Well, shades of the 1960s. This appeared in the recent "Winds of War" briefing, but I thought I'd expand on it a bit because it's worth an independent reference.
Calling it India's "single biggest internal security challenge," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently suggested setting up of joint unified commands in areas badly hit by Maoist terrorism. Dr Singh expressed concern over the changing character of Naxalism (Maoist ideology in India) into militarisation with "superior army style organisation, better trained cadres, attacks on large targets through large scale frontal assaults, better coordination and possible external links. We must recognise that such extremism is a threat to our democracy, our way of life," he said.
Gee, I wonder what "external links" he could possibly be referring to?
It's also noteworthy that we're seeing regional coordination beyond India, not to mention some Islamist alliances. Yes, I know communists and Islamists are ideologically hostile to each other. They, on the other hand, seem less concerned about that and more concerned with their common enemy. Funny how that goes...
The Naxalites comprise a number of groups, some of which are supported via the United Liberation Front of Asom, a Marxist group which is strongly believed to receive assistance from Pakistan's ISI and other Islamist groups like MULFA.
The regional coordination is coming via the Coordination Committes of Maoist Parties and Orgainsations (CCOMPOSA) mechanism, in much the same way that Islamists pursue pan-regional Islamic jihad in Central Asia/Chechnya and in Southeast Asia. As Marxists, however, they're compelled to create formal and unpronounceable committees to coordinate this, rather than handling such things quietly and informally.
More than 10 Indian provinces (plus surrounding states like Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka) are affected by Maoist violence, which has killed thousands of people in the last 10 years. Visit Naxal Terror Watch for a blog dedicated to covering this phenomenon over the longer term.
On the good news front, India recently agreed on a 14-point policy to combat the Naxalite threat, and they're having some success.
Glad to hear it. Maoism and its close variants comprise the most cruel, destructive, and evil ideology ever devised by humankind.
UPDATE: Over at The Moderate Voice, there's an essay on this subject by Indian journalist Swaraaj Chauhan about The Siege Within!
Leave a comment
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.