India’s Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has let it be known that it is about to launch a major, indeed unprecedentedly large, multi-state offensive against Maoist guerillas. This offensive, which is set to begin next month, will include the deployment, for the first time ever, of Indian Air Force (IAF) units against the Maoist insurgents, who are commonly known in India as the Naxalites.
According to press reports, more than 100,000 federal paramilitary troops—including personnel from the Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), and the Central Reserve Police Force’s (CRPF) elite COBRA unit—will take part. They will be assisted by the Indian Army’s Rashtriya Rifles and the Indian Air Force.
In preparation for the offensive, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidabaram and other central government officials have been holding extensive consultations with state government officials.
Chidambaram visited the adjacent central Indian states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in late September to review the preparations for the anti-Maoist offensive. These states, which are amongst India’s most economically backward and deprived, are the center of the Naxalite insurgency.
Chidambaram praised Chhattisgarh’s government, which is formed by the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), for its efforts to combat the Maoists and promised India’s central government will “provide all possible help” to the two states “to eradicate the left-wing extremists completely.” According to press reports, more than 55,000 troops, including 20,000 newly deployed from elsewhere in India, will be involved in the anti-Naxalite offensive in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
Upon its re-election last May, the UPA declared quelling the Naxalite insurgency to be one of its top priorities. The presidential address that inaugurated the new parliamentary session vowed that the government would take “stern measures” to combat “leftwing extremism.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has himself repeatedly characterized the Maoist insurgency as the “biggest internal security threat” that New Delhi faces and argues that suppression of the insurgency is important for achieving the government’s economic development goals. Speaking to a meeting of police chiefs last month, Singh expressed concern that the government is losing the battle with the Naxalites, noting that their insurgency has intensified and spread.
According to Chidambaram, Maoist insurgents are active in 20 states and more than a third of India’s administrative districts. Said the Home Minister, “2,000 police station areas in 223 districts … are partially or substantially affected by Naxalite activity.”
Of special concern to India’s elite is the emergence of a so-called “red corridor,” a large contiguous area of insurgent activity stretching from the India-Nepal border in the north to the northern districts of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Much of this area is peopled by tribal groups, whose concerns have traditionally been ignored, and rights trampled on, by the Indian state.
The proposal to involve the Indian Air Force in the anti-Naxalite campaign has caused considerable debate in Indian political and military circles, with some expressing concern that this could rapidly lead to an escalation of the fighting and heavy civilian casualties. Some members of the military establishment have even warned about the potential for an “Afghan” or “Iraq” type situation in which the terror and death caused by indiscriminate air strikes feed the anti-government insurgency.
Initially UPA government spokesmen said Air Force helicopters would be used only for logistical purposes, such as ferrying troops, evacuating casualties, and reconnaissance. But after the Air Force high command objected, the government agreed that the Air Force will be allowed to fire on Naxalite guerrillas in “self-defence.”
“We have put up a case before the defence ministry,” said Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik October 1. “It is absolutely important that the Air Force be allowed to fire in self-defence whenever its helicopters or air crew comes under attack.” While Vice Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora said on October 14 that the Air Force has yet to receive any official response to its request, Defence Minister A.K. Antony forthrightly declared last weekend that the Air Force will have the right to open fire “during anti-Naxal operations.”
“[T]he government should be extremely careful” that the Air Force’s role is “only logistical … nothing else,” Mahendra Kumawat, the former director-general of the Border Security Force, told the Kolkata Telegraph last month. “And even so,” warned Kumawat, “the Naxalites are very capable of trapping the Air Force in ugly situations where they will have no option but to retaliate. Once that begins to happen, there will be the huge risk of collateral damage to populations and further alienation. The Naxalites are clever tacticians, they will engage and scoot; innocent people will get killed. You will have a mess on your hands. Look at what the drone attacks are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
The government, added Kumawat, “is going to lose more hearts and minds to the Maoists if it forges ahead with a strike policy that brings nothing but bloodshed and disruption to people in the affected zones. That is going to multiply our problems, not solve them.”
Antony’s announcement indicates that these concerns have been given short shrift in the rush to crush the Maoist insurgency and assert the fiat of the Indian state. The Hindu quoted an unnamed government official as saying, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” although he conceded that “if we end up killing many more tribals in the process, there will be problems.”
In preparation for the coming offensive, central and West Bengal security forces have been waging a campaign against a Maoist-supported tribal rebellion in the Lalgarh subdistrict since last June. “Lalgarh is the laboratory for us,” explained Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai. “This will be reflected in what we are going to do in other Naxal-infested areas like Chhattisgarh.”
The Lalgarh operation, which was preceded by a UPA government and media campaign charging West Bengal’s Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government with ignoring the Naxalite threat, also had the objective of associating the Stalinist parliamentary parties with the counter-insurgency campaign, so as to give it greater popular legitimacy. And the CPI (M) and its Left Front allies have predictably fallen in line. Last Sunday, West Bengal Chief Minister and CPI (M) Politburo member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had a breakfast meeting with Chidambaram to “give final touches” to plans that coordinate West Bengal’s security forces with the UPA’s nationwide anti-Maoist offensive.
The Naxalite insurgency is viewed by the Indian bourgeoisie as an intolerable obstacle to its plans to exploit the minerals, forests, and other natural resources of the remote, predominantly tribal areas where the Naxalites have focused their activity for several decades.
“With the help of central forces, we are bringing back security” in Lalgarh, boasted Nirupam Sen, West Bengal’s ostensibly leftwing Commerce and Industry Minister. “And investors want security.” Lalgarh lies some 15 kilometers from a 10 million ton JSW Steel plant in Salboni and within 100 kilometers of mega-projects being undertaken by Bhushan Steel and the Indian conglomerate Videocon.
The growth of the Maoist insurgency is a damning indictment of bourgeois rule. India’s much vaunted “rise” has been driven by pro-big business policies—corporate tax concessions, social spending cuts, the diversion of state funds from agriculture to the infrastructure projects favored by investors, and the gutting of price supports—that have increased economic insecurity and poverty among the rural and urban poor.
Long the victims of government neglect, tribal peoples and other rural toilers now confront the state-supported attempts of foreign and domestic capital to dispossess them of their resource-rich lands and transform them into cheap labor.
But the spread of the Maoist insurgency is not just a product of ravenous Indian capitalism. The Maoists have been able to gain influence, drawing support from some of the most impoverished of India’s rural toilers, only because the working class has been politically paralyzed by the mainline Stalinist parties—the CPI (M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI). For decades these parties confined the working class to militant trade unionism and parliamentary politics. Over the past two decades, they have emerged as enforcers of the Indian bourgeoisie’s neo-liberal export-led growth strategy. The CPI (M) and CPI have supported a succession of pro-big business Union governments, including the UPA from May 2004 through June 2008, and implemented pro-investor policies in those states where they hold office like West Bengal.
Because the working class has been prevented from advancing a socialist solution to the social crisis produced by Indian capitalism, the door has been opened for the Maoists to channel the legitimate anger of sections of the rural toilers into isolated conflicts with Indian security forces and politically destructive bloodcurdling acts of revenge against various petty exploiters.
Whilst socialists and the working class must unequivocally oppose the Indian government’s military offensive against the Maoists, as it is aimed at strengthening the capitalist state and pressing forward with the dispossession of sections of the tribal people and other toilers, this in no way implies an iota of support for the retrograde nationalist-Stalinist politics of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the other Naxalite groups.
The Naxalites have contributed to the political paralysis of the working class, abandoning it to the woeful political influence of the mainline Stalinist parties and confining it to the role of spectator to a “protracted people’s war” being mounted in the most remote parts of India by guerrilla-cadres, most of whom hail from the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie. For all their “revolutionary” rhetoric, the Naxalites defend the counter-revolutionary politics of the Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin. Like the pre-1962 Communist Party of India, to which they trace their origins, India’s Maoists promote the reactionary Menshevik-Stalinist two-stage theory of revolution, which holds that in countries of belated capitalist development socialists must ally with the “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie to complete the so-called national revolution.
Thus the Maoists’ “armed struggle” goes hand in hand with all manner of opportunist alliances and maneuvers. Most recently, the Maoists have worked closely with the Trinumal Congress (TMC), a right-wing Bengali regionalist party led by the anti-communist demagogue Mamata Bannerjee. The Naxalites boosted the TMC’s pretensions to be a defender of the oppressed peasantry when it sought to insinuate itself into the leadership of the movement against the pro-investor land expropriations being carried out by the West Bengal government at Nandigram and Singur. And their Lagarh uprising coincided with a TMC campaign to press the Union government to sack West Bengal’s Left Front government on the grounds that law and order had broken down in the state.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tensions between India and China flare again
Tensions between India and China flare again
Tensions have flared again this month between China and India. The immediate spark was a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the northern state of Arunachal Pradesh on October 3. The trip provoked a protest from Beijing, which disputes Indian control over the area, resulting in heated words in the Indian and Chinese media.
Singh visited Arunachal Pradesh as part of an election campaign for his Congress Party. On October 13, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry declared: “China is strongly dissatisfied with the visit to the disputed region by the Indian leader disregarding China’s serious concerns.” He insisted that China and India had “never officially settled” their border dispute and China’s claim over “South Tibet” was “consistent and clear-cut”.
China claims 90,000 square kilometres in Arunachal Pradesh, while India asserts its right to 33,000 square kilometres in China’s Aksai Chin, near Kashmir. India and China fought a border war in 1962 over the disputed territories. Chinese forces advanced rapidly, declared a ceasefire and then voluntarily withdrew in 1963. India transformed the areas into a separate state in 1987.
India’s External Affairs Ministry responded to the Chinese statement on the same day, reiterating that Arunachal Pradesh was “an integral part of India”. Escalating the dispute, New Delhi called on Beijing to end its highway projects and a $US12.6 billion dam in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). “We hope the Chinese side will take a long-term view of India-China relations and cease such activities in areas illegally occupied by Pakistan,” a spokesman said.
By targetting China’s longstanding ties with Pakistan, India only added further fuel to the fire. At the time, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was in Beijing meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao over the projects. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over the area. China hopes to be able to use Pakistan as a means of accessing energy supplies from the Middle East, thus easing its dependence on longer and more strategically vulnerable sea routes. Such a plan would require building roads and pipelines through Kashmir.
The war of words heated up on October 14. Editorials in the Chinese People’s Daily and Global Times took a strident stance. The former accused India of being “obsessed” with a “hegemonic mentality”, refusing to “drop the pretentious air when dealing with neighbours like Pakistan”. Criticising India’s close ties with the US, it declared that New Delhi’s policy was to “befriend the far and attack the near”—that is, China.
The more hawkish Global Times declared that India would be making “a fatal mistake” if it mistook “China’s approach for weakness”. Declaring the disputed area to be “of strategic importance”, the editorial warned that Singh’s visit and a planned trip by the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh “could have dangerous consequences”.
Calling for tougher government action, a comment in the Times of India on October 14 declared: “Our response was tepid, to say the least, and that is how it has been across the geopolitical spectrum where we are competing with China. If anything, we seem to be getting weaker.” Pointing to China’s growing influence in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and its direct competition with India for energy resources, the newspaper declared: “And even as all this happens, we have nothing else to show except hot air, theatrics and slogans.”
The comments reflect deep concerns in the Indian establishment that the country is being overshadowed diplomatically, economically and militarily by the rise of China. The tensions have only intensified under the impact of the global economic crisis. Both New Delhi and Beijing regularly whip up nationalist sentiment and indulge in sabre rattling as a means of diverting attention from the deepening social crises at home.
The dispute over Arunachal Pradesh erupted in April when China attempted to block an Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan worth $2.9 billion to India, including $60 million for projects in Arunachal Pradesh. In June, India outmanoeuvred China, with the backing from US and Japan. In August, however, Beijing struck back with the support of Japan, Australia, Pakistan and most South East Asian countries to state in the ADB’s public notification of the loan that Arunachal Pradesh is not part of India, on the grounds that it is disputed territory.
The row has not been limited to the diplomatic sphere. India deployed 60,000 soldiers to the north-eastern state of Assam near Arunachal Pradesh in June, bringing total numbers in the area to more than 100,000. A new airfield was built just 30 kilometres from Arunachal Pradesh, in an obvious counter to China’s strategic build-up in Tibet, including the construction of a major railway that could be used for rapid troop deployment.
In September, India initiated “Operation Alert”, an exercise that involved sending half its troops along the Line of Actual Control in Kashmir to forward posts. This was in response to a huge cross-country mobile exercise by 50,000 mechanised Chinese troops, which was viewed in New Delhi as part of Beijing’s efforts to improve its military capacity against India.
Following last week’s outbursts, both governments have downplayed the issue. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has asked to meet Indian Prime Minister Singh at this week’s Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) gathering in Thailand. While the two men are likely to meet tomorrow, none of the underlying issues will be resolved.
In ruling circles in New Delhi, the fear is that India, which has ambitions to become a major world power, is losing out to rival China in every sphere. Although China is now India’s largest trading partner, with trade expected to reach $60 billion in 2010—30 times the size of 2000—it is largely in China’s favour. India’s deficit with China increased by 41 percent in 2008-09 to more than $20 billion, fuelling protectionist sentiments among sections of Indian business.
Strategically, China’s growing influence in countries, such as Sri Lanka, that India has regarded as within its regional sphere of influence has come as a shock in New Delhi. While India was constrained in its support for the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by popular opposition in south India, China provided arms and diplomatic support and in return is constructing a major port facility in southern Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan port is part of broader Chinese plans to extend its naval reach into the Indian Ocean with the building of port facilities in Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. The “chain of pearls” strategy is aimed at securing China’s vital energy supply lines to the Middle East and Africa. As far as India is concerned, Beijing is involved in an unwelcome intrusion into what New Delhi regards literally as the “Indian” Ocean. Further, China has a close relationship with India’s bitter regional rival Pakistan and with neighbouring Burma. Rivalry between the two powers is also on the rise in Nepal and Bangladesh.
In the midst of these tensions, the most destabilising factor is the intervention of the US, both directly through its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its proxy war in Pakistan, and indirectly through its efforts to encircle China with US military bases and allies stretching from North East Asia right around to Central Asia. China’s sensitivity over Arunachal Pradesh is in part a product of concerns in Beijing that social unrest in neighbouring Tibet could be exploited by the US and its allies for their own ends. China’s prodding of India over Arunachal Pradesh serves to remind New Delhi that there is a price to pay for its closer ties with Washington.
Already there are concerns in the Indian establishment over ties with the US. The nuclear pact signed with the US last year was regarded in New Delhi as a triumph that could transform India into a “world power”. Since then, however, Washington had been compelled because of the global economic crisis to prioritise its relations with Beijing. Amid the media hype about an emerging G2—the US and China—Washington’s relationship with India has been pushed into the background.
In the military sphere, India is also conscious that it lags behind China. While India boosted defence spending this year by 25 percent to $30 billion in 2009, this figure is still less than half China’s military budget of $70 billion. One of the largest Indian expenditures is $10 billion for 126 new fighters, which the military insists is necessary because its air capacity is just one third of China’s.
What is emerging is a dangerous arms race. Last month the Hindu reported the remarks of K. Santhanam, a former chief adviser for the Defence Research Development Organisation, calling for further testing of nuclear weapons. Noting that India’s nuclear warheads were in the 25-kilotonne range, he declared: “We are totally naked vis-à-vis China which has an inventory of 200 nuclear bombs, the vast majority of which are giant H-bombs of power equal to 3 million tonnes of TNT.”
While Santhanam’s claims have been dismissed by Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, the comments do point to the discussions taking place in top military and political circles in New Delhi. Tensions over current Arunachal Pradesh dispute may die down, but the issues underlying the longer term and dangerous rivalry between the two states remain.
Please contact:maoist_manipur@yahoo.com
Tensions have flared again this month between China and India. The immediate spark was a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the northern state of Arunachal Pradesh on October 3. The trip provoked a protest from Beijing, which disputes Indian control over the area, resulting in heated words in the Indian and Chinese media.
Singh visited Arunachal Pradesh as part of an election campaign for his Congress Party. On October 13, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry declared: “China is strongly dissatisfied with the visit to the disputed region by the Indian leader disregarding China’s serious concerns.” He insisted that China and India had “never officially settled” their border dispute and China’s claim over “South Tibet” was “consistent and clear-cut”.
China claims 90,000 square kilometres in Arunachal Pradesh, while India asserts its right to 33,000 square kilometres in China’s Aksai Chin, near Kashmir. India and China fought a border war in 1962 over the disputed territories. Chinese forces advanced rapidly, declared a ceasefire and then voluntarily withdrew in 1963. India transformed the areas into a separate state in 1987.
India’s External Affairs Ministry responded to the Chinese statement on the same day, reiterating that Arunachal Pradesh was “an integral part of India”. Escalating the dispute, New Delhi called on Beijing to end its highway projects and a $US12.6 billion dam in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). “We hope the Chinese side will take a long-term view of India-China relations and cease such activities in areas illegally occupied by Pakistan,” a spokesman said.
By targetting China’s longstanding ties with Pakistan, India only added further fuel to the fire. At the time, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was in Beijing meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao over the projects. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over the area. China hopes to be able to use Pakistan as a means of accessing energy supplies from the Middle East, thus easing its dependence on longer and more strategically vulnerable sea routes. Such a plan would require building roads and pipelines through Kashmir.
The war of words heated up on October 14. Editorials in the Chinese People’s Daily and Global Times took a strident stance. The former accused India of being “obsessed” with a “hegemonic mentality”, refusing to “drop the pretentious air when dealing with neighbours like Pakistan”. Criticising India’s close ties with the US, it declared that New Delhi’s policy was to “befriend the far and attack the near”—that is, China.
The more hawkish Global Times declared that India would be making “a fatal mistake” if it mistook “China’s approach for weakness”. Declaring the disputed area to be “of strategic importance”, the editorial warned that Singh’s visit and a planned trip by the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh “could have dangerous consequences”.
Calling for tougher government action, a comment in the Times of India on October 14 declared: “Our response was tepid, to say the least, and that is how it has been across the geopolitical spectrum where we are competing with China. If anything, we seem to be getting weaker.” Pointing to China’s growing influence in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and its direct competition with India for energy resources, the newspaper declared: “And even as all this happens, we have nothing else to show except hot air, theatrics and slogans.”
The comments reflect deep concerns in the Indian establishment that the country is being overshadowed diplomatically, economically and militarily by the rise of China. The tensions have only intensified under the impact of the global economic crisis. Both New Delhi and Beijing regularly whip up nationalist sentiment and indulge in sabre rattling as a means of diverting attention from the deepening social crises at home.
The dispute over Arunachal Pradesh erupted in April when China attempted to block an Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan worth $2.9 billion to India, including $60 million for projects in Arunachal Pradesh. In June, India outmanoeuvred China, with the backing from US and Japan. In August, however, Beijing struck back with the support of Japan, Australia, Pakistan and most South East Asian countries to state in the ADB’s public notification of the loan that Arunachal Pradesh is not part of India, on the grounds that it is disputed territory.
The row has not been limited to the diplomatic sphere. India deployed 60,000 soldiers to the north-eastern state of Assam near Arunachal Pradesh in June, bringing total numbers in the area to more than 100,000. A new airfield was built just 30 kilometres from Arunachal Pradesh, in an obvious counter to China’s strategic build-up in Tibet, including the construction of a major railway that could be used for rapid troop deployment.
In September, India initiated “Operation Alert”, an exercise that involved sending half its troops along the Line of Actual Control in Kashmir to forward posts. This was in response to a huge cross-country mobile exercise by 50,000 mechanised Chinese troops, which was viewed in New Delhi as part of Beijing’s efforts to improve its military capacity against India.
Following last week’s outbursts, both governments have downplayed the issue. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has asked to meet Indian Prime Minister Singh at this week’s Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) gathering in Thailand. While the two men are likely to meet tomorrow, none of the underlying issues will be resolved.
In ruling circles in New Delhi, the fear is that India, which has ambitions to become a major world power, is losing out to rival China in every sphere. Although China is now India’s largest trading partner, with trade expected to reach $60 billion in 2010—30 times the size of 2000—it is largely in China’s favour. India’s deficit with China increased by 41 percent in 2008-09 to more than $20 billion, fuelling protectionist sentiments among sections of Indian business.
Strategically, China’s growing influence in countries, such as Sri Lanka, that India has regarded as within its regional sphere of influence has come as a shock in New Delhi. While India was constrained in its support for the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by popular opposition in south India, China provided arms and diplomatic support and in return is constructing a major port facility in southern Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan port is part of broader Chinese plans to extend its naval reach into the Indian Ocean with the building of port facilities in Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. The “chain of pearls” strategy is aimed at securing China’s vital energy supply lines to the Middle East and Africa. As far as India is concerned, Beijing is involved in an unwelcome intrusion into what New Delhi regards literally as the “Indian” Ocean. Further, China has a close relationship with India’s bitter regional rival Pakistan and with neighbouring Burma. Rivalry between the two powers is also on the rise in Nepal and Bangladesh.
In the midst of these tensions, the most destabilising factor is the intervention of the US, both directly through its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its proxy war in Pakistan, and indirectly through its efforts to encircle China with US military bases and allies stretching from North East Asia right around to Central Asia. China’s sensitivity over Arunachal Pradesh is in part a product of concerns in Beijing that social unrest in neighbouring Tibet could be exploited by the US and its allies for their own ends. China’s prodding of India over Arunachal Pradesh serves to remind New Delhi that there is a price to pay for its closer ties with Washington.
Already there are concerns in the Indian establishment over ties with the US. The nuclear pact signed with the US last year was regarded in New Delhi as a triumph that could transform India into a “world power”. Since then, however, Washington had been compelled because of the global economic crisis to prioritise its relations with Beijing. Amid the media hype about an emerging G2—the US and China—Washington’s relationship with India has been pushed into the background.
In the military sphere, India is also conscious that it lags behind China. While India boosted defence spending this year by 25 percent to $30 billion in 2009, this figure is still less than half China’s military budget of $70 billion. One of the largest Indian expenditures is $10 billion for 126 new fighters, which the military insists is necessary because its air capacity is just one third of China’s.
What is emerging is a dangerous arms race. Last month the Hindu reported the remarks of K. Santhanam, a former chief adviser for the Defence Research Development Organisation, calling for further testing of nuclear weapons. Noting that India’s nuclear warheads were in the 25-kilotonne range, he declared: “We are totally naked vis-à-vis China which has an inventory of 200 nuclear bombs, the vast majority of which are giant H-bombs of power equal to 3 million tonnes of TNT.”
While Santhanam’s claims have been dismissed by Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, the comments do point to the discussions taking place in top military and political circles in New Delhi. Tensions over current Arunachal Pradesh dispute may die down, but the issues underlying the longer term and dangerous rivalry between the two states remain.
Please contact:maoist_manipur@yahoo.com
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