CPI-Maoist: The Threat from Left-Wing Extremists

By Frank Hyland & Animesh Roul

This column is another in the ongoing series on the terrorist threat to India and the surrounding region by Frank Hyland and Animesh Roul.

Discussion of the terrorist threat in India’s troubled eastern region would not be complete without including the Communist Party of India-Maoist.

September 9th, 1976, marked the death of Mao Tse Tung, the iconic leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and an inspiration to millions of others throughout Asia and beyond. Mao’s ideas lived on, though, and persist even today in one of India’s most effective and most feared terrorist groups: The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M).

As it exists today, CPI-M is not yet four years old, having been formed in September of 2004. CPI-M’s progenitors, however, the Maoist Communist Center (MCC) and the People’s War Group (PWG) were highly experienced groups, both of which had carried out anti-state attacks in India for decades. CPI-M’s expressed goals remain those of MCC and PWG: nothing less than a PRC-like official end to societal classes through a peasant-led revolution in India. CPI-M’s strategy to achieve those ends, also mimicking Mao’s historic Long March, is the establishment of areas under its control known as Compact Revolutionary Zones. The areas would later be expanded until India in its entirety fell under CPI-M control. At present the group exerts a degree of such control over portions of Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh States, as well as in the surrounding areas of Bihar, Orissa, and West Bengal.

CPI-M is, far and away, the most redoubtable of India’s left-wing terrorist groups. The group presently fields an estimated seven thousand guerrillas, including youngsters, in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and West Bengal. CPI-M has also caused a “ripple effect” beyond India’s borders, in neighboring Nepal, through its growing relations with Nepalese Maoists of the CPN-M. Before its first organizational anniversary, CPI-M and CPN-M combined forces in June 2005 to kill more than 20 victims in a joint attack carried out in Bihar State.

A listing of CPI-M attacks, its motives, and its victims illustrates well the degree of the threat:

• On February 28, 2006, nearly 25 people were killed when CPI-M cadres triggered a landmine blast at Eklagoda, in Chhatisgarh’s Dantewada district; more than 40 others were injured;
• An attack by CPI-M on a government-run relief camp in Errabore, Dantewada, on July 17, 2006, probably to demonstrate the fate of those who relied on the Indian Government, resulted in the massacre of more than 30 people;
• In what is considered to be CPI-M’s biggest-ever strike targeting Indian security forces, the group stormed the Rani Bodli Police outpost with grenades and indiscriminate gunfire on March 15, 2007, killing approximately 55 police personnel;
• CPI-M attacks in the latter part of October 2007 were emblematic of its expressed aims. In one, the group killed villagers who had gathered for a cultural event, including the nephew of a former Chief Minister of Jharkhand State. In the other, in order to display its political control over the area, villagers were accused of being informers for Indian Police authorities and executed;
• The following month, and in a further demonstration its control, CPI-M killed sixteen security force personnel patrolling near Pamedu in Bijapur (Chhattisgarh);
• Just two weeks ago, on February 15th, fifteen people, most of them police personnel, were killed when heavily armed Maoist cadres, both men and women, attacked three police establishments in Nayagarh, Orissa State.

The Indian response - official and non-official - has met with mixed results. The Indian Government has arrested a number of CPI-M’s members under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The group has also been banned by at least three of the affected states - Orissa, Andrha Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. On the non-official side, vigilante groups have arisen in a number of areas in an attempt to respond to the CPI-M violence. Attacks, as noted above, continue.

As did Mao’s People’s Liberation Army -- as did the MCC and PWG -- CPI-M retains a penchant for violence, showing no quarter whatsoever to its victims. Also reminiscent of its Maoist heritage, CPI-M’s targeting focus is squarely on those it considers to be representative of the Indian State - governmental officials, members of public security forces, and teachers. Although to the present only a small portion of CPI-M’s victims, tourists have been among the group’s victims. It would not be surprising, however, to see that situation change. As has been the case in numerous other nations, anti-state attacks that include tourism, such as in Turkey, Egypt, and Spain, have had a devastating effect on countries’ revenues. While the focus will remain on Indian State targets, foreign firms in India should be vigilant at all times.

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