Saturday’s swarming attack and massacre by left-wing ultras on the convoy of Congress party leaders and workers at Dharbha Ghati, 35 kms from Sukma have opened up a debate on myriad aspects of counter-insurgency failures in Chhattisgarh.
The key aspect of the debate doing rounds for the past 24 hours both in the official circles had been what nowIJ Have some lessons been learnt from the unfortunate and gory incident of a bloodbath which left 28 persons dead and injured including some senior Congress leaders.
The Pioneer spoke to two top cops who have dealt with left-wing militancy from close quarters. Here is what they opined: Former Director General of Police (DGP), Chhattisgarh, Vishwaranjan : The lessons learnt are quite simple — Wrong assessment of situation and illogical deployment of force led to such a big incident.
Maoists have declared war on the State of India and the Government needs to tackle the situation as a ‘War’. All the Maoist infested States should unite and come in one mode to tackle the menace,” he said.
To a query that if Maoists have declared war on Indian State should the Army be brought inIJ To this, the former DGP said: “Army is not required”.
Over the question of political will required to contain the situation, he commented, “The conscience of Maoists is clear but the conscience of responding machinery is still not clear.”
BK Ponwar, Director Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare School (CTJW) Kanker had this to say: “Maoists are now finding it hard to hit strong targets like security forces and police stations, so they have now adopted a new strategy and are targetting soft targets like they did at Darbha.
“Just to attract media attention they are doing such cowardly acts,” he opined. On the killing of Salwa Judum founder Mahendra Karma who was on their hit list , Ponwar said Karma was the object of the attack,”.
Over the question on what was lacking to combat Naxals, he remarked : ‘This is a difficult war. This is not like the 1974 war. There were clear liens and enemies.
We don’t know who our enemy is now, the Director said and added that anti-insurgency operations have just begun and we are capable to handling them.