Tapping into Proxy War

Antony Shimray, the nephew of NSCN-IM General Secretary T Muivah, who was apprehended by the security authorities in October 2010, revealed the extensive linkages between China and NSCN-IM and other insurgent and terrorist groups in India including the Maoists.

There are number of evidences regarding the coalescence of the proxy wars being waged by China and Pakistan respectively. As per the Asian Age dated 01 March 2012 (Intelligence reveals ISI-Naxal link ) the ISI was using Bangladesh based operatives to establish links with the Indian Maoists and ULFA leader leader Paresh Barua had played the key role in bringing them into direct contact.  For sophisticated arms, the Maoists, as per Intelligence agencies, are heavily dependent on the ULFA’s international procurement network .The report further states that the ISI has urged the Maoists to target infrastructure projects and industrial units in the Indian hinterland.  The Maoists on their part had pleaded for supply of sophisticated arms and explosives particularly RDX. 

Two important leaders of the Manipur based People Liberation Army (PLA) N Dilip Singh and Arun Kumar Singh Salam were apprehended in October 2011. During their interrogation, they revealed that the plans to form a ‘Strategic United Front’, comprising the various militant outfits in J&K and the Northeast and the Maoists. Such a front is not possible without collaboration between the Chinese Intelligence and Pak ISI. The recent capture of arms in September this year, i.e. 98 pistols, 10 AK-47 and 2 assault rifles (all of Chinese make), by the Indian Army in Keran sector of J&K establishes China-Pakistan link in the ongoing proxy war against India.

There are also reports about emerging links between the Indian Maoists and Dawood gang at the behest of the ISI. Reportedly Dawood Ibrahim has solicited Maoist indulgence for making in-roads into the illegal mining industry in areas in India.

The arrows and dots of concern on the Indian map i.e. Maoist terror, Jihadi terror, insurgencies in Kashmir and the Northeast, and fundamentalist threat emanating from Bangladesh are rushing to ride on each other, thus generating an unprecedented destabilising churning force. It is evident that the threat from internal and external inimical forces is becoming seamless. The so far acceptable line between ‘law and order’ and ‘internal security’ and ‘external threat’ has almost disappeared.     

Western Linkages

Maoist terror has regional and international linkages. The regional activities and support structure is coordinated by the organizations Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties of South Asia (CCOMPOSA), which as the name suggests, comprises Maoist outfits in Asian countries, i.e. India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement(RIM) whose Headquarter is based in Chicago, in the US is one of the major benefactors of ultra-leftist groups active in Asia which significantly includes Nepal , India, Afghanistan and Iran. Possibly the US authorities view this organization as a tool to influence regimes or carry out regime changes in target countries. This should partly explain the frequent visits of otherwise  rabid anti-US  Indian Maoist sympathizers to that country.

While the regional support frame work of the Maoists is well known, its European support structure has either been dismissed or ignored. The Maoists Communist Party, Manipur in a press release on 09 December 2011 revealed the support by various ultra-leftist outfits based in Philippines, Malaysia, European countries and Canada. The various ultra-leftist outfits aiding and abetting the Maoists in India are Association for Proletarian Solidarity, Italy (ASP), Communist Party of Philippines (CPP), Maoists Communist Party of France (MCPF), Partito Comunista maoista (PCm) Italia, Party of the Committees to Support Resistance for Communism (CARC), Revolutionary Communist Party, Canada (PCR-RCP), and Struggling Socialist Union, Italy (SLL). This explains the visit of a delegation from the European Commission to witness the trial of Binayak Sen. This also explains the kidnappings(allegedly staged) of two Italians  Paolo Bousco (58) and Claudio Colangelo (61) . Paolo has been trekking in Orissa for many years. Both the Italians had gone to Orissa jungles despite travel advisory by their government. Both were abducted from the Kandhmahal area where most Maoist terrorists are Panna cast Christians and the Maoist discourse in the region has strong Church and anti-Hindu elements.

In April 2012 nine French tourists were deported from Bihar as their activities in the interior of the State betrayed Maoist links.

These ultra-leftist groups have been conducting meets in Europe in support of Peoples War in India being waged by the Indian Maoists. These are attended by the Maoists leaders, sympathizers and benefactors of the Indian Maoists. 
 
Feeding into Terror

Apart from aiding Indian Maoists directly and indirectly, China has been using the Maoists in Nepal for securing their geopolitical objectives vis-à-vis India. Following the ostensible split in the Maoist ranks recently, the leader of the break-away group (Nepal Communist Party, Maoist), Mohan Vaidya Kiran visited Beijing . On his return he spoke to the media about the Chinese position on the contentious issue of ‘fedearalism’ in Nepal. He said ‘’China is not against federalism but is opposed to foreign interference (read India) on issue of federalism.” Subsequently, Vaidya’s party issued a ban order on plying of vehicles with Indian registration numbers and screening of Hindi movies.

Fuelling and feeding on the ISI sponsored proxy war jihadi terror are fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh and Wahabi groups drawing sustenance from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian footprints were quite conspicuous in the violence by Rohingyas in Myanmar. The Wahabi discourse emanating from Saudi Arabia and its concomitant jihadi factor owing allegiance to  groups based in Bangladesh and Pakistan  was quite pronounced in Kokrajhar and then in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The jihadi frenzy witnessed in India travelled to Bangladesh and recently consumed nearly a dozen Buddhist temples in the Cox’s Bazar area.  It was allegedly an act of religious vendetta by Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. A large number of Indian Muslims going to the Gulf for work return indoctrinated and imbued in Jihad. Global jihad has indeed engulfed the entire Indian subcontinent.

Feeding on the Maoist terror are also elements pretending to be part of the electoral politics of India. In reality these are different routes to the same objective of capturing state power. The CPM is the parliamentary route, the CPI-ML is the semi-parliamentary route and the Maoists are the armed route. This explains   the deafening silence or ambivalence  of CPM AND CPM(ML)whenever there are terrorist attacks by the Maoists. Their common controller and benefactor China is not averse to the internecine struggle between the three because in its reckoning while all the routes complement, the route which circumstances favour, will assume the lead role and succeed. It is for this reason that there is never a hint of condemnation by the CPM, or CPI(ML) or the Maoists even in the face of most  blatant inimical posturing by China against India. For Capitalist China, communism only remains a strategic tool for proxy war.

There are also political outfits tapping into Jihadi terror as well as Maoist terror. At least leaders of two political parties campaigned with Osama bin Laden look –alike during elections in Bihar, thus fanning the Jihadi discourse. In Jharkhand one segment of the ruling segment owes half it seats to the Maoists. Proxy War therefore is subverting Indian democracy.

Conclusion

The ‘secure’ space in India is shrinking at a frightening pace. Little economic development is possible in insecure environment. The leaders however fail to conflate security and overall development. Indian decision-makers must realize that today’s wars are not about territory. It is about influence, political manipulations, effecting regime changes, engineering social and economic instability by terror, insurgency, and ideological subversion, and eventually causing internal collapse of the target country and making it untenable in its existing form. This method of war called ‘proxy war’ or ‘asymmetrical war’ has the advantage of being calibrated by diplomacy, is cost effective, and does not invite international opprobrium and sanctions. It is not limited by frontiers and geography. Most vitally, it affords ‘deniability’.  The proxy soldiers are liberally funded, supplied with sophisticated arsenal and trained in a progressive military manner. The Internal Security Forces of the targeted country will always be outdone by the proxy soldiers in these aspects. Since the level of proxy war emanates from degree of conventional capability and perceived nuclear deterrence, it is the military of the targeted country which has to provide the leadership in the armed response of the State to the internal facet of the war as well. We must remember that Central Armed Police Forces and para-military forces are not structured, officered, organized, trained and motivated to take on the proxy soldiers. The failure to accept this ,truism  will continue to claim  lives of CAPF, police and para-military  personnel. In the ultimate analysis terror and instability will grow till it creates the situation of implosion of the State. The Military  was employed soon after Independence to crush the violent communist uprising in the Telengana region, to assimilate some recalcitrant princely states and to liberate Goa. If the Military was the chief instrument for building the Independent Indian nation-state why is there such heavy reluctance to use it for its preservation when the fissiparous forces are shrinking the secure space in the country at such a rapid pace, and the Internal Security forces are unable to arrest the momentum?

The author is a former R&AW Officer and author of book ‘Military Factor in Pakistan'