him by a member of the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP), a party which was formally proclaimed on April 13, 1980 under the leadership of Y Ibohanbi. During its formative years, the KCP under the leadership of Ibohanbi and Ibopishak had decided to follow the communist ideology. But with the passage of time and the death of the two leaders, the outfit split into many factions. Police sources in Imphal indicated the existence of about dozen of them.

Exploring the Maoist - North-East Alliance

Since the eighties, the KCP has been waging a bloody struggle for a sovereign Manipur. In 2009, a faction of the outfit has embraced Maoist ideology to carry on its armed movement like the ultra-left wing guerrillas in other parts of India. In a signed document, W. Malemnganba Meitei, spokesperson of the newly-floated maoist wing of KCP said, “Our immediate aim is to carry on a new democratic revolution in Manipur to establish a communist society through armed revolutionary war. We will carry out the Protracted People’s War by joining hands with other Maoist revolutionary parties.”

However, such hobnobbing with the Maoists is not new for insurgent groups of Manipur. According to The Workers Dreadnought, in the early 1970′s during the Bangladesh Liberation War, a number of Manipuri activists and leaders, ended up in prison; especially in Tripura, where they came into contact with Naxalite prisoners who also were being arrested at the time. This had a profound influence on the Manipuri groups as a number of key leaders were released from prison in the mid 1970′s with a new ideology, Mao Zedong’s thought and the military strategy of Protracted People’s War.

Interestingly, though a branch of KCP professes the ideology of Maoism, on November 30, it was a dastardly act of blatant terrorism. And quite expectedly, it didn’t find the major Maoist party in India by its side.

However, if one goes somewhat back in time; in November 2010, the KCP had shown solidarity for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in their 24-hour All India Bandh. On November 03, 2010, Malemnganba Meitei, the Secretary for Publicity and Propaganda of the KCP (Maoists) came out with a declaration which read thus:

“Kangleipak Communist Party will extend unconditional support to the 24 hours All India Bandh on 8th November called by our fraternal group Communist Party of India (Maoist) but it can not be effected in Manipur because Manipur is going to celebrate Ningol Chakouba on the same day, a traditional largest festival of Manipuri Society. So KCP apologize for that reason.”

The rest of the text was the usual vitriolic stuff heaped against the Indian Union as the bourgeoisie political structure. Nevertheless, one statement demands attention. Though the KCP openheartedly extended its support for the CPI-M, they clearly fell short of implementing that support on the ground. And the rationale put forth in defence was the celebration of a social festival involving the Meities of Manipur. Hence, it was clear that the KCP was still guided by ethnic moorings and were yet to be completely driven by the secular doctrinaire of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist philosophy as their comrades in CPI-M.

The explosion of the IED a year later carried exactly the same signature of ethnicity as the KCP was basically protesting against the Manipur blockade by the Nagas and the Kukis. The issue was largely a local one. However, that doesn’t rule out any tactical collusion between the Maoist parties; more so on the part of the CPI-M.

Ratnadip Choudhury writes at Tehelka.com that CPI-M was attempting to spread the idea of a Strategic United Front (SUF) of all rebel outfits operating in the restive North-East. Tehelka claims to have accessed secret letters between the Maoists and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership. These reveal how the nexus between CPI-M and PLA was formed and this scheme was the brainchild of the recently eliminated CPI-M politburo member Kishenji aka Koteswar Rao.

In fact, such a revelation was reported on November 25, 2011 in The Telegraph. It said that the Manipur-based PLA and the CPI-M convened a meeting at Champai in the comparatively peaceful state of Mizoram on July 15, 2010. This information was extracted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). NIA also came to know that similar meetings between the two proscribed outfits had taken place in Kolkata, Guwahati and Rourkela.

Furthermore, on a more alarming note, it has been discovered that the PLA had imparted arms training to the CPI-M cadres at the Saranda forests of Jharkhand between September 11 to November 20, 2010. The Telegraph further alleged that the CPI-M had paid money to the PLA for procuring Chinese made arms and communication devices.

Moreover, there are reports of plans of conducting joint training camps of CPI-M and the PLA in Myanmar. And through this channel, their expansive connections with ULFA can hardly be ruled out. To add fuel, the CPI-M had already signed a joint declaration with the Revolutionary People’s Front (RPF), the political wing of the PLA, in October 2008.

Amitabh Bhattasali for the BBC on November 23, 2011 quotes an officer Iftiqar Hussein, who administers five sensitive districts of Upper Assam. Hussein told BBC: “"The Maoist guerrillas are getting food and shelter in the area. There were several cases of arms-snatching. Even extortion letters were sent to some rich people.” Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has repeatedly expressed his feelings on this issue. He seems to be of the firm opinion that anti-dam movements have a Maoist hand behind them. Moreover, there were reports of Maoists trying to spread their ideological base in Assam through the tea plantation workers.

To understand the gravity of the matter, a December 12, 2011 news in The Telegraph states that Assam police have urged Dispur to create the post of Superintendent of Police (operations) in Upper Assam to co-ordinate offensives against Maoists which have been trying to gain a foothold in the area.

Analyst Ajit Singh for The Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi goes deep into the subject of alliance between North-Eastern outfits and the Maoists. He cites an official source “ISI and PLA are in touch and supplying Maoists with arms. They are supposedly using China as the alternative route." However, STRATFOR’s analysts Fred Burton and Ben West indicate to the contrary.

The China Factor

The China factor has been corroborated by Tehelka.com: “The PLA was given a contract of procuring Chinese-made rocket-propelled grenades, automatic rifles and high-end wireless sets.” Tehelka was also informed by an insider from the anti-talk faction of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) that Kishenji was in touch with ULFA army chief Paresh Baruah, who led him to Anthony Shimray, National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Issac-Muivah) or NSCN(IM)’s chief arms procurer.

In this regard, it is noteworthy to quote then home secretary G K Pillai’s statement: “Chinese are big smugglers... suppliers of small arms. I am sure that the Maoists also get them.” (Times of India, Nov 9, 2009)

Furthermore, a December 07, 2011 report in The Sangai Express, a Manipur-based daily re-iterates the above. It states that insurgent groups in North-East are procuring arms in China and South-East Asian nations before smuggling those into India through Myanmar and Bangladesh. And Yunan province in China seems to be the breeding ground for such activities; Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran had said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

According to intelligence sources, Paresh Barua flew to Kunming in China’s Yunan province from Dhaka and had meetings with Chinese military intelligence brass. The PLA had urged the Chinese to help the Maoists and an “assurance” from the Chinese was sent through the PLA.

Conclusion

Even Mao Zedong’s China was apprehensive in explicitly acknowledging a helping hand towards then Naxalites of the late 1960s. Though Kanu Sanyal and others had gone to China to learn the basic tenets of guerrilla warfare and Naxal cadres had their [in]famous slogan: “China’s Chairman is our Chairman”; Mao never openly encouraged an ideology-based proxy-war in India. In the 21^st century, with a booming trade between India and China, it hardly appears logical that the Chinese foreign policy establishment would support the cause of the Maoists like the ISI does in Kashmir. At worst, China would abet the insurgent outfits by selling small arms, which again suits their business interests at large.

Dr Pushpita Das at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses opines that overall, 2011 has been a good year for India’s internal security. However, she warns that “to ensure 2012 also turns out to be a quiet and secure year, New Delhi not only has to consolidate the gains made in 2011 but also undertake new initiatives.”

At the other end, India’s task is cut out. On December 03, 2011, Prime Minister Dr Singh and United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi addressed the previously planned public function at Kangla in Imphal. The dignitaries were provided tight security and no untoward incident occurred. But if this expanding net of terror in the North-East is not nipped in the bud, then it is easy to comprehend the futuristic implications of such a scenario.

References

Tehelka : http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne171211Kishenji.asp

Telegraph: http://telegraphindia.com/1111126/jsp/northeast/story_14799567.jsp

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15789273

KCP: http://theworkersdreadnought.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-rise-of-the-maoist-communist-party-manipur/

IDSA: http://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/IndiasInternalSecurity_pdas_131211

Ajit Singh, SATP: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/sair10/10_17.htm#assessment1

Gandhi Peace Award and Adivasi Consciousness

2011-12-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

By Uddipan Mukherjee

“This evening’s meeting went well…
I did not have a good hearing,
the acoustics were not brilliant
and, on top of that, I am unable
to decipher many Indian accents.
There were some very
strong opinions expressed.
There will be a report posted
on our website fairly soon.”

—John Rowley,
co-ordinator of Special events and projects of
The Gandhi Foundation (November 10, 2011)

The ‘acoustics’ were confidently shrill, if not sounding cacophonous
sometime back. However, Rowley was quite optimistic and polite in
his approach while dealing with the postponement of an award,
which generated more debate than eulogy.

The Gandhi Foundation is an organisation based in London.
It does not even need to boast about the presence of mentors
of the stature of Lord Bhiku Parekh and Lord Richard Attenborough,
amongst others. Every year, the Foundation painstakingly scripts a
peace award in the name of one of the messiahs of tranquility—Gandhi.

The year 2011 was no exception. November 9 was scheduled to
host the bestowal of the recognition at the Human Rights
Action Centre, London, amidst the august presence of Lord Parekh
and sublime applause of the ‘au courant’ audience.

However, it couldn’t be worked out in that manner. Right from
the outset, the award faced vehement criticism from certain
quarters in India. Prominent among them was the
Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM) based at Ranchi.
As if a lone crusader in the fight of the ‘unheard’ Adivasis, as if to
un-tarnish the allegation of a ‘lack of consciousness’ of his Adivasi
brethren, and most visibly to negate the imposition of external
elites on the Adivasi fabric, Gladson Dundung on behalf of the
JHRM took up the cudgels to counter the noble composition of the
London-based foundation.

The initial wordings of the Award [probably not willfully] contained a faux pas: “…the Gandhi Peace Award 2011 is being conferred to the tribal people of India, on behalf of whom, Dr Binayak Sen and Mr Bulu Imam would receive the honour…” The tribal groups strongly retorted: “It is extremely painful to know that the foundation has decided to award Binayak Sen and Bulu Imam on behalf of Adivasis of India……we would not like them to receive the award on behalf of Adivasis of India”. They appealed to uphold the dignity of Adivasisby changing either the wording or bestowing the award on someone else.

The foundation then made the first retreat. It re-worded the award script.

Thereafter, the top story on the home page of the organisation’s website read thus, “Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award 2011 will be presented to Dr. Binayak Sen and Bulu Imam”. The mention of the ‘tribal people of India’ was missing.

Nevertheless, even such a re-posturing couldn’t satisfy the India-based organisations like JHRM and others. A flurry of e-mails and letters was exchanged. Arguments posited, debated and permeated through the cyberspace. A pastiche of opinions overwhelmed the clime of intelligible argumentative contestations.

Instead of indulging in prolixity, cogent articulation needs to be put forward regarding the matter in contention. First, this author felt privileged to be part of the cyberspace-debate raised by Gladson Dungdung et al. and intellectually defended by Anand Patwardhan et al. (if causality could be ordered in that manner). Gladson is known through his writings and his ‘ground-level’ materials are useful for strategising and theorising regarding the Maoist movement in India.

Definitely, an ‘arm-chair theorist’ with a laptop, pen and loads of research paper all around is visibly different from Gladson, who doesn’t stroll, rather toil in the woods, collate data and then write, however, with elan and exuberance. Theorists are based within the confines of urbane-laxity, whereas Gladson had battled it out in the jungles of Jharkhand and still probably, battles.

At the other end, most of us know Dr Sen through the media. Our opinion about him, his family and other activists spread around the Naxal heartland is shaped up from the news articles, both in the national and international circuits. Mr Bulu Imam, on the other hand, may be accepted to be a less familiar name in the rights-circuit.

Dr Sen is yet to be totally absolved of the charges of sedition. And an award for him at the international arena could have engendered a mess for the Indian judicature. Sen, however, voluntarily relinquished the award. Imam, on the other hand, was probably pragmatic enough not to let off the prized

possession.

Here, the question is of an ‘award’. And the safe presumption could be that intellectuals were coerced into this debate more so because the ‘award’ was being given by a phoren organisation, and because the Father of the Nation’s name was associated with it. However, after Mr. Obama received the Nobel, do we really need to be serious regarding awards? At least, about awards which may not have objective analysis encrypted on them?

As far as the award for Dr Sen and Mr Imam is concerned, it surely was a decision taken by a coterie of sociologists, anthropologists and activists. It does not reflect the ‘will’ of the autochthonousAdivasis. Nevertheless, such a process is inherent in any award, ranging from the insignificant to the highest. Thus, the conferment does not elevate Dr Sen and Mr Imam as “messiahs” of the Adivasis.

Furthermore, even if the Adivasis had ‘voted’ Sen and Imam for this award, the duo wouldn’t have become their “messiahs” for a simple reason: the Adivasis have not bartered away their ‘consciousness’ to any external elite. The subaltern may be ‘unheard’ and ‘unheeded’, but it is always hard to ‘unravel’ and ‘understand’ him (her).

Political philosopher George Lukacs believed that the element of ‘revolutionary consciousness’ was required in the proletariat. That would grant them the necessary wherewithal to de-codify their status as an ‘object’. Once they fathom that they are being treated as ‘objects’ in a capitalist structure, they can turn themselves into ‘subjects’ and hence become ‘agents of change’. And in no way, this process could be aided and abetted by any external elite—either the rights activists or the Left-wing ultras.

Ranajit Guha, an acclaimed Indian historian, backs this argument of Lukacs with literary strength. He maintains that peasants and tribals do possess ‘consciousness’ and if they rebel, they do so on their own and not under the influence of any external elite. Lukacs and Guha thus sternly refute the Leninist dogma that consciousness needs to be pumped into the proletariat through a set of ‘enlightened’ individuals.

An Ulgulan in the tribal heartland goes on as an undercurrent in the socio-economic and political strata of the country. It may be ‘interpreted’ by the powerful, authoritative elite as an intricate set of matrices of insurgency and its reactionary counterpart—the counterinsurgency. It needs to be discussed why Sen and Imam did not lodge a protest to the Gandhi Foundation themselves as far as the original ‘award script’ was concerned.

Gladson and others may defocus on the actors receiving the award; rather stress on the contentious issues and keep on working for the Adivasis, let them rejuvenate and let them come up as the real heroes. There are innumerable unsung heroes amongst the Adivasis. In any movement, unsung heroes and heroines remain. We need to appreciate that it’s not only those protagonists on whom the camera flashes are the real ones. ‘Reality’ always needs a critical analysis.

India’s Approach to Counterinsurgency and the Naxalite Problem

2011-12-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

Oct 31, 2011
Author: Sameer Lalwani

Since its independence in 1947, India has fought dozens of campaigns against four distinct and independent insurgencies on its soil—in Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast, and the Maoist insurgents of central India—as well as one foreign campaign in Sri Lanka. While India has accumulated a wealth of counterinsurgency (COIN) experience that has varied in terms of terrain, insurgent goals, force structure(s), foreign involvement, and outcomes, most COIN scholars have focused on Western foreign incumbent experiences to the neglect of India and other indigenous incumbents.[1] Nevertheless, as both Iraq and Afghanistan move toward assuming greater responsibility for their internal security amidst continued insurgent activity, India’s COIN strategies can offer important lessons for these states and others that resemble its highly federalized political system, developing economy, and still evolving democracy.

One analyst has argued that India has “one of the world’s most successful records in fighting insurgencies,” noting that “it has not yet lost a counterinsurgency campaign within the country.”[2] This claim, however, is puzzling given the current struggles of the Indian government to curb a raging Maoist insurgency. Today, while the insurgencies of the Northeast and Kashmir are largely contained, if not under control, and the Punjab insurgency soundly defeated, India has been earnestly testing different COIN strategies to combat a growing Maoist threat throughout its center and east known generally as the Naxalite insurgency. Since resurging in the last decade, the Naxalite uprising has been described by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as “a great national security threat” and the “biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country.”[3] This article will briefly describe some of the lessons of success and failure that can be drawn from India’s decades of COIN experience and their application in the current fight against the Naxalite insurgency.

India’s Alternative Approach to COIN
Generally speaking, the Indian take on COIN appears to depart from the approach advocated by Western doctrine that promotes a population-centric strategy to win “hearts and minds.”[4] Despite Indian official doctrine formally espousing this concept[5] and some contentions that India has always seen COIN as a “political rather than military problem,”[6] a closer look reveals that the Indian approach may be better characterized as a strategy of attrition[7] with the deployment of “raw state coercion”[8] and “enemy-centric” campaigns[9] to suffocate an insurgency through a “saturation of forces.”[10] At times it may involve the co-optation of elites to “buy-out” and contain an insurgency.[11] When the military has been deployed, it operates under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which includes “the power of the security forces to make preventative arrests, search premises without warrant, and shoot and kill civilians.”[12]

In each major counterinsurgency campaign, the Indian state developed a number of innovative tactics and organizational capacities that yielded some success along with some negative fallout. During the Punjab campaign, India militarized the police and reversed their role with the military to harness local knowledge and legitimacy and lead kinetic operations.[13] As a result, the police structure remained highly militarized, bloated, inefficient, and incapable of investigative police work more than a decade later.[14] In Kashmir, the creation of a dedicated COIN force—the Rashtriya Rifles, integrating an army ethos into a paramilitary force especially equipped and trained to conduct counterinsurgency—achieved some success, but it ultimately had to be fully manned by army personnel and faced a number of operational and coordination problems with other forces.[15]

The co-optation and transformation of insurgents into local assets was a tactic employed both in Punjab (called “CATs,” for Covert Apprehension Technique) and Kashmir (ikhwanis).[16] Turning insurgents was sometimes achieved through money[17] as well as abduction and torture,[18] but these tactics eventually led to new problems, such as increased criminal activity and corrupted security forces, for the respective governments.[19] Moreover, the highly kinetic approach of both campaigns entailed tremendous brutality, torture, disappearances, “encounter killings,” and mass graves that created a litany of human rights investigations and public disaffection, and today continues to fuel simmering resentment and potentially violence.[20]

A slight variant of this approach—the buyout and political incorporation of insurgents—has enabled India to keep a lid on a whole host of insurgent separatist movements in the seven states of India’s eastern extremity, India’s Northeast, since 1956.[21] Yet while eliminating the prospect of separatism, it has perversely created spirals of insecurity, splinter groups (there are more than 100 distinct armed groups in the Northeast), and a dysfunctional insurgent political economy of violence, development aid, and interminable militia politics.[22]

Overall, the Indian strategy of coercion, co-optation, and containment has achieved moderate success in mitigating the threat to the state, and this is being applied today against the re-emergent Naxalite insurgency.

The Naxalite Insurgency
The Naxalites first emerged in 1967 in the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal and spread throughout the central states of Bihar, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh until it was violently suppressed by state and paramilitary forces by 1972. This militant left-wing movement fractured into more than 40 distinct groups, which began to remobilize, consolidate and become more active in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in the state of Andhra Pradesh.[23] Since 2004, with the merger of the two largest factions—the Peoples War Group and the Maoist Communist Center—to form the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M), violence has climbed dramatically, with 2,200 incidents and 1,200 killed in 2010 alone.[24]

It is estimated that Naxals have a presence in one-third of districts in India,[25] but with the strongest foothold in parts of seven states—West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. The difference today is that this region also happens to sit atop tremendous iron ore, coal, and aluminum deposits as well as irrigation and hydroelectric potential.[26]

While some parts of the left-wing movement in India are willing to partly or fully embrace parliamentary politics to address issues of class, inequality, and distribution, the hardcore Naxalites remain unwilling to countenance democratic politics and seek the violent overthrow of the state through a variety of tactics.[27] Although conventional accounts describe them as motivated by the broad economic deprivation and absence of the state in much of rural central India,[28] a more specific reason is resentment at the local exploitative power configurations—whether feudal landlords, land-expropriating state governments, or extractive corporations—that continue to dominate and suppress the lower castes and aboriginal tribes that reside in these areas and constitute the Naxalite support base.[29] The Naxalites, however, are a protean movement that has expertly exploited a variety of caste, ethnic, or sectarian cleavages in India.[30]

Unlike some of the ethno-sectarian insurgencies of recent years, the Naxalite insurgency—posturing itself as a “people’s war”—comports more with classic COIN theory that was built on notions of competitive state building to address economic and governance deficiencies.[31] In step with their historical experience, however, the Indian state has generally favored a more kinetic approach to counterinsurgency over winning “hearts and minds.”[32]

There appears to be an explicit awareness that the Western COIN model may not be the right fit for India. One Indian military analyst and practitioner praised the Andhra Pradesh approach for its “enemy-centric” character, an anathema in current Western COIN discourse.[33] Another well-regarded Indian analyst defended a kinetic focus and derided the hearts and minds “myth” by recalling that even Sir Gerald Templar regarded it as “that nauseating phrase I think I invented.”[34] Moreover, a well-known defense journalist wrote that a population-centric approach “has proved to be flawed.”[35]

Indian State Response to the Naxalites
State Strategies
Given India’s federalist structure, the onus for responding to the rising Naxalite threat has fallen upon individual states, although with substantial federal support during the past five years.[36] The hardest hit states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh—where roughly half of Naxalite activity is concentrated and continues to escalate—have raced to scale up the manpower of their state and local police forces, while being supplemented with about 40 battalions of central paramilitary forces.[37] Meanwhile, states such as Bihar and West Bengal have also seen a rise in violence in recent years as their police manpower has declined or held steady. The composition of police is another variable that may adversely affect outcomes. The police forces of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa are composed of a much higher percentage of paramilitary forces (as opposed to civil police) relative to the Indian average, potentially rendering them less locally knowledgeable or legitimate.[38]

Central and state governments have been criticized for their paramilitary forces’ shortfalls in size, antiquated organizational structure and age profile, inadequate training (for instance, only firing 20 rounds per year), and most importantly the absence of coordination or a coherent strategy.[39]

The Limits of Indian Responses
True to its past history, the Indian central and state governments’ COIN responses have been heavily kinetic, disregarding local public perceptions. One Indian commentator wrote, “exceeding Maoist rebels they accuse of brutality, the police, paramilitary and Salwa Judum recruits continue to freely kill unarmed men and women. It has wrecked any short- to medium-term hope of winning tribals and forest dwellers back to the fold of the state.”[40] With the launch of additional major sweep operations and expansion of commando units, collateral damage of civilians caught in the crossfire and through retribution is expected to rise.[41] Violence, whether premeditated or spontaneous, “can be completely indiscriminate, leading to the burning of the homes of innocents and their torture, maiming, rape, and death.”[42]

While there have been centralized efforts to coordinate the use of force and economic development, these have largely faltered due to poor coordination, misutilization, and co-optation by local elites and corporations.[43] The Indian government has repeatedly set up unified commands to better coordinate the use of central paramilitary forces, state armed (paramilitary) police, and state local or civil police, but these have been riddled with problems and at times hindered local innovation.[44] A major attempt was launched with Operation Green Hunt in late 2009, a massive search-and-destroy operation meant to clear out the Naxalite strongholds in the forests of central India. The fissures of this unified command, however, were exposed when a company of central paramilitary forces short on local police support and intelligence were ambushed and more than 80 killed after being tracked for three days by Naxalite insurgents.[45]

The two states that appear to be relatively successful at reducing insurgent activity or keeping it at bay are Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra seems to have had a relatively higher police to population ratio at the beginning of the decade, potentially buffering it from the spillover of Naxalite insurgency from neighboring areas. While Andhra Pradesh’s manpower ratio rose somewhat over the past decade, its success in dramatically reducing Naxalite activity in its territory is generally attributed by Indian analysts to a rather different strategy of raising a special commando force known as the Greyhounds.[46]

The Greyhound Force
The Greyhound force, an elite anti-Maoist commando unit, was raised beginning in 1987 from within the Andhra Pradesh police to conduct small unit counterguerrilla offensives against Naxalite insurgents.[47] Roundly believed to have been tremendously successful, the Andhra Pradesh police have drawn inspiration from the infamous Selous Scouts of Rhodesia to prosecute the equivalent of a “bush war” against the Naxalites.[48]

The 2,000-strong Greyhound force is better paid and equipped than federal or state paramilitary forces with state of the art weapons and technology, better trained in jungle warfare, and moves in nimbler, highly capable units to target, track, and destroy insurgent networks by modeling guerrilla tactics.[49] The Greyhounds are also well supported by the entire state police force.[50] Two companies of Greyhounds would be deployed at a joint operational base with two platoons of local home guards for intelligence and logistical support.[51] Between 2005 and 2008, they have been credited with bringing down the Maoist cadre in Andhra Pradesh from 1,200 to 500 and Naxalite activity in the state this decade has dropped from a peak of roughly 600 attacks in 2003 to around 100 in 2010.[52] Their success was attributed to signals intelligence exploitation, careful operational planning, jungle survival training, night operations, and decapitation of Maoist leadership.[53]

The Greyhound model is perceived to be so successful that many states are starting to develop their own small unit commando police battalions. While the Indian central government continues to pour central paramilitary forces into the region (now on the order of about 70 battalions), it is also raising 10 Commando Battalions for Resolute Action (CoBRA) and deploying them alongside state and federal units.[54] Yet one should be leery of the triumphant claims made of Andhra Pradesh as well as the potential to model the Greyhound success.

First, there is reason to believe that the Greyhounds did not defeat the Maoist insurgents outright but merely displaced them to neighboring states. This corresponds with data that shows Naxalite activity skyrocketed in neighboring Chhattisgarh as it declined in Andhra Pradesh.[55] Second, intelligence officers and other analysts believe gains in Andhra Pradesh are unsustainable and the state remains highly vulnerable to Maoist activity.[56] This fear was validated by a recent Times of India-IMMRB survey of five northern districts of Andhra Pradesh recently cleared of Maoist insurgents where the majority of those surveyed still sympathized with Naxalite motives, methods, and results, and viewed actions by state forces such as encounter killings as suspect and unjustified. Meanwhile, a plurality believed nothing had improved and exploitation had increased since their departure.[57] Even if the Naxalite presence and violence has been structurally reduced, the survey revealed that the strategy has certainly not relied upon winning hearts and minds to achieve this end.

Finally, even if the Greyhound approach was actually successful, the background conditions required to achieve operational effectiveness are currently absent or underdeveloped in the rest of the country. Andhra Pradesh began raising the Greyhounds in 1987 but did not achieve marked success until almost two decades later. Despite the state having a relatively efficient policing system, both the Greyhound commandos and the state police and security force serving as the logistical and intelligence “tail” took substantial time to mature.[58] New police inductees served first in the Greyhound support unit for about four years before rotating to the district level where they might continue to support operations.[59] This gradually built up inter-organizational familiarity and cooperation within the state, and the substantial network of well-trained local police—features noticeably absent in the rest of Naxal-affected India—were able to funnel high quality intelligence for Greyhound targeting.[60]

Conclusion
Three points are worth noting about Indian counterinsurgency strategy. First, rather than abiding by a singular formula, strategies have varied over time and space depending on the context and nature of the insurgency. Second, India has routinely departed from the traditional “hearts and minds” or population-centric COIN for a highly kinetic and coercive enemy-centric COIN. Third, Indian successes are never “clean” and always involve uncomfortable tradeoffs, whether by way of criminal activity, organizational dysfunction and corruption, or further insurgency. These should all be expected as India faces down the Naxalite insurgency over what might be a full decade or more.[61]

This third point is in part related to India’s democratic character. The mobilization capacity of insurgents creates perverse interests by political parties to harness these assets for their own ends.[62] In fact, for much of the earlier part of this decade, most Naxal-affected states “abdicated their authority over vast regions, as long as the semblance of normalcy could be maintained and the electoral interests of the dominant political party could be taken care of.”[63]

Moreover, Indian counterinsurgency has been and will likely continue to look both brutal and incomplete (by Western standards) because the incumbent is unwilling to countenance the types of institutional overhauls needed to fully quell insurgent impulses. If the fundamental conflict is not over the distribution of resources that can be mended with economic development, but rather the distribution of power controlled by the state and elite cadres, then the disease is the system.[64] The cure then may deeply threaten not only India’s growth engine that has relied upon land appropriation and displacement for industrialization and mining, but also the power, composition, and identity of the Indian state stretching from the local level up to the state and national governments.

Sameer Lalwani is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fieldwork for this research was partly supported by the Tobin Project.

[1] Indigenous incumbent is meant to distinguish states fighting insurgency on their own soil from foreign incumbents. One notable exception is a recent volume edited by Sumit Ganguly and David Fidler, India and Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned (New York: Routledge, 2009).

[2] Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Force and Compromise: India’s Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 30:1 (2007).

[3] Manmohan Singh, “PM’s Speech at the Chief Minister’s Meet on Naxalism,” April 13, 2006; Manmohan Singh, “PM’s Valedictory Address at the Seminar on the Occasion of Golden Jubilee of National Defence College,” October 22, 2010.

[4] For instance, see David J. Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); John Nagl, David Petraeus, James Amos, U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-24 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Stephen Biddle, “The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis,” Perspectives on Politics 6:2 (2008).

[5] Lawrence Cline, “The Insurgency Environment in Northeast India,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 17:2 (2006).

[6] Rajagopalan, “Force and Compromise: India’s Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy.”

[7] Prem Mahadevan, “The Gill Doctrine: A Model for 21st Century Counterterrorism?” Faultlines 19 (2008); K.P.S. Gill, “Endgame in Punjab: 1988-1993,” Faultlines 1 (1999); Namrata Goswami, “India’s Counter-insurgency Experience: The ‘Trust and Nurture’ Strategy,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 20:1 (2009).

[8] Paul Staniland, “Counterinsurgency is a Bloody, Costly Business,” Foreign Policy, November 24, 2009.

[9] Deepak Aneel Boyini, “Explaining Success and Failure: Counterinsurgency in Malaya and India,” unpublished masters thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2010.

[10] Anit Mukherjee, “India’s Experiences with Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” in Sumit Ganguly ed., Handbook of Asian Security Studies (London: Routledge, 2010).

[11] Anit Mukherjee, “Lessons from Another Insurgency,” New York Times, May 4, 2006.

[12] Sanjib Baruah, Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New Policy Framework for Northeast India (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2007).

[13] Mahadevan, “The Gill Doctrine: A Model for 21st Century Counterterrorism?”; C. Christine Fair, “Lessons from India’s Experience in the Punjab, 1978-93,” in Sumit Ganguly and David P. Fidler eds., India and Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned (New York: Routledge, 2009).

[14] On subsequent police failures, see Arvind Verma and Srinagesh Gavirneni, “Measuring Police Efficiency in India: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis,” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 29:1 (2006); H.S. Sidhu and S.S. Bains, “Public Expenditure on Police Services in India: With Special Reference to Punjab,” The Indian Police Journal 55:1 (2008); Pramod Kumar, Community Policing Programme in Punjab: A Guide (Chandigarh, India: Institute for Development and Communication, 2011).

[15] Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Innovations in Counterinsurgency: The Indian Army’s Rashtriya Rifles,” Contemporary South Asia 31:1 (2004); Moeed Yusuf and Anit Mukherjee, “Counterinsurgency in Pakistan: Learning from India,” AEI National Security Outlook, September 2007.

[16] Fair; Mukherjee, “Lessons from Another Insurgency.”

[17] Ibid.; Prem Mahadevan, “Counter Terrorism in the Indian Punjab: Assessing the ‘Cat’ System,” Faultlines 18 (2007).

[18] Joyce Pettigrew, “Parents and Their Children in Situations of Terror: Disappearances and Special Police Activity in Punjab,” in Jeffrey A. Sluka ed., Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

[19] Sidhu and Bains; Mukherjee, “Lessons from Another Insurgency.”

[20] On Punjab human rights violations, see Romesh Silva, Jasmine Marwaha, and Jeff Kligner, “Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India: A Preliminary Quantitative Analysis,” A Joint Report by Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group & Ensaaf, Inc., January 2009. On Kashmir mass graves, see Lydia Polgreen, “Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds,” New York Times, August 22, 2011.

[21] Cline.

[22] Baruah.

[23] P.V. Ramana, “India’s Maoist Insurgency: Evolution, Current Trends, and Responses,” in Michael Kugelman ed., India’s Contemporary Security Challenges (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011); Jennifer L. Oetken, “Counterinsurgency Against Naxalites in India,” in Sumit Ganguly and David P. Fidler eds., India and Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned (New York: Routledge, 2009).

[24] These figures are from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Annual Reports, Government of India.

[25] Rahul Bedi estimates that Naxals have a presence in 20 of India’s 29 states, or 223 of 603 administrative districts, roughly one-third of the country. See Rahul Bedi, “State Told to Disband Militia Fighting Maoist Guerillas,” New Zealand Herald, July 13, 2011.

[26] J.K. Achuthan, “Tackling Maoists: The Andhra Paradigm,” Indian Defence Review 25:2 (2010).

[27] Naxalite insurgents have targeted “class enemies” (sometimes through beheadings), police and security forces, infrastructure such as police stations, schools, local government buildings, roads, power lines, railways, and economic targets like mining and energy infrastructure. They have been able to carry out these activities through the acquisition as well as indigenous production of a wide variety of weapons including automatic firearms, rocket launchers, and a whole host of mines for which they use to conduct IED attacks and small unit ambushes. See Ramana; Achuthan; Sudeep Chakravarti, “No End in Sight,” Seminar 605 (2010). The Naxalites are also reported to provide public goods to local residents such as security, swift justice in “people’s courts,” education, irrigation, community kitchens, medical units, and minimum wage enforcement in part through extortion and taxation of local government offices, contractors, businessmen, and industrialists. See Bedi; Oetken; Chakravarti; Pratul Ahuja and Rajat Ganguly, “The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 18:2 (2007).

[28] For example, the Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report from 2006-07 states, “Naxalites typically operate in a vacuum created by inadequacy of administrative and political institutions, espouse local demands and take advantage of the prevalent disaffection, perceived injustice among the underprivileged and remote segments of population.” Also see “India’s Naxalites: A Spectre Haunting India,” Economist, August 17, 2006; Vani K. Borooah, “Deprivation, Violence, and Conflict: An Analysis of Naxalite Activity in the Districts of India,” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 2:2 (2008).

[29] Nandani Sundar, “At War With Oneself: Constructing Naxalism as India’s Biggest Security Threat,” in Michael Kugelman, India’s Contemporary Security Challenges (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011); Manoj Mate and Adnan Naseemullah, “State Security and Elite Capture: The Implementation of Antiterrorist Legislation in India,” Journal of Human Rights 9 (2010).

[30] Kirpal S. Dhillon, “Police and Terrorism,” in P.J. Alexander ed., Policing India in the New Millennium (Mumbai, India: Allied Publishers, 2002).

[31] Biddle; Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis,” Perspectives on Politics 6:2 (2008).

[32] Ramana; Bedi.

[33] Boyini.

[34] Ajai Sahni, “India’s Maoists and the Dreamscape of ‘Solutions,’” South Asia Terrorism Portal, February 2010.

[35] Praveen Swami, “Anti-Maoist War in Serious Trouble,” Hindu, August 10, 2011.

[36] The minister of Home Affairs recently announced that there are currently 71 battalions of Central Paramilitary Forces deployed in the Naxalite-affected region. See “P. Chidambaram Inaugurates DGPs/IGPs Conference,” Press Information Bureau, Government of India, September 15, 2011.

[37] Chhattisgarh has 28 battalions and Jharkhand has 15. See Vinay Kumar, “In Chhattisgarh, Central Forces Don New Mantle,” Hindu, April 23, 2011; Amit Gupta, “CRPF’s Rain Offensive,” Telegraph, July 12, 2011.

[38] This assessment is based on data from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

[39] Sahni, “India’s Maoists and the Dreamscape of ‘Solutions’”; Achuthan; Bhavna Vij-Aurora, “Armed and Dangerous,” India Today, April 25, 2011.

[40] The local vigilantes in part recruited by the state governments, sometimes as special police officers or village defense committees, are known as the Salwa Judum (“peace hunt”) movement. They have brutally abused the population and in fact escalated violence. See Sundar; Chakravarti.

[41] Chakravarti.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Sundar; Ajai Sahni, “India and her Maoists,” Wars Within Borders, November 2009.

[44] Supriya Sharma, “Unified Command Flopped Last Time, Will it Work Now?” Times of India, July 17, 2010; Bibhi Prasad Routray, “India’s Anti-Maoist Operations: Where Are the Special Forces?” Eurasia Review, January 5, 2011.

[45] Anuj Chopra, “India’s Failing Counterinsurgency Campaign,” Foreign Policy, May 14, 2010; “A Disaster Foretold,” The Pioneer, April 11, 2010.

[46] The different approaches to counterinsurgency employed by the U.S. Army (modeled on FM 3-24) and U.S. special forces are analyzed by Jon Lindsay in “Commandos, Advisors, and Diplomats: Special Operations Forces and Counterinsurgency,” presented to the International Studies Association Annual Conference, New York, February 15, 2009.

[47] Boyini; Madhavi Tata, “Lessons from Andhra,” Outlook India, April 19, 2010; Ajai Sahni, “Andhra Pradesh: The State Advances, the Maoists Retreat,” South Asia Intelligence Review 6:10 (2007).

[48] Achuthan.

[49] Boyini.

[50] Sahni, “Andhra Pradesh: The State Advances, the Maoists Retreat.”

[51] Ibid.; Achuthan.

[52] This data is from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Also see Sreenivas Janyala, “The Andhra Fightback,” Indian Express, June 27, 2009.

[53] Ibid.; Achuthan; Tata.

[54] Routray.

[55] This data is from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Also see Vij-Aurora.

[56] Chakravarti; KP Narayana Kumar, “Naxalites ‘Tamed’ in Andhra Pradesh, Hub of Movement,” MINT, July 2, 2009.

[57] “58% in AP Say Naxalism is Good, Finds TOI Poll,” Times of India, September 28, 2010. Although the survey did not specifically pose questions about the Greyhounds, they are likely included in the forces viewed with suspicion as unjust since they were the lead operational forces in these areas over the last decade.

[58] On initial police efficiency, see Verma and Gavirneni. On maturation, see Sahni, “Andhra Pradesh: The State Advances, the Maoists Retreat.”

[59] Achuthan; Sahni, “Andhra Pradesh: The State Advances, the Maoists Retreat.”

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ramana estimates 7-10 years for government strategy to start seeing results and Vij-Aurora reports that one intelligence official estimated 8-10 years simply to properly train the required force.

[62] Mukherjee, “India’s Experiences with Insurgency and Counterinsurgency”; Paul Staniland, “Cities on Fire: Social Mobilization, State Policy, and Urban Insurgency,” Comparative Political Studies 43 (2010).

[63] Achuthan.

[64] This borrows a concept used by Anatol Lieven to explain some elements of another South Asian state. See Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (New York: Public Affairs, 2011).

Naxalite Wars Of Lions & Donkeys

2011-12-08T01:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/ajaisahni/09AS-32DSI.htm

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

Benjamin Franklin

An apocryphal story attributed to a conversation between two German Generals
during the First World War (versions of the narrative are sometimes located in
the Crimean War more than half a century earlier) has one of them commenting,
"The English soldiers fight like lions". To this, the other responds, "True.
But like lions led by donkeys."

As thousands of State Police and Central Paramilitary Force (CPMF) personnel are
flung, without visible plan or purpose, into an escalating ‘war’ – notwithstanding
any euphemisms particular politicians may prefer – against the Maoists, it becomes
increasingly urgent to determine which species India’s strategic leadership is drawn from.
Suspicions of some link to the genus asinus surely cannot be altogether disregarded,
if the public discourse has any coherent linkage to strategic thinking on the issue.
The wilder among imaginations have thrown their weight behind visions of high resolution
imagery and aerial operations by the Indian Air Force, backed by the Army on the ground.
Happily, however, Air and military operations, at least, have been unambiguously struck
down both by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
However, the idea of ‘surgical strikes’ executed by combined teams of ‘Special Forces’ drawn
from the States and the Central Paramilitary Forces (CPMFs), in densely forested Maoist
‘heartland’ areas, are yet to be divested of their seduction. The Centre and various
States continue to conjure up grandiose campaigns targeting the Maoists in a ‘coordinated’
and ‘massive’ offensive across the worst affected areas in the country. Perhaps taking
a page out of American ‘successes’ in Afghanistan and Pakistani ‘successes’ in Swat, there
has been much ill-advised kite flying about an attack on the Maoist ‘central guerrilla area’ in
the Abujhmadh Forest in Chhattisgarh, backed by sci-fi visions of high resolution aerial,
satellite and thermal imagery and air support for ground (police and paramilitary) troops.
That Pakistan and USA, with the massive ‘collateral damage’ they routinely inflict on civilian
populations, have little, if anything, to teach India on counter-insurgency, is largely missed
by advocates of such ‘techno-warfare’. Incidentally, the IAF has repeatedly sought permission
to shoot at the Maoists ‘in self-defence’, as its helicopters fly transport and surveillance sorties
over affected areas, and public statements by Defence Minister A.K. Antony and Home Minister
Chidambaram suggest "that is the policy", though formal permission is yet to be granted.

This is a slippery slope, and, while offensive air operations against the Maoists have explicitly
been ruled out, the IAF is reportedly preparing for a still-undefined ‘expanded role’ in the fight
in the Naxal ‘strongholds’.

In the meantime, there has been loud and continuous tom-tomming of the ‘massive operations’ ‘shortly’ to be launched by the Centre, in coordination with the States. Leaks to the media have emanated steadily from a multiplicity of agencies, and it is abundantly clear that any operations that are now to be launched will come as no surprise whatsoever to the Maoists. Indeed, while some signs of disarray, especially between State and Central Forces, are visible, there is evidence that the Maoists have been systematically preparing for the ‘imminent’ onslaught for months, and have, indeed, already initiated their operations to thwart and circumvent the state’s strategy. Worse, the state’s ‘strategy’ has been progressively diluted, as it becomes obvious – as it has, indeed, been for years now – that the quantum of Forces required for the kind of sweeping offensive operations across six states, which had been envisaged earlier, are simply not available. Abruptly, sources suggest, that the operations have been reinvented as a focused campaign in just six Districts! These are expected to be clustered principally around Abujhmadh in the Bastar Division of Chhattisgarh and overflowing into the neighbouring Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra. What impact this will have on the Maoists, who, by the Home Minister’s own admission, are now active in as many as 223 Districts across 20 States, should be more than obvious. Crucially, if overwhelming force is, in fact, concentrated in these narrow areas, after an initial and bloody campaign that will cost the lives of many Security Force (SF) personnel in ambushes, landmine and improvised explosive device (IED) blasts in the dense jungles and poorly connected approaches, as well as significant ‘collateral’ casualties in areas where civilian populations intersect seamlessly with Maoist formations, the Maoists can be expected to simply and quickly ‘walk away’ from the fight. While holding territory has definitive advantages, it is of no extraordinary significance in the overall Maoist strategy. Even for those unfamiliar with Maoist strategy and tactics, this should have been evident, after Lalgarh. While the media spoke of ‘liberated areas’ and an imminent ‘showdown’ between the ‘entrenched’ Maoists and the state Forces that were eventually deployed, K.P.S. Gill wrote of the inevitable trajectory:

"…the slow buildup over… months of state denial, appeasement and progressive error; paralysis in the face of rising Maoist violence; and the final, almost effortless resolution, as the rebels simply melted away in the face of the first evidence of determined use of force."

This outcome, however, could provide no more than scant and fleeting comfort to the state. While saturation of Forces has been maintained over the past months, this has, in itself, become an issue for further Maoist mobilisation, even as attritional Maoist violence has been restored. If CPMF presence is diluted, the area will, once again, be vulnerable to the Maoists’ disruptive dominance. Even if Lalgarh is effectively secured in perpetuity, the rest of West Bengal – and areas of progressive Maoist consolidation across the country – will provide limitless recurrent opportunities for future theatrics in the ‘people’s war’.

And so it will be in Abujhmadh, in case projected operations are actually initiated. The strategic reality is quite simple. Unless a certain critical mass of Forces can be deployed across all areas of current and potential Maoist violence, all available dispositions of existing Forces will prove irrational. If there is a concentration of state Forces on particular nodes, the Maoists will disperse and intensify operations in other areas; if there is a dispersal of state Forces, these will be subjected to persistent and corrosive attacks at their points of vulnerability, even as there is a steady expansion of areas of Maoist ‘disruptive dominance’.

Astonishingly, much of this seemed apparently incomprehensible to elements within India’s strategic, planning and security communities. Home Secretary G.K. Pillai, certainly one of the better officers in an endemically decaying Indian Administrative Service, declares, with Panglossian optimism, "We hope that within 30 days of security forces moving in and dominating the area, we should be able to restore civil administration there." It would, indeed, be quite miraculous if the state could even ‘restore civil administration’ to vast expanses of rural India where the Maoists have no presence whatsoever, but where virtually the entire apparatus of governance has vanished. At least some of these areas are little more than a stone’s throw away from Delhi.

There has, of course, been some subsequent dilution of this ‘war rhetoric’, particularly after the Home Minister, on November 12, correctly dismissed ‘Operation Green Hunt’ as a "pure invention of the media" (though he omitted mention of the significant and continuous leaks from the Home Ministry that had fed distorted public perceptions), declaring that what was to be expected "in the months ahead is merely a more coordinated effort by the state police to reassert control over territory or tracts of land where regrettably the civil administration has lost control. And for that purpose we (the Centre) will assist them in every manner possible, particularly by providing paramilitary forces and sharing of intelligence."

None of the Government’s posturing was, however, lost on the Maoists, who appear to be preparing themselves for a full scale civil war, not only with the State Police and Central Paramilitary Forces, but also with the Army – or as they express it, "the state’s khaki and olive-clad terrorist forces" – and with clear expectations that, when push comes to shove, they may have to deal with the Air Force as well. The now-notorious ‘June 12 document’ released by the Maoist Politburo explicitly notes that, in the political circumstances created by the General Elections of April-May 2009, the state’s ‘repression’, will be "far more brutal, deadly and savage than under any other regime hitherto witnessed." Nevertheless, the Politburo declares:

"Though the enemy is itching to suppress our Party and movement by deploying a huge force in all our areas, he has severe difficulties in implementing this at present; he has plans to increase the number of central forces in the next few years, to set up and train special forces like the Cobras, but in the immediate context it is quite difficult for the Centre to send the forces required by each state to control our movement. Keeping this in mind, we have to further aggravate the situation and create more difficulties to the enemy forces by expanding our guerrilla war to new areas on the one hand and intensifying the mass resistance in the existing areas so as to disperse the enemy forces over a sufficiently wider area; hence the foremost task in every state is to intensify the war in their respective states while in areas of intense enemy repression there is need to expand the area of struggle by proper planning by the concerned committees; tactical counter-offensives should be stepped up and also taken up in new areas so as to divert a section of the enemy forces from attacking our guerrilla bases and organs of political power." (Emphases added).

These contrasting perspectives arise out of the subjective experience of the Indian state in a vastly contradictory context. To the high official at Delhi, insulated behind layers of security, juggling battalions of Forces, allocating random hundreds of crores of rupees with a squiggle of the pen, pronouncing on the future of entire regions and populations on a moment’s consideration, the experience of the state remains one of great power. The Maoist, on the other hand, intentionally encounters the state at the points of its greatest infirmity. Maoist strategies and tactics are, moreover, uniquely tailored to exploit and augment these infirmities, stepping into a widening vacuum of governance and systematically expanding its boundaries through a slow process of attrition to establish a ‘disruptive dominance’ that prevents the state’s agencies from delivering even on the rudiments of governance, development and welfare.

In this, the Maoist approach is complex and, while it certainly uses extreme violence to great effect, is not exhausted by it. As the programme and constitution of the erstwhile People’s War Group’s (PWG’s) People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) declares, "The PGA firmly opposes the pure military outlook which is divorced from the masses, and adventurism. It will function adhering to the mass line." The ‘mass line’ explicitly rejects the ‘Left adventurism’ often attributed to the earlier Naxalite movement of the 1967-73 phase, and insists that the military aspects of the revolution are contingent on mass mobilisation: "…we see not only weapons but also people. Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive." Crucially, as it builds up its mass base through ‘secret organisations’ as well as over-ground ‘united front’ activities, the strategy of protracted conflict, as one group of commentators note, "postpones the decisive battle and calibrates its challenges to a calculus of risks – until the balance of power has shifted overwhelmingly to the side of the revolutionary forces."

The balance of power. That is the key, the variable the Maoist seeks to gradually, painstakingly, transform. The Maoist is under no illusion, today, that he is an equal to the state and to its armed might. The CPI-Maoist document on Strategy & Tactics notes, nevertheless,

"However strong the enemy’s military power may be and however weak the people’s military power, by basing ourselves on the vast backward countryside – the weakest position of the enemy – and relying on the vast masses of the peasantry… and creatively following the flexible strategy and tactics of guerrilla struggle and the protracted people’s war – as a full meal is eaten up mouthful by mouthful, exactly in the same way – by applying the best part of our army… against different single parts of the enemy forces and following the policy and tactics of sudden attack and annihilation, it is absolutely possible to defeat the enemy forces and achieve victory for the people in single battles. It is thus possible to increase the people’s armed forces, attain supremacy over the enemy’s forces and defeat the enemy decisively." (Emphasis added)

It is crucial, in confronting this strategy, not to fall into the trap of focusing inordinately on ‘kills’. For years, now, the Maoists have had a far greater capacity for violence than they have actually demonstrated. In vast areas of their activity, they deliberately choose to calibrate violence at low levels, or to avoid armed violence altogether, in order to build their mass base. On the other hand, the state has often looked upon the problem overwhelmingly in terms of fatality rates – and this lies at the core of current and increasingly panicked assessments. With fatalities in Maoist-related violence in 2009 expected to rise beyond a thousand by the end of the year (at least 749 had already been killed as of October 6, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal data), Home Minister Chidambaram has rightly observed that the CPI-Maoist had "improved upon its military wares and operational tactics" and, further,

"Recent decisions taken by its Politburo [this refers to the June 12 document] indicate that the CPI-Maoist is determined to expand its activities into newer areas, on the one hand, and intensify its 'mass resistance' in the existing areas, on the other. Violence, the most visible aspect of Naxal menace, has been consistently witnessed in about 400 Police station areas of around 90 Districts in 13 States… With increasing sophistication in fabrication and deployment of Improvised Explosive Devices, it has inflicted more casualties on the Security Forces..."

With more and more SF personnel and civilians being killed, there is inevitable and increasing pressure to rack up higher numbers of Maoist kills through ‘comprehensive operations’, as currently envisaged. Given current state capacities and levels of preparedness, as well as the Maoist strategy of "applying the best part of our army… against different single parts of the enemy forces", however, any excessive emphasis on simply ‘neutralizing’ Maoists can only result in enormous inefficiencies in the use of force – in other words, large numbers of civilians and SF personnel killed – without establishing any enduring gains. The existing ‘balance of power’ cannot support operational dominance of the Maoists, even as the Maoists acquire increasing capacities to inflict their disruptive dominance over widening areas.

The envisaged ‘massive operations’, reflecting little by way of plan or purpose, consequently, are at best a faith in demonstrative violence, based on the hope that this will cow down the enemy. This is not a calculus of war; it is sheer fantasy. Even as colossal deficits in leadership, manpower, training, technology and counter-insurgency orientation persist in the SFs – both Central and State – operations are being intensified. The consequence can only be that more SF personnel will lose their lives, and the gains will remain dubious.

It is crucial to review the relevant state capacities in this context. First, police-population ratios for the whole country stood at a bare 125 per 100,000 in early 2008. According to the Prime Minister’s statement at the Conference of Directors General of Police on September 15, 2009, this has now risen to about 145 per 100,000 – still abysmally low, compared to required ratios for peacetime policing at well over 200, and ranging, in some western countries, at over 500 per 100,000. This is, moreover, a primitive, ill-trained and ill-equipped Force, and, in most States, has little capacity or orientation to deal with a full-blown insurgency. Worse, these numbers reflect sanctioned strengths, and not the actual strength available on the ground. Thus, there was more than a 14 percent deficit against total sanctioned strength in 2008. The situation in the States worst affected by Naxalism is infinitely worse. Bihar has a Police-population ratio of just 60, and a deficit of over 33 percent against sanctioned strength. Orissa has a sanctioned ratio of 97, and a deficit of nearly 19 percent. In Jharkhand, the ratio is 136/100,000, and the deficit is 21 percent; Chhattisgarh has 128/100,000 and a deficit of 26 per cent; Andhra Pradesh, 96/100,000 and a deficit of 11 percent; West Bengal, 92 per 100,000, and a deficit of 25 percent.

The crisis of leadership is worse. At the cutting edge ranks of Deputy Superintendent of Police to Senior Superintendent of Police, deficits in Andhra stand at 19 percent; in Bihar at 35 percent; in Chhattisgarh at 28 percent; in Jharkhand at 51 percent; in Orissa at 34 percent; and in West Bengal at 25 percent. In the ‘fighting leadership’ at the ranks of Assistant Sub-Inspector to Inspector, deficits in Andhra are at 15 percent; Bihar: 39 percent; Chhattisgarh: 41 percent; Jharkhand: 18 percent; Orissa, 34 percent; and West Bengal 30 percent. Crucially, sanctioned strengths in most leadership ranks are severely inadequate, and will become progressively so as recruitment to the lower ranks accelerates. The overall system does not appear to be geared to respond to these predicaments. In the worst case, for instance, Orissa has a current sanctioned strength of as many as 207 officers in the IPS ranks, but has just 84 officers currently available. The State had requested the Centre to allocate a trifling eight IPS officers from the graduating batch of 2009; the Centre allocated just four – a number that will be significantly exceeded by those retiring this year, and against the current deficit of as many as 123 officers. The State Government is, of course, doing its own substantial bit to add to the chaos. The State Services Examination for entry into the Police at the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police has not been held since 1976! 48 posts in the IPS ranks are reserved for promotees from the State cadre – not a single officer is currently available for these reserved posts. Manpower deficits are, of course, infinitely compounded by extreme shortfalls in technical, technological and training variables, by irrational deployment of Forces, and by persistently imprudent political interventions. The outcome is that current capacities of Police Forces in the afflicted States are simply insufficient to design an effective response to the Maoist challenge.

The Centre pretends to come ‘to the rescue’ with its ‘battalion approach’, and there is much talk of ‘massive deployment’ of CPMFs. The reality is sobering. Prior to the much advertised current ‘mobilisation’ the total allocation of CPMFs in the Maoist affected areas was a mere 37 battalions, yielding a total of just 14,800 men in the field. There is now talk of 70 battalions being sent to these areas – though it is not clear whether this will be an additional 70 or an augmentation of current Force to this number. We would, in other words, have either 70 or 107 battalions allocated under the Centre’s projected operational plans, that is, 28,000 or 42,800 CPMF personnel, as the case may be, for six worst affected States with a total area of 1.86 million square kilometers and a total population of over 446 million. This is like trying to irrigate the desert with dewdrops.

Of course, the Centre’s operational strategy would seek to concentrate this Force in areas of specific Maoist dominance, to ‘recover’ these areas, and then ‘bring them under civil administration’. But the Maoist would simply refuse to confront the state in its areas of strength, and the state cannot, given existing capacities, maintain permanent saturation in the ‘recovered’ areas. Where state’s deployments are heavy, the Maoists will simply walk away, as they did in Lalgarh. Where state Forces are dispersed or their presence is eventually diluted, they will be selectively targeted in a campaign of attrition.

From any realistic perspective, the current ‘intensive operations’ are, consequently, doomed. But how can you judge an operation that has no manifest strategic objective? That is the magic here. Recall the purposeless massing of troops under Operation Parakram, launched on December 16, 2001, after the Pakistan-backed terrorist attack on India’s Parliament. 680 soldiers were killed, without a single shot being fired, by the time Operation Parakram was, inexplicably, called off on October 16, 2002, with the unsupported claim that its undefined "objectives" had been achieved. So, indeed, will be the case with the current anti-Naxalite mobilization. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Crucially, the other bogus ‘strategy’ – bringing ‘development’ and ‘civil administration’ to areas currently under Maoist disruptive dominance – also has no possible future for comparable reasons. There has been a long-standing myth that India suffers from ‘too much governance’; that its ‘bloated bureaucracy’ needs to be ‘rationalised’, drastically reduced. This is another bit of the most extraordinarily contrafactual nonsense that has taken firm root in the Indian imagination. The reality is, India’s administrative capacities are collapsing, not just qualitatively – because of the rising incompetence and corruption of the system – but even in terms of minimal quantitative variables. Thus USA, with its belief that "the best government governs least" has as many as 889 Federal Government employees per 100,000 population. India’s Central Government employs just 295 per 100,000, and a large proportion of these are flogged out to a number of public sector enterprises and units entirely unconnected with core governance. The Railways, for instance, is the largest single Central Government employer, accounting for over 42 percent of the total pool. If Railway employees were to be excluded from the strength of Central Government Employees, this would leave us with a ratio of just 171 Central Government employees per 100,000. Moving on to State and Local Government employees, we find that, in the US, these account for another 6,314 per 100,000; in sharp contrast, Uttar Pradesh has 352; Bihar, 472; Orissa, 1,007; Chhattisgarh, 1,067; Maharashtra, 1,223; Punjab, 1,383; Gujarat, 1,694. Worse, in India, the overwhelming proportion of Government employees is in the lower cadres, class III and IV, as against the 'thinking' element of the state in higher echelons. Even in the latter category, qualitative profiles, including modern and administrative skills, training and technological competence are severely limited. Crucially, there is no plan or programme, given current resource configurations, that can address the cumulative developmental deficits in India in any timeframe that is relevant to counter-insurgency goals.

Given current state capacities, it must be clear, no proposed strategy can offer the possibility of a decisive victory, or even enduring gains, against the Maoists, and current pronouncements are intended, at best, to project a political posture, and, at worst, to massage the political vanity of particular leaders.

Clarity of purpose, the objective – and not merely the visible impact of the use of force – is integral to the success, and even the potential of any strategy or plan. While there is evidence of some crystallization of will and an emerging consensus within the national leadership, this is still periodically undermined by ill-conceived qualification. Take, for instance, the nonsense spouted from the highest offices in the land about the Maoists being ‘our people’. Is the law of the land only to be applied to foreigners? Are the thieves and bandits, the rapists and murderers languishing in India’s jails not ‘our people’? Should they, on this ground, be exempted from responsibility for their transgressions? What provision of Constitution, law or morality confers impunity on the Maoists because they are ‘our people’?

But even as we regurgitate, ad nauseum, the vapid rhetoric of ‘developmental solutions’, ‘our people’, ‘our children’, ‘our brothers and sisters’, there is an unconstrained and excessive rhetoric of the use of force. Special Forces are, for instance, being fashioned in the image of all manner of predatory beast – cobras, jaguars, hounds (the Greyhounds are, perhaps, the most benign of these images, the species being notable more for speed than for aggression). But is this the image of the state we want to project – to our people, to our enemies, and to the world?

Two things are abundantly clear here. The first is that, given existing capacities, current strategies have little possibility of inflicting decisive reversals on the Maoists. The second is that the Maoists have to be fought and defeated. India’s strategic leadership has not displayed the wisdom to reconcile these realities, and to focus on the urgent tasks of capacity building at a pace and a scale that this conflict demands.

(Published "Disruptive Dominance", in Defence & Security of India, Volume 2, Issue 2, November 2009, pp. 14-21)

Galula and his COIN

2011-12-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

Introduction

It's hardly surprising that Counterinsurgency Warfare is often near the top of the reading list for contemporary military officers--even though it is over forty years old. Though many of its empirical examples are dated, its insights remain hauntingly relevant. It is still considered by many to be the "Bible" of counterinsurgency warfare. In it, Galula, a French military officer with experience in China, Greece, Southeast Asia, and Algeria, seeks to provide a "compass" for the counterinsurgent, much as Mao did for the revolutionary. This "compass" is comprised of the laws and principals of counterinsurgency warfare, and corresponding strategy and tactics.

He begins this task by describing the basic characteristics of revolutionary war in general, because an insurgency (along with revolution and coup d'etat) is thought to be a type of revolutionary warfare. While a revolution is a sudden and "accidental" mass movement and a plot (or coup) is an intentional effort to overthrow the top leadership in a swift action, an insurgency is intentional, but not swift. It is a protracted struggle conducted methodically in order to attain intermediary goals with an eventual aim of overthrowing the existing power structure. While the book is primarily concerned with insurgency, it often refers to both revolutions and plots as well.

A key characteristic of all three types of revolutionary warfare is their inherent asymmetry. Counterinsurgents hold a virtual monopoly on tangible assets, such as material resources and legitimate power. On the other hand, insurgents lack power, but have the advantage regarding intangible assets such as ideology and a general lack of responsibility. While counterinsurgents are powerful, they are obliged to uphold law and order, which limits their potential action. On the other hand, insurgents lack power, but they are much more free to violate both their promises and social norms. Insurgents also decide when and where the conflict will begin, since they become insurgents through their own contentious actions. Indeed, a counterinsurgency exists only in reaction to an insurgency. The asymmetric nature of this relationship requires the successful counterinsurgency to capitalize on its tangible advantages and limit the insurgent's ability to benefit from its intangible advantages.

The "Laws"

According to Galula, there are four "laws" of counterinsurgency.

The first law is that the population is paramount. That is, the support of the people is the primary objective of a counterinsurgency campaign. Without the support of the population, it is impossible to root out all the insurgents and stop further recruitment.
Such support is most readily obtained from an active minority. Those willing to actively support a counterinsurgency operation should be supported in their efforts to rally the relatively neutral majority and neutralize the hostile minority.
Having attained the support of the population it is imperative to remember that this support is conditional. What you do matters, and support can be lost if your actions are unfavorable to the population.
The fourth and final law of counterinsurgency regards the "intensity of effort and vastness of means." Because counterinsurgency requires a large concentration of effort, resources,and personnel, it is unlikely that it can be pursued effectively everywhere at once. Rather, action should be taken in select areas, and resources moved as needed. Thus, according to the laws of counterinsurgency, it is important to continuously make efforts at gaining and maintaining the support of the populace in distinct areas by leveraging an active minority.

Counterinsurgency "in the Cold"

As long as an insurgency's activities remain "on the whole legal and nonviolent," (p 43) the insurgency is referred to as "cold". When this is the case, the essential problem for the counterinsurgency is that the "actual danger will always appear to the nation as out of proportion to the demands made by an adequate response" (p 4.) That is, the response necessary to eliminate the insurgency is likely to be seen as excessive by the general population.

This leaves the counterinsurgents with four options (which are not mutually exclusive):

They can act directly on the insurgent leaders,
they can act indirectly on the conditions that are propitious to an insurgency,
they can infiltrate the insurgent movement,
or they can reinforce their own "Political Machine".

Acting directly on insurgent leaders (arresting them, or limiting their actions) is difficult in democracies and often backfires. Such direct action should only be attempted when the insurgent's cause in not popular, the counterinsurgent has the legal authority to act, and significant publicity of such action can be prevented.

Indirect action consists of either co-opting the insurgent's cause, or addressing the weaknesses of the state. A successful insurgency requires a viable cause to rally support. If the demands of an insurgent can be met through state action (without undermining its own authority) the insurgent is deprived of his/her cause. For example, insurgent farmers demanding land reform can be stripped of their cause when the state provides land reform. Unfortunately, an insurgent's cause is often impossible for a state to adopt, without relinquishing its power. In this case, indirect action can be taken to ensure that the judicial, police, and military institutions are strong (thus discouraging insurgent action).

The infiltration of an insurgency seeks to destroy it from within by turning it against itself. Though potentially quite effective, such action can backfire and anger the general population. The final option, strengthening or building the "political machine" of the state, consists of convincing the population to buy into the state's legitimacy and moral authority. While important in "cold" insurgencies, this is the primary activity of counterinsurgents in "hot" insurgencies.

Counterinsurgency "in the Heat"

As soon as an insurgent's activities become openly illegal and violent, it is considered "hot". In some ways, this aids a counterinsurgency because the "moral fog" surrounding the insurgents dissipates and the counterinsurgency is free to act more decisively. But decisive action does not necessarily mean military action. Indeed ,as Galula put it, "Essential though it is, the military action is secondary to the political one, its primary purpose being to afford the political power enough freedom to work safely with the population." (p 63)

Keeping this emphasis on political action and the laws of counterinsurgency in mind, Galula develops a comprehensive strategy for dealing effectively with hot insurgencies. His strategy is divided into eight steps:

Concentrate enough armed forces to destroy or to expel the main body of armed insurgents.
Detach for the area sufficient troops to oppose an insurgent's comeback in strength, install these troops in the hamlets, villages, and towns where the population lives.
Establish contact with the population and control its movements in order to cut off its links with the guerillas
Destroy the local insurgent political organizations
Set up, by means of elections, new provisional local authorities.
Test these authorities by assigning them various concrete tasks. Replace the softs and the incompetents, give full support of the active leaders. Organize self-defense units.
Group and educate the leaders in a national political movement.
Win over or suppress the last insurgent remnants.

Each of the steps is to be undertaken in a specific area (consistent with the fourth law) and then repeated in other areas as necessary. Though Galula presents this eight-step process as a guide to hot counterinsurgency operations, he is quick to point out, "Like every similar concept, this one may be sound in theory but dangerous when applied rigidly to a specific case." (p 56).

Tactics

Having developed a strategic base for counterinsurgency, Galula turns his attention to tactics. While he acknowledges the importance of conventional military tactics in counterinsurgency, he focuses primarily on ways to build an effective "political machine" capable of garnering the support of the people. At the heart of this political machine is the development of a counterinsurgent cause (to compete with the insurgent cause). This requires political programs aimed at placating the insurgent's base. Such programs are often based on reason, and will be relatively ineffective in the early stages of an insurgency when "passion is the prime mover," but as the conflict progresses and the pragmatic implications of the war become the "the prime mover," rational programs which improve the lives of the populace will become highly persuasive.

The development of these programs requires a coordination of efforts on the part of the counterinsurgency. According to Galula, this coordination can be achieved through committees and integrated military-civilian hierarchies but, "more than anything else, a doctrine appears to be the practical answer to the problem of how to channel efforts in a single direction" (p 65). Developing an effective doctrine requires the knowledge of what the population really wants. To do so, it is necessary to keep a single static or holding force in place. This ensures that soldiers do not have to constantly relearn the cultural nuances of a local area. Further, the counterinsurgency must learn and adapt as it goes along. As such, the first area should be viewed as a test area in which policy is adapted to the reaction of the population. Lessons learned should then be rapidly applied to subsequent areas.

Conclusion

While insurgencies often fail on their own accord, "Relying on luck...does not constitute a policy." (p 47) This book seeks to take the luck out of counterinsurgency operations by defining "the laws of counterrevolutionary warfare, deduce from them its principles, and outline the corresponding strategy and tactics." In doing so Galula has provided a "compass" for counterinsurgency operations, giving them direction.

An essential aspect of this "compass" is the realization that public support for the state should be the primary goal of counterinsurgency and that this makes counterinsurgency operations above all, political operations. In this book, Galula provides the basic strategy and tactics necessary to successfully defeat insurgencies through the development of a "political machine" capable of garnering public support. However, he cautions that the lessons of this book do not guarantee success and that, "As long as the revolutionary situation exists, even in a dormant form, as long as the problem that gave rise to the insurgency has not been eliminated, the danger persists" (p 96).

http://www.crinfo.org/booksummary/10672/

Cities Under Siege

2011-12-05T03:05:00.000-08:00

pp 60 - 62, Geopolitics, December 2011

http://www.geopolitics.in/dec2011.aspx

The increasing significance of cities hardly needs to be emphasized. According to the United Nations Population Fund, the urban-dwelling population will swell to nearly 5 billion by 2030. Presently, world population stands at 7 billion. And half of the populace lives in cities. Expectedly, with time, it can be presumed that the percentage of urban population shall be on an upward curve.

Of late, the City Mayors Foundation, an international think tank dedicated to urban affairs, presented a list of 100 ‘fastest growing’ global cities and urban areas. Interestingly, out of them, 25 belonged to India. It needs to be remembered that about 17 per cent of world’s population resides in India. Thus, simple arithmetic tells us that the growth of Indian cities is well above normal proportions than its share of world population.

Statistically speaking, India has 35 cities, each with a population of more than one million. In total, some 108 million Indians, or about 10 per cent of the national population, live in the country’s 35 largest cities.

Threats to Global Cities

Stephen Graham, professor at the Newcastle University writes: “urban modernity, despite its promises of absolute technological and material progress, is actually utterly interwoven with fragility and vulnerability.”

Extrapolating further, Spiller says: “Being chiefly human, cities can be killed.” And Lang does not provide consolation either as he asserts: “All too often, the city’s survival hangs in a precious balance.”

To refer to Graham again, “Cities, warfare and organised political violence have always been mutual constructions.”

Furthermore, on the sidelines of the September 11^th attacks on New York, the old defensive responses to urban terrorism; viz. CCTV, road blocks, heavily controlled street spaces, immigration controls – seemed almost comically irrelevant. Nevertheless, it still does not overtly imply that such seemingly outmoded instruments of anti-terrorism be put in the list of obsolescence altogether.

In these circumstances, terrorism, among other things like poverty and lack of a proper environment, remain as the chief nemesis for the global cities. In this regard, it needs to be understood that all terror attacks on global cities shall not be replicas of September 11 – i.e. of the same magnitude and intensity. For instance, attacks in Karachi, Lahore, Moscow and London ask for following basic approaches in combating terror.

Hence, surveillance and monitoring with the help of CCTV, compounded with grass-roots level human intelligence can be effective tools in thwarting ‘glocal’ (thinking globally and acting locally) terrorist acts.

The peculiar case of India

It is noteworthy that Indian cities, and especially the ‘growing cities’ like Agra, Pune, Patna, Nasik and others are prone to terrorist and insurgent attacks. The repeated bomb blasts in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, with occasional hits at Agra and Pune indicate such a pattern of the non-state actors. Over and above, apart from the well-identified and deadly cross-border bred fundamentalists, Indian cities face terror threat from another quarter. And that comes from the left wing insurgents, popularly called the Maoists.

Mr Vishwaranjan, the top cop of the central Indian province of Chattisgarh, has alleged in early 2011 that the Indian Maoists are seriously building up their urban bases to create a steady supply of logistics, technological help and recruits. In fact, July 2011 reportage in the Indian media says thus: “The Maoists are planning to spread their tentacles in urban areas after years of creating terror in rural pockets.”

The report further informed that at a high-level meeting of senior Maoist leaders held in July 2011, a plan was chalked out to re-organise the set-up of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The Maoists have planned separate sections to look after the affairs of rural as well as the urban areas respectively. A source in the rebel group, according to the report, said that the new plan for urban areas were unveiled from 15^th August 2011 onwards.

As per the plan chalked out for urban areas, the Maoists attempt to have separate area committee, sub-zone, zone, regional and the special area committee. The central committee of the outfit will also have a separate in-charge for the urban affairs. The committees constituted for urban affairs will hold meetings to discuss the public problems in the urban areas. One of the prominent issues that the Maoists envisaged to focus was rehabilitation of the footpath-dwelling population. It was clear from the report that the Maoists planned to raise the banner of insurrection in the Indian cities through popular activism.

Furthermore, in August 2011, while answering questions in the Parliament; junior Home Minister of Indialisted Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai among 10 Indian cities where the presence of guerrillas had been detected.

Hence, it cannot probably be termed as a coincidence that there have been arrests by the Indian Police (between 2007-11), of prominent Maoist leaders from cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nasik, Kolkata, Chandigarh and other urban areas. These are pointers to the fact that the ultras are spreading their wings in cities.

R Venkatramani, a researcher based in New Delhi, articulates at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, that in the Indian cities; “instead of carrying out attacks against symbols of the state, the Maoists are attempting to reach out to intellectuals and academic scholars on the one hand and industrial workers, persons who occupy lower positions in the government and students on the other. In this way, they are seeking to mobilize the urban populace as their patrons, supporters and sympathizers, rather than as armed cadres.”

Thus, the incursion of the Maoists in the cities, in essence, shapes up as a more deep-rooted problem than the known external threat from Islamist fundamentalists. The threat assumes further importance as the ultimate aim of the left wing insurgents is to capture state authority by defeating the government forces in the rural areas in a protracted war and finally zoom in on the cities.

Mao, Che and the Maoist document

As a matter of fact, the Ninth Unity Congress of the Communist Party of India (Maoists) held in early 2007 had resolved to take the struggle into urban areas. The document of the Maoists at the Ninth Congress read thus: “Working class leadership is the indispensable condition for the new Democratic Revolution (NDR) in India. Working class has to send its advanced detachments to rural areas.”

Thus, being the centers of concentration of the industrial proletariat (industrial workers), urban areas play an important part in the political strategy of the NDR. The task of the party in urban areas is to mobilize and organise the proletariat in performing its crucial leadership role.

According to the Indian Maoists, “the specific characteristics of revolutionary war in India is to determine the military strategy as that of protracted people’s war – of establishing revolutionary base areas first in the countryside where the enemy (read the government) is militarily weak and then to gradually surround and capture the cities which are bastions of the enemy forces.”

Thus it is clear from the Maoists’ document that the armed struggle and the movement in the rural areas will play the primary role; whereas the work in the cities will play a secondary role, complementary to the rural work.

In fact, legendary Mao Tse-tung had said: “the final objective of the revolution is the capture of the cities, the enemy’s main bases, and this objective cannot be achieved without adequate work in the cities.” The charismatic Che Guevara too opines: “The importance of the urban struggle is extraordinary.”

The Maoists assess that presently, India has a larger proportion of the population in urban areas and a much larger working class than at the time of the Chinese revolution. This increases the relative importance of urban work in the particular conditions of the Indian revolution.

Nevertheless, in cities, the counter-insurgency state forces are very strong and hence the Maoists are careful while establishing bases. Since a steady supply of urban cadre is necessary to fulfill the needs of the rural movement and to fuel the protracted people’s war, establishment of urban bases is imperative for the Maoists.

Why an Urban Base for the Maoists?

An urban base provides logistical support to the armed struggle, i.e. technical and medical help. It further helps to send cadre to rural areas. The Maoists also plan to infiltrate into enemy organizations like the police, para-military and military. They attempt to do so by conducting propaganda warfare; viz. upholding the problems of the ordinary constables and soldiers.

Thus a favourable condition exists in the urban areas in India for the building of broad mass fronts against the state structures. At least that is the evaluation of the Indian Maoists. It may also be inferred that the Maoists are venturing into the Indian cities with obvious intentions of solidifying and extending their networks and in addition to that, they are in the process of colluding with other terrorist outfits based in the Northeast, Bangladesh and Nepal, which have grave security implications for the Indian state.

In sum, it may be stated that though the fast growing Indian cities are vulnerable from cross-border terror attacks and the blasts may be heard from far off places like New York, yet a much more lethal attack on their very existence comes from the local insurgents. India, at present, finds itself enmeshed in a confrontation of capital-liberalism vs Mao’s communism, entangled in a showdown between city culture and rural squeaks and entwined with the competing branches of growth in gross domestic product and a subversive tendency which wishes to wreck from within the democratic ethos of the nation.

References

(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110726/jsp/bihar/story_14286342.jsp)

(http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/the-naxal-strategy-in-urban-areas-3047.html)

(http://hindu.com/2010/11/10/stories/2010111061111400.htm)

(http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/11/maoists-fanning-into-indian-cities.html)

(http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/GoldenCorridorTurningintoMaoistHub_PVRamana_200511)

(http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_maoists-shifting-base-to-urban-areas-of-uttar-pradesh_1373732)

(http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/maoists-eye-the-cities-3297.html)

On Kishenji

2011-11-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

One of the top Politburo members & a Central Military Commission member of the CPI-Maoist (CPI-M), Kishenji alias Mallojula Koteswar Rao has been reportedly killed by a mammoth operation by security forces in the Jangalmahal area in West Bengal yesterday (24th Nov 2011).

The operation which hemmed in Kishenji on 24th November, was planned in concentric circles. A group of 1000 joint forces (paramilitary and state police) encircled Kishenji and his aide Suchitra in three circles. This made it almost impossible for the elusive leader to evade the clutches of the security forces.

(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/crpf-denies-kishenji-killed-in-fake-encounter/205741-3.html)

He was a major decision-maker for the ultras and was looking after the expansion of the group in the North-East. Presumably, he came from Assam a couple of days back and was convening meetings in West Bengal-Jharkhand border.

The following reasons may be elucidated to have brought his undoing:

1. He was recovering from an injury he suffered last year from an attack by the security forces.

2. Severe intelligence network of the police (across provinces) was tracing him and the moment he came out of his hideout, he became vulnerable

3. He was technology-savvy and that could have helped the police to track his position

4. The closeness of the CPI-Maoist with the Trinamool congress before the assembly polls in Bengal could have worked to their disadvantage. The cadres of the TMC can now very well act as moles (spies) against the Maoists. In fact, there are reports that Kishenji might have been betrayed by his own rank and file.

(http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_kishenji-may-have-been-betrayed-by-his-men_1616992)

What Next?

Well, Kishenji's demise would be a big jolt to the rebels. It would be hard to find a replacement soon as he had become indispensable in the eastern region. However, there is no reason to expect sudden spate of reprisals from the Maoists.

First, they would re-group and Ganapathy (their General Secretary) must be extremely cautious now. They had lost Azad and now Kishenji. Narayan Sanyal and Kobad Ghandy are languishing in jail. Telugu Deepak and Kanchan are also incarcerated. Hence, Ganapthy now has to work with second rung leaders.

Second, by the very principle of guerrilla warfare tactics, the rebels would retaliate in a different venue, different time and different occasion.

The Counterinsurgency Policy

The CI/CT (counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism) policy of the Indian security forces seem to work fine vis-a-vis the Maoists. The recent success of the forces at Saranda forests (Jharkhand); coupled with the annihilation of Cerukuri Rajkumar alias Azad (in 2010) and now Kishenji speaks of the Indian CI/CT policy as toeing the line of WHAM-based counterinsurgency in addition to targeted Killings and incarcerations (the imprisonments of top leaders of the Maoists). At the other end, the state has kept the options of 'talking to the Maoists' an open agenda and is quite rightly moving to a position of strength so as to reach a vantage point and then 'talk' to the rebels.

(http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=details&m_id=970&u_id=136)

WHAM : Winning Hearts and Minds

Urban perspective of the Maoists: an analysis

2011-11-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

Centre for Land Warfare Studies
Article #1996, Nov 13, 2011

http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=997&u_id=136

Incalculable harm was done to the Naxalite movement of the late 1960s and early 70s due to the wrong strategic evaluation of then leaders of the insurrection. Their defective understanding of urban warfare and penchant of initiating a bloody confrontation with the administration in the cities led to their abysmal show. However, after the grand merger of the two major Naxal splinter groups in 2004, a series of bulky documents from the side of the Maoists have made their way into the public domain which speaks volumes of their refined doctrinal position vis-à-vis strategy and tactics, especially for urban areas.

Out of those documents, two merit serious attention and analyses. The first is the “Strategy and Tactics of Indian Revolution” prepared in September, 2004 (henceforth STIR). And the other one came out three years later; termed the “Urban Perspective: Our Work in Urban Areas” (henceforth UPUA). In the backdrop of a recent spate of arrests of Maoist activists from urban areas and cities; it appears that a re-reading of the two documents to decipher the long term strategy of the Indian Maoists has become a necessity.

In STIR, the Maoists stress on the large concentration of the petite bourgeoisie in urban areas of India. It is no wonder that the rebels are still basing their revolutionary tactics on the lower middle class of the Indian society as the French had done on the Sans-culottes in 1789. Further, in STIR, they write with Marxian moorings: “We should not forget the dialectical relationship between the development of the urban movement and the development of the armed agrarian revolutionary war.”

The Maoists admit through STIR that: “In the absence of a strong revolutionary urban movement, the growth of the people’s war will face limitations and difficulties in its advancement”. The pressing question in this context is how the urban work of the Maoists will aid and abet their ongoing rural insurrection?

The answer, though was stated in STIR itself, is far more conspicuous and resolute in UPUA of 2007. The document reads thus: “Working class leadership is the indispensable condition for the new Democratic Revolution (NDR) in India. Working class has to send its advanced detachments to rural areas.” [Section 3.1.1, p 17, UPUA]

Nevertheless, in cities, the counter-insurgency state forces are very strong and hence the Maoists are careful while establishing bases. Nevertheless, since a steady supply of urban cadre is necessary to fulfill the needs of the rural movement and to fuel the protracted people’s war, establishment of urban bases is imperative for the Maoists. [Section 3.5.2.3, p 65, UPUA]

Urban Guerrilla War is far-off

The main challenges that the Maoists face in the urban areas are:

1. Democratic party-system is well entrenched in the cities and urban areas and hence it is extremely tedious to dent the political ethos in cities and towns.

2. Extremely strong administrative machinery exists in these regions and thus counterinsurgency repression assumes gargantuan proportions.

3.
The trade unions, which are potential fertile regions of fomenting dissatisfaction amongst the urban proletariat; already has established political parties ensconced in.The presence of the Maoists in key industries like defence production, telecom, etc is poor.

Undoubtedly, an urban base provides logistical support to the armed struggle, i.e. technical and medical help. It further helps to send cadre to rural areas. The Maoists also plan to infiltrate into enemy organizations like the police, para-military and military in these populous regions. They attempt to do so by conducting propaganda warfare; viz. upholding the problems of the ordinary constables and soldiers.

A favourable condition exists in the urban areas of India for the building of broad mass fronts against the state structures. At least that is the evaluation of the Indian Maoists as articulated through UPUA. It may be inferred that the Maoists are venturing into the Indian cities with obvious intentions of solidifying and extending their networks and in addition to that, they are in the process of colluding with other terrorist outfits based in the Northeast, Bangladesh and Nepal, which have grave security implications for the Indian state.

In STIR, the rebels stress on forming secret party units in the bastis and slums of the urban areas. Their main focus is that of mass political mobilization by inculcating the leadership qualities in the urban working class: the real class, according to Karl Marx, which possesses the ‘consciousness’ of revolution.

The Maoists have realized their folly in the early part of their revolution when they were drastic in having a showdown with the police in the urban areas. Hence, they warn their comrades in STIR: “we cannot and should not, at this stage of the revolution, organize for armed offensive with the state in the urban areas…..”

They accord special emphasis on small towns, small mining centres and areas in the vicinity of their base areas and guerrilla zones. They focus on the formation of both open and secret defence teams to resist state repression.

Party Structure in Urban Areas

The basic task of the Communist Party of India (Maoists) in the urban domain is to deal with the problem of coordination between open and secret work. Another chief component is to retain contacts between city organisation and leadership in the rural areas – the heartland of the insurgency.

In urban areas, they seem to, as per STIR, adhere to the principle of ‘political centralization and organizational decentralization’. That is, their Central Committee contemplates small squad-level groups which would be matured enough to take decisions independently, but along party lines. The squad leaders need not refer to the party high command for all minor issues and day-to-day work.

In UPUA (p 12), they acknowledge that their party’s work and organisation in the cities/towns is extremely weak and generally cannot achieve a dominant position till the final stages of the people’s war. This ‘objective reality’ forces the Maoists to determine a ‘mellowed-down’ long-term policy for urban areas.

However, there have been arrests made by the Indian Police (between 2007-11), of prominent Maoist leaders from cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nasik, Kolkata, Chandigarh and other urban areas. These are pointers to the fact that the ultras are spreading their wings in cities, more so, after the publication of the UPUA.

So, what is the long-term strategy of the Maoists with regard to urban areas?

1. They would hardly adopt a short-term approach of direct confrontation with the state forces in order to achieve ‘quick results’.

2.
T Thus, the threat perception to Indian cities in the form of what we face from the cross-border terrorists is highly unlikely.

3.
Urban terrorism accompanies a substantial amount of collateral damage. That acts as a dampener for the Maoists to go for a Lashkar-esque operation in the cities because such sporadic and wanton acts of terror would create disconnect between the left-wing ultras and the masses: a situation they totally detest.

4.
The Maoists are concentrating on a long-term approach of solidifying their bases in the urban areas.

5.
If at all they have a short-term goal; that has to be to use their urban bases in supplying spare parts, medicines, arms, recruits and ideologues to the rural guerrilla zones.

6.
To further the military objective of the revolution, the Maoists are and surely would strengthen their cyber-warfare strategy.

7.
Propaganda through student-worker organizations would be the mainstay of their strategy for the time being.

8.
Their rural insurgency is in the stage of strategic defense. So, they would very likely continue the above discussed strategy in the urban areas till the rural insurgency reaches the stage of strategic offense.

9.
Till then, the Maoists would try hard to penetrate the white-collar employees, intellectuals and youth so as to bolster their insurgency.

While evaluating the Iraqi insurgency (2003-06), Major Edward Brady in his thesis submitted at the Maxwell Air Force base, Alabama in June 2008; rightly assesses that urban areas provide access to the insurgents to soft targets that could be attacked by small cells. Moreover, easy sanctuaries are provided to the insurgents to thrive in the cities. However, we may safely hypothesize that keeping in mind their historic failure in the 1970s, the Maoists would be reluctant to enact a Baghdad-type insurgency in Indian cities at this stage of their revolution.

Nevertheless, it always could happen that if the top leadership of the Maoists is annihilated by targeted killings/incarcerations, then a breakaway faction could unleash ghastly acts of terror emulating the cross-border militants. That will probably be a cost which we might have to incur in return of the decimation of the insurgency.

In the meantime, police ought to step up its human intelligence network and continue to nab the urban outfits of the Maoists as they had been doing for some time recently. Panic buttons need not be pressed right now. But cognizance must be made of the fact that the spread of the Maoists in the sprawling towns and cities of India could shape up as a major destabilising parameter in the future.

References:

1. http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maoist/documents/papers/Urbanperspective.htm

2. http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maoist/documents/papers/strategy.htm

The New PLAAF: poser or a real danger?

2011-11-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

by Uddipan Mukherjee

The following piece was published in Strategic Affairs in March-April 2011

Whether it was ‘massed manpower’ as the hallmark of Napoleonic Wars or ‘Blitzkrieg’ maneuverability of the Nazi Army in the Second World War, technicalities have manifestly evolved in modern day warfare. Though on the one hand, military theorists postulate a Fourth Generation War (4GW) and the neologism has incidentally nestled itself in strategic jargon because of the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan; the world, on the other hand, is yet not completely bereft of the inherent possibilities of a conventional war.

Post decolonization, the territorial rearrangement of nation-states has given rise to situations wherein one party or the other has faced arraignment in front of arbitration tribunals. In South Asia, India and Pakistan had to digest the dictates and remonstrations of the United Nations on more than one occasion; be it the Kashmir issue or the Nuclear Tests. Since the Cold War did incalculable harm to the concept of ‘comity of nations’, it should have been a natural intellectual derivation to presume an extremely low probabilistic penchant for ‘wars’: either hot or cold, at least among the Third World nation-states after 1991.

However, at present the economic aggrandizement and the concomitant military wherewithal of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) do seem to threaten the geopolitical climate of South and East Asia. China has miles to tread before it can claim a hegemonic status for itself in Asia and as long as the American ‘hyperpower’ exists, the prospects are unlikely to be bright for it. Nevertheless, the displacement of Japan by the PRC as the second largest economy in the globe (at least for one quarter) along with an imposing People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ready for combat role makes China a formidable state-actor in the world and Asia in particular.

The aura of J-20

The US Air Force’s recently retired intelligence chief warned his fellow countrymen regarding the Chinese stealth fighter that had its first test flight on 11 January this year. Lt. Gen David Deptula said the fifth-generation fighter J-20 “may turn out to be a very, very formidable aircraft.”

According to him, the J-20, like the American F-22, would be able to cruise at supersonic speeds at very high altitudes. And in addition, it also possessed the capability to carry more weapons, including types now under development. One was the air-to-air missile with longer ranges than their U.S. counterparts; whereas the other two were the anti-ship and anti-surface weapons.

He also said that such a plane might be used against US sensor aircrafts such as the E-3 Sentry and E-8 JSTARS. Deptula expressed concern that the emergence of both the J-20 and the Russian fifth-generation fighter PAK-FA indicated that the Americans were losing advantage in the fifth generation domain, which they specifically enjoyed for the last 25 years.

Thus the continued air and naval dominance of the US in the Pacific region may be in jeopardy, at least in the foreseeable future. In fact, Deptula’s observations may not be totally unfounded. Moreover, he is not alone to have cast doubts on the ability of the American air and naval forces vis-à-vis the rising Chinese tempo.

In a RAND Corporation presentation released in August 2008, John Stillion and Scott Perdue predicted an ominous future for the US Air Force (USAF) in an eventuality over Taiwan.

According to that study, Chinese anti-access efforts seek to deny U.S. the ability to operate efficiently over Taiwanfrom nearby bases or seas. Large, sophisticated Chinese air, naval and missile forces can mass against small number ofU.S. carriers and air bases in Asia-Pacific.

Many bases of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) are significantly harder than the US Air base at Kadena inJapan. And some PLAAF bases have super-hard underground hangers. Moreover, Kadena is the only USAF base which is within 500 nautical miles (nm) of the Taiwan strait (460 nm). On the other hand, PLAAF has 27 such bases.

Interestingly, USAF fighter operations are most efficient within 500 nm. Hence, this lack of favourable bases for the USAF may turn out to be a stumbling block. Furthermore, USAF makes about 138 sorties over Taiwan Strait per day compared to 1300 per day by the PLAAF. This is due to the help the PLAAF enjoys because of its geographical proximity to the probable war zone and consequently more number of bases at their disposal.

The best case scenario for the US as predicted by Stillion and Perdue is: the Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Missiles and the Stealth Fighters of America work fine whereas that of the Chinese fail. Then only in a likely Taiwan-scenario, a ‘quality’ USAF may defeat a more numerous PLAAF. In addition to that, USAF will very much require secure, close bases. The researchers believe that counter-stealth and counter-BVR technologies are proliferating in a globalized world and thus the classic ‘air superiority’ of the USAF is constantly under threat.

But at present, such a presumption of Stillion and Perdue would hardly hold ground as the Chinese have already flown their first stealth fighter and plan to deploy the first operational J-20 around 2017-19.

The New PLAAF

To substantiate these arguments, it is worthwhile to mention that the PLAAF has improved considerably in the last decade. In 2000, of the estimated 3,200 fighter aircrafts operated by the PLAAF and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), almost all the “fourth-generation” Su-27s (“Flankers”) were imported from Russia. Barely 20 were domestically designed, but were based on the 1950s-era second-generation MiG-19 and MiG-21.

Further, they were dependent on ground-based radar or their largely outdated onboard sensors to locate and identify enemy aircraft, as China had only one operational Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft. In addition, except for the Flankers, they were limited to within-visual-range engagements, as China’s domestically-produced aircraft were not equipped with BVR missiles. China’s electronic warfare capabilities were minimal as well.

However, 10 years down the lane, the picture seems to be quite different. The PLAAF has lost ‘mass’ to stress on efficiency. In fact, it has cut down approximately 100,000 personnel – roughly a quarter of the force – and has halved the size of its fighter force. A top-heavy organizational structure has also been streamlined, with the PLAAF eliminating one entire organizational level – the corps-level.

The number of second-generation fighters in China’s arsenal has been reduced by two-thirds whereas the number of fourth-generation fighters has more than quadrupled.

There have been improvements in other dimensions as well. Many of China’s fighters are now capable of carrying BVR missiles. Also, many Chinese fighter pilots are now believed to receive roughly the same number of training hours as theirU.S. counterparts. Grossly half of all new officers in China’s air forces are now graduates of China’s rigorous civilian universities.

In 2004, China’s National Defense White paper stated that “the Air Force has gradually shifted from one of territorial air defense to one of both offensive and defensive operations.” This programme got a further fillip in 2007 when the Xinhua News Agency announced that an “air intelligence radar network” covering the entire country had been completed.

There is another aspect of PLAAF’s modernization that is noteworthy. During the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, most of the PLAAF’s hardware were imported, largely from Russia, with some technologies and equipment acquired fromIsrael and other countries. In recent years, however, this equipment has increasingly been domestically produced. In the area of fighter aircraft, for example, China now produces a single-engine fighter, the J-10 that is comparable in performance to the U.S. F-16. The J-11B (a heavy fighter) is an improved version of the Russian Su-27. China also produces early warning aircrafts comparable to the U.S. E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 AWACS.

Along with these, China is developing long-endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that are comparable in range and endurance to the U.S. Predator and Global Hawk. In the area of munitions, China now produces a BVR active radar-guided air-to-air missile, the PL-12 which is comparable to the U.S. AMRAAM or Russian R-77 (AA-12).

The upshot is that the new PLAAF no longer belongs to that of the third-world. Improvements in China’s air force capabilities, coupled with improvements in the conventional missile capabilities, mean that an air war with China will be increasingly challenging, even for the Americans.

Further, the Chinese missile threat to the USAF base at Kadena and the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) base at Iwakuni inOkinawa are similar to that faced by Taiwan’s air bases. Combined with the lack of good bases for land-based fighters in the area around Taiwan, the United States is unlikely to be able to counter the Chinese threat in the Taiwan Strait. And this is basically what the RAND study opines. Interestingly, nearly a decade ago, this same institution had predicted an easy victory for the US over China in a war over Taiwan.

Well, the PLAAF has really progressed.

Now, a PLAAF bubbling with a newly acquired arsenal, including Su-27 and J-10 fighters, AA-12 and PL-12 missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles is assumed to defeat the Americans. Actually, the RAND's analysis "suggests that a credible case can be made that the air war for Taiwan could essentially be over before much of the Blue air force has even fired a shot. Threats to Blue air bases paint a very troubling picture."

Lack of Clarity

However, there are problems for China too. In a possible war over Taiwan, China will have to think twice before striking sovereign Japanese territory in Okinawa, or sovereign US territory in Guam. Nevertheless, the major bottleneck in positing any definite outcome in a Taiwan-like eventuality is the lack of transparency exhibited by the Chinese in their defence preparedness.

Though China’s white paper provides a reasonably good discussion of military doctrine and the generic types of capabilities needed to execute doctrinal requirements, it however, falls short compared to some other white papers of Asia-Pacific countries. The PRC’s White Paper hardly discusses how current and projected military capabilities will helpChina attain its national security objectives. In fact, this raises doubts about whether China’s stated objectives are congruent with increasing defense spending.

Such a lack of clarity by the Chinese and their concomitant rise in defence capabilities does not portray an amiable nation-state; neither for the Americans nor for any other Asian power, including India. Naturally, PRC’s proclaimed concept of ‘peaceful rise’ turns out to be more of rhetoric than reality.

Jihadist Threat and Grassroots Defence

2011-10-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Beyond the Cliches

There are many cliches used to describe grassroots jihadists. As we have long discussed, grassroots operatives tend to think globally and act locally — meaning they tend to be inspired by events abroad and yet strike close to home. Additionally, these operatives tend to be a mile wide but an inch deep — meaning that while there are many of them, they are often quite inept at terrorist tradecraft. These cliches are not just cute; they have a sound basis in reality, as a study of grassroots jihadists demonstrates.

There are two basic operational models that involve grassroots jihadists. The first operational model is one where an experienced operational commander is sent from the core al Qaeda group to assist the local grassroots cell. This is what we refer to as the “al Qaeda 1.0 operational model” since it literally is the first one we became familiar with. We saw this model used in many early jihadist operations, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa. It has also been employed in a number of thwarted plots, such as Operation Bojinka in 1995 and the millennium plots in 2000. This model also was used in the thwarted 2006 Heathrow airliner plot.

The second grassroots operational model involves operatives who launch attacks themselves without external funding or direct operational guidance. This is what we refer to as the “al Qaeda 3.0 operational model.” Examples of attacks committed using this model include the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York, the July 21, 2005, London bombings, the July 2002 armed assault of the El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport and the botched June 2007 bombing attacks in London and Glasgow.

Something of a gray area exists around the borders of these two operational models, and at times it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other. For example, Mohammed Siddique Khan, the leader of the cell that carried out the July 7, 2005, London suicide bombings, had attended training camps in Pakistan with another member of the cell. While there, he had at least some contact with al Qaeda, since al Qaeda released a copy of the martyrdom videos the two made during their time in Pakistan.

Notably, these attacks show that most of these grassroots jihadists, whether as part of a 1.0 or a 3.0 structured cell, selected targets in close proximity to their place of residence. Even when such cells have established safe houses to store chemicals, to manufacture improvised explosive mixtures or to construct improvised explosive devices, those safe houses quite often have been close to the target and the attacker’s residence. Grassroots jihadists really do think globally and act locally.

A second notable aspect of several of these attacks is that these operatives lack terrorist tradecraft such as operational security and surveillance techniques. Blunders in these areas have frequently led to the groups being identified and nabbed before they could launch their attacks. Plain old police traffic stops have exposed jihadist cells such as the Virginia Jihad Network and have helped to thwart several other terror plots.

Even when a grassroots group is able to execute its attack without detection, it often has been hampered by a lack of bomb-making skill. The failed July 21, 2005, London bombings and the June 2007 London and Glasgow attacks exemplify this flaw. Grassroots groups simply do not have the same level of training and operational experience as the professional operatives comprising the core al Qaeda group. Operationally, they are a mile wide and tend to be an inch deep.

Another consideration that comes to light while contemplating past grassroots cases is that lacking funding from al Qaeda core, grassroots operatives are likely to indulge in petty crimes such as credit card theft, cargo theft or armed robbery to fund their activities. For example, in July 2005, a grassroots cell in Torrance, Calif., was uncovered during an investigation into a string of armed robberies. After arresting one suspect, Levar Haney Washington, police who searched his apartment uncovered material indicating that Washington was part of a militant jihadist group planning to attack a number of targets in the Los Angeles area.

Truthfully, most grassroots operatives are far more likely to commit a criminal act such as document fraud or receiving stolen property than they are to have telephone conversations with Osama bin Laden. When they do commit such relatively minor crimes, it is local cops rather than some federal agency that will have the first interaction with them. This means that local police are an important piece of the counterterrorism defenses — they are, in essence, grassroots defenders.

Beyond Grassroots Jihadists

A recent study led by Brent Smith of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas’ Fulbright College suggests that these trends extend beyond the grassroots jihadist threat. In a July article in the National Institute of Justice Journal, Smith noted that his research team studied 60 terrorist incidents in the United States over the past 25 years. The terrorist actors were from a cross-section of different ideological backgrounds, including domestic left-wing, domestic right-wing, domestic single-issue and international terrorists.

In the study, Smith and his colleagues identified the residences of 431 terrorist suspects and found that, overall, 44 percent of the attacks were conducted within 30 miles of the perpetrator’s place of residence and 51 percent were conducted within 90 miles of the residence. When broken down by type, the numbers were actually highest for international terrorists, with 59 percent of the suspects living within 30 miles of their target and 76 percent of the suspects residing within 90 miles.

Smith’s study also noted that many of the preparatory actions for the attacks occurred close to the attack site, with 65 percent of the environmental terrorists and 59 percent of the international terrorists studied conducting preparations for their attacks within 30 miles of their target sites. Of course, some preparatory actions, such as preoperational surveillance, by their very nature must be conducted within close proximity to the attack site. But still, the percentage of activity conducted near attack sites is noteworthy.

One other interesting result of Smith’s study was the timeline within which preparation for an attack was completed. For international groups, the preparation could take a year or more. But environmentalist and left-wing groups proved to be far more spontaneous, with a large portion of their preparation (88 and 91 percent, respectively) completed within two weeks of the attack. This means that prior to an attack, international terrorists are generally vulnerable to detection for far longer than are members of a domestic left-wing or environmentalist group.

Application

While there are always exceptions to the percentages, with people like Timothy McVeigh and Mohammed Atta traveling long distances to conduct preparatory acts and execute attacks, most people conducting terrorist attacks tend to operate in areas they are familiar with and environments they are comfortable in.

When we examine the spectrum of potential terrorist actors — from domestic people such as McVeigh and Eric Rudolph to international figures such as Mohammed Atta and Ahmed Ajaj — it is clear that a large number of them have had no prior interaction with federal law enforcement or intelligence officials and therefore no prior record identifying them as potential terrorism suspects. That means that even if they were stopped by a local police officer (as Atta was for driving without a license), any national-level checks would turn up negative. Because of this, it is extremely important for police officers and investigators to trust their instincts and follow up on hunches if a subject just doesn’t feel right. The Oklahoma state trooper who arrested McVeigh, the New Jersey state trooper who nabbed Yu Kikumura, or the rookie Murphy, N.C., officer who apprehended Eric Rudolph are all examples of cops who did this.

Of course, following your instincts is difficult to do when management is pressuring police officers and agents investigating cases such as document and financial fraud to close cases and not to drag them out by pursuing additional leads. Indeed, when Ahmed Ajaj was arrested in September 1992 for committing passport fraud, the case was quickly closed and authorities pretty much ignored that he had been transporting a large quantity of jihadist material, including bomb-making manuals and videos. Instead, he was sentenced to six months in jail for committing passport fraud and was then scheduled for deportation.

Had authorities taken the time to carefully review the materials in Ajaj’s briefcase, they would have found two boarding passes and two passports with exit stamps from Pakistan. Because of that oversight, no one noticed that Ajaj was traveling with a companion — a companion named Abdel Basit who entered the United States on a fraudulent Iraqi passport in the name Ramzi Yousef and who built the large truck-borne explosive device used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

While many state and local departments have specialized intelligence or counterterrorism divisions, training on how to spot potential terrorist preparatory activity often does not go much further than those officers specifically assigned to the counterterrorism portfolio. In some jurisdictions, however, law enforcement managers not only give investigators the leeway to investigate potential terrorist activity, they also encourage their street officers to do so — and even provide training on how to identify such behavior.

In many jurisdictions, serious problems in information sharing persist. Much has been written about “the wall” that separated the FBI’s intelligence investigations from its criminal investigations and how that separation was detrimental to the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts prior to 9/11. The FBI is not the only place such a wall exists, however. In many state and local law enforcement departments, there is still a wide gulf separating the intelligence or counterterrorism division officers and the rest of the department. This means that information regarding cases that general crimes investigators are looking into — cases that very well could have a terrorism angle — does not make it to the officers working terrorism cases.

As the shift toward grassroots operatives continues, information pertaining to preparatory crimes will become even more critical. Identifying this activity and flagging it for follow-on investigation could mean the difference between a thwarted and a successful attack. As the grassroots threat emerges, the need for grassroots defense has never been greater.

Read more: The Jihadist Threat and Grassroots Defense | STRATFOR

This is republished with the permission of STRATFOR

Decoding the Manchester Plot

2011-10-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

On April 8, British authorities mounted a series of raids in Merseyside, Manchester and Lancashire that resulted in the arrest of 12 men suspected of being involved in a plot to conduct attacks over the Easter holiday weekend. In a press conference the following day, Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that the men arrested were allegedly involved in “a very big terrorist plot.” British authorities have alleged that those arrested sought to conduct suicide bombing attacks against a list of soft targets that included shopping centers, a train station and a nightclub.

The searches and arrests targeting the suspects purportedly involved in the plot, which was dubbed Operation Pathway, had to be accelerated after Bob Quick, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in charge of terrorism investigations, inadvertently allowed reporters to see a classified document pertaining to the operation as he was entering 10 Downing Street to brief Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on April 8. An embarrassed Quick resigned April 9 over the gaffe.

In spite of the leak, the British authorities were successful in detaining all of the targeted suspects, though the authorities have reportedly not been able to recover explosive material or other bomb-making evidence they were seeking. British authorities arrested 12 suspects, 11 of whom were Pakistani citizens. Smith told British Parliament on April 20 that all 11 of the Pakistani nationals entered the United Kingdom on student visas. The youngest of the Pakistani suspects, who is reportedly still a teenager, was remanded to the custody of British immigration authorities to face deportation proceedings April 9. The rest of the 11 suspects were released by British authorities April 21, though ten reportedly were placed in the custody of immigration officials.

Many of the specific details of the plot have not yet come out, and due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence sources and methods involved in these types of investigations, more details may never be fully divulged now that there will be no criminal trial. However, when viewed in the historical and tactical context of other terror plots and attacks (in the United Kingdom and elsewhere), there are some very interesting conclusions that can be drawn from this series of events and the few facts that have been released to the public so far.

This case also highlights the tension that exists within the counterterrorism community between advocates of strategies to disrupt terrorist attacks and those who want to ensure that terror suspects can be convicted in a court of law.

Targets

Among of the most significant things that have come to light so far regarding the thwarted plot are the alleged targets. According to press reports, the British MI5 surveillance teams assigned to monitor the activities of the purported plotters observed some of them videotaping themselves outside of the Arndale and Trafford shopping centers in Manchester, as well as at St. Ann’s Square, which lies in the center of Manchester’s main shopping district. Other reports suggest that the plotters had also conducted surveillance of Manchester’s Piccadilly train station, an intercity train station that is one of the busiest in the United Kingdom outside London, and Manchester’s Birdcage nightclub.

These targets are significant for several reasons. First, they are all soft targets — that is, targets with very little security. As STRATFOR has pointed out for several years now, since counterterrorism efforts have been stepped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and as the tactical capability of groups like al Qaeda has been degraded, jihadist operatives have had less success targeting hardened targets and have turned instead to striking soft targets.

While authorities have moved to protect high-value targets, there simply are far too many potential targets to protect them all. Governments are stretched thin just trying to protect important government buildings, bridges, dams, nuclear power plants, airports and mass-transit systems in their jurisdiction. The reality on the ground is that there are not nearly enough resources to protect them all, much less every potential location where people concentrate in large groups — like shopping centers and nightclubs. This means that some targets are unprotected and are therefore, by definition, soft.

The selection of soft targets in this case indicates that the alleged Manchester plotters did not possess the operational capability to strike more strategic, high-value targets. While attacks against soft targets can be tragic and quite bloody, they will not have the same effect as a successful attack on high-value targets such as Parliament, the London Stock Exchange or a nuclear power station.

It is also very interesting that the plotters were purportedly looking to hit soft targets in Manchester and not soft targets in London. London, as the capital and a city that has been the center of several plots and attacks, is generally on a higher alert than the rest of the country and therefore would likely be seen as more difficult to target. Additionally, many of the suspects lived in the Manchester area, and as we have previously discussed, grassroots operatives, who are not as well-trained as their transnational brethren, tend to “think globally and act locally,” meaning that they tend to plan their attacks in familiar places where they are comfortable operating, rather than in strange and potentially more hostile environment.

In addition to targeting locations like shopping centers and the train station, where there were expected to be large crowds over the holiday weekend, the alleged plotters also apparently looked at the Birdcage nightclub, an establishment that is famous for its “flamboyant and spectacular” shows featuring female impersonators. This is a location the alleged plotters likely considered a symbol of Western decadence (like establishments that serve alcohol in Muslim countries).

Flawed Tradecraft

As noted above, the alleged plotters had been under surveillance by MI5. This indicates that their operational security had been compromised, either via human or technical means. Furthermore, the suspects did not appear to possess any surveillance detection capability — or even much situational awareness — as they went out into Manchester to conduct pre-operational surveillance of potential targets while under government surveillance themselves. Furthermore, the suspects’ surveillance techniques appear to have been very rudimentary in that they lacked both cover for action and cover for status while conducting their surveillance operations.

This aspect of the investigation reinforces two very important points that STRATFOR has been making for some time now. First, most militant groups do not provide very good surveillance training and as a result, poor surveillance tradecraft has long proven to be an Achilles’ heel for militants. Second, because of this weakness, countersurveillance operations can be very effective at catching militant operatives when they are most vulnerable — during the surveillance phase of the terrorist attack cycle.

Media reports indicated that during Operation Pathway, British authorities intercepted a series of Internet exchanges between the suspects suggesting a terror strike was imminent. Furthermore, among the locations raided April 8 was the Cyber Net Cafe in Cheetham Hill, an establishment where British authorities observed the suspects using computers to communicate. Not only is this electronic surveillance significant in that it allowed the authorities to surmise the approximate timing of the attack, but perhaps just as important, this ability to monitor the suspects’ communications will allow the authorities to identify other militants in the United Kingdom and beyond.

Indeed, in several previous cases related to the United Kingdom, such as the investigations involving the U.S. arrest of Mohammed Junaid Babar and the U.K. arrest of Younis Tsouli, authorities were able to use communications from militant suspects to identify and roll up militant cells in other countries. Therefore, we will not be at all surprised to hear at some point in the future that British authorities were able use the communications of the recently arrested suspects to tip off authorities in the United States, Canada, other European countries or elsewhere about the militant activities of people the suspects were in contact with.

Links to Pakistan

And speaking of elsewhere, as noted above, 11 of the arrested suspects were Pakistani nationals who entered the U.K. on student visas. At this point it is not exactly clear if the British believe the 11 suspects were radical militants specifically sent to the United Kingdom to conduct attacks or if they arrived without malicious intent and were then radicalized in the Petri dish of Islamist extremism that so rapidly replicates inside the British Muslim community — what we have come to refer to as Londonistan.

Many British lawmakers and media reports have made a huge issue out of the fact that 11 of the alleged plotters entered the United Kingdom on student visas, but even if the suspects were radicals who used student visas as a way to enter the United Kingdom, this is by no means a new tactic as some are reporting. STRATFOR has long discussed the use of student visas, bogus political asylum claims and other forms of immigration fraud that have commonly been used by militants. In fact, there have been numerous prior examples of jihadist operatives using student visas, such as the following:

While Sept. 11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi initially entered the United States on tourist visas, they were approved for M-1 student visas shortly before carrying out their attacks.

Youssef Samir Megahed, who was arrested in possession of an improvised explosive device (IED) in August 2007 and later sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence, was a Kuwaiti engineering student who entered the United States on a student visa.

Mohammed Aatique, a convicted member of the “Virginia Jihad Network” who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy and weapons violations, also entered the United States from Pakistan as an engineering student.

In some ways, connections between the alleged plotters and militant groups in Pakistan such as al Qaeda or the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would be more analytically significant than if they turn out to be grassroots operatives. The operational security, skills and terrorist tradecraft exhibited by the plotters are about what one would expect to see in a grassroots militant organization. This level of sophistication is, however, far less than one would expect from a transnational organization. Therefore, if this was an al Qaeda operation, it shows how far the group has fallen in the past eight years. If it was the TTP, it means that our previous estimate of their operational ability outside of Pakistan was fairly accurate.

Lack of Evidence

To date, the British authorities have not been able to find the explosive material and IED components they were expecting to find. This might mean that the materials may still be hidden somewhere and could be used in a future attack. It is also quite possible, and perhaps more likely, that this lack of evidence is an indication that the plot was not quite as far along as the British authorities believed. Perhaps the references the suspects allegedly made to launching the attack on a bank holiday pertained to a holiday later in the year.

While the plot as described by the British authorities would not have been a significant, strategic threat to the United Kingdom, it could have been quite deadly and could very well have surpassed the July 7, 2005, attacks in terms of final body count. Because of this potential destruction, it is quite possible that the British government decided to err on the side of disruption rather than on the side of prosecution. This is something we have seen in the investigation of several other plots in recent years in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, perhaps most notably in the August 2006 Heathrow plot, in which a cell of operatives was preparing to bomb a series of trans-Atlantic airline flights using liquid explosives.

It is much more difficult to obtain a conviction for a conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism than it is to obtain a conviction for an attack that was successfully conducted. Once the attack is executed, there is no longer much room to wrangle in court over things such as intent or capability. Governments also frequently know things via intelligence they cannot prove to the standards required for a conviction in a court of law.

This was seen in the Heathrow case, where only three of the eight suspects were convicted of the main charges during that trial, which ended in September 2008. (The other five suspects had pled guilty to lesser charges.) During that case there was reportedly some tension between the U.S. and British authorities over when to wrap up the Heathrow plotters — some of the British apparently wanted to wait a while longer to secure more damning evidence, while the Americans were reportedly more interested in ensuring that the plot was disrupted than they were in obtaining convictions. It is likely the same dynamic was at play during the investigation of the Manchester case.

Although Quick’s disclosure did hasten the launch of Operation Pathway by a few hours, it did not significantly alter the timing of the investigation — the British authorities were preparing to execute an array of searches and arrests. From an ethical standpoint (and, not insignificantly in this day and age, a political aspect) it is deemed better by many to disrupt a plot early and risk the terror suspects being acquitted than it is to accidentally allow them to conduct an attack while waiting to gather the evidence required for an ironclad court case. Disruption can have an impact on the success of prosecutions, but in the eyes of a growing number of policymakers, that impact is offset by the lives it saves.

Read more: Disruption vs. Prosecution and the Manchester Plot | STRATFOR

This is republished with the permission of STRATFOR

diplostratics

What is the Chongqing Model?

STRATFOR's paper on the domestic-consumption led growth model in China

Summary

Analysis

An Unorthodox New Direction

Beijing Takes Notice

Kishenji, Maoists and the Battle Ahead

Insurgencies – Trajectories in 2012

The Maoist movement in India – government apathy, tribal insurrection or ideological dogmatism?

Maoists, North-East and China

Gandhi Peace Award and Adivasi Consciousness

India’s Approach to Counterinsurgency and the Naxalite Problem

Oct 31, 2011Author: Sameer Lalwani

Naxalite Wars Of Lions & Donkeys

Galula and his COIN

Introduction

The "Laws"

Counterinsurgency "in the Cold"

Counterinsurgency "in the Heat"

Tactics

Conclusion

Cities Under Siege

pp 60 - 62, Geopolitics, December 2011

http://www.geopolitics.in/dec2011.aspx

On Kishenji

Urban perspective of the Maoists: an analysis

The New PLAAF: poser or a real danger?

Jihadist Threat and Grassroots Defence

Beyond the Cliches

Beyond Grassroots Jihadists

Application

Decoding the Manchester Plot

Targets

Flawed Tradecraft

Links to Pakistan

Lack of Evidence

Oct 31, 2011
Author: Sameer Lalwani