Military Response in Chhattisgarh

This seems significant. The Indian army has unveiled plans to establish a local command structure in Chhattisgarh tasked with gathering intelligence on the Maoists and training the state police. The army claims that this does not constitute the beginning of active involvement by its forces in counter-insurgency operations:

This is the army’s first move to create a structured body to deal specifically with Naxalite activity. But army headquarters and the defence ministry do not equate this with a deployment of armed forces against the Maoist insurgency.

This is not the army’s first foray into the Maoist insurgency (they have responsibility for running Chhattisgarh’s counter-terrorism and jungle warfare centre), it is, however, the most direct. The army will now be permanently stationed in the war zone with an explicit anti-Naxalite mandate. It may be the beginning of increased army involvement in the fight or, more likely, be indicative of a smarter, more unified and flexible counter-insurgency approach being formed in Delhi.

In either case, I’m not at all sure that a militarisation of the conflict would be all bad. State police forces and many of the national para-police agencies have proven to be unprepared, ill-equipped and, at times, ill-disciplined. The Indian army is a widely respected and well-trained force. And, simply because the army is not fighting the insurgency, doesn’t mean that the conflict isn’t a virtual civil war.

I’d be curious what my reader’s views might be.