Homeland Security

Naxalism: Revisiting the Principles of Fourth-Generation Warfare
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Issue Courtesy: Aakrosh | Date : 18 Jul , 2011

So, while they are trying to spread their bases to as many districts as possible, they are mindful of doing it covertly, hiding in jungles. Besides, they proclaim that their objective is to establish “people’s government through people’s war,” propagating that this is the only way by which true justice could be given to tribals. So, what Maoism in India is doing is avoiding direct conflict with the state while simultaneously waging a war against the state.

The idea of “peoples” government’ propagated by the Naxalites is part of a broader strategy pursued by nonstate actors all over the world for achieving their objectives. If one tries to analyse the idea represented in the CPI-M party programme, one gets the feeling that its strategy well resonates with the strategy propounded by al-Suri10 for creating “global jihad,” wherein he says that the different groups fighting the state will be connected by ideology rather than by any hierarchical principles and organisations.11 The idea of al-Suri has been well documented by Cruickshank and Ali,12 wherein they have mentioned that the “The morphing of Al Qaeda from an organization with its own Afghanistan-based bureaucracy, hierarchies and modus operandi into an ideological umbrella for more loosely tied jihadists around the world, is by now a familiar story.”

The rural hinterlands of India have for centuries been left untouched not merely by the Indian government but also by the British government for many reasons.

The same analogy holds true for the Maoists in India. The Maoists openly express their solidarity with and support for all the separatist and revolutionary movements not only in India but all over the world. It has been clearly laid down in the party programme of CPI-M that “One could not move a single step towards revolution in any country without fighting and defeating it. Hence the Indian proletariat must fight against both ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ opportunism in advancing the class struggle and the revolutionary war. The party, while drawing lessons from the past revolutions, and later, from the restoration of capitalism in Russia and China, must uphold the relevance of the most modern experiences of the GPCR particularly in the struggle against revisionism. Thus, it has to build unity with all the genuine Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, groups and forces in the world today. It also has to establish unity with the proletariat, oppressed nations and oppressed people of the whole world. By uniting with them and through the practice of learning from each other, it forms part of the global struggle to eliminate imperialism and counter revolutionary forces from the world.”13 So, what Maoism is trying to achieve is to build a loose network of like-minded revolutionary groups across the world linked through ideology and not through any hierarchical structural network (another tenet of fourth-generation warfare). These tactics of Maoists gel well with the principle of decentralisation of the command and control structure practiced in guerrilla warfare.

The offensive is against the Naxalites who are waging a guerrilla warfare based on principles of fourth-generation warfare, misleading the tribals and using them to achieve their well-laid-out objectives. The sooner the states realise it, the better it will be for the counterinsurgency forces that are facing casualties every day in their fight against the Naxals.

The Naxalites’ strategy of extending their network across the borders is revealed through the group’s collaboration with foreign terrorists and insurgent groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and LTTE. The arrest of Azam Ghouri, a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist, revealed that before his arrest, he had a meeting with important People’s War Group (PWG) leaders in Warrangal and Nizamabad districts of Andhra Pradesh, where they discussed the supply of arms and explosives to the Naxalite groups.14 Not only this, the Maoists also have established relations with Indian separatist groups like United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Bodo Liberation Tigers Force (BLTF) and Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), whose collaboration with the Maoists of Nepal is an open fact. Besides, the Maoists in India have maintained cordial relations with the left revolutionary movement going in other parts of the world also. This becomes evident when one goes through the message released by the Peru People’s Movement (MPP) on 2 December 2009, wherein it not only sends regrets to the Maoists of India for not attending its convention against war on people, held in New Delhi, but also promises full support to the movement. To quote, “Very unfortunately it was not possible for us to attend your very timely and important meeting, but we send you this message as an expression of our deep felt solidarity and agreement with your aims and purpose . . . The Indian revolution and the people of India are truly powerful and we are sure that they will defeat the reactionaries. In doing so, they should always feel assured that they can count on the support by the Peruvian revolution and the people of Peru who wage the people’s war against the same enemies.”15

It is being debated in the civil rights group and even among sections of the government that it is the failure of the government of India in delivering to the tribals what happens to be their due rights of land and natural resources that has led to the Maoists taking up arms against the state time and again. Part of the reason happens to be true. It is true that the government since independence has tended to ignore the rights of the tribals and has also not tried to bring them into the mainstream of the society, which provided the Maoists some reason to make inroads among the tribals, making them conscious of their rights, as reflected in the first peasantry rebellion in the state of Andhra Pradesh against the tyrannical and feudal rule of the Nizam. But there also happens to be another side of the story. Maoism pronounces asymmetric armed rebellion against the state in which the Maoists are advised to look for the weakest point where they can hit. The rural hinterlands of India have for centuries been left untouched not merely by the Indian government but also by the British government for many reasons. These places were located in areas where there were no roads and infrastructure built and also the tribals practiced their own customs and laws, which the British India was not ready to tamper with. The Indian government after independence continued the same policy, as a consequence of which, these areas remained isolated from modern developments. There were no roads, no hospitals, no courts and no police stations in these areas, and even if there were any; they were too far away for the tribals to commute to. In a nutshell, government authority or presence in these areas was the weakest, which gave the Maoists what they had been looking for—the weakest nerve of the government, which they could utilise to further their objective of armed rebellion.

Offensive against the Naxalites will never succeed until the forces dealing with them have an understanding of their basic strategy and tactics”¦

The above analysis could even be culled out from the arguments put forth by the Naxalites, wherein they have affirmed that “Our class enemies-imperialism, comprador big bourgeoisie and feudalism-have built up their strong bases in big cities where their armed state machinery is very strong. In such a situation, the party of the proletariat has no other way but to take the path of protracted people’s war, just as in China, to advance the revolution towards victory i.e. to liberate the rural areas first and then having expanded the base areas-the centre of democratic power in rural areas- advance towards countrywide victory through encircling and capturing the cities”16 (taken from Maoists’ document issued after the merger of the two factions of PWG and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) into CPI-M). So, Maoists have played the rules of asymmetry very carefully, and if there were no villages with population with grievances against the state, they would have found some other weak points where they could have played their game of asymmetry and that is what modern terrorists are doing, destroying public places and killing civilians which are symbols of government authority and simultaneously easily accessible to strike at.

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The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

Vinita Priyedarshi

Vinita Priyedarshi is a well known research scholar who is presently, doing research on fourth-generation warfare and case studies of counterinsurgency in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Northern Ireland.

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