October 7, 2009 ☼ CIMPCOR ☼ counter-insurgency ☼ governance ☼ Naxalites ☼ Public Policy ☼ Security
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
In today’s Indian Express Sushant and I call for the Indian government to address two big issues that appear to be missing from its strategy to fight the Naxalite insurgency. Excerpts:
First, the Naxalites and their sympathisers will launch a psychological counter-offensive to weaken the political commitment to the campaign by trying to delegitimise it in the public mind. Security forces will be accused of human rights violations, and a dubious moral equivalence drawn between the damage chemotherapy causes and the cancer it treats. Celebrity activists will find a new cause to express their outrage in prize-worthy eloquence. Even genuine human-rights activists will become the Naxalites’ unwitting instruments — to the extent that criticism of the government’s conduct will be projected as an implicit vindication of the Maoist agenda….
To get out of this hole, the government must release accurate and factual information to the public with unprecedented timeliness. In this age of inexpensive technology and connectivity, there is no excuse for the home ministry to be unable to release reports, photographs and video footage from the field. Paying for advertisements in the national media will only take it so far—-unless the UPA government implements a sophisticated public communication strategy, it will find its political will sapped by the Naxalite propaganda machine.
This brings up the second challenge: India does not have the capacity to conduct the vital endgame of counter-insurgencies…
After any serious surgery, there is usually a brief period of convalescence in the hospital before the patient is discharged into the care of the general practitioner. India does not have the capacity to take an area that has been cleared of insurgents, build institutions of governance before discharging it to the state government. Unless this capacity is built, the successes of Operation Green Hunt will remain ephemeral.
Delivering governance in the immediate aftermath of conflict requires hybrid civil-military capacity. A new organisation must be raised by the Central government, under a restructured home ministry, to lay foundations for the rule of law, economic freedom and property rights in areas cleared of Naxalites. We call this the CIMPCOR or Civilian Military Partnership for Conflict Resolution model…
The alchemy of Naxalism lies in the transformation of millions of quotidian grievances into disaffection and rebellion against the Indian state. Green Hunt rightly focuses on security first; but it will only be complete when good governance eliminates those quotidian grievances. [Indian Express]
We flesh out the CIMPCOR model in our in-depth piece in Pragati that was reproduced by The Pioneer as a two part series.
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