Understanding Indian Insurgencies

[Red Rat]

Interesting analysis of Security Force problems in Chhattisgarh.

Praveen Swami is probably one to track on twitter feed for those interested in the situation there.

Chhattisgarh Attack: Why India is losing its war against the Naxals

[Ray]

Interesting analysis of Security Force problems in Chhattisgarh.

Praveen Swami is probably one to track on twitter feed for those interested in the situation there.

Chhattisgarh Attack: Why India is losing its war against the Naxals

With a caveat that he is a journalist and has no hands on experience, unlike many western journalists who have had military training and experience and can understand issues more incisively.

Notwithstanding, he is more knowledgeable amongst journalists on security issues.

[davidbfpo]

At an academic seminar one speaker posed the question: Are the Naxalites or AQ a bigger threat to global security?

The discussion that followed, without any Indians present, remarked on the spread of the Naxalites, citing quite a high % of India's land mass being affected. Then the reluctance of the central government to even talk about the problem, let alone take action.

So the following comments by a "lurker" help to understand:

The real reasons are the constitutional arrangement in which the Central Government. has no direct role in CT or law & order action in the twenty-eight states except when providing extra manpower at the states' request and this has resulted in a highly fragmented police & CT machinery. Secondly the inability of the State Police to meet the trans-state or trans-national terrorist challenges due to poor training and that the State politicians object to Central Government initiatives on law & order and CT action.

[Ray]

It is being treated as a State issue since law and order is under the jurisdiction of the State.

If it were to be taken as terrorism, then it would be an Union Govt responsibility.

[davidbfpo]

Elsewhere on SWJ mention has been made pf the apparent absence of an internal jihadist activity when compared to the size of India's Muslim minority, so Stephen Tankel's latest offering 'Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat' may help understanding. I have not read the paper yet; the summary says:

India faces many well-known challenges, from corruption to environmental degradation. A lesser-noted challenge is domestic militancy. This new study, produced by noted South Asia security expert Stephen Tankel, focuses on the Indian Mujahideen (IM)--a loosely organized indigneous Islamist militant network. IM, Prof. Tankel argues, is "an internal security issue with an external dimension." Its leadership is currently based in Pakistan, but the organization represents a response to Indian domestic failings.

Link:http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publicat...-indian-threat

[davidbfpo]

A "lurker" has responded and pointed to a 2009 academic conference paper by a retired Indian police / intelligence official. The paper takes a broad approach and contains some "gems" on Indian terrorism - especially on how officialdom has responded:

Since the outbreak of modern day terrorism in India in the early 1980s, our counter-terrorist policy has been stymied by a constant refrain from experts and government agencies that all terrorism in India including Sikh militancy were only the result of religious or ideological subversion from abroad, especially Pakistan. This was based on an illusory political hypothesis that Indian citizens by themselves were unsympathetic to militancy in their country and needed to be prodded from outside. At various stages even North East militancy or Maoist violence was branded as inspired from abroad.

[blueblood]

For the first time since 1994, the year 2012 registered a total number of terrorism and insurgency linked fatalities across India in the three digits – at 804, as against 1,073 in 2011 and a peak of 5,839 in 2001. The trend of sustained decline in such fatalities has been near-unbroken since 2001 (with a marginal reversal in 2008), giving tremendous relief to theatres of persistent violence. The most prominent among these is Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), which has been wracked by a Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist movement since 1988, with a resultant total of 43,439 fatalities (till March 10, 2013). J&K recorded 117 fatalities in 2012, down from 183 in 2011; and a peak of 4,507 in 2001.

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countr...dia/index.html
..........

Seems like a massive decline in the number of fatalities but I fear these numbers may go up after US leaves Astan this year.