Mining the Maoist and Taliban Fights

Wall Street Journal Online, July 14, 2010

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703792704575366321414684724.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_sections_opinion#articleTabs%3Dcomments

By BIBHU PRASAD ROUTRAY AND SHANTHIE MARIET D'SOUZA

In Asia's war on terror, India's Maoists and Afghanistan's Taliban fighters have proved some of the toughest and most tenacious enemies. Indian and U.S.-led forces in both conflict zones could learn greatly from each other's shortcomings.

The two theaters are proving similar. Both in Afghanistan and India's Maoist-affected states, the collapse or lack of governance remains a critical factor that aids insurgency and generates popular support for the extremists. Fatalities among the foreign forces in Afghanistan reached a record high this year; similarly, casualty figures among India's paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force also recently marked an all-time high.

In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition is frustrated with the local Afghan security forces' inability to secure areas once cleared of the insurgents. A similar incompetence prevails among India's police forces in the Maoist-affected states. None of India's state police forces, with the exception of Andhra Pradesh's, have the ability to lead anti-Maoist operations. And both forces have recently had a change of command at the top after public spats with civilian leaders: In Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal was shown the door, while in India, Vijay Raman, CRPF's Special Director General of Police in charge of the anti-Maoist operations too was fired.

There are common lessons here for both commands. For a start, the extremists' military threat must be neutralized by external security forces to give local forces time to gain skills to deal with the extremists and ward them off in future. This strategy requires more boots on the ground—both external and local—even if in the long run local police will shoulder the responsibility to hold onto the area.

The second challenge is to bolster forces. India's Ministry of Home Affairs plans to fill 350,000 vacancies in the state police forces over the next five years. But Delhi might want to examine what happened in Afghanistan when the Obama administration ramped up the Afghan National Army's numbers to 250,000 from the current 130,000 by 2014. However, a recent Pentagon report notes 86% of the new recruits lack basic levels of literacy. The Afghan National Police is also plagued by inefficiency, corruption and cronyism. It is possible that in a rush to fill the vacancies too fast, the police departments in Indian Maoist-affected states too will be burdened with incompetent personnel.

The third challenge is to tackle the insurgents across a wide geographical area. American and NATO forces have increasingly depended on large-scale operations in concentrated extremist strongholds to expand the area under their dominance. On the contrary, India's Green Hunt operation against the Maoists has been a multi-state operation. With the state police forces proving inadequate partners, the central forces have been spread too thin over a vast area. This makes carrying out regular counterinsurgency operations difficult, not to speak of pinpointed precision strikes.

A state-by-state approach would be the most plausible tactic to adopt. Andhra Pradesh, once the worst Maoist-affected state, managed to weaken the extremists even with limited forces, while neighboring states continued to struggle with the problem. There is no reason why such a measure cannot be adopted in any states like Chhattisgarh or West Bengal, which have been Maoist strongholds for quite a long time.

Another important challenge is to decapitate the enemy leadership. For years, India tried to negotiate with the Maoists; so much so that the recent killing of Azad, the Communist Party of India-Maoist spokesman, has been described by a section of the Indian intelligentsia as a setback to the peace prospects. Yet Andhra Pradesh's failed 2004 peace process and other examples show that the Maoists have used talks as an excuse to stall and regroup. Similarly in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation process to win over the Taliban leadership is doomed to fail until significant military gains are achieved against the insurgents, driving them to a point of desperation and to real negotiations.

These comparisons are by no means exhaustive. But there is clearly a similar road map to success in both theaters, which includes an emphasis on institution building, the provision of security, better governance and delivery of basic essential services to local residents. Both U.S.-led forces and Indian forces have suffered through a long conflict, as have the citizens they're trying to protect. It's time to learn from each other and figure out how to win a durable peace.