OPED | Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Capacity-building a must to eliminate Maoists
India must raise a new agency to fight the last stage of counter-insurgency, write Sushant K Singh & Nitin Pai
No security force — not even the Army — has the capacity to carry out these tasks on the necessary scale. Even if financial resources are expended to create this capacity it would fundamentally distract them from their core competence.
The solution, therefore, is to create a new form of civilian capacity with the specific purpose of tackling counter-insurgency at the fundamental level. Civilian capacity is both relatively cost-effective and better suited to delivering governance and development. Placing counter-insurgency management under civilian command will accord greater legitimacy for the mission — it will not be seen as an ‘occupation’ by Central security forces — and facilitate eventual handover of the area to the local administration.
If India is to break from the vicious cycles of the past — where insurgencies are never quite extinguished — the Central Government must create a new, dedicated statutory organisation to engage in the endgame of counter-insurgency. We shall use the acronym CIMPCOR, or Civilian Military Partnership for Conflict Resolution to describe it. It will enable the Government to extend its non-military authority and lay the foundations for the rule of law and basic governance in areas cleared of Maoists.
Mandate: CIMPCOR’s mandate should be to fill the gap between emergency humanitarian assistance and longer-term development assistance. It should be charged with the responsibility to put in place the building blocks for sustainable development, by building basic infrastructure, delivering basic public services and unleashing economic freedom. It should have institutional mechanisms to partner with the security forces, the local political and community leaders and specialist Government agencies engaged in agriculture, education, power, telecommunications and water resources development.
Governance: Administratively, CIMPCOR should be placed under a revamped Home Ministry — but with senior-level staff drawn from various Ministries and the Planning Commission. At the present time the Home Ministry has too much on its plate to be able to devote its resources towards internal security, leave alone development in conflict situations. The case of the National Disaster Management Authority — which remains a fledgling years after its formation — suggests that merely creating a new specialised agency is not the full answer: The Ministry must re-orient itself towards the new priorities. If this is not possible for any reason, the next best alternative is to place CIMPCOR as an autonomous agency under the Prime Minister’s Office.
Staffing: CIMPCOR’s staffing could be drawn from three streams: First, a core staff charged with building and maintaining the capacity to engage in short to medium-term interventions anywhere in India. Second, its deployable resources could be ‘lend-leased’ from the armed forces, Central paramilitary forces, Government departments, NGOs and some public-sector units (banks, for instance). Third, it could draw from a reserve of individual specialists — with expertise in various domains and experience in various regional contexts — employed through a system of call-down contracts.
To ensure co-ordination with the security forces engaged in the Hold stage, CIMPCOR should have adequate representation of serving and retired security forces personnel at all levels. To use the ‘Rotterdam principle’, CIMPCOR “should be as civilian as possible and as military as necessary.” Where circumstances dictate that the security forces play a key role in executing development tasks — like the road through the Red Corridor — their role would be clearly defined, with the transition process identified. In any case, the responsibility for carrying out the development work should rest with CIMPCOR.
If insurgencies in general and Maoism in particular are the biggest threats to internal security, then it must follow that CIMPCOR must be staffed and led by exemplary individuals — from Government and private sectors.
Readiness: In terms of operational readiness, CIMPCOR should be capable of deploying planning teams within 10 days and project execution teams within two months.
It must have the capability to conduct assessments; design, implement and evaluate development programmes; provide local administration; manage contractors and funding agencies; and provide consultation and training to State Government departments to facilitate early transition to local control. Its role should be catalytic — by providing staff and trainers — in rejuvenating State Governments’ agencies and personnel.
Deployment terms: CIMPCOR’s deployment could vary from six months to two years, but should be capped — perhaps at no more than three years. This is important: For a long-term deployment of CIMPCOR would undermine the very purpose of creating an institution; the aim being to facilitate a quick and smooth return to normalcy, without affecting the development goals while preserving the military success achieved by the security forces against the insurgents. An exit strategy should be written into CIMPCOR’s charter, mandating the transfer of responsibilities to the State Government to start within one year of its deployment.
There are several areas in India where CIMPCOR is needed today. In the future, it is conceivable that as India’s global role expands in tandem with its economic and geopolitical interests, CIMPCOR might even have to be deployed in foreign contexts. Investing in a robust, competent and professional final-stage counter-insurgency force is not only be timely, but will be forward-looking as well.
In his book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It, economist Paul Collier has shown that only economic growth decisively reduces the risk of a return to civil war. This does not mean that insurgencies are only about economics but that an upward growth trajectory makes a recurrence of war less probable. Indeed, Mr Collier found that the higher the post-war growth rate was, the harder it was to shatter the peace. Thus, growth and development, alongside security for the population, has to be the utmost priority of any counter-insurgency campaign.
If the struggle against Maoists is not to be Sisyphean, India cannot be flippant about the endgame of counter-insurgency. It can be said with confidence that given political will and leadership, India’s security forces are competent enough to succeed against the Maoists in the military space. Without adequate capacity to rebuild the lives, livelihoods, communities and societies ravaged by the Maoists and the war to eliminate them, successes will be ephemeral. India needs CIMPCOR now.
- Courtesy: Pragati — The Indian National Interest Review
Concluded
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