India-U.S. military exercises begin

Indo-US joint exercises begin at Agra, Babina

BS Reporter,  New Delhi,  October 20, 2009

Indo-US military collaboration has taken a big step this month, with the launch today of Exercise ‘Cope India-09’, a five-day joint exercise between the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF) at the Air Force Station, Agra, even as an even bigger exercise between the two countries’ armies, ‘Yudh Abyas 2009’ rolls on at Babina, Madhya Pradesh, in a 17-day programme which concludes on October 29.

The Yudh Abhyas partnership exercise commenced in 2004, at Chaubatiya in the Himalayan foothills, and was followed in 2005 with US Army contingents coming to train with Indian troops at the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Vairangte, Mizoram. In Yudh Abhayas 2006, Gorkha troops went to Hawaii for training. In 2009, Indian Army soldiers from the 31st armoured division are working with US counterparts from Hawaii, in a multi-echelon, full-spectrum, combined operation.

Maoists gain strength in Orissa

Orissa in the grip of Red ultras due to the neglect of the deprived section

Anurjay Dhal, Orissa Diary, October 19, 2009

Bhubaneswar: The Red terror has spread its wings to 22 out of 30 districts in Orissa throwing a serious challenge to the state authority even as chief minister Naveen Patnaik has come back to power in Assembly poll marketing his king-size image of honesty and good governance.

The Leftwing insurgency has grown and the situation has gone out of control now because of the neglect of the deprived section by the state government over the years. The people, largely, have lost faith over state mechanism due to the factors like absence of civil administration in remote areas, collapse of the justice system, exploitation of tribals by contractors and rich people and failure of police to provide minimum security to civilians.

Indian military assault may have hard time finding the Maoists

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.--Mao Zedong.  Indian counter-insurgency specialists and their U.S. advisers have undoubtedly studied Mao’s military writings, but they are still trying to figure out how to counter them.

October 19 , 2009, The Telegraph, Calcutta, India

Maoist ‘melting plot’ worries govt   by Sankarshan Thankur

New Delhi, Oct. 18: Armed Naxalites could resort to an absence offensive in response to the first security thrust into their strongholds.

Intelligence inputs reaching here from parts of Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand suggest that large numbers of cadres may leave their jungle bases and “melt away into urban anonymity” over the next few weeks as part of a thought-out tactic.

“It makes good sense for them,” said a senior intelligence official based here. “They don’t have the firepower the government is in the process of employing. By vanishing initially, they will not only escape a full-blown assault, they will also be able to draw security forces deeper into their habitat and trap them in a long-drawn guerrilla conflict.”

Arundhati Roy on the Poor, the Armed Struggle & the Failure of India’s System

This is a 5-part series where writer/activist Arundhati Roy speaks on “Indian Democracy In A State Of Emergency”  The 5 parts total 20 minutes, and the 4th part contains her comments on the Maoists and the armed struggle.