Bibhu Prasad Routray
The 1 December 2014 killing of 14 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
personnel in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district by the Communist Party of
India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) should invariably go down as one of the
country's worst security force operations in recent times. In terms of
the killing of trained personnel, looting of their weapons, and the
follow up response of a well established security establishment in the
state, the attack surpasses even the far bigger extremist attacks of the
past in which the force had lost far larger number of personnel. The
incident further gives rise to the question whether a victory over the
Maoists is at all possible under a CRPF-State police force combination
formula?
The attack took place as over 2000 personnel of the CRPF were conducting
a four-phase operation against the extremists in the district. As
expressed by the involved personnel to the media, without much of
intelligence to back these initiatives, there was little objective
behind the operations rather than what broadly is described as area
domination exercises. During the end of the third phase of the
operation, a section of the force, variously described as consisting of
200 to 700 personnel came under attack by the Maoists – who apparently
used civilian villagers as shields. There was little resistance from the
forces, who as reports suggest got away only 14 fatalities. While 12
perished in the combat, two personnel died while being shifted. Had the
Maoists persisted and continued their attacks, the toll could have been
much higher, perilously close to the 2010 Dantewada attack in which the
CRPF lost 76 troopers. The attack has led to an early conclusion of the
area domination exercise in Sukma.
The attack raises several questions regarding the ability of the force
that has been designated as the country’s lead counter-insurgent force
after the Kargil attack, vis-a-vis the Maoists. There are issues of
leadership, logistics, intelligence and coordination with the state
police force. However, none of these concerns are new. Each
investigation following a major attack has unravelled the same ills
affecting the force that has been fighting the extremists for nearly a
decade and whose battalion strength in the conflict theater has grown
manifold over the years. While some incremental improvements in the way
operations have been conducted are natural and are there for everybody
to see, fundamental issues such as the CRPF leadership's strategy of
fighting the war with well-motivated and adequately supported personnel
have been chronically absent.
This explains why the transient successes that have pushed the 10-year
old CPI-Maoist arguably to its weakest state notwithstanding, the CRPF's
own history of engagement with the extremists is replete with mistakes,
setbacks, and a perennial search for the right principles of
operational accomplishment. The force's projects to generate
intelligence by setting up an dedicated wing; its initiatives of
developing bonds with the tribal population by providing them with
gifts, medical facilities, and organising sports and cultural events;
and its efforts to narrow down the differences with the state police
forces have all achieved marginal results. Even the 10-battalion strong
Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA), raised with the specific
objective of fighting the Maoists, which has since been diluted to make
them deal with the insurgents of all denominations in the northeast,
have minor achievements to demonstrate, in the Indian Ministry of Home
Affairs (MHA)'s own assessments.
The uncomfortable conclusion one can derive from the state-of-affairs is
that the CRPF, in its present state, is not the force that can deliver
significant successes in the Maoist conflict theaters. Even with an
ever-expanding budget of Rs. 12,169.51 crores for the current financial
year - amounting to almost 1/5th of the MHA's entire budget – the
successive chiefs of the force have failed to provide its fighting
troops even the basic of the provisions. Media narratives indicate
soldiers keeping themselves operationally fit with rice, lentils and
Maggi noodles. Worse still, seen in combination with poor condition of
the state police forces and their virtual irrelevance to the conflict
resolution project, it points at an ignominious future of a permanent
state of conflict in a sizeable geographical expanse of the country.
In response to the Sukma attack, the MHA plans to induct more forces
into Chhattisgarh. Such a move, in the pipeline since the new government
assumed power in New Delhi in May 2014, is based on the premise that
more boots on the ground would be able to reverse the success of the
Maoists. Nothing can be farther from truth. The CRPF's failure needs to
be seen in the context of the overall lack of imagination among the
country's policy makers in dealing with the Maoist threat. Ever since
the CPI-Maoist emerged as a major challenge, lackadaisical, reactionary,
and adhoc-ish measures have been passed off as official policies. Even
as such experimentation continues, the soldiers, among others, are
paying with their blood and lives in conflicts mainland Indians are
completely oblivious to.
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