SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 3, No. 19, November 22, 2004

 

INDIA

Naxalites: While We Were Sleeping
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

In the first operation of this magnitude in Uttar Pradesh; their first major strike since the unification of two major Left Wing extremist (Naxalite) groups - the Communist Party of India - Marxist-Leninist Peoples' War (or Peoples War Group, PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) - under the banner of the Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-Maoist); and one of their most significant strikes against Security Forces since the commencement of the 'peace process' in Andhra Pradesh, militants of the CPI-Maoist ambushed and killed 17 policemen in cold blood on November 20, 2004, at a culvert in the Chandauli District of India's largest (and among its worst-governed) state(s).

A reported eyewitness account of one of the survivors is chilling: Some 31 personnel of the PAC Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and from police posts in Chandoli and Mughalsarai were traveling in a convoy of two jeeps and a truck. The jeeps managed to pass the culvert, but as the truck crossed over, a landmine went off. However, none of the men died in the explosion. They were injured. The policemen in the jeeps fled in fear on seeing an estimated 50 to 150 Naxalites gunning for the survivors. The Naxalites then rounded up the wounded and killed each one by shooting them in the head.

Police authorities in the State have blamed the incident on an 'intelligence failure', admitting that they were several portents of escalating Naxalite violence in the area. On November 19, the Naxalites had attacked a Forest Department outpost in the District and had killed two forest guards. Later, the same night, they had set fire to the hut of the sarpanch (village head) of the Laharui village in the district. The Inspector General of Police (Varanasi zone) was to visit the site of these incidents, and the ambuscade was on his projected route. November 21, moreover, was the first death anniversary of a prominent MCC 'commander' in the area, Gauri Harijan, and the Naxalites were expected to execute a major strike to 'commemorate' the occasion.

The 'failure of intelligence', however, is more an abject failure of common sense. The Chandauli incident is only a clear declaration of intent that the Maoists remain committed to a radical extension of the areas of their violence and consequent influence, even as the State Government seeks to appease them in Andhra Pradesh, encouraged by the Union Minister of Home Affairs who has articulated the desire to extend his indulgence to those he regards as 'our children' who need to be shown the 'right way'. The Home Minister is apparently undeterred by the fact that many of 'our children' - particularly their top leaders, with whom the Government wishes to 'negotiate' a solution - are well into their sixties, and have spent the better part of the last four decades in the enterprise of murder, intimidation and terror.

The dramatic expansion of Naxalite activities from just 55 Districts across nine States in the country in November 2003, to as many as 156 Districts in 13 States (of a total of 602 districts in the country) by September 2004, has been outlined earlier [SAIR 3.12]. However, there is little sense of urgency in even the highly affected States, and virtually no sense of a crisis in the States that are presently marginally affected or targeted by the Naxalites. Chandauli now demonstrates how abruptly an area can be carried across the threshold, from a moderately, marginally affected or targeted area, to an area of escalated violence.

It is useful to see the sheer spread of the existing Maoist network [MAP] beyond the 'core States' of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Bihar. Beyond these States of Naxalite dominance, the sweep of Naxalite ambitions is manifested in the sheer dispersal of the areas of their current mobilisation. Among the 'marginal' States, they are concentrated in six districts in Uttar Pradesh (UP), bordering Bihar - Bihar itself is now almost completely covered. Mirzapur, Chandauli and Sonebhadra in UP are moderately affected, while Gorakhpur, Ghazipur and Ballia are targeted. Mirzapur had witnessed the murder of two private security guards at a stone crushing company in the Chahawan village on June 30, and an MCC activist and some weapons had been seized in the Sonebhadra district in September. More significant than incidents and arrests, however, have been the reports of continuous mass mobilization in the region, and the State's police is at least apprehensive in its movement through the affected areas.

The infant State of Uttaranchal (formed in November 2000 after a bifurcation of Uttar Pradesh) has five of its 13 districts, in areas bordering or proximate to Nepal's Far West Region, already 'targeted' by the Maoists. Significantly, an unspecified number of weapons and ammunition were recovered at a Maoist training camp - believed to have been set up for the Nepalese Maoists by the Indian group - in the Champawat District on September 6. Earlier, on August 30, five suspected Nepalese Maoists had been arrested in the Saufutia forests of the Udham Singh Nagar District.

In West Bengal - the State shares borders with Naxalite affected areas in Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, and also has to contend with ethnicity-based insurgencies in its North, bordering Assam, as well as a sensitive, extensive and demographically destabilized border with Bangladesh - as many as 16 of a total of 18 districts are now afflicted by Maoist activities. On October 16, six personnel of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) were killed in a landmine attack in the Ormara forest in West Midnapore district. In another major incident on February 25, eight SF personnel, including five from the EFR, were killed and four injured, when a powerful landmine exploded at Golabari in Midnapore district. Intelligence sources indicate that the Maoists are now poised to unleash a wave of terror in the State. West Bengal was the source and primary focus of the original Naxalite movement (the name derives from the village of Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of North Bengal), which commenced in 1967, and was comprehensively crushed by the early 1970s. The State had been largely free of Naxalite activities after 1973 till the end-1990s.

Madhya Pradesh has five affected districts, primarily in the tribal belt in the South of the State, bordering some affected areas in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh. Maharashtra itself has six affected districts - at least two 'highly affected', another three marginally, and one that is 'targeted'.

In India's South, Karnataka currently has 12 affected districts all along its North-East and South. Four districts located roughly along its Eastern region, are now affected in Tamil Nadu. Three districts - along its borders with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and the coastal district of Ernakulam, are currently under the Naxalite area of operation in Kerala.

To these, of course, are to be added the 99 districts in the 'heartland' States of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Orissa.

Nor, indeed, is this sum of the problem. Beyond these districts already designated by intelligence agencies as variously afflicted by Naxalite activity, is a much wider network of covert mobilization. Indeed, districts are added virtually by the week - as the pace of expansion over the past year demonstrates. Unconfirmed reports indicated Naxalite 'political activity' in a sampling of supposedly 'unaffected' States across the country, including Haryana and Punjab in the North and Gujarat and Rajasthan in the West, far from the current areas of concentration in India's East and South.

Ominously, the students' wing of the CPI-ML (the parent entity of the Naxalite movement) won the president's post in the Students' Union election at Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in October this year. It is useful to recall that some professors at JNU are quite proud to list Baburam Bhattarai, the 'ideologue' of the Nepal Maoist movement, as an alumnus of this University.

In the meanwhile, the Union and State Governments continue to fail to impose the law of the land across expanding regions of violence, choosing, instead, to strike unprincipled deals with continuously proliferating violent groups in the deluded expectation that they can stanch the bleeding from a thousand self-inflicted wounds. They continue, equally, to fail to do what Governments are intended and elected to do - provide the rudiments of governance, security, justice, development and basic welfare services - in ever widening areas. Appeasing violent groups has now become the natural response of a political leadership that has a bad conscience, is in bad faith, and is itself substantially criminalized. In the meanwhile, the uniformed services - the police, the paramilitaries and the Army - continue to pay a limitless price in lives.

 

BHUTAN	NEPAL

Terror and Refuge
P.G. Rajamohan
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

With the Maoist terror extending across virtually the whole of Nepal, other issues plaguing the country have tended to be brushed under the carpet. Under the shadow of this neglect, at least some of these have been compounded by the enveloping troubles, and the problem of the refugees from Bhutan is one among these.

During his three-country visit in October 2004, covering Bhutan, India and Nepal, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Migration and Refugees, Arthur E. Gene Dewey had expressed Washington's increasing concern over the deteriorating situation in the refugee camps in Nepal's eastern District of Jhapa. Quoting reports, Dewey said, "Nepali Maoists have infiltrated in camps," and further urged India to play a more pro-active role in resolving the refugee question before it turns into an intractable security issue.

Earlier, on June 2, 2004, Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) forces had conducted a cordon-and-search operation in a Bhutanese refugee camp, Beldangi-I, on a tip-off that suspected Maoists were holed up in the camp, and subsequently arrested six refugees for their connections with the Maoists. Security forces had also seized some arms from the camp, and also found many refugees missing from their designated camps. These missing refugees were suspected to have joined the Nepali Maoists' People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Over 105, 000 Bhutanese Refugees reside in seven camps in the eastern Districts of Nepal since the ethnic exodus that followed implementation in Bhutan of the Citizenship Act of 1985 and the subsequent nation-wide Census of 1988. Protesting against the results of the Census, which had identified a large 'non-national' population believed to be illegal Nepali immigrants living in the southern part of Bhutan, and thought to be quantitatively 'diluting' the Bhutanese population in that region, some of the 'illegal immigrants' were involved in an unprecedented spate of attacks on human and institutional targets in late 1989 and early 1990. These incidents were followed by the forceful eviction or distress migration of a majority of the Nepali population from the southern Bhutan region, eventually confining them to designated camps in Nepal.

Since then, the refugee issue has been one of great contention between the Governments of Nepal and Bhutan. Though a process for their repatriation commenced in 1993, there has been little forward movement over the intervening 14 years. After 15 rounds of Ministerial Joint Committee (MJC) meetings, the Joint Verification Committee (JVC) had categorized some 12,000 refugees. However, this process was also stalled when the refugees attacked the Bhutanese verification officials at the Kudunabari camp in Jhapa on December 22, 2003, reportedly for the 'provocative and derogatory conditions' being imposed for repatriation, and after refugees demanded that their properties be restored to them in their homeland in Bhutan.

With world powers and the international organizations expressing renewed interest in refugee repatriation process, the potential threat they constitute to the host state has also come into focus. Analysts suggest that such a threat has three dimensions: social security, economic security, and political security, and point to the following circumstances:

These threats are, at present and at worst, incipient. However, the threat of an armed struggle by the refugees against their home state is growing visibly. The emergence of a Maoist party in Bhutan - the Bhutan Communist Party - Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) (BCP-MLM) - which distributed a pamphlet announcing its birth on April 22, 2003, and urged all the 'victimised' citizens of Bhutan to join a 'people's war' to overthrow the Bhutanese monarchy and establish a people's republic sent alarm bells ringing across Bhutan. The pamphlet was signed under an alias, 'Vikalpa' ['Alternative'], on the 'authority' of the Central Organizing Committee of the BCP-MLM, and propounded the traditional strategy of 'protracted war' as their party's programme to take over villages and encircle the towns in Bhutan. In a Press Release on June 30, 2004, BCP-MLM Central Organizing Committee 'incharge', Vikalpa, indicted the Bhutan King and his Government for their 'insincerity' in the repatriation programme and asserted that "the communal policy of the ruling elite has brought forward the maximum chances of clash between various Nationalities." Further, the Release called on 'all the freedom lovers' to join the 'New Democratic Revolution'. The BCP-MLM has also criticized the 'Sikkimization' of Bhutan and charged their Government of 'selling out' to India on vital issues. There is evidence that the BCP-MLM was set up with the active support and collaboration of the Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist, as well as Indian Maoist groups, and the language and content of their various declarations closely reflects the perspectives of their mentors.

Aware that the large number of frustrated youth in the Refugee Camps in Nepal could constitute a strong recruitment pool, the BCP-MLM has been insistently raising the issue of their repatriation to their home state. Bhutan authorities firmly believe that Nepalese Maoists are behind efforts to extend the network of Left Wing extremist terror into neighbouring states, particularly Bhutan. The Speaker of the Bhutan Assembly, Ugen Dorje, had claimed in July 2004 that 2,000 refugees had joined the 'Maoists Army'. The numbers may well be exaggerated number - and observers in the region put the realistic number at under 200 - but, given the recent trajectory of Maoist movements in the region, these developments are a matter for serious concern for a small and peaceful country like Bhutan.

The seven refugee camps of Nepalis from Bhutan, moreover, are located in the eastern region of Nepal, where the Nepali Maoists have constructed a strong base, and their power had been demonstrated in a major attack in the mid-eastern regional district Bhojpur during March 2003. The cumulative successes of the Nepal Maoists will certainly act as a magnet to a proportion of the refugees in the area, and this constitutes a potential threat to both the host and the home countries.

On the repatriation front, after the long process of discussions and meetings, both Bhutan and Nepal have agreed to categorize these refugees in the camps under four heads:

1. Bhutanese forcibly evicted,
2. Bhutanese voluntarily migrated,
3. Non-Bhutanese and
4. Bhutanese with anti-national and criminal records.

The Bhutan Government has tended to resist all repatriation because most of the refugees are of Nepali origin, and this is seen as creating a 'demographic imbalance' in areas of the thinly populated country, as well as a threat to the Monarchy. While growing international pressure has forced Bhutan to accept the idea of repatriation of some refugees, non-Bhutanese and Bhutanese with anti-national and criminal records will certainly be excluded, accounting for a sizeable and potentially volatile chunk of the refugee population. Bhutan also fears that the repatriated groups may be 'infected' by the Nepalese Maoists, and that they would include a significant representation of radical sympathizers who would bring the 'peoples' war' to Bhutan. On the other hand, Nepal, among the poorest and currently deeply disturbed, countries in the world argues that it cannot be expected to bear the burden of this additional population.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the major supporter of the refugee camps, is gradually cutting off its assistance, drastically affecting the support programmes, especially education projects. Growing unemployment and scarcity of resources in the refugee camps has led to tensions, even clashes, with the local population in the recent past.

Significant strategic threats also emerge from the current situation, compounding the many strong anti-establishment insurgent movements that plague the whole region - Nepal, Bhutan and India's Northeast. After Bhutan's military operation against the bases of Indian insurgent groups - ULFA, the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) - in the dense forest areas in South Bhutan, the country has just begun to return to a state of normalcy. Any significant population movement at this time has the potential to destabilize and endanger all three countries. Intelligence reports suggest that several youth from the refugee camps had been trained by the ULFA, and the KLO is believed to have been instrumental in formation of the BCP-MLM, and had mediated its contacts with the Nepali Maoists. There is a complex and unstable mix here, and, while humanitarian considerations demand continuous relief to the refugees in Nepal, the relocation of 100,000 persons in a region deeply afflicted by multiple insurgencies, at this point of time, cannot be expected to have a positive impact on the potential for peace.