If, in 2001, the US had just overthrown the Taliban, allowed the installation of a genuinely democratic government in Kabul rather than parachuting an ineffectual rubber stamp of a UNOCAL employee called Hamid Karzai into the Presidential Palace, and exited, things would have sorted themselves out by now. But that would have exposed the real purpose of the invasion of Afghanistan - outflanking Iran from the East and China from the West, and opening the route for oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia through Pakistan, so as to bypass and isolate Russia. The overthrow of the Taliban, formerly an American creation and till the mid-nineties an ally,was merely a convenient excuse.

Iraq proved, if any proof was needed, that the lives of American soldiers and Muslim civilians are equally expendable in the newest version of the Great Game.

A few months ago, I was in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and was fleeced by the sort of creature that preys on tourists. Last night, some of the same places I remember were torn apart by eight bomb blasts, killing around sixty people and injuring upwards of two hundred more. I suppose it would be too much to expect that any of the tourist fleecers were among those exterminated?

Anyway – to get to the point. I don’t, at the moment of writing, know who made the nine bombs and strapped them all to bicycles and blew eight of them up (one failed to explode and was found and defused). I’m told by the media that the people responsible were Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HuJI) terrorists from Bangladesh, but knowing the deep and abiding respect I have for our media, I’m sure you’ll understand that I take that with a handful of salt.

Anyway – whoever did this was stupid. I don’t actually think anyone can be idiot enough to believe that blowing up a few small bombs (the one recovered weighed just 500 grams, and was composed of low grade explosive at that) can actually overthrow the Indian government or even make any difference at all. Attacks on soft targets can in theory keep security forces tied up in defensive positions, but that’s only if the government of the day gives a damn for its people. I believe I’ve gone puce in the face often enough talking about how cheap human life is in India, except when said life belongs to the upper-middle and/or upper classes.

Also, just imagine what you expect to achieve if you set off bombs in public places. You intend to kill people en masse, right? So, your victims should (in order for the attack to make any sense) belong to a relatively homogeneous group. But this is India.

Let me explain. Suppose you’re a Sunni Muslim terrorist intent on the victory of your version of Wah’habi Islam. You explode a bomb in an ethnically cleansed area of Sadr City in Baghdad, for instance, and you’ll kill only Shias. You explode a bomb in any Indian city in order, say, to kill Hindus and drive some kind of wedge between communities that will radicalize Muslims. But of every ten victims, you’ll more likely than not have five Hindus, three Muslims, a Sikh and a Christian. Instead of dividing the people, you’ll more likely than not end up pushing them closer together, if only for a while.

Now of course exploding bombs in crowded cities is so easy it’s not even worth calling an attack. You don’t even have to belong to any organized group; you just download explosive recipes from the net and make your own, along with trigger devices that are extremely easy to acquire. And as for the “courage” needed to park such a bomb in a car in a crowded street and calmly walk away…Richard the Lionheart you don’t need to be.

There is another different type of attack, though, which happens often in India – and that isn’t any amateur affair with homemade bombs, and you do require a smidgen of guts. In fact you require a hell of a lot of guts. That’s the fidayeen attack.

It happens often in Kashmir. A small squad of – I won’t call them terrorists, since they mostly attack hard targets like army camps – fidayeen shoots its way into a military establishment (though sometimes they have targeted other places as well, like the Akshardham temple in Gujarat). The members, usually just two or three, keep firing and throwing grenades until they’re killed - affording lovely photo opportunities to units

or (sometimes) they effect some kind of escape and get back to their hideouts with the help of backup teams. Of course, these attacks keep military units all keyed up and engaged in self-protection to an extent that their more active operations can’t but suffer, so it’s sound military strategy. I’d go so far as to call it legitimate warfare.

And it’s not something your friendly neighbourhood self-taught bigot can cook up in his kitchen, is it?

Respected Prime Minister

In view of your extremely perspicacious declaration of the Maoists as "the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country", I have been thinking of how to go about countering them.

I shall call them “Maoists” in this letter to you, and, unlike most commentators, not Naxalites, – and I shall explain in a moment why I do this. 

Now, Mr Prime Minister, I’m sure you understand that we should make full use of this Maoist rebellion to further our long term goals – both as a party and as a nation.

So, let me advance my considered opinions as to the best way to go about doing this.

The struggle against the Maoist rebellion has the potential for both direct and indirect benefits.

First, Mr Prime Minister, we must understand that the Maoists are not the problem – though for public consumption we should, of course, keep reiterating this. The most pressing problem is the mainstream Left, which is bent upon confounding your desire to push the country to the right and forge an alliance, unofficially and then officially, with the United States of America.

Therefore, Mr Prime Minster, we must begin with a media offensive intended to deliberately confuse the Left with the Maoists. Since the term Naxalite is popularly understood to be restricted to armed communist rebels, we must forthwith junk this and switch to Maoist, which is a more general term. Maoist itself is a halfway house; it has its uses, which I shall talk of soon, but in itself it’s only a stepping stone to calling the rebels Communists. Once they are all popularly referred to as Communists it will be extremely easy to deliberately confuse them with the mainstream left and ban or otherwise debar the latter from politics. You can well imagine how the forced exit of the Left from electoral politics will free your party’s hands to carry out a right wing economic policy, which, as we all know is of course the best solution for the nation. (Can you imagine the enormous benefits we could receive as an American vassal state, I mean ally – including a permanent majority for your party so long as it proved itself the most allied of all the political parties allowed to function? The Americans would allow no other party to win or rule! Just look at the Philippines if you wish confirmation.)

Of course, Mr Prime Minister, during the period when these people are referred to as Maoists, we should not forget to drive home the fact that Maoism derives its name from Mao Zedong, who was, of course, Chinese. Since our American friends are positioning themselves for a future conflict with China, we should accordingly keep trumpeting the Chinese war of 1962 as a “betrayal” (and keep the actual facts suppressed, if necessary by quietly banning such books as Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War), and keep mentioning Maoist links to China (even if no such link is ever found). This will help to mould Indian public opinion against China and pave the way for a formal alliance, starting with the Unclear, I mean Nuclear, Deal so devoutly wished for by you, sir.  

Also, reiterating links between the Chinese and India’s mainstream Communist political parties – already a staple of the right wing media – will make it easier to ban the latter.

Secondly, Mr Prime Minister, we can then see the absolute necessity of propaganda designed to make the Maoist rebellion look like the greatest threat ever faced by the nation. Just repeating your line will not help, we must keep driving it home, exaggerating incidents, bribing the media if necessary to keep the public eye fixed firmly on it in between the necessary distraction of cricket matches, so that the public, most especially the Middle Class (and it would be a grave error to underestimate the stupidity of the Middle Class, Mr Prime Minister) comes to believe that the Maoists are about to surround and capture the cities where the Middle Class lives. Then they will be ready to approve any and all means to eliminate this (imaginary, needless to say – as you well know, the Maoist rebels are restricted to a few pockets in some states only) threat. 

And as to how eliminating the Maoist threat will help indirectly, Mr Prime Minister, to know that we must see how to eliminate the threat first.

The Maoist movement, as you well know, is based primarily in the forests. Therefore, in order to destroy the rebels, it would be a good idea to destroy the forests. No forests, no problem! It would not be difficult – and the rewards, as I shall explain, would be out of all proportion to the effort involved.

You know, Mr Prime Minister, that up to a fifth of the country’s land is occupied by these useless tracts of jungle, and when they are cleared and opened up, all that land can be sold to the private sector for exploitation. Indeed, the very act of clearing would yield immense amounts of wood and would provide, albeit temporary, employment to many workers. Then the private sector could use this land for minerals, contract farming, or industry. One can in fact see where this helps in politics as well – the private sector can be given land without forcing peasants off theirs. Useless as the peasants are, they can create political embarrassment by committing suicide or making a lot of noise when thrown off their land at gunpoint.

Of course, all forests will need to be wiped out – if we were to restrict ourselves only to the tracts occupied by the Maoists, we would only be able to clear a small portion of the forest, not nearly enough to make it economically viable.

As an ancillary, we must of course paint the ecology lobby as anti-development Luddites – the media will co-operate in the effort without prompting – and make the point that a developing country cannot afford ecology. Most of the Middle Class is already primed to accept this view. Incidentally, wiping out the forests will deny poachers and bandits space to operate, so adverse publicity from their activities would be reduced.

Also, along with destroying the forests, we must destroy the forest communities. These people are the backbone of Maoism. It might make a lot of adverse publicity if we kill them directly, so we should allow them to die of neglect. This is not difficult, we just have to follow our current policies through to their logical conclusion. Don’t worry, Mr Prime Minister, these people do not have enough votes to make any difference. Besides, since they have nothing and are given nothing, these people are an important factor in degrading our position on the national development index. Kill them off, and our ranking will inevitably improve dramatically, something you can take credit for.

Then, of course, all one has to do is paint all of one’s domestic opponents as Maoists and lock them up. Just possessing any literature citing or quoting Mao should be made a crime. Even a passing reference to Mao, or possessing an encyclopaedia mentioning him, should be made illegal. This has the great advantage that virtually anyone can be locked up anytime at the government’s discretion.

Of course, Mr Prime Minister, as an essential part of the anti-Maoist struggle, our police and paramilitary forces should be allowed to kill whom they want. It will keep them happy and – by putting the fear of the state in every heart – further strengthen your party’s rule.

And, last but not the least, Mr Prime Minister – Maoism stands for egalitarianism. Your party, on the other hand, stands for monarchy. The destruction of Maoism and its vilification will allow you to project monarchy, its polar opposite, in the best possible light.

Therefore, Mr Prime Minister, I hope you can appreciate that this is literally the opportunity of a lifetime. It almost certainly, if missed, will not come again.

Most helpfully and cordially, I remain

                                                                       Rabi D  Rai Twinger  

                                                                       (Security Consultant)

Sometime life does imitate low forms of self-styled “art”.

Towards the later part of my first novel, Rainbow’s End, there is a scene where a small group of terrorists infiltrates the (unnamed) city with the mission of killing a particular man and of extorting money. One of the terrorist squad defects to the police almost immediately, with the result that the rest of the group goes from being the hunters to the hunted.

Two days ago, there was a firefight in the city where five terrorists of the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), a terrorist group of whom I’ve written in the past, were killed. A squad of six had infiltrated into the city, tasked with extorting money and with killing two men – Julius Dorphang, erstwhile chairman of the outfit, who surrendered a few months ago; and HS Shylla, a politician who speaks sense sometimes, most often on controversial topics (an extremely rare thing for an Indian politician). He does make some godawful cockups, too, but it’s his sensible remarks (on uranium mining) which got him targeted this time.   

In any case, this group of terrorists had infiltrated the city and had one month to carry out their mission. Then, three days ago, one of their number, one Anthony Mawthoh, told the rest of them he was going to buy cigarettes – but defected to the police instead. He told the police what he knew, and they (both regular police and plainclothes “special police” auxiliaries, many of them former HNLC themselves) were waiting when the remaining terrorists drove into their trap at about 7pm the night before last (the place is within easy walking distance of my clinic and almost bang opposite my old school) in a grey Maruti van. When the police tried to stop them they opened fire and injured one policeman and one special policeman. The police retaliated with the results you can see in the photo above, which I cut out of a newspaper and scanned (so it is unfortunately not as clear as it might be) and sharpened to the best of my ability. They’re interesting in a totally gruesome way.

Incidentally, and this may be of interest – two of the five dead terrorists were from the locality where I live. Apparently these guys weren’t smart enough to do what my protagonist Rollin did, to maintain security. This was the largest number of casualties ever suffered by the HNLC in one single operation. It was a crowded residential locality, yet not a single civilian got a scratch. Short and sweet on the part of the police, for once. No?

Now I admit I may have been a wee bit optimistic to have said, in my last post on these people, the HNLC is dead beyond recovery, to everyone except politicians. Now that all that remains is to write the group’s obituary … Before saying why, let me explain that India is riddled with “interest groups” such as fascist “student unions” comprising anyone but students. The local fascist “student union” calls itself the Khasi Students Union (KSU) and its own former president has admitted it helped set up the HNLC. One of its former bigshots was among the HNLC terrorists killed in the car.    

Some years back the HNLC was doing pretty much as it pleased, and at the time the KSU was rather vocal in its support for the terrorists whenever the police killed one of them. I recall one time when a notorious smuggler got shot after trying to fight back when the police tried to arrest him. The KSU condemned, get this, the “murder of an innocent tribal criminal”. I’m not joking.

Now, again, morons who have never touched a gun are demanding to know why the police didn’t “shoot to wound” or arrest the terrorists (who were armed with an AK47, several shotguns, and hand grenades) instead of killing them. Some of them say none of the police were injured – but two of them were (maybe it’s the police’s fault for not losing some men to please the fascists). And I’m sure they’re going to try and raise the innocent tribal criminal defence – if they haven’t tried it already, that is. Since two of the bastards were from this district of town, and since there is at least one totally unscrupulous woman politician who fancies her chances at the next election, I’m sure she’s going to jump in and bay for police blood if only it looks like the line will work. It’s unlikely to.

There are people here who long to return to the dark days of insurgency, but there are many, many more, who don’t.   

I’m, in most things, far left wing in my political views – and I think the Khmer Rouge was the worst disaster ever to affect the left movement anywhere. Let me try and explain why.

There have been a lot of previous disasters in the left; Stalin is one example, but he was far from the unmitigated disaster most people like to pretend he was. He did guide the USSR from the wooden plough age to the age of nuclear reactors; and during that time he got the country through a devastating civil war, economic collapse, and even more devastating world war, and a Cold War he neither instigated nor wanted. That’s not exactly peanuts. Also, Stalin was far from a pure left wing dictator; in his methods he was much more a fascist nationalist than a leftist.

Mao Zedong, in his later years, also set himself up as a demigod; but in his earlier years, when he would debate and engage with his peers, he was very far from the personality cultist he is thought of as these days. Most of his real accomplishments – the civil war, the Long March, agrarian reforms, the uniting of the country behind his movement, the anti-Japanese war (in which the ‘official’ Chinese government of Chiang Kai Shek did nothing at all) – all these date back to those early years. Mao also realised something which he never tired of trying to drum into the heads of his imitators, something which I call the essence of Maoism: one should not try to replicate the Chinese blueprint in other countries, because the conditions in each nation are different. Mao himself applied this in his own struggle. The Chinese Communist party, in following the Russian imposed model, was on the verge of collapse when Mao took over the reins and (in direct opposition to conventional Marxist theory, which stressed on the urban worker as the vehicle of revolution) turned to the peasantry. We all know what happened then.

As long as you keep the goal of egalitarianism in sight, find your own way to it: that is the real message of Mao.

Now, back to the Khmer Rouge. In my ever un-humble opinion, the Khmer Rouge is the Taliban of the left. Just as the Taliban, by its excesses, has tainted every Islamic movement anywhere in the world (even when those movements have no relationship to the Taliban and are engaged in legitimate struggles, the anti-Zionist fight for instance, like Hizbollah in Lebanon) and turned the world against them, every Maoist movement has to bear the cross of the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields of Cambodia. Bush recently, for instance, claimed that to withdraw from Iraq would lead to a Cambodia like situation, one of the stupider comments to come from a not very intelligent individual with no knowledge of history.

There are many other parallels between the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban.

Just as the Taliban were born out of American interference in Afghanistan, the Khmer Rouge was born of American interference in Cambodia, when it helped overthrow the government of Norodom Sihanouk and imposed the corrupt Lon Nol, when it illegally bombed and invaded the country and rendered it waste.

Just as the Taliban enjoyed initial strong American support, the Khmer Rouge was supported by the US and its Thai satellite after the Vietnamese ousted it from power, almost up to its final 1998 disintegration and surrender. The Thai regime sheltered it; the Americans gave it diplomatic recognition and allowed it to occupy the Cambodian seat at the UN. (This also kind of raises an interesting point: do US governments, and their allies, like to support regimes that would theoretically be of the extreme opposite to US-professed values, against relatively more moderate and liberal regimes? Remember American support for the Taliban, the Saudi Arabians, the Afghan warlords, and consistent American opposition to such relatively liberal Muslim states as Najib’s Afghanistan, Syria and Ba’athist Iraq. Contrast American support for the Khmer Rouge to its long standing sanctions regime against the much less extreme Vietnamese Communists. Remember that Hamas was initially promoted by the Zionist regime of “Israel” as a counter to the secular Fatah.)

There are other points of similarity. Both the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge were welcomed with open arms by a citizenry weary of war and rampant corruption; both made themselves speedily hated by their actions – I admit the Taliban couldn’t hold a candle in that respect to the Khmer Rouge, which set out to alienate the people of Phnom Penh in one single day.

And let’s not lose sight of one crucial point: whatever one thinks of them, both the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge were led by people who were both personally incorruptible and thought they knew what was best for the people. This fact has to be kept in mind if one is going to look for an explanation of either regime; otherwise one is at a loss to explain why anyone would try to do such apparently nonsensical things. At the ground level Taliban soldiers were often corrupt, and I’ve no doubt that there were a lot of corrupt Khmer Rouge as well; but just as Mullah Omar was on a holy war against corruption of Islam and western contamination, not to mention banditry, rapine and warlordism, Pol Pot (Saloth Sar if one is to give him his real name), Khieu Samphan and the rest of the Angka Leou (the Khmer Rouge High Command) were radicals, sure, but none of them were actuated by any love of luxury or personal acquisitiveness. They thought, bizarre as it sounds, that by putting anyone with spectacles or dental fillings in labour camps and by emptying the cities they were actually purifying society of the curse of intellectualism. The Taliban didn’t put women in shuttlecock burqas and ban girls’ education just to be cussed; they thought they were imposing pure Islam. The Khmer Rouge actually thought that forcing schoolteachers to grow rice and lawyers to take care of cows was creating a pure Marxist society. That by these standards Karl Marx himself would have ended up in their camps didn’t seem to strike anyone, or if it did they ignored it. Irony being dead, as we all know.

As an aside: doesn’t it strike you that revolutionary leaders, anywhere, have got to be humourless? A sense of humour and revolution don’t seem to go together somehow. Any exceptions come to mind?

So, the personally honest and utterly blinkered leaders of both movements not only destroyed what they set out to create but contaminated others, utterly unconnected with them, because these others were tarred by the same brush. The US, India, and others backed Nepal’s horrible royal regime against the Maoist rebels who were trying to bring in some kind of egalitarianism to the country, citing, among other things, the Khmer Rouge’s record. Similarly, any Muslim rebellion against oppression (as in Occupied Palestine) is crushed on the pretext of fighting Talibanic values, in the form of Al Qaeda.

This is why I’d love to see the Khmer Rouge leaders hanged by their ears. Not just because of what they did to Cambodia, but what they did to the leftist fight against imperialism, worldwide.

And I’m sure plenty of Muslims would love to see that happen to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden as well.

I have to tell the world I am a man.

That I have blood in my veins

And bones, muscle and sinew.

I breathe, I exist, and when I see injustice

I, too, anger.

When I see my mother my son

Held at gunpoint, my sister raped,

My pregnant wife shot

I, too, anger.

When I see the occupier’s boots crush down on my land

When I see my brother’s blood mix in the sand

I, too, anger.

But when I take up the gun

When I put the enemy on the run

I’m an enemy of the people

And I have no right to anger.

When I fight the men who bomb my town

Who turn our lives upside down

Divide brother against brother

It’s news no longer.

I’m a dead ender, I’m a beast

A child-killing raghead terrorist

And those who would rule over us

Have a right to anger.

It’s time I said I am a man

It’s time I said I will and can

It’s time I said I will shed my blood

But I will prove to the world

That I, too, anger.