First, my remarks were based on Robert Thompson partly, and his Malaysian experience; during the 60s, his writing was tremendously influential in certain circles in India, but actual experiences caused certain principles to be formulated. I had in my post reproduced from memory some documents 'seen' in a completely irregular manner, which dealt with a civilian force's doctrinal outline for dealing with Maoist insurrection in the countryside (it is to be noted that an earlier phase of country-based insurrection was defeated, and resulted in a flare-up of an essentially urban insurrectionary movement fought with low technology on both sides, which also resulted in the defeat of the insurrection). The sequence of events was:
- Political detachment of insurrectionary faction from main pro-Chinese marxist political body (other mainstream marxist political body was pro-Soviet Russian);
- outbreak of armed insurrection in West Bengal countryside;
- successful partial repression of rural insurrection;
- transfer and continuation of insurrection in urban setting (in Kolkata, 68 to 71);
- repression of insurrection in urban area;
- revival of rural insurrection;
- second, thorough repression of rural insurrection;
- long interval and multiple 'splits' in Maoist political body (different from majority pro-Chinese marxist body named earlier);
- multiple outbreaks of insurrection in 'central' India (Bihar, including present Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, specifically present Chhatisgarh, Maharashtra, including Gadchiroli area, Andhra Pradesh, and bits and pieces of Tamil Nadu and Kerala;
- sustained insurrectionary campaign in Bihar/Jharkhand/West Bengal/Orissa/ Chhatisgarh;
I will respectfully disagree. Intelligence above anything is what is important in counter-insurgency. There is the romantic idea of fighting the guerilla like a guerilla, (plot of the second Rambo movie no?) but I think it is largely unnecessary for an army operate off the land and of the land to be effective.
I
emphatically agree that gathering of local intelligence, broader and more civilian and life-style activity oriented information than military information, is the living spirit of counter-insurgency work. Nothing I have written already should be considered to oppose intelligence gathering as a critical function.
There have been different doctrines used in different states, and all will be reported as possible, though possibly not in this thread. However, it is understood that all successful campaigns ran on efficient gathering of local information and intelligence. This was typically gathered by policemen as well as by civilian spies, operating under the protective and sustained presence of armed policemen in sensitive and trouble-prone areas. Details are not clearly known due to lack of documentation of these campaigns by state-based police forces, more accurately, state-based paramilitary forces uniformed and designated as policemen.
Living off the land was not an option and was not attempted; I suspect that this phrase was used in a different sense than it appears in the rebuttal, the different sense being to be located in and around the battlefield, not in off-terrain armed barracks, but in the field; fighting guerrillas as guerrillas was done successfully, partially by adopting some key elements in Mao' book 'On War'.
Intelligence (or the need thereof) is generic to fighting any conflict, not just an insurgency. About Rambo; Mr. Rambo or even Gen. Rambo will not last long in any counter insurgency operation. There was nothing romantic about the Viet Cong for instance, but a lot that was effective.
Rambo was not a model, although there were militaristic tendencies in some of the disparate forces assembled then and now.
I think, intelligence is differentially important in different kinds of wars and also the kind of intelligence needed to fight an insurgency is different from the conventional idea of intelligence in war (ie troops disposition, concentration) but more human intelligence like relationships between people, cell structure, political motivation, stuff like that.
Very true.
