Maoist split on suicide squads

by Sanjay Basak and Namrata Biji Ahuja

(August 25, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) An "ideological debate" is raging among India’s Maoists over forming "suicide squads" on LTTE lines, sources in Chhattisgarh revealed.

A senior state police official told this newspaper it was found during interrogations that major differences had cropped up within the central committee, the Maoists’ highest policymaking body, over forming suicide squads on the lines of terrorist outfits.

A section of both the central and state committees of the Maoists felt since they were not a "fundamentalist" outfit but were working to bring about an egalitarian society, and believed in the right to life (for loyal soldiers), forming suicide squads would not be "ideologically correct."

Another section of the Maoist leadership, however, felt it could not ignore the "lethal success of suicide squads and (their) fearsome impact on the psyche of the Indian State and security forces," sources said. The Maoists, incidentally, prefer to describe themselves as "professional revolutionaries."

Saturday’s killing of VHP leaders in Orissa by suspected Maoists, meanwhile, indicates that sporadic attacks would continue during the monsoon. Maoists in both Orissa and Chhattisgarh have stepped up recruitment efforts with the monsoon slowing down operations.

The Maoists are also taking advantage of the grinding poverty and government neglect in the remote, inaccessible region to ask parents to hand over children aged between 10 and 15, promising food and a "better life in the camps." Amnesty International activist Meha Dixit says: "Maoists are recruiting very small children in rural areas, and the government is not doing anything." Video CDs seized by the security forces show Maoists training children in the 8-15 age group, who are "used mainly as carriers, planting IEDs in jungles and tracking police movements," sources said.

Intelligence reports reaching the home ministry indicate that the Maoists intend to "recruit over 5,000 child soldiers from eastern and central India." The Maoists also prefer women soldiers due to the "loyalty factor". Some cases of "sexual abuse" of women cadres by top Naxal leaders have, however, been reported. Forty per cent of People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army cadres are women.
- Sri Lanka Guardian