queer
July 27, 2007, 7:29pm
11
Re: 24 Indian troops killed by Maoist rebels as Insurgency grows
Reza_Pahlavi:
**In India, Maoist Guerrillas Widen ‘People’s War’ **
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/world/asia/13maoists.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=b397a84735c2f9cb&ex=1302580800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The insurgents blow up railway tracks, seize land and chase away forest guards. They have made it virtually impossible for government officials, whose presence here in the hinterland is already patchy, to function. Police posts, government offices and industrial plants are favored targets. Their ultimate goal is to overthrow the state.
Today the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which exists solely as an underground armed movement with no political representation, is a rigidly hierarchical outfit with toeholds in 13 of 28 Indian states . It stretches from the tip of India through this east-central state to the northern border with Nepal, where the Maoists have set off full-scale civil war. Estimates by Indian intelligence officials and Maoist leaders suggest that the rebel ranks in India have swelled to 20,000, though the number is impossible to verify. **One senior Indian intelligence official estimated that Maoists exert varying degrees of influence over a quarter of India’s 600 districts. The top government official in one of Chhattisgarh’s rural Maoist strongholds, Dantewada, acknowledged that the rebels had made some 60 percent of his 6,400-square-mile district a no man’s land for civil servants. **
what 13 out of 28 states has is a CPI(M) party office, which is not the same as Maoist rebels. The CPI(M) is not an underground armed outfit with no political representation, as the article claims. It is a mainstream political party, and has state governments and law-makers in the parliament.
20,000 rebels in a population of 1 Bn+ indians can control maybe one or two districts, if they are lucky.