India prepares to fight Maoists’ lethal insurgency: NYT
NEW YORK, Nov 1 (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...”
World 
