Post
by cottage cheese » Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:42 pm
Bah!...
Usual stupidity doing its rounds.... you know... the wonders of Indian Governance!
I'd rather not comment on the banning idea... just gives me a hernia.
While it would be pretty naive to think military action alone will be the solution to the maoist problem (That would mean culling a lot of rural folk)...if one must apply the same, well...its pretty plain butter and bread tactics and strategy... which I'm afraid, is a quality that continues to elude most of our governmental establishment.
At the risk of sounding very much like an arm chair general, heres my two annas:
The maoists primarily use two classic tactics from the regular guerrilla handbook(Mao-che etc...)
1. IEDs
2. Massed Raids
The first is pretty obvious and simplest in terms of investment of time, money, manpower. No solution for its total removal. The only partially effective solution from a police perspective is breaking of habit and predictable movement patterns. Most successful IED ambushes are so because of carelessness and laziness of the policemen. It's as simple as that. For instance most times they don't want to take the trouble of taking the longer and roundabout but relatively safer route. Repeat same route regularly and then boom!
The second is the classic commie guerrilla tactic. It was used effectively in the early Naga insurgency days as well. The tactic is simple - Outnumber your foe.
Its superbly effective against our undergunned under motivated under trained police constables. When you outnumber your enemy overwhelmingly, it doesn't get too important whether you are armed with flintlocks, DBBLs, 303s or AK-47s or Uzis. It's the psychological factor that is paramount. If you are manning a platoon size outpost even with gizmos like Steyr AUGs and G36's, it's quite certain you'd be discharging copious amounts or urine and gas at the sight of hundreds of murderous maniacs closing in on you. The din created by the screams, gunfire and crude home made bombs won't help one little bit. The guerrilla knows this and is conditioned and led to exploit this. There is nothing suicidal or brave in this tactic... its just fighting smart and knowing how and when to hurt your enemy.
Now look at our poor police man. Poorly trained, very poorly paid, poorly motivated, most times poorly armed. Most have passed half their miserable careers in inane pointless deployment... Most have degenerated to part time mafia or just small time ruffians. Good leaders and officers come and go like comets. There is no permanence in doing anything good or useful. Our style of governance and policing is built upon adhocism... almost always, an effective measure is a knee jerk reaction to a circumstance. Then it simply fizzles out. Our lively political system ensures the impermanence of any policy.
Look at the arms... all the bakwaas about modernization. Marvellous talk of SLRs replacing 303s... the 303's soldier on. Stens remain, Webley .455s keep being issued... hell even 410 muskets make their grand appearances once in a while. Look at the paltry ammunition load of a deployed police man. As SLR comes with 3 magazines from the factory and thats about the maximum a police man can hope to carry. Most times its 15 shots to a magazine. The LMGs - the very tool meant to provide the volumes of fire in such circumstances is sparingly used like a heavy automatic rifle. Most times, as I'm aware its 5 magazines for an LMG when they come with 24 from the factory!!
AK's? - 3 magazines maximum.... occasionally grenades...once in a blue-moon, mortars - Do they ever dry-range-in mortars and GF rifles on likely approaches when they first set up perimeter on a new position? I guess they don't know what that means. Do they set up obstacles like punji stakes (Now thats not expensive) and barb wire along the perimeter? My point with the arms is that one of the effective counter -measures against Massed human-wave attacks is massive volumes of gunfire. Confidence in not running out of ammo and thus letting rip at relatively easy targets is likely to improve performance. There should also be reliable and efficient logistics in support of every outpost... airborne if possible. When the governments can spend fortunes almost daily coptering their politicians all over the place... they can certainly spare some money the get copters to supply the poor souls taking bullets trying to make safe their constituencies.
Of course its not as simple as that. There are a lot of dynamics and details involved. I've only touched the surface. All the standard bubblefart talk of special crack commando teams is standard establishment BS and will not work. It won't anywhere in the world. Our country is blessed, or should I say cursed with more than enough special units, CPO's and task forces and I certainly don't think another bunch of bravado drunk, black-clad, bandana-swathed AK wielding thugs will make any difference.
Of course, amidst all this silly gung-ho talk, we are forgetting the most important aspect - What's causing the fire? Certainly the Maoists are not Maoists just for an afternoon of fun and games. Governments and politicians certainly have this serious inability to grasp this vital factor.
A Vikram rightly said - Deal with the cause.
Last edited by
cottage cheese on Thu Nov 01, 2007 8:49 pm, edited 9 times in total.
