Maoist surge extracts toll

Maoist surge extracts toll


Manvendra Singh

In the absence of any cohesive counter-insurgency strategy to fight Red terror in central India, CRPF jawans will continue to be massacred by Maoists.

Even as the country remains riveted by the fasting Baba and the feasting Government, a tragedy happens almost every day at the hands of the Maoists in central India. The seriousness of the situation was enough for the Union Minister for Home Affairs to convene a special meeting with the political and police leadership of the affected States on Tuesday, June 14. In the last month more security forces personnel have been killed than days have gone by in the calendar. The tragedy of ambushes in 2010 is being revisited in 2011, and some of the tales suggest that lessons have not been learnt at all. The mounting loss in human lives has been reduced to mere statistics — to be displayed on the walls of police stations and incorporated in presentation software in power-pointed Delhi.

The Chhattisgarh Armed Force lost many recently when their bombproof vehicle was blown by what local police officials say was a tonne of explosives. Some were then slaughtered in an early morning visit to jungle toilets. A waste of lives if ever there could be. This was also the case last year with the Central Reserve Police Force that has lost over a hundred of its men to Maoist ambushes in 2010. In one particular ambush last year the CRPF lost a large number of men because they didn’t have a tourniquet in their equipment — as a result, they bled to their deaths. Fancy weapons are bought, and will be purchased in future. As will be other support equipment such as radio sets and protection kits. But they mean nothing if you can’t stop bleeding with a Rs 10 item. But for that to happen it requires revisiting the language and leadership of the campaign against the Maoists.

The campaign against the Maoists is a counter-insurgency operation, and denying that reality is to deceive the country. What the Maoists have managed to create is an insurgent-dictated environment in all of the districts that are under their sway. And this insurgency is not going away in a hurry, especially not given the response, the un-intelligent response, of the authorities. And this Maoist insurgency is going to continue to extort greater number of casualties from the CRPF, specifically, and other State police forces in lesser numbers. It sounds like a terrible thing to say, and without any knowledge of the stars et al, but it is a certainty of this insurgency that the CRPF will continue to pay the heaviest price. Why it shall be so is plain to the eye.

The Dantewada ambush of April 6, 2010 was the worst in the history of independent India. Wars against the neighbours did not extract such a toll in one single operation, an ambush. But the national reaction to that ambush was just as telling in many ways. Shock lasted only as long as the ubiquitous offer of resignation. That wasn’t taken, and neither was anyone’s head for that matter. And it is this ability to live and accept unacceptable casualties that lies at the root of the rot that has set into the functioning of the CRPF. This is the same attitude that will bring further casualties. It is important to analyze the structure and culture of the organizations at play, so as to better understand the reality of casualties in the campaign against the Maoists. Since the CRPF is certain to remain the primary force conducting anti-Maoist operations in the foreseeable future, an understanding of its functioning is vital. This understanding will vividly explain why it is easier to buy fancy assault weapons without a care for what it does to logistics, but not inexpensive tourniquets. One takes lives, while the others saves one’s life. Which one the leadership of the CRPF wants to save is fairly obvious from stories as they are told.

All that it requires is some simple analysis. One of the CRPF casualties was a 55-year-old jawan. How many of them were of that age is not known, but this was the suffix to his name on a television channel. It is certain that every Maoist in that ambush was just about old enough to be his child. How a 55-year-old man is expected to operate in an insurgency environment is perplexing and scandalous. But it is not surprising, and that is the reason the CRPF will continue to pay the heaviest price in the operations against the Maoists.

The root of the problem lies in the fact that the CRPF is led by officers who don’t belong to the organization. They come on deputation and return to their parent cadre or a better posting if they can wrangle it. The mass of the CRPF is from the same villages of India that send their other sons to the Army. The differences become stark moments after recruitment. Nothing is more striking than the differences of leadership between the two organizations. To ably command an armed force, the officer must have served as a company commander. For that is the key level of combat where it is won or lost. And it is the most vital level in understanding the ethos of an organization, and bonding with the subordinates. Not so with the CRPF, where the leadership is imported and is of a temporary disposition. The bonding required for an armed force, however, between the leadership and the led, cannot be imported or transferred from another organization. It has to be a product of its own ethos. And that is something that the CRPF has not been able to generate, and neither will it be able to do so in the foreseeable future. Even as para-military force continues to pay the heaviest price.

An Army has great difficulty in adjusting to insurgency conditions because no conventional force is raised to handle operations against unidentified enemies. But the Army does adjust, simply because it has the ethos and the leadership to handle such challenges. Since the leadership is from within. But that is not the case with the CRPF or any of the other Central police organisations. They lack the leadership, the ethos and the structure. So the casualties happen, and will continue to mount. It is indeed a national shame that the country cannot have an unemotional analysis of all that ails the operations against the Maoists. For unless there is a dispassionate debate, and an acknowledgement of errors, the country will continue to send 55-year-old men to fight 20 something Maoists in their own jungle terrain. It is an unequal contest, only because the country doesn’t think it fit to call a slaughterhouse for what it is.