This map, taken from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, shows the geographical spread of India’s Maoist insurgency.

Massacre: 55 police killed in Chattisgarh

I started writing this post in November last year, but thought I’d wait until India’s Maoist rebels were back in the news to actually post it. Last week a female Naxalite assassinated one of the Members of the Lok Sabha for Jharkand, Sunil Kumar Mahato. And yesterday Maoists in Chattisgarh carried out one of their biggest ever attacks, using rockets and firebombs to overrun and destroy a police outpost. 55 were killed, including 15 from the Chattisgarh Armed Forces and 40 Special Police from the tribal anti-Maoist militia, Salwa Judum. Just 11 escaped without injury. Apparently the roads surrounding the camp were blocked with huge logs and landmines, to prevent reinforcement. Reports suggest that some of the bodies were mutilated.
In other news, the tension surrounding development in India was underlined by the killing of 14 rioters by police, during protests against industrialization in West Bengal. A strike was declared inr response, whch paralysed the entire state including Kolkata, and transport infrastructure was blocked or sabotaged to enforce the strike.

Development, or at least the way in which it is occurring, is not seen as desirable by many of the poorest Indians, and ironically some of the most tense areas are in Communist-ruled states like West Bengal. These poor communities provide fertile recruiting ground for radical groups like the Maoists.

And the Cental government has shown a serious lack of resolve in responding to the threat – for example, no reinforcements were sent to the besieged camp in Chattisgarh, UAVs supplied to affected states have been grounded due to a lack of coordination with ground forces, and the Salwa Judum – the main counter-insurgency effort in many areas – consists mostly of teenagers armed with bows and arrows. The effort is poor enough to justify questioning the governments will to fight the Maoists.

The Maoist/Naxal movement

The Economist has a useful backgrounder on the Maoists. They originate from a peasant rebellion in Naxalbari in 1967, hence the name Naxals or Naxalites, and they originally received support from China. China’s strategic interests changed, though, and without state support, the movement nearly died out. Until today.

In 2004 the two largest Maoist factions merged, and since then the conflict has escalated. In 2006, nearly 800 people were killed. The Maoists have become more high-tech, with a web presence and supporters in major cities. Many of their cadres are armed with machetes and axes, but assault rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers have become more common, and their roadside IED attacks have become more deadly.

According to the Indian Prime Minister, Naxalism and terrorism are the two biggest threats to Indian national security. But why? 700 people is nothing compared to India’s population of over 1 billion, and unlike Islamist terrorists or Pakistan, the Maoist attacks have been restricted to remote, underdeveloped rural areas.

The answer is economic. India’s prosperity is based on globalization – the economy relies on a few major cities which generate foreign investment through exports and outsourcing. The Maoists are ideologically opposed to globalization, economic inequality, development, and multi-national corporations. And they may be developing the ability to strike at the most vulnerable nodes of India’s economy.

Targeting globalization

Last November, the Maoists hijacked and looted trains, and kidnapped one of the top executives of Hindalco. Attacks on trains became more frequent last year, so much so that the paramilitary Railway Protection Force has been ordered to raise more battalions and start training for hostage situations. Earlier this year, there were some major attacks on mining camps and facilities, thought to be for the purpose of extortion and the theft of explosives.

The South Asia Terrorism Portal has some analysis of the economic aspects of the Maoist insurgency. While they have issued threats, there have been few attacks against multi-national corporations since the October, 2001 bombing of a Coca-Cola plant. Most attacks aimed at economic targets have been related to extortion of domestic companies. The insurgency can be seen as a resource war, where lootable resources provide income for the insurgents, and unlootable resources are an opportunity to extort funds from legitimate businesses:

…some of the districts worst affected by Maoist violence in different States are those that account for a high percentage of forest cover, mineral wealth and, crucially, a substantial tribal population.

It seems like the Maoists have combined the original People’s War strategy of gradually surrounding cities from the countryside with the extortion and black market deals used in resource wars in Nigeria, Colombia and so on. The involvement with the black market – with corrupt officials and transnational criminals – reflects developments in Islamic terrorism directed at India, too. Organized crime has been linked to many of India’s worst terrorist attacks, and apparently they are now paying people to plant bombs. Some arms trading and other contact between leftist and Islamist elements has been uncovered, suggesting that India’s insurgencies are developing a Global-Guerrilla style bazaar of violence.

Also according to the Global Guerrilla analysis (which is only one possible approach) we should see increased infrastructure targeting and attacks on corporate psychology, in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy fo the central government, and discourage foreign investment.

The government response to this has been to employ loyalist paramilitaries (Salwa Judum). John Robb’s analysis covers this as well – loyalist paramilitary groups can be effective for the same reason as the guerrillas – light, decentralised and adaptive. Unfortunately, according to Robb, this approach tends to cause institutionalized corruption, human rights abuses and long-term instability.

The future: paralysing vital urban infrastructure?

India’s major cities, like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata, are vitally important economically, and contain over 30% of India’s 1 billion plus population. Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, handles 60% of trade and contributes 40% of all income tax revenue. These cities, often with aging infrastructure and massive populations, are the vulnerable parts of India’s massive, fast-growing economy. Ambitious Maoists attempting to stop rural development at its source would do well to look at harming these cities. And a strategy of surrounding major cities and attacking their infrastructure would fit well with People’s War theory.

The vulnerability of India’s urban infrastructure to disruption was demonstrated by the West Bengal strike yesterday. Not only the strike, but the blockage of major highways and the sabotage of buses, trains and overhead lines caused Kolkata – a city of over 10 million – to effectively grind to a halt.

Some insight into the consequences of a sustained attack on urban infrastructure can be gained by looking at the impact of the 2005 Mumbai floods. Islamic terrorists, of course have already attacked Mumbais infrastructure in the simultaneous 2006 train bombings. The effects of the floods included:

• ATM networks and banking made impossible across large areas of India due to the failure of central systems in Mumbai.
• The premier stock exchanges of India were seriously disrupted.
• Domestic and international airports shut for more than 30 hours, with over 700 flights cancelled.
• Rail disrupted and long-distance trains cancelled.
• Mumbai-Pune expressway shut for 24 hours.
• 5 million mobile and 2.3 million landline connections disrupted.
• .in DNS servers shut down.
• Tens of thousands of buses, autorickshaws, local trains, trucks and taxis damaged.

One of the reasons the floods caused such damage was the aging state of the stormwater and drainage system. Aging infrastructure heightens the threat to Indian cities. A sustained campaign to bomb train and road links, sabotage telecommunications, attack financial targets and disrupt airports could cause serious damage to India’s economic growth. By taking the war to the cities, the Maoists could greatly increase their political and financial leverage.

Better dead than red: the rising threat of leftist terror worldwide

India’s Maoist and Naxalite groups form part of a broader picture of global leftist extremism. While leftist groups were hit hard by the lack of state sponsorship following China’s reforms and collapse of the Soviet Union, leftist terrorist and insurgent groups still exist, and show signs of increasing their activities. Venezuela, Cuba and so on form part of a leftist revival in Latin America, as well, and Venezuela along with leftist groups around the world have connections with, and sympathy for, Iran and Islamic extremists. Anti-Americanism, environmentalism and animal-rights are beginning to inspire single-issue violent groups in the West, too, and there is a violent fringe in the anti-globalization movement. The potential success of leftist insurgency in Nepal, India and elsewhere is likely to inspire similar actions worldwide.

Posted by Phil on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 1:33 pm.