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INTERVIEW |
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INTERVIEW |
‘Political Parties Must Unite To Deal With The Maoist Insurgency’ — Dr. TOM MARKS
Dr. TOM MARKS, a
professor with the graduate faculty (unconventional warfare) of American Military
University (Manasas, VA), has specialized in insurgencies and small wars. Dr. Marks, who
graduated from United States Military Academy and earned a Ph.D. from the University of
Hawaii, has focused on Maoist insurgency and revolutionary crisis in Thailand. He has
visited Sri Lanka, Colombia, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Laos and the Philippines extensively
and has studied the conflicts there. He also visited Nepal during the Vietnam War. Author
of "Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam" (London 1996), Dr Marks was recently in
town and addressed a talk program at the Center for Nepal and Asian Studies. He spoke to
KESHAB POUDEL on various issues related to the Maoist insurgency. Excerpts: How do Americans view Nepal? When many Americans look at Nepal, they
want to know about the caste system. What they know about castes, they associate it with
caste functions in India. I always have to explain to my colleagues that Nepal is
different. Yes it has castes and the caste system has so many drawbacks, but Nepal is
changing. Nepal has had a democratic system, even if a flawed one, for a dozen years and
already you can see dramatic changes. Some American scholars at a recent seminar urged the
US government not to give military aid to Nepal. These intellectuals are misunderstood
about Nepal, that Nepalese police and security personnel are fighting with the Second
World War-era weapons and ammunition and dying in the hills protecting the common people.
There is no rationale in trying to stop the modernization of Nepalese security forces.
Unfortunately, there is misunderstanding about the ground reality in Nepal. What about the political
developments in Nepal? Because of the particular uniqueness of
Nepal, you have, I think, a greater chance of true democracy developing than in any other
country in the region. Of course, Sri Lanka has a functioning democracy and it has not had
a coup. Despite the marginalization of a large section of population, it is holding. In
Nepal, you are moving beyond the democratic experiments of all South Asian countries.
Perhaps out of this crisis, you will actually come out with a much stronger and more
egalitarian democracy then when you went in to the crisis with. Then you will gain out of
the pain. How about the role of political
parties? The most unfortunate thing I saw in your
country is that political parties are not united to deal with Maoist insurgency. When
political parties are in power, they talk about the mobilization of the army and defend
their actions. As soon as they are removed from power, they talk about the need for
dialogue and oppose the army mobilization. Your political parties must rally behind the
security forces when they have been fighting in the remote parts of the world with very
limited resources and old weapons. What does your experience tell you
about the Maoist People's War waged in different parts of the world? In my book, I was not trying to catalogue
Maoist insurgency but rather trying to look at some of the major ones in order to say
something about People's War. Even the groups that are not identified as Maoist, such as
the LTTE, adopted the People's War Approach. In my book, I am comparing Sri Lanka, Peru,
the Philippines and Thailand. Four such movements, including the JVP in Sri Lanka,
explicitly claimed themselves as Maoist. But you could take the 42 Tamil groups all of the
major ones which claimed to be Marxist-Leninist. Even the LTTE claimed they were
Marxist-Leninist but used the Maoist approach. I don't think we would have predicted a
resurgence of the Maoists. In Colombia, for example, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) has strong-armed combatants of 17,000. They don't say that they are
Maoists but they use the people's war approach as modified by the Vietnamese. How do you see the Nepalese
Maoists' approach? Here in Nepal, you have a classic people's
war approach. The movement overtime has lifted terror as a tactic. That is what we have
seen in Peru, too. In the Philippines, the communist insurgency drew inspiration from
Indian Marxism. Now we understand how much radical communists worldwide drew inspiration
from Naxalites. You have the same basic approach. All Maoist movements rely on the masses.
This is a political movement, so the Maoists arm their cadre to fight against the state.
There are three components in the Maoists. First, they start on the defensive, then
stalemate, eventually going on the offensive. When the Maoists are defensive, they use
terror and guerrilla war because of which the state invariably deploys the military. A
proportion of the guerrilla was made into a copy of the army. First phase, terror, is used
as in your society. The Maoists here are in the second phase and they are in the position
to go to the third. Don't you see the context of the
Vietnamese people war as different, especially since the People's Republic of China and
the former Soviet Union were behind the Vietcong? The Vietnamese people's war was different
since they had an inexhaustible pipeline from China and Soviet Union. Movements like your
Maoists are self-sufficient. It will make them stronger. This is year 2002 and everything
you need to wage war; even a self-loading rifle is expensive. And consequently you can
never get enough of them or particular ammunition or grenade by capturing them. That means
that any insurgent movement must find regular sources of funding. They rob banks and go
for extortion. They do all criminal things, which will alienate them from the people even
as they are having to depend more on the masses. The people will then rebel against them.
This forces the movement to brutalize the people. Although they use the method of
terrorism, they call it a political movement. FARC has solved its funding problem by
exploiting the drug trade and extortion. They accumulate about US $200 million-300 million
a year. What forced a strong and dreaded
terrorist organization like the LTTE to the dialogue table? The LTTE agreed to hold peace talks with
the government when the United States and other western countries attacked its source of
funding. The LTTE is a Tamil liberation movement and it is receiving almost all funding
from the Tamil diaspora. That is external to the battle zone. This allows them to behave
within Sri Lanka in a way that they can never behave outside. The LTTE has never got
funding from within Sri Lanka. If governments cut off funding, they really make things
different for such movements. The Shining Path got much of its funding from the drugs
trade. The US played a key role in cutting off that funding. What else have countries done to
contain such movements? All the countries that are successful in
controlling the Maoists have an understanding of the problem. Then they have come up with
a national plan. They always involve two major components: the correct use of security
forces and addressing the roots of the problems. Through this, you can say, dealing with
the national dimension became almost an independent factor, because dealing with financing
is normally international. Where do such insurgencies
flourish? They can flourish in any conditions.
Structural problems such as poverty, bad governance, injustice, corruption are the roots
of the problem. Once the movement gets started, those original causes fade. How can they be contained? Every country has to use its military and
police as a shield for the restoration of the legitimate state's presence. Democracy
allows the people to make their lives better. There is a need for micro-development where
the people do the exact work. You can go all over the hills of Nepal; it is the people who
can take all the responsibility for development works. The state should not intervene in
development. The villagers that get micro funding take pride in their development works.
The state must promote such action at What is the experience of Peru? In Peru, the government armed the local
population with agricultural equipment like sickles and swords for self-defense. The
defense groups in each village consists of young men and women. Each small group is tied
in by communication radio or messengers to a government unit. In every country, which has
been passing through insurgency, the establishment of self-defense group has been
encouraged with support from the police. All the villagers have stopped the killings. Most
of the killing is committed by five or six young group of rebels armed with sickle and
khukuri who come into the village at midnight and drag the poor guy out and then murder
him or break his legs. Peru has many similarities with Nepal, but the Peruvian government
contained the Shining Path movement, which captured over 90 percent of the territory. At
the same time, the villagers notified the authorities. If the Maoists try to retaliate
against the villagers by using their muscle, villagers have their own muscles. A country
that has an open border with India, where so many insurgents are active, must be cautious. How vulnerable are Nepal's
neighbors to the Maoist insurgency? I mentioned that the international
dimension become so important that it generally is an independent element of the campaign.
Of course, it is absolutely crucial for Nepal to work with hand in hand with India to
resolve the issues which surface everyday in the papers. There is no one who is unaware
that the Maoists have bases and personnel in India. How will this affect the security
of Nepal's neighbors? India has to realize that Nepalese Maoists
making common cause with the Indian Maoists such as the MCC in Bihar and the PWG of Andhra
Pradesh will harm their security interests. India, too, has to realize that this is a
great threat to India's internal stability as is to Nepal. I was in Sri Lanka when the
Indian Peace-Keeping Force came in and ultimately put 40 battalions in the country. So,
why did they go in the first place? They thought it was security threat to off their
shores. They cannot allow threats to their security to foster off their shore. How much
more of a threat a group like the Maoists would register where there is no such straight
or Adam's bridge and you have an open border? So, if things go much worse, India would be
confronted with the same dilemma as it was in Sri Lanka. Indians then would be forced to
intervene. One would hope that decision makers in New Delhi would look at this problem
seriously so that the crisis never comes to a head. Therefore, I think we will see
increased assistance of all types - political, economic, social and military - from the
Indians. It is in their interest. How do you see the future of
insurgencies after 9/11? Two things have happened. First, you all
know there has been a much greater willingness on the part of the US government to stand
for nations that are threatened by what we are now calling terrorism. The second element,
though not very well understood, is what the traumatized American public saw and
experienced on 9\11. Bin Laden who knew nothing about America thought that he was
attacking the heart of American power. What he was also doing was directly attacking the
American decision making elite. Embraced husband and wife leaping off hundred-storey
buildings rather than being burnt to death. They were friends and children of the American
elite. Then American elite stood back and realized the trauma of terrorism. All these
years, we tried to understand the other side. We tried to understand why someone becomes a
Maoist. What you see then is the United States' willingness to try to deal with situations
such as those in Nepal before they become crises like Cambodia or Afghanistan. That is why
you see the US aid coming in here. I think it is significant if you look at the actual
figure; the US has not only increased the military aid, it also putting in more
development aid through the USAID. The USAID money is larger than the military money. But
we have a case here where we have to stop the butchering in the hills. What is the role of political
forces? The country and the state have to unite to
oppose the threat. Try to imagine our state of Los Angeles, which is totally depending
upon the freeway and infrastructure totally devastated several years ago by the
earthquake. All political games had to change. New rules had been put and temporarily to
effect. And everyone has to rally together to restore Los Angels. Then you go back to
arguing with each other. In New York City, when the World Trade Center collapsed, we had
elections scheduled. Just like here, even in America, where elections are never postponed,
those elections were postponed. Because of quake, entire middle of the city was ruined and
we faced a crisis. I have never actually been in one of these crises. The political
leadership has been so fragmented in Nepal. Someone has to view the Maoist insurgency for
what it is, which is the threat of the survival of the soul. In every country where these
people have taken over areas, they have instituted a way of life which none of us is
willing to participate in. Consequently, the elite must rally people behind the plan for
dealing with the problems. What role do other factors have to
play? Your military, armed police and police are
going to have to get better. At the same time, your politics must get better in
implementing a solution. You must restore a legitimate government to the people. When you
restore government to those areas, it cannot be same old game - what's written in your
papers. It has to be like what I just saw up the hills in Tanahu where people determine
the shape of their life. That would give the country strength. They people must be given
the means even if temporarily to protect them. The first duty of any state is to guarantee
the lives of its citizens. If the recent spate continues, instead of 7,000 dead, you would
have 15,000 dead. But if the system comes together and uses the security forces to
safeguard the development efforts that are already going on, if the government addresses
corruption and inefficiency, then you will see the Maoists reduced the same problem they
are in India - a law-and-order problem. |
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editor: spotligh@mos.com.np |
