Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Indian Government Rejects Conditional Maoist Cease-Fire Offer

Nearly two-and-half years ago, a special one-day meeting of Chhattisgarh Assembly was convened on the issue of Naxallite (Maoist guerillas) menace. But the peculiarity of the session was that it was kept secret from media. Later, Chief Minister Raman Singh gave the reason for this secrecy, saying that Naxallites would not come to know who said what in the meeting. This was the terror of Naxallites, who hold sway in 16 out of 20 districts i.e. three-fourth of the state.

Rise in Maoist Violence
Not only Chhattisgarh, a dozen states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh are trembling with this fear. They kill policemen, citizens, children, and women at will. They talk to media without fear and extort money at gunpoint. Recent figures show that incidents of Naxallite violence have outnumbered terrorist incidents in Kashmir and the northeast.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram admits that the government has failed to assess the strength and intentions of Naxallites. In this situation, if Naxallites have offered a 72-day cease-fire, there is no need to be enthusiastic about it. This is also their ploy.

Future Preparations
Just recently, they have killed four-dozen security force personnel and innocent citizens in West Bengal and Bihar. For the first time, the fedarl government is appearing serious on this issue and is getting ready to take action in affected states, keeping political enmity aside.
There are clear signs that the Army would also be involved in this attack. Aware of the government's intentions, Naxallites want time for self-protection and future preparations, and, therefore, they have imposed the condition that security forces should be withdrawn from affected areas before talks. We hope that the government would not get caught in such a trap.

How To Tackle?
The government has rightly announced that no condition would be accepted for talks and Naxallites would have to give it in writing that they would abjure violence. Obviously, Naxallites would hesitate to take such a step because for one, it is against their guerilla strategy, and second, it will loosen their grip on their cadres.
The situations are telling us that they could only be crushed through use of force. In this situation, it should be taken care of that Naxallites are not able to use innocent Adivasis (aboriginal people) as their shield.

1 comment:

seema said...

The author has rightly presented the danger Maoists hold for the districts in which they operate as well as to the counry at large.Their recent attack on the security forces confirm how grave the danger is.In fact,In 2008 alone, the Maoists killed more than 700 people - which included children as young as four years and badly-paid police constables — the closest they can reach to the mighty state of India. None of their victims was a capitalist - who they say are the exploiters. Most of them were tribals, whose right they are allegedly fighting for.Congratulations to the author for delving on this issue.