[Naxalite Maoist India] What does government want in Junglemahal ?

Photograph: Deadbody of Umakanta Mahato. Anandabazar Patrika, 28 August, 2010.

Yesterday, Umakanta Mahato, leader of People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) was found dead in Lalgarh. According to the police sources he was killed in an encounter although no casualty of police has been reported. Not only in this particular case, but also in last two encounters in Ranja and Metla forests where joint forces gunned downed total fourteen PCPA leaders-supporters including Sido Soren, no casualty of joint forces was reported. It is therefore very possible that police and joint forces have been killing the leaders of PCPA in clod blood and want us believe that they were killed in encounter.

Fake encounter is not something which we have never hard of. In seventies, so many students and youths were killed in the name of encounter in West Bengal. Although in their words government is keen to restore peace In Jangalmahal, but actually prefers to eliminate the leadership of PCPA, the organization leadading the democratic movement against police atrocities. They are not going to stop the brutal state repression, rather aggravates it.

The day before Umakanta's cold-blooded murder, Director General (DG) of West Bengal police said there was not a single camp of CPM goons (or Harmad) in Jangalmahal. And when the body of Umakanta Mahato was laying on the soil of Lalgarh, Susanta Ghosh, the minister of West Bengal state government addressing a CPM rally in Goaltore claimed that with arms CPM was going to capture the whole Jangalmahal soon. Obviously, CPM harmads have been working in unison with joint forces to unleash the terror over the people of Junglemahal.

Umakanta Mahato was the prime accused in Gyaneshwari derailment case. PCPA however several times denied the allegation. Surprisingly, police who brought the allegation did not show the enough courage and confidence to produce Umakanta before a court of law; rather preferred to kill him. It once again strengthens PCPA's allegation that Ganeswary derailment was the handiwork of CPM.

Not only the leadership of PCPA, every organization or individual, who stands for the struggles of people, is the target of the government now. Last week police arrested Naba Dutta, well known activists and general secretary of Nagarik Mancha, a mass organization working for labour issues and environment. Couple of months back police arrested Hemanta Mahato, environment activists of Jhargram. These incidents show the fascist face of the government. They even do not spare the democratic-progressive voices. A space for democratic forces is therefore a daydream now.

Red Barricade condemns killing of leaders of PCPA in fake encounters and all forms of repression unleashed by state machinery and CPM goons (Harmads).

Red Barricade

Source - Red Barricade

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/29/2010 07:09:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Maoist Classes in full swing at Tihar Jail

The battle to control Maoism has reached the Tihar jail's barracks.

Exasperated prison authorities are thinking of changing Maoist ideologue Khobad Ghandy's ward after every two months because he has been propagating ultra-Left ideology among fellow inmates.

Ghandy, 63, has built a captive audience inside Jail No. 3 at Tihar, his home for the past 11 months. He meets fellow inmates, who revere him, every day during his morning and evening walks and often holds "interactive sessions".

He tells them he had fought for the poor throughout his life and that the government had failed to do anything for the people. The prisoners salute him after every session.
"He is a very good man. He is fighting for the poor and we respect him a lot," said a 35-year-old inmate of Jail No. 3, a Class X dropout who is facing trial for attempted murder.

Another prisoner, arrested in a blast case in Uttar Pradesh, said: "He (Ghandy) is a very well-read man. He talks of revolution and makes us feel we too should do something for the country."

Ghandy, a CPI (Maoist) politburo member, was arrested in September 2009 and booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

An inmate of Jail No. 1, who met Ghandy three days ago at a basketball match in the prison, said: "We address him as 'Sir' and salute him whenever we see him. We can't understand why the government is holding him in jail as though he is a terrorist."

The convict, serving a life term for murdering a relative, added: "I am paying for what I did, but people like Sir should not be treated this way. We are fans of his. He speaks from the heart about the injustices suffered by the poor. We support him for his movement against the government."

Ghandy's rising popularity among fellow prisoners is worrying Tihar authorities. A jail official said around 1,500 prisoners — 100 convicts and 1,400 undertrials — were lodged in the 12 wards in Jail No. 3. Ghandy shares his ward with many other prisoners.

"He loves mixing with people and has made several friends inside the jail. But of late his conversation has acquired revolutionary overtones," the official said. "We are thinking of changing his ward every two months and keeping a watch on his morning and evening walks."

The official, however, agreed that Ghandy, who is from an upper class background and went to the best educational institutions, was a thorough gentleman.

"He is very enthusiastic and agile for his age. During the basketball match, he was joking with jail officials about many things," said jail superintendent Vijay Kumar Sharma.

Ghandy had studied at Doon School and St Xavier's College, Mumbai, before travelling to London to become a chartered accountant. A few years later, he joined the Maoists. He is now believed to be writing a book on his life.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/29/2010 06:09:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Maoist Leader Hosagadda Prabha escapes from Karnataka...

BANGALORE: A Naxal leader, wanted in a number of cases, gave the police a slip after getting treated at a private city hospital.

A senior police officer told Express that Hosagadde Prabha is "still alive and nothing has happened to her during the treatment".

Her Naxal comrades led the police to believe that Prabha had died in the hospital due to dengue fever on August 18. The police thought that the cadres had somehow removed the body from the hospital and cremated it in an unknown location. Even a section of the media fell for that story.

The police officer admitted that the intelligencegathering system, believing in her 'death', could not trace her movement. Thus, the police had failed to arrest her while she was undergoing treatment.

But that was just a cookedup story. "She was admitted as Susheela for treatment and getting better, she vanished from the hospital giving the police the slip," he said.

Sources said Prabha escaped just a day before police got wind of her presence in Bangalore.

Prabha has been an active Naxal leader in the Western Ghats area for more than 10 years.

The state police has announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh for her arrest. "We don't have sufficient evidence to prove whether she is dead of alive. So, I cannot comment on this issue," said A R Infant, ADGP (Law and Order).

There are 26 cases registered against her at Sringeri, Aldur, Balehonnur and Jayapura police stations.

Prabha, also known as Netra, Vindhu, Sandhya and Madhu, belongs to Hosagadde village of Thirthahalli in Shimoga, and is the wife of B G Krishnamurthy, the frontline cadre of Naxals in the state.

"The Shimoga police did not have any evidence of her death but believed that she was dead," said a police officer.

About Prabha Prabha, a Bunt, married Krishnamurthy, after they went underground following their close association with the Naxal leader Saket Rajan, who was gunned down in a police encounter in February 2005. She has been active as a naxal leader in Western Ghat area for more that 10 years. She joined 'Mahila Jagruthi' a voluntary organisation, and fought for women's empowerment. Prabha also took part in various people's movements such as 'Tunga Ulusi' (Save River Tunga) and the Kudremukh agitation by the indigenous Adivasis. A firebrand, she joined the Red Brigade after she met Saket and Krishnamurthy. The state police already had announced Rs 5 lakh reward for her arrest. A total of 26 cases were registered against Prabha at Shringeri, Aldur, Balehonnur and Jayapura police stations. She is accused in the Gandaghatta Venkatesh murder, Thanikodu checkpost destruction, vandalising Kerekatte Forest Office and Matholli blast.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/24/2010 09:13:00 AM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Post-mortem indicates Azad was shot from close range

Top Maoist leader Azad, who the Andhra Pradesh police claimed to have killed in an encounter on July 1, was shot from very close range, according to his post-mortem report accessed by Rediff.com's Krishnakumar Padamanbhan.

Top Maoist leader Azad, alias Cherukuri Rajkumar, who the Andhra Pradesh police claimed to have killed in an encounter in the forests of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh, was shot from very close range, probably from less than one foot, according to his post mortem report, accessed by Rediff.comThe post-mortem report stands in contradiction with the police version that Azad was killed in a gun-battle between 11 pm and 11.30 pm on July 1 in Sarkepally village, Wankedi, in Adilabad district.

After the Andhra Pradesh police claimed Azad, a member of the Communist Party of India-Maoist central committee and politburo as well as its national spokesman, was killed in the forests of Adilabad district, the Maoists claimed that he had been picked up in Nagpur a day earlier, flown to Adilabad by helicopter, and executed in cold blood along with a man named Hemchandra Pandey.

In May, Home Minister P Chidambaram [ Images ] had invited Swami Agnivesh, who had led a peace march in Chhattisgarh in April, to mediate with the Maoists and explore the possibility of a cease-fire, which would likely result in peace talks with the central government.

With Chidambaram's permission, Agnivesh met with senior Maoist leaders Kobad Gandhy in Delhi's [ Images ] Tihar jail and Narayan Sanyal in Raipur jail in Chhattisgarh to begin the peace process.

He also wrote to the Maoists, informing them about the government's interest in a dialogue, to bring about a peaceful resolution to the Leftist insurgency that has crippled life in many districts in the country.

Azad responded on the Maoists's behalf, expressing willingness in possible talks with the Centre and indicating that his organisation could think of a cease-fire.

One sticking point was Chidambaram's insistence on a date for a cease-fire, which the home minister felt would indicate the Maoists's intentions.

Once a cease-fire -- the duration of which could extend for three days or six months or longer -- was in place, Chidamabaram told Agnivesh talks could begin.

In late June Agnivesh wrote again to Azad, suggesting three likely dates in July when the cease-fire could go into effect.

Azad was carrying Agnivesh's letter with him the day he died.

There are other discrepancies in the police inquest and the First Information Report, which too was accessed by Rediff.com

According to the post mortem report, the first bullet, which killed Azad left 'a one centimetre oval-shaped wound with darkening burnt edges present at the left second intercostal space'and exited 'at the 9th and 10th intervertebral space, lateral to the spinal vertebrae on the left side'.

This raises two key aspects regarding the shot that killed Azad:

First, according to doctors and experts, such darkening edges in the entry wound happens only due to burns caused by a bullet fired from very close quarters, mostly from less than a foot.

Second, the intercostal space is the part between two ribs. The intervertabral space is the part between two vertebrae. This means that the bullet hit Azad high on the chest and exited through the middle of his back.

For this to happen the bullet must have been fired from above the victim at close quarters.

But according to the first information report, the police was firing at Azad, who they said was on a hilltop, from a distance and from below.

The FIR says Azad, accompanied by 20 to 25 Maoists, opened fire on the police from the hilltop, after which the police retaliated, killing Azad and Hemchandra Pandey.

The Andhra Pradesh police, however, denied the fake encounter theory and maintained that it was a genuine gun-battle.

Regarding the darkening at the entry wound, they said burn marks happen in case of firing from a distance also.

"We have also checked that aspect with forensic experts. They say it is possible that shots fired from a distance can also cause burn marks," a senior officer told Rediff.com

The police report has a lot of holes in it, and raises many questions:

The gist of the FIR (crime number 40/2010) filed by Station House Officer Mansoor Ahmed at the Wankedi police station, Adilabad, at 9.30 am, July 2, is:

Intelligence divisions informed them that a group of 20 CPI-Maoist members had crossed into Andhra Pradesh from Maharashtra [ Images ] and were moving about in the forest area.

At 9 pm, personnel from the Asifabad police station and a special police party launched a search operation in the forested and hilly region between Sarkepally and Velgi.

At 11 pm, the police team -- equipped with night vision devices -- spotted the Maoists on a hilltop and asked them to surrender.

As the Maoists opened fire, the police retaliated in self-defence.

The firing lasted for 30 minutes after which the police climbed the hilltop and halted.

When they searched the area early in the morning, they found two unidentified bodies -- a 50-year-old man, and a 30-year-old man wearing sandals with an AK-47 and a 9 mm pistol lying by their respective sides.

1. If, according to the FIR, the Maoists were on a hilltop -- which strategically means the Maoists had the terrain advantage -- how was Azad killed by a bullet fired from such close quarters that it caused a burn?

2. The FIR is against 'unknown Maoist terrorists'.

But in their inquest, accessed by Rediff.com, the police have identified the slain Maoist as Azad at 6 am, July 2.

In fact, local journalists said they got phone calls at 6 am from senior Adilabad police officers informing them that Azad has been killed in an encounter.

"The Adilabad SP (superintendent of police) called me and other journalists at 6 am and told us Azad had been killed in an encounter in this area. We reached the place immediately. We searched the area till 1 pm but were unable to locate the bodies. Then, some local policemen came and guided us to the location. We saw the bodies of Azad and another person," says a local journalist.

Question: If the police had already identified Azad at 6 am, why did they not name him in the FIR, which was filed three-and-a-half hours later?

3. The FIR says the police party, which was tipped off about the presence of Maoists in the forest, reached there around 9 pm, July 1 and with the help of night vision devices, spotted 20 to 25 Maoists.

The FIR also says that after the gun-battle ended at 11.30 pm, the policemen reached the hilltop and halted. It says the police party found two bodies at 6 am when they began searching.

Question: If the police had night vision devices, as claimed in the FIR, and if they had reached the hilltop occupied by the Maoists after the gun-battle had ended, why did they not use the same devices to check for dead or hidden Maoists at that time? Why did they have to wait for sunlight to spot the bodies?

Outside of these discrepancies and questions arising out of the official documentation, there are also some other pertinent questions:

4. In cases of encounters, the police are supposed to launch a magisterial probe into the matter.

But in Azad's case, even 52 days after the encounter, the revenue district officer, who is supposed to conduct the probe, has not even issued a notification where witnesses from the general public, if any, are called to present themselves before the magistrate.

The villagers in Sarkepally and Velgi -- the place where the police claim that the encounter happened is between these two villages -- said they saw police vehicles go to the spot on the night of July 1.

"We saw some vehicles go past our village. Then at about 11.30 I heard gunshots," said a villager who did not want to be named. "We have seen encounters here in 1997 and 2005. Those times, the police came during the day and we could hear gun shots throughout the night. This time it was not like that. They came in the night and we heard some shots and that was it."

They also said there has not been any Maoist movement in the region for at least a year.

"After 2005, their movement thinned quiet a bit," a village elder said. "In the last two years or so, there have not been any Maoists in the area."

Kranti Chaitanya, general secretary, Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, who has challenged the police in several fake encounter cases, said the sizes of the entry and the exit wounds clearly show that Azad was shot from close quarters, and that it raises critical doubts about the police claim that he was killed in a gun-battle.

"Even dead bodies tell a lot of stories. In Azad's case, the entry wounds are all narrow in diameter, meaning he was fired at from point blank range. Had he been involved in the gun-battle and the police had fired from the distance that they claim, the wounds would have been bigger in diameter," Chaitanya, who recently helped bring out a book on fake encounters, said.

Activists of the Co-ordination of Democratic Rights Organisations, who visited the encounter spot and the Wankedi police station on a fact-finding mission on August 21, said the encounter raised several larger and disturbing questions.

"From our fact-finding, this is clearly a fake encounter," said Prashant Bhushan, senior Supreme Court counsel. "But more than the incident itself, it raises several significant issues. It is well known that the Union home ministry was, through Swami Agnivesh, engaged in exploring the possibility of a dialogue with the CPI-Maoist. Agnivesh was talking to the Maoists through Azad."

"The alleged encounter in these circumstances and at such a time raises important questions: How could the Andhra Pradesh police's special branch, dedicated to combating Maoists, murder Azad in this manner without the knowledge of the Union home minister and the state government, particularly when the Union home ministry is said to be leading the joint offensive against the Maoists?" Bhushan asked.

He said if the Union government was sincere in seeking dialogue, it would have been "natural for Home Minister (Palaniappan) Chidambaram to express concern about the execution of the key actor from the Maoist side with whom he was exploring the peace dialogue."

"His explanation on the floor of Parliament was that the enquiry is a state subject," Bhushan said. "This is unacceptable because the Andhra Pradesh state government is run by the Congress party and had the Union home minister sought an enquiry they could not have refused," he said.

The umbrella organisation's fact-finding team also raised some other questions.

"How did the police pinpoint the Maoists' location in a forest several hundred square kilometres along the Andhra-Maharashtra border? And despite 30 minutes of firing not a single police personal suffered any injury, whereas only Azad and Hemachandra Pandey are killed -- this when the police themselves say the Maoists were on a hilltop and they were on lower ground," asked Gautam Navalakha of the People's Union for Democratic Rights.

The activists demanded a judicial enquiry into the encounter.

"In any case, the central government is empowered to constitute an enquiry under the Commission of Enquiries Act, 1952. In the light of the significance of the assassination, which has scuttled the peace process, it is imperative that the government institute a high level independent enquiry headed by a sitting/retired Supreme Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice of India [ Images ]," said activist Kavita Srivastava, who was part of the team as an independent member.

It also demanded that an FIR be registered against the police and the case be independently investigated in accordance with the National Human Rights Commission guidelines.

Source - Rediff

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/23/2010 03:16:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Karnataka Maoist Leader - Hosagadde Prabha Dead

Unable to capture her when she was alive, police try to capture her dead body and fail miserably.

There was a buzz of activity at the house of Hosagadde Prabha, a Naxal leader who carries a reward of Rs 5 lakh, in Hosagadde near Agumbe in Shimoga on Thursday following rumours of her death in a Bengaluru hospital. According to family sources, some unidentified people had sent Prabha's mother a message that her daughter's body will reach there soon. Police officials from Theerthahalli and Agumbe arrived at her house to meet her parents. But neither the police nor the family has any concrete information on the death of the 30-year-old Naxal.

According to the police, Narayanappa, Prabha's father, pleaded ignorance on the issue. "It has officially been confirmed that Prabha's health had been deteriorating. She was not active since the last two months and was reportedly seriously ill. There were reports that she could no longer hide in the dense forests of Western Ghats," a senior police officer said.

Earlier, on August 7, a few Naxals had reportedly approached some residents of Agumbe, seeking help to shift the ailing Prabha to a hospital. But no one helped forcing the Naxals to return to their camp. Anti Naxal Force (ANF) sleuths, who learnt of this, combed the area and set up barricades, which made escape impossible. Two days later, a group of four, including a woman aged around 30, travelled to Kadur from Kuduregundi, about 10 km from Koppa. From Kadur, the four reached Bengaluru in a KSRTC bus. The ailing woman was admitted to a private hospital.

Sources told that Prabha was suffering from asthma and was also highly diabetic. Recently, she developed gangrene due to an injury in the leg. Since the weather condition in the Western Ghats was very cold due to monsoon, her condition worsened.

She was brought to St John's hospital in Bangalore where she was treated. It is not clear when she was brought to the hospital. Her condition worsened and she passed away on Wednesday night.

When police went to the hospital and made inquiries, even showing Prabha's photo, which they were in possession as she was a wanted person, they drew a blank. Reason: the hospital authorities could not identify Prabha as the photo was taken when Prabha passed her class 10.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/20/2010 03:10:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Raghuram Rajan Interview Part II

Raghuram Rajan's POV on Inequalities and Free Enterprise.

The first part is here .

Now that we are at the high table, it's time to ask...

In the second part of his interview, economist Raghuram Rajan tells TOI-Crest that India needs to become proactive on the global stage

In India, there's been a lot of talk about how the G-20 is a sign of India having arrived at the high table. Does the G-20 have little more than symbolic value?

You saw what happened. When it was time to spend, the G-20 told them all to spend. They all spent. A year later, some of them got into trouble spending, so the G-20 said 'ok, some of you spend, some don't spend'...

So it basically told them to do what they were already doing?

Exactly. You didn't need encouragement to spend, as politicians, in a downturn. They all went out and spent. They just got political cover in some sense — you were doing what the G-20 said. But now it comes to hard policy change that each country has to do and now you're seeing the differences. So I don't really think the G-20 has that much capacity to do the change. The second thing I would say is that even whatever little the G-20 can achieve has to be through the power of ideas. This is where we also need to say, now that we've arrived at the high table, what is it that we want the high table to do. It's not clear to me that we have a strong sense of where we want the high table to go.

Our position in the past has been largely reactive — we don't like this, we don't like that, you've got to change this, you've got to change that. But it has rarely been proactive in the sense of 'here's what we think is for the global good'. I think we need more of that. We did play a little bit of that role in the Non-Aligned Movement, but we need to play that role again. China has tried to take up some of that role, acting as the voice of the developing countries. Brazil has. We need to do that in a way that enhances the debate.

Joseph Stiglitz in his book on the crisis argues that economics as a discipline needs to be reformed too because it has become "the biggest cheerleader" for freemarket capitalism. Your comments...

The cause of this crisis was not free enterprise, it was the interaction between the government and the private sector. If it had been just free enterprise, we'd have seen the problems in the corporate sector. The corporate sector was untouched. We saw the probem in low-income housing. Why? The banks in this country have to be prodded to lend to the poor because there is no money to be made there, right? The same is true of the US. Why are the banks going and lending to people who are less well off? The hand of the government is obvious. Now, who is to blame? The government was well-intentioned , the private sector tried to take advantage of the government.

You can't blame the private sector either, it's their job to try and make money and if the government is willing to step in and provide cheap money, they will take advantage of that. The key is to make each play its role in an appropriate way and that is where economies failed. There are weaknesses in free enterprise capitalism. The question is: what do we replace it with? so what's the alternative? Winston Churchill's comment that democracy is the worst system except all the other ones that have been tried applies here too. It's a pretty bad system, but given human incentives it is something that works much better than anything else, so we just have to make this work much better.

As you point out in your book, the government's urge to boost low income housing was because it was seen as the simplest way of addressing resentment about widening inequalities. Isn't that inherent in free market capitalism?

Well, there are different kinds of inequality. There's inequality that comes because somebody is much more talented and therefore capable of producing something much better. I don't grudge Steve Jobs his billions, because he's a really smart guy who manages to produce products that the world wants to buy. In a system where everybody thinks they have the opportunity to become Steve Jobs, people don't grudge Steve Jobs. That's the way the US used to be. Where people believe that they are shut out from ever becoming a Steve Jobs, inequality breeds resentment, especially when you think, 'Steve Jobs didn't get there because he was Steve Jobs, he got there because he knew the minister for computers'.

So, inequality that comes from privilege is very different from inequality that comes from talent and I think increasingly the US is becoming a society where inequality comes from privilege. The biggest difference in the US is between kids who go back to a home in the summers where they read books and work on summer projects — typically white kids –— and kids who go back home and watch TV. Those three months make an enormous difference in their educational attainments. There have been studies showing that the gap increases over time between white kids and minority kids simply because of the way they use their summer. This indicates you are a product of your family. As more of these differences make their effect felt, you get a growing gap between the haves and have-nots with the have-nots knowing they can never become the haves. This wasn't the case in the US in the past.

Read the original article at

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6270009.cms?prtpage=1#ixzz0w2FfSJh9

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/08/2010 10:31:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Another Maoist Leader arrested

Top Maoist leader arrested in Jharkhand

Bokaro(Jharkhand),Aug 8 (PTI) A top Maoist leader hailing from Andhra Pradesh who carries a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head was today arrested from here. Narasimha Reddy, the 'secretary' of CPI(Maoist) in Andhra Pradesh, was apprehended when a joint team of CRPF and state police raided his hideout at Relibera village following a tip-off, Superintendent of Police (SP) Saket Kumar Singh said.

Reddy alias 'Langada' was held from a house in Upper Ghat of Gomia area and is wanted in many cases in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the CRPF officer said. The forces also recovered arms, ammunition, a laptop, certain documents and cash from him.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/08/2010 10:00:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Maoist Leader held in Ranchi

In a revelation that has Jharkhand cops looking afresh at the foreign links of outlawed Maoists, top CPI (Maoist) leader Rajesh Kumar Sinha alias Udaiji has told interrogators that he has a girlfriend based in the UK.

A member of the Bihar-Jharkhand-North Chhattisgarh Special Area Committee of the CPI (Maoist), Udaiji carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head. Captured by the Ranchi police from an apartment flat in the posh Lower Burdwan Compound in the city on Wednesday, he has told cops he is "emotionally attached" with his girlfriend whom he met four years ago and who works for a social organization.

Denying that he ever went on an overseas travel, the rebel leader told cops he has dated the woman in her 30s at least thrice in different parts of the country, including once in Delhi.

"Udaiji holds a masters degree in Economics from Patna University and speaks fluent English. Befriending the English woman might not have been a difficult task for him," a police officer associated with the interrogation said and added the rebel leader claimed to have given an Indian name, Jhanvi, to his love interest.

Udaiji, who had been in constant touch with Jhanvi through the internet, also told cops that the Maoist ideology fascinated his woman and she had expressed willingness to mobilise support for the rebels in the UK's civil society.

Udaiji's interrogators are now quizzing him on whether or not he secured funds from the UK for the Maoist movement. "We are also scanning his email accounts, blogs and chat history as well as bank accounts to cross-check his confessions," another police officer said.

Udaiji has two daughters. One of them has done BTech from a Ludhiana engineering college while the other recently finished her plus two. His younger brother works in the United States while his elder brother works with the finance department of Bihar government. Udaiji himself once aspired to join civil services, but could not crack the exam.

Police officials describe Udaiji as a prized catch who was the mastermind behind most of the Naxalite attacks in Jharkhand, Bihar and parts of Chhattisgarh. He gave police the slip several times even though he extensively moved in the three states, said a cop who was tracking him for the last two years.

Ranchi SSP Praveen Singh refused to divulge details of the disclosures made by Udaiji. "He has made several astonishing, serious and new revelations," the SSP told TOI on Saturday.


Read more

The Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Captured-Maoist-sings-says-he-has-girlfriend-in-UK/articleshow/6272098.cms

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/08/2010 11:12:00 AM

[Naxalite Maoist India] OPEN LETTER TO SWAMI AGNIVESHJI

Source - http://www.swamiagnivesh.com/Open%20letter%20-.htm

OPEN LETTER TO SWAMI AGNIVESHJI

Dear Swami Agniveshji,

I recieved your latest letter dated 22nd July. I understand your feelings about the martyrdom of com Azad and sincere concern for the peace process. Though I could not get the attachements which you mentioned in the letter, I followed almost all of your interviews given to print media.

Since it is difficult for me to send any reply to your letter nor is it possible to send your letter to our comrades who had to decide and act on your letter. Hence this open letter. There was no other choice for me.

The deception is continuing. The deception by Mr. Chidambaram. Who ardently beleives in "quite diplomacy". He is doing the things quitely and coolly.

He offically agreed to make you the interlocuter in the "peace talks". You opened channels to send the proposals to us. He "quitely" and with a neatly chalked out plan entered our channels; knowing well that the communcication would have to reach com. Azad. Under the clear guidance from Chidambaram, the notorius APSIB implemented the plan. I feel that you too must have understood all this by now, but may be difficult for you to say so. I can understand that.

Chidambaram, had his hands were not wet with blood of our beloved com. Azad, his life partner com. Sitakka alias Padma, who was most probably shown as an encounter death in Gadcheroli on 6th July, and journalist Hem Chandra Pandey, he could have seen staight into his eyes and accepted for an enquiry in to this ablsolutely fake encounter. He knows that he was the brain behind this operation and that was why he could not have accepted this demand. Who knows like Amitshah who is exposed as the the main culprit in Sohara buddin case, Chidambaram too could be implicated one day, if there were to be an enquiry. Any way, he denigrated your status as an interlocutor by rejecting the most genuine demand.

Your letter dated 26th of June reached com azad, just before 30th. The APSIB which already entered the mechanism knew this. They know that they could scuttle the process by eliminating com. Azad. With that purpose only they entered through the channels you had opened to send your letters to us. We fell to the prey of this great deception by Chidambaram.

We feel that you are being used as a pawn in the whole process. Sorry for the straight talk!!


Please ask Mr Chidambaram one question. What is that the APSIB has been doing in many states outside Andhra pradesh? In UP, west Bengal, In Delhi, so on so forth? Are they functioning without his knowledge? Does he not know that it is the APSIB team that arrested com. Kobad Gandhy and put him under illegal custody for three days and on 20th septemeber he was given to Delhi Police? Shall I inform you the list of the personnel of APSIB who arrested com Kobad Gandhy; and who headed that team? May be it will be a small addition to the wikileaks, and can be a scoop to the media.

The point is again the deception. He is talking of langauge of "peace". He is planning cold blooded murders with his trusted APSIB.

Now that you have given another letter to our CC. Appealing to take the further the peace process that was started.

Your letter dated 22nd july reached me. Not just the letter. Some thing more too. The APSIB too reached me. How can we understand this phenomenon? I just escaped very narrowly. On August 1st. If we can meet some time later, like we met on the dias of Karimnagar Peasant Labour Assocaition meeeting in 1983 where we addressed the gathering along with others, (You paid rich tributes to com Haribhushan who was killed by the then NTR regime), i can give you the details. Had I gone into the hands of this notorius Indian Mossad, your 22nd letter must have gone back to the chidambaram, pehaps with some blood marks on it, like your 26th letter reached Chidambaram in similar way. We do not have any iota of doubts in your genuine feelings regarding the peace process. I am afraid that you are pegion among the cats. The cats are using you to catch us in this process.
The APSIB encircled me and for the time being I am out of it. In these circumstances it is difficult for me to send any reply to you through some channels or send your letter to our comrades. I request you to openly publish your letters in the papers. Any channel if you try to send through, it might end up in some loss. I hope we can no more afford that.

Chidamabaram will continue to play unfair game. He has already claimed our beloved comrades lives along with life of a journalist.

Our comrades will reply to you on your proposals if you can publish your letters through media. The june 26th letter and the present one, since june 26th letter has not reached our comrades. Since they are written by you, it is your prerogative to publish openly or not. May be you have to go against Chidambaram by not doing these things "quitely". He is sticking upto his programme by doing "quitely".

Your lofty concerns and well meaning efforts are torpadoed by Chidambaram with his dirty tricks. He might have scuttled the peace process by killing com. Azad. Can he stop the revoution? The history of Hitler is before us.
I stated hard facts.

with warm regards,
Srikant@ Sukant
Central Committee Member,
CPI(Maoist)
August 3rd

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/05/2010 09:46:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Maoists say police tracking leaders through Agnivesh ...

Maoists have indicated that they have not backed out of the talks with the government but asked mediator Swami Agnivesh not to contact them through their channels alleging that police was tracking their leaders through the letters sent by him.

In an "open letter" to Agnivesh dated August three, CPI (Maoist) Central Committee member Srikant alias Sukant said the two letters of Swami Agnivesh dated June 26 and July 22 have not reached the top leaders of the party, who are to take a call on the offer.

Azad, who was killed in an encounter in early July, and he himself had received the letters but could not pass it on to their leaders, Sukant said in the letter.

He alleged that Agnivesh opening channels of communication with Maoists for talks were used by police to track Azad and later eliminate him.

Agnivesh had also gone public saying he felt that authorities used his communication and channels to track Azad after which he was killed in an encounter in Andhra Pradesh. He had also demanded a judicial probe into encounter in which Azad and one Hem Chandra Pandey, a Delhi-based freelance journalist, were killed.

Sukant also alleged that soon after Agnivesh's July 22 letter reached him, the AP Special Intelligence Bureau also reached him. "Your letter dated 22nd July reached me. Not just the letter. Something more too. The APSIB too reached me. How can we understand this phenomenon? I just escaped very narrowly. On August 1st," he claimed in the letter released to media. Sukant said Maoists cannot afford to reply to Agnivesh's July 22 letter through some channels or send his letter to the top leaders as opening up of any channel of communication might end up in some loss and Maoists "can no more afford that.

"I request you to openly publish your letters in the papers," he said.

However, Sukant said Maoists "do not have any iota of doubts in Agnivesh's genuine feelings" regarding the peace process.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/05/2010 09:19:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Wrong Side of the Law

There was consternation over the encounter killing of Hemchandra Pande along with Maoist spokesperson Azad in the jungles of Adilabad in north Andhra Pradesh in the first week of July. While the police contend that Pande was a Left ultra himself, Pande's wife Babita insists her husband was a freelance journalist who wrote for many papers. Obfuscated in this debate is that Pande possibly a Maoist sympathiser and not a hardcore ultra was gunned down in an encounter after allegedly being picked up from Nagpur, roughly three hours drive on the National Highway 8 from Adilabad.

As Maoists run amok in large parts of the country and extremists from across the border try to disrupt peace, sections of the Indian middle class paranoid at this increasing threat to the republic have begun justifying extrajudicial killings. They argue that since the judicial system is not quick and effective, summary encounters are the only way to curb militancy. Though encounter killings are not part of official state policy, police and other agencies armed with this civil society sanction have been increasingly resorting to encounters and abrogating to themselves the role of judge and executioner. It will not be an exaggeration to say many encounters are cold-blooded killings. This has terrible consequences for democracy and rule of law. It also perniciously affects the police's performance, a development that does not augur well for the country. The following example will demonstrate this point effectively.

In December 1999, three central committee members of the Maoist party were liquidated in an encounter by the Andhra Pradesh police in Karimnagar district. Three IPS officers were awarded the police medal for gallantry for their role in this encounter. This medal entitles an awardee to get a free land site and free lifetime 1st class travel by train, among other goodies. But an anonymous complaint led to an inquiry which revealed that the gallant trio were nowhere near the scene of encounter that day. In 2008, nine years after the encounter, the officers were served a "charge memo" asking why they should not be punished. But internal police pressure in the home ministry ensured the file lost its way in the meandering bylanes of North Block.

This is not the end of the story. One of the 'gallant' officers, an SP then and now a DIG, was posted as the CRPF's boss in Dantewada earlier this year, presumably because he was a gallant man eminently qualified to take on the extremists in this Maoist-infested area. What happened next is history: 76 men of the CRPF were ambushed and gunned down by the Maoists on April 6 in an event that shook the nation. An official inquiry by a former BSF director general revealed that there was "command failure" and "standard operating procedures" were not followed. This was responsible for the CRPF men falling to the hail of bullets from the ultras. The DIG in question was sent packing from the area, but only after the damage had been done. The point is that he would never have had an exalted status if not for the gallantry award for a false encounter.

The unfortunate thing is that not only are officers rewarded for false encounters, but officers resisting such encounters end up in the doghouse. Ask Harvinder Singh Kohli, an artillery colonel whose regiment was deployed in south Assam in 2003 to track down militants. At the end of an operation in August 2003, Kohli's men captured five militants from the Assam Commando Force.

On hearing about the operation, his senior, the brigadier, ordered him to bump off these militants since all that mattered in the eyes of the bosses were "kills". The brigadier also indicated that his boss, the major-general, was in the know of things. The colonel resisted and quickly handed these militants to the police to ward off further pressure. But the brigadier would not relent, he told the colonel to photograph a staged encounter. The colonel chose the lesser evil. So five men were made to lie on the ground with ketchup sprayed on their bodies and their pictures taken to show that there were 'kills'. But the lid soon came off with a complaint and the colonel was court-martialled and sacked.

Later the brigadier was also discharged from the army, but the major-general was allowed to retire. On appeal, the brigadier, who commissioned the activity, was reinstated with loss of seniority and a reprimand. But Kohli now an ex-colonel wearing the media-given label of 'ketchup colonel' is waging a Herculean battle to clear his name. There is, however, nobody to bell the cat and reinstate an officer who actually had the moral courage to refuse orders to execute a false encounter. Interestingly, defence ministry officials noted on the file reviewing Kohli's case that an unofficial policy existed to assess the peformance of units involved in counter-insurgency operations in terms of number of kills.

A dispensation where officers resorting to false encounters get encomiums and those resisting are jettisoned can only lead to the brutalisation of security agencies, with individual policemen using the gun to also eliminate petty criminals and other suspects. This process has actually begun in many places. The consequences can be well imagined since, in a civilised nation, lawlessness cannot be countered by lawlessness.

Times of India

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/05/2010 07:14:00 PM

[Naxalite Maoist India] Cyberwar - War in the fifth domain

An article from the Economist

Are the mouse and keyboard the new weapons of conflict?

At the height of the cold war, in June 1982, an American early-warning satellite detected a large blast in Siberia. A missile being fired? A nuclear test? It was, it seems, an explosion on a Soviet gas pipeline. The cause was a malfunction in the computer-control system that Soviet spies had stolen from a firm in Canada. They did not know that the CIA had tampered with the software so that it would "go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," according to the memoirs of Thomas Reed, a former air force secretary. The result, he said, "was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

This was one of the earliest demonstrations of the power of a "logic bomb". Three decades later, with more and more vital computer systems linked up to the internet, could enemies use logic bombs to, say, turn off the electricity from the other side of the world? Could terrorists or hackers cause financial chaos by tampering with Wall Street's computerised trading systems? And given that computer chips and software are produced globally, could a foreign power infect high-tech military equipment with computer bugs? "It scares me to death," says one senior military source. "The destructive potential is so great."

After land, sea, air and space, warfare has entered the fifth domain: cyberspace. President Barack Obama has declared America's digital infrastructure to be a "strategic national asset" and appointed Howard Schmidt, the former head of security at Microsoft, as his cyber-security tsar. In May the Pentagon set up its new Cyber Command (Cybercom) headed by General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA). His mandate is to conduct "full-spectrum" operations—to defend American military networks and attack other countries' systems. Precisely how, and by what rules, is secret.

Britain, too, has set up a cyber-security policy outfit, and an "operations centre" based in GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA. China talks of "winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century". Many other countries are organising for cyberwar, among them Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran boasts of having the world's second-largest cyber-army.

What will cyberwar look like? In a new book Richard Clarke, a former White House staffer in charge of counter-terrorism and cyber-security, envisages a catastrophic breakdown within 15 minutes. Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems; oil refineries and pipelines explode; air-traffic-control systems collapse; freight and metro trains derail; financial data are scrambled; the electrical grid goes down in the eastern United States; orbiting satellites spin out of control. Society soon breaks down as food becomes scarce and money runs out. Worst of all, the identity of the attacker may remain a mystery.

In the view of Mike McConnell, a former spy chief, the effects of full-blown cyberwar are much like nuclear attack. Cyberwar has already started, he says, "and we are losing it." Not so, retorts Mr Schmidt. There is no cyberwar. Bruce Schneier, an IT industry security guru, accuses securocrats like Mr Clarke of scaremongering. Cyberspace will certainly be part of any future war, he says, but an apocalyptic attack on America is both difficult to achieve technically ("movie-script stuff") and implausible except in the context of a real war, in which case the perpetrator is likely to be obvious.

For the top brass, computer technology is both a blessing and a curse. Bombs are guided by GPS satellites; drones are piloted remotely from across the world; fighter planes and warships are now huge data-processing centres; even the ordinary foot-soldier is being wired up. Yet growing connectivity over an insecure internet multiplies the avenues for e-attack; and growing dependence on computers increases the harm they can cause.

Enlarge

By breaking up data and sending it over multiple routes, the internet can survive the loss of large parts of the network. Yet some of the global digital infrastructure is more fragile. More than nine-tenths of internet traffic travels through undersea fibre-optic cables, and these are dangerously bunched up in a few choke-points, for instance around New York, the Red Sea or the Luzon Strait in the Philippines (see map). Internet traffic is directed by just 13 clusters of potentially vulnerable domain-name servers. Other dangers are coming: weakly governed swathes of Africa are being connected up to fibre-optic cables, potentially creating new havens for cyber-criminals. And the spread of mobile internet will bring new means of attack.

The internet was designed for convenience and reliability, not security. Yet in wiring together the globe, it has merged the garden and the wilderness. No passport is required in cyberspace. And although police are constrained by national borders, criminals roam freely. Enemy states are no longer on the other side of the ocean, but just behind the firewall. The ill-intentioned can mask their identity and location, impersonate others and con their way into the buildings that hold the digitised wealth of the electronic age: money, personal data and intellectual property.

Mr Obama has quoted a figure of $1 trillion lost last year to cybercrime—a bigger underworld than the drugs trade, though such figures are disputed. Banks and other companies do not like to admit how much data they lose. In 2008 alone Verizon, a telecoms company, recorded the loss of 285m personal-data records, including credit-card and bank-account details, in investigations conducted for clients.

About nine-tenths of the 140 billion e-mails sent daily are spam; of these about 16% contain moneymaking scams (see chart 1), including "phishing" attacks that seek to dupe recipients into giving out passwords or bank details, according to Symantec, a security-software vendor. The amount of information now available online about individuals makes it ever easier to attack a computer by crafting a personalised e-mail that is more likely to be trusted and opened. This is known as "spear-phishing".

The ostentatious hackers and virus-writers who once wrecked computers for fun are all but gone, replaced by criminal gangs seeking to harvest data. "Hacking used to be about making noise. Now it's about staying silent," says Greg Day of McAfee, a vendor of IT security products. Hackers have become wholesale providers of malware—viruses, worms and Trojans that infect computers—for others to use. Websites are now the favoured means of spreading malware, partly because the unwary are directed to them through spam or links posted on social-networking sites. And poorly designed websites often provide a window into valuable databases.

Malware is exploding (see chart 2). It is typically used to steal passwords and other data, or to open a "back door" to a computer so that it can be taken over by outsiders. Such "zombie" machines can be linked up to thousands, if not millions, of others around the world to create a "botnet". Estimates for the number of infected machines range up to 100m (see map for global distribution of infections). Botnets are used to send spam, spread malware or launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which seek to bring down a targeted computer by overloading it with countless bogus requests.

The spy who spammed me

Criminals usually look for easy prey. But states can combine the criminal hacker's tricks, such as spear-phishing, with the intelligence apparatus to reconnoitre a target, the computing power to break codes and passwords, and the patience to probe a system until it finds a weakness—usually a fallible human being. Steven Chabinsky, a senior FBI official responsible for cyber- security, recently said that "given enough time, motivation and funding, a determined adversary will always—always—be able to penetrate a targeted system."

Traditional human spies risk arrest or execution by trying to smuggle out copies of documents. But those in the cyberworld face no such risks. "A spy might once have been able to take out a few books' worth of material," says one senior American military source, "Now they take the whole library. And if you restock the shelves, they will steal it again."

China, in particular, is accused of wholesale espionage, attacking the computers of major Western defence contractors and reputedly taking classified details of the F-35 fighter, the mainstay of future American air power. At the end of 2009 it appears to have targeted Google and more than a score of other IT companies. Experts at a cyber-test-range built in Maryland by Lockheed Martin, a defence contractor (which denies losing the F-35 data), say "advanced persistent threats" are hard to fend off amid the countless minor probing of its networks. Sometimes attackers try to slip information out slowly, hidden in ordinary internet traffic. At other times they have tried to break in by leaving infected memory-sticks in the car park, hoping somebody would plug them into the network. Even unclassified e-mails can contain a wealth of useful information about projects under development.

"Cyber-espionage is the biggest intelligence disaster since the loss of the nuclear secrets [in the late 1940s]," says Jim Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington, DC. Spying probably presents the most immediate danger to the West: the loss of high-tech know-how that could erode its economic lead or, if it ever came to a shooting war, blunt its military edge.

Western spooks think China deploys the most assiduous, and most shameless, cyberspies, but Russian ones are probably more skilled and subtle. Top of the league, say the spooks, are still America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ, which may explain why Western countries have until recently been reluctant to complain too loudly about computer snooping.

The next step after penetrating networks to steal data is to disrupt or manipulate them. If military targeting information could be attacked, for example, ballistic missiles would be useless. Those who play war games speak of being able to "change the red and blue dots": make friendly (blue) forces appear to be the enemy (red), and vice versa.

General Alexander says the Pentagon and NSA started co-operating on cyberwarfare in late 2008 after "a serious intrusion into our classified networks". Mr Lewis says this refers to the penetration of Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, through an infected thumb-drive. It took a week to winkle out the intruder. Nobody knows what, if any, damage was caused. But the thought of an enemy lurking in battle-fighting systems alarms the top brass.

That said, an attacker might prefer to go after unclassified military logistics supply systems, or even the civilian infrastructure. A loss of confidence in financial data and electronic transfers could cause economic upheaval. An even bigger worry is an attack on the power grid. Power companies tend not to keep many spares of expensive generator parts, which can take months to replace. Emergency diesel generators cannot make up for the loss of the grid, and cannot operate indefinitely. Without electricity and other critical services, communications systems and cash-dispensers cease to work. A loss of power lasting just a few days, reckon some, starts to cause a cascade of economic damage.

Experts disagree about the vulnerability of systems that run industrial plants, known as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). But more and more of these are being connected to the internet, raising the risk of remote attack. "Smart" grids", which relay information about energy use to the utilities, are promoted as ways of reducing energy waste. But they also increase security worries about both crime (eg, allowing bills to be falsified) and exposing SCADA networks to attack.

General Alexander has spoken of "hints that some penetrations are targeting systems for remote sabotage". But precisely what is happening is unclear: are outsiders probing SCADA systems only for reconnaissance, or to open "back doors" for future use? One senior American military source said that if any country were found to be planting logic bombs on the grid, it would provoke the equivalent of the Cuban missile crisis.

Estonia, Georgia and WWI

Important thinking about the tactical and legal concepts of cyber-warfare is taking place in a former Soviet barracks in Estonia, now home to NATO's "centre of excellence" for cyber-defence. It was established in response to what has become known as "Web War 1", a concerted denial-of-service attack on Estonian government, media and bank web servers that was precipitated by the decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial in central Tallinn in 2007. This was more a cyber-riot than a war, but it forced Estonia more or less to cut itself off from the internet.

Similar attacks during Russia's war with Georgia the next year looked more ominous, because they seemed to be co-ordinated with the advance of Russian military columns. Government and media websites went down and telephone lines were jammed, crippling Georgia's ability to present its case abroad. President Mikheil Saakashvili's website had to be moved to an American server better able to fight off the attack. Estonian experts were dispatched to Georgia to help out.

Many assume that both these attacks were instigated by the Kremlin. But investigations traced them only to Russian "hacktivists" and criminal botnets; many of the attacking computers were in Western countries. There are wider issues: did the cyber-attack on Estonia, a member of NATO, count as an armed attack, and should the alliance have defended it? And did Estonia's assistance to Georgia, which is not in NATO, risk drawing Estonia into the war, and NATO along with it?

Such questions permeate discussions of NATO's new "strategic concept", to be adopted later this year. A panel of experts headed by Madeleine Albright, a former American secretary of state, reported in May that cyber-attacks are among the three most likely threats to the alliance. The next significant attack, it said, "may well come down a fibre-optic cable" and may be serious enough to merit a response under the mutual-defence provisions of Article 5.

During his confirmation hearing, senators sent General Alexander several questions. Would he have "significant" offensive cyber-weapons? Might these encourage others to follow suit? How sure would he need to be about the identity of an attacker to "fire back"? Answers to these were restricted to a classified supplement. In public the general said that the president would be the judge of what constituted cyberwar; if America responded with force in cyberspace it would be in keeping with the rules of war and the "principles of military necessity, discrimination, and proportionality".

General Alexander's seven-month confirmation process is a sign of the qualms senators felt at the merging of military and espionage functions, the militarisation of cyberspace and the fear that it may undermine Americans' right to privacy. Cybercommand will protect only the military ".mil" domain. The government domain, ".gov", and the corporate infrastructure, ".com" will be the responsibility respectively of the Department of Homeland Security and private companies, with support from Cybercom.

One senior military official says General Alexander's priority will be to improve the defences of military networks. Another bigwig casts some doubt on cyber-offence. "It's hard to do it at a specific time," he says. "If a cyber-attack is used as a military weapon, you want a predictable time and effect. If you are using it for espionage it does not matter; you can wait." He implies that cyber-weapons would be used mainly as an adjunct to conventional operations in a narrow theatre.

The Chinese may be thinking the same way. A report on China's cyber-warfare doctrine, written for the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, envisages China using cyber-weapons not to defeat America, but to disrupt and slow down its forces long enough for China to seize Taiwan without having to fight a shooting war.

Apocalypse or asymmetry?

Deterrence in cyber-warfare is more uncertain than, say, in nuclear strategy: there is no mutually assured destruction, the dividing line between criminality and war is blurred and identifying attacking computers, let alone the fingers on the keyboards, is difficult. Retaliation need not be confined to cyberspace; the one system that is certainly not linked to the public internet is America's nuclear firing chain. Still, the more likely use of cyber-weapons is probably not to bring about electronic apocalypse, but as tools of limited warfare.

Cyber-weapons are most effective in the hands of big states. But because they are cheap, they may be most useful to the comparatively weak. They may well suit terrorists. Fortunately, perhaps, the likes of al-Qaeda have mostly used the internet for propaganda and communication. It may be that jihadists lack the ability to, say, induce a refinery to blow itself up. Or it may be that they prefer the gory theatre of suicide-bombings to the anonymity of computer sabotage—for now.

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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 8/05/2010 06:55:00 PM