A military assessment of the Nepalese Maoist movement

A military assessment of the Nepalese Maoist movement - 

JANE'S INTELLIGENCE REVIEW

By John Mackinlay,

DECEMBER 01, 2002

John Mackinlay reports on the military organisation and tactics adopted by Nepal's Maoist movement and examines whether it can sustain its current level of operations.

Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba conceded to the electorate on 4 October 2002 that he could not guarantee the security of the forthcoming November elections, thus exposing candidates and voters to intimidation by Maoist guerrillas.

King Gyanendra dismissed Deuba and his cabinet on the following day and assumed executive powers, provoking a crisis that has led to a debate over the emerging power structures in the capital that emanate from the office of the king. However, such political debates are increasingly overshadowed by the growing power of the Maoist insurgents.

This argument over politics in the capital reflects the reluctance among Kathmandu's élite to face up to the imminent threat of the Maoist forces, which have demonstrated their grip on the population in rural areas. The Maoists' ability to block the November election, however, now threatens the citadel of the Kathmandu élite.

Nepal has reached a culminating point in its civil war and so far it is the insurgents who have proved to be the more potent and proactive element. The question now is whether they can translate these gains into a strategy for overwhelming success.

An assessment of the military wing of the Maoist movement suggests that they have developed an organisation that succeeds in the rural areas, but that their campaign is now running at a pace that outstrips the availability of manpower and local resources.

Controlling structures

The insurgents' military arm grew rapidly from a small nucleus in the Tamang communities around Harbung in West Nepal in the early 1990s. In its expanded form, the military wing is now organised into five elements that control their overseas linkages, the Kathmandu valley cadres and the three military regions - central, east and west that comprise the remainder of the Nepalese countryside and the regional centres. Each military region is further subdivided into three sub-regions and then again into three districts. The 30 or so military districts that result from this sub-division do not correspond to the official jillas or administrative districts of Nepal.

The strengths, energy, limitations and ruthlessness of the movement are manifest at the operational level of the military wing. In concept the smallest brick in the field organisation on which the Maoist structure rests is the local guerrilla group. This is tactically reinforced from the district or region level for a specific action.

Local groups are hidden and sustained by rural communities that may live in a single village or in a group of settlements along the steep-sided valleys. The cadre to establish a new group will initially come from another district. In their selection and penetration of a community they look for, and then take advantage of, the absence of police and government structures. During the early 1990s small and vulnerable police and government posts were successfully targeted and then overrun by the Maoists, which led to the general withdrawal of police forces and their regrouping into district capitals.

In the villages, the effect of the government exodus was exacerbated by a simultaneous migration of the wealthier and more powerful landowners into the urban areas. This general disaffection left rural communities vulnerable to penetration by well-organised military groups.

As a group grows larger it eventually comprises a majority of members from the target community which normally live and work in the area. Once established, a guerrilla group divides its time between its overt identity as part of the community and its clandestine refuge in the scrub beyond the cultivation around the village. For this reason, it is difficult for an outsider to assess the extent of a local guerrilla group within a particular community.  The group is armed, highly mobile and intrusive. It regulates the local community in a ruthless manner, executing criminals and 'class' enemies and punishing offenders against the Maoist code, sometimes by execution but more usually by breaking their legs and/or arms.

At a local level Maoist social regulations ban gambling, alcohol, corruption, ostentatious religious ceremonies and caste and gender discrimination. The local Maoists act in place of the government, monitoring and controlling movement through their area, commandeering privately owned weapons and keeping accurate records of individual wealth and surplus food. Because most of Nepal's rural areas are occupied by such groups, the Maoists collectively exercise an overwhelming resistance to the Nepalese government's efforts to re-assert itself over its territory in the form of elections, development infrastructure and the party political efforts to educate and mobilise a more informed electorate.

Military tactics

When the Maoists attack a military target their local organisation is significantly enlarged by the arrival of a uniformed battalion group. Whereas the resident guerrillas are primarily an instrument of control, the uniformed battalion group is an attack force. Its permanent cadre is subdivided into four functional groups: uniformed fighters; logistics porters; the intelligence group; and commissars. The regular battalion is augmented by a locally conscripted element known as the 'martyrs'.

The uniformed fighters are a full-time military force with an established vertical control structure and badges of rank. Individual fighters are variously armed with captured arms and seem to adapt themselves to new weapons with great versatility. They are, however, usually not strong enough to move openly as a body from district to district.

The logistics party is also referred to as doko manchhe ('basket men'). Their role is to move ammunition and combat supplies up to the point of contact. They have also been used to build fires to smoke off the enemy garrison's fields of fire over an approach line for the advancing fighters. Prior to the action the doko manchhe will also dig communal graves in anticipation of heavy casualties. The district leaders make strenuous efforts to remove their dead and have in many cases concealed their identity by decapitation. The doko manchhe also carry casualties to the dressing stations that are set up behind cover.

The intelligence group cadres operate in plain clothes and may co-opt locals to help penetrate a selected target. In the case of an established military garrison they will use local contractors, cleaners, laundry women, office workers and prostitutes to gather information and steal documents that will help to assess the value of the target.

The commissar group comprises a few individuals who maintain the ideological integrity of the battalion and decide the fate of military prisoners and civilians after a position has fallen.

The martyrs act as a first wave of the assault when the attack is launched. In their initial operations against police posts, martyrs were recruited from locally disaffected elements of the community. They did not represent a particular caste, but rather a level of society so poor that it lived habitually on the edge of subsistence. As such, they were vulnerable to the extortion of local officials, they had little to lose in property or heritage and in most cases felt outraged at the hardship of their lives and their unfavourable relationship to the urban classes. However, as the Maoist operations increased in scale and ambition, local willingness to volunteer as martyrs began to evaporate. Although the attacks were often successful, the price in casualties was high. More recently, rural communities have been reluctant to volunteer and locals have had to be coerced to join the martyr group. The local guerrilla group accompanied by the uniformed fighters moves from house to house demanding young men and sometimes women. The penalty for refusal is the execution of a member of the household and as a result many young people flee from areas where the Maoists have begun recruiting for an impending attack. The escapees congregate increasingly in the urban areas of the Kathmandu valley and the provincial capitals. The unlucky ones are marched off to a camp somewhere in the jungle. Here they receive rudimentary training and indoctrination. They will each wear some article of uniform to identify them and may be issued with a weapon. In many cases the percussion lock muzzle loaders, khukris and cutting instruments they receive are more symbolic than genuinely effective weapons. The tragedy for these young people is that they are not expected to have any real offensive capability. Their unstated task is to draw the enemy's fire as they present themselves in the first and successive waves. They are expendable and most will be buried in the pits that have already been dug in anticipation of this outcome.

A Maoist operation against a company position is usually executed with precision and determination. The target will be carefully selected for its value and vulnerability. Its security will be penetrated by the intelligence group that has shown itself capable of making shrewd assessments concerning the laxity of a garrison and the weakness of its defensive positions. The most successful Maoist operations have managed to overcome the defensive perimeter using surprise but where this has failed waves of martyrs will assault the position until the defending fire is exhausted.

The final thrust is made by the uniformed fighters, who enter and clear the installation, rounding up prisoners, gathering weapons and looting useful articles. Meanwhile the commissars sift through records and papers, identifying the prisoners and deciding who will be executed and how. In some cases executions are carried out visibly and brutally to send a signal to corrupt government officials and police officers in other areas.

The attackers also calculate the time and direction of any approaching relief columns of government forces. Recently they have demonstrated an elaborate planning capability in their dispersal phase, picketing the government's likely routes and successfully withdrawing before they can be surrounded.

In addition to the set-piece attacks, Maoist destruction of infrastructure has included airfields, microwave masts, schools and overland communications. Although Maoist strategic thinking is hidden, the effects of the campaign are visible and have successfully tied down government forces, compelling them to protect installations and garrisons. This reduces the Royal Nepalese Army's (RNA) campaigning assets and allows the Maoists more operational freedom at the local level.

Foreign influence

Apart from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, internationally organised insurgent forces usually demonstrate a poor applied knowledge of infantry skills, whereas the Nepalese Maoists excel in this field. Tactically they have demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of section, platoon and company level battle procedures. Their use of ground; hard cover; fire and movement; their understanding of the value of surprise; their selection of objectives; their co-ordination of fire; and their use of smoke and battlefield illumination suggests a foreign influence in their training.

In the hill areas, where the British and Indian armies have recruited soldiers since 1815, local communities include an experienced, internationally trained class of junior infantry commanders. Although there is not much evidence that serving Gurkhas from the UK, Singapore, India or Brunei actively support the movement, in such an inter-related community serving officers and non-commissioned officers could be persuaded by active Maoist relatives to act as consultants for a particular operation.

In their use of improvised explosive devices the Maoists have demonstrated some links with foreign terrorist groups. The current improvement in the use and sophistication of command detonation suggests not only a well developed system for the local manufacture of devices but also the hand of foreign expertise, perhaps from Naxalite organisations across the Indian border.

State response

An important reason for the Maoists' continued freedom and success in rural areas is the absence of an effective counterstrategy. In the prescriptions of UK experience, a successful counterinsurgency campaign should be driven by a political aim, supported by all government departments, with good intelligence and co-ordinated under a single director of operations. The purpose of the political strategy could be to isolate the activists from their supporting constituency.

Although the former Nepalese government's security plan had the appearance of a counterstrategy, the essential conditions were missing. Besides being tied down to the protection of installations, the RNA is not yet fit to conduct an effective counterinsurgent campaign on the ground. For several decades it has been deployed around Nepal as a garrison, understandably it still has the configuration and mentality of a static force. Until 2002 it had no experience of campaigning, no developed logistic support capability for mobile operations, and at the lowest level there was not even a man-portable ration similar to MREs (meals ready to eat) or the 24-hour ration pack.

Foreign observers say that unit commanders tend to comfort themselves with the wrong lessons of Nepal's insurgency, seizing on the isolated example of one successful RNA defensive action at Salleri as the norm, and disregarding the reality, the more numerous disasters where lax RNA units have been overrun. Their current policy of withholding food aid to some rural areas demonstrates a failure to understand the long-term consequences of retribution and becomes a propaganda gift for the Maoists.

The Nepalese Department of Military Intelligence is also unsighted on the Maoist organisation. In the current climate of Maoist success, good intelligence sources are hard to recruit. A Kathmandu-based intelligence organisation has the additional problem of penetrating rural communities, which are ethnically distinct from the government forces.

The sum of these disabilities is that unit for unit, patrol for patrol, the Maoists have created a better instrument than the RNA. Government forces move through the valleys as strangers. Goatherds and travellers herald their progress along the Nepalese footpaths. Before they reach a village surplus food is stowed away, lootable items hidden, and the uniformed Maoist elements move into their clandestine bases so that only the ostensibly civilian inhabitants remain to meet them. Moving in this manner the RNA, even in the best circumstances when they are welcomed, cannot afford to maintain its presence within a particular community. It must move on, usually back to barracks, leaving behind a vacuum that is immediately refilled by the local guerrilla unit.

Stalemate

In this analysis the Maoists seem irresistible. However, there are several reasons why Nepal is more likely to endure a prolonged and brutalising stalemate than see a sudden Maoist victory.

King Gyanendra's assumption of power may provide firm leadership to a flaccid counterstrategy. Although an unpopular survivor of the palace massacre, Gyanendra is also regarded as the most formidable member of the family, with a strongly developed street fighter's survival instinct. Only a tough leader could wield the power and purpose to impose a political counterstrategy that effectively removes the insurgents from their position as the champions of Nepal's dispossessed underclass.

Only he can compel the army and the intelligence service to undertake the uncomfortable reforms needed for all to survive. At a tactical level there is much that can be improved without inflicting a crippling set of reforms during a continuing campaign. From its current low standard, even a small improvement in the RNA's mobility and field presence would begin to impinge on the Maoists' freedom of movement. There are, however, serious problems of ethnic distinction, professionalism and accountability that in the longer term are likely to prevent the RNA from turning stalemate into victory.

As for the insurgents, they now face a much more demanding phase in their military campaign: the penetration and capture of the urban areas. This requires more than the skills of a rural guerrilla force and brings the conflict onto a territory where the RNA and police are at home and better supported.

The problem for the Maoists is that their campaign may move into a stalemate even before an effective assault is mounted on the urban areas. The Maoist operational pace has outstripped its sources of supply and exhausted the popular support it had in the early 1990s. Insurgent casualties, many of them martyrs, are almost 10 to one in favour of the government. If they continue to force the pace the Maoists will begin to lose their freedom of movement in the rural areas, not to the RNA but to an abused and uncooperative population that will betray and resist them. However, a deliberate slow down would take the pressure off the government forces and enable them to formulate and implement a more effective counterstrategy.

John Mackinlay is a part-time lecturer at the War Studies Department, Kings College London.