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Losing Battle
In 2009, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a Dehli press conference that his government was losing its battle against the Maoist revolutionaries that have disrupted the country since 1967.
It’s a war that has gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, but has in the past 10 years racked up a death toll of over 6,000 and seen the insurgents come to dominate 150 districts – a quarter of the country known as the “red corridor” – to the point that Indian government in these areas has been classed as “non-functioning” and the Maoists are described by Manmohan as “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”.
Since that press conference things have gone from bad to worse. In response to the government’s “Operation Green Hunt”, dedicated to gaining back ground from the insurgents, Maoist attacks have increased in frequency and violence but were limited to assaults on the Indian armed forces until May, when the derailing of a passenger train killed upwards of 150 civilians.
Experts suggest that the Maoists’ goal was to disrupt the Indian parliamentary elections in the hope of further cementing their rule in the “red corridor”, the 60,000 square miles they now dominate, and gaining more footholds elsewhere.
"They're attacking the election to de-legitimise the Indian state structures. They want to sabotage the legitimacy India gets from elections. In many areas, where the state is not functioning, they are resolving local disputes, gaining their own legitimacy. Their social support is huge," said Saibal Gupta, secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute.
Robin Hood communism
The Maoists, with their communist philosophies, huge level of social support and claims to represent the rural poor, serve as an emblem of the poverty afflicting almost 40% of India’s population.
This is proving awkward for the Indian government who, anxious not to play Sheriff of Nottingham to the Maoists’ Robin Hood, is having a tough time balancing their long tradition of leftism with the need to put the rebellions down.
Thus far they’ve managed to do neither - their attempts to crush the uprisings are proving unsuccessful, with endeavours such as sponsoring vigilante groups to teach and equip villagers to resist the Maoists only resulting in further civilian casualties and barely a dent in the insurgents’ ranks. The attack on 28th May came at the worst possible time, with the government already accused of an unimpressive performance after just a year in power.
"They are looking quite helpless. There's a sense of administrative collapse," said MJ Akbar, the editor of India’s Sunday Guardian.
The Maoist threat has exposed the ideological cracks in India’s government as a growing number of leftist leading figures voiced their discomfort over the hawkish tendencies of some contemporaries, chiefly Home Minister P Chidamabaram, the architect of the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ campaign.
Senior Congress party leader Digvijay Singh said Chidamabaram was "treating it purely as a law and order problem without taking into consideration the issues that affect the tribals" while the influential Congress party leader, Sonia Gandhi, has called for greater attention to the “root causes” of the conflict.
Chidamabaram, who initially defended himself against criticisms of ‘Operation Green Hunt’ by blaming the “limited remit” granted to him by the government, finally announced in early June that he had tentatively set the conditions for peace talks with the Maoists.
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