India prepares to fight Maoists’ lethal insurgency: NYT
Sunday, Dhul-Qi’dah 13, 1430
NEW YORK, (APP): India is preparing for a prolonged counterinsurgency fight against Maoist rebels once discounted as a ragtag group of irrelevant ideologues, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The Maoists, intent on overthrowing the government, are operating in 20 of India’s states, and have become a strong and lethal insurgency, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Barsur, the eastern Indian state of Chattisgarh.
Indian leaders are prepared to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for the extended counterinsurgency effort, the dispatch said.
In the last four years, according to the report, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.
The Maoists say they represent the dispossessed of Indian society. Especially hard-hit, they say, are indigenous tribal groups burdened with the highest rates of illiteracy, poverty and infant mortality.
The insurgents charge the government wants to push tribal groups from their lands to grab valuable natural resources, the Times says. Maoists have escalated their efforts to sabotage roads and bridges, and even have attacked an energy pipeline.
The rebels present a new challenge to India, the Times says. In the past, the country has absorbed secessionist rebel groups by offering them participation in the political mainstream.
But the Maoists aren’t interested; they want to topple the system, the Times reports. There have been efforts to open peace negotiations, but with the government offensive drawing closer, talks remain stalemated, the Times says.
The dispatch opens on a dramatic note: “At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water.
The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government. ‘That is their liberated zone’, said Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh. Or one piece of it… “For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country’s democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed…”
Aslamu-Alaikum,
This is scary. I hope China has contingency plans to secure Hindustani nuclear weapons before they fall into the wrong hands.
Anyway, according to the article, the fighters are operating in 20 provinces?? How did that happen? Was the Hindustani military sleeping?