Maoists forge ‘rocketpowered’ resurgence to take on forces

ONE STEP AHEAD The more we learn their tactics, the more they learn ours, says CRPF

PUNE/RAIPUR: One night this February, six rockets whooshed out of the forest and burst into flames, raining shrapnel into trees surrounding a police camp in Chhattisgarh. No lives were lost but the explosions sounded a loud alarm for the security forces fighting a decades-old Maoist insurgency.

Until recently, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) cleared all the trees and shrubs before pitching their camps in the forests where the rebels hold sway. But now the trees are left to stand as a shield against projectiles the insurgents seem to fire with worrying frequency.

Security specialists say the Maoists are adapting themselves to the changing ground situation. With the region teeming with 118 paramilitary battalions comprising 120,000 troops, they are taking to the aerial route to attack.

“The more we learn their tactics, the more they learn our tactics,” said a senior CRPF officer involved in anti-Maoist operations. “As we improve, so do they.”

The Maoists’ crude rockets and mortars were on show even during the ambush in Sukma two weeks ago that killed 25 CRPF men. The guerrillas used five kinds of airborne projectiles in the ambush, officials said.

One of the projectiles seized from the spot was what security forces describe as the “Rambo arrow”. Fired from a traditional bow, the arrowhead carried lowgrade gunpowder that explodes on impact after hitting a target.

“Rambo arrows don’t cause much damage but they disorient you in the fog of war,” said a CoBRA trooper who survived the ambush. The CoBRA is a commando unit that specialises in guerrilla warfare.

Intelligence officials who studied the ambush said the projectiles were used to force troopers to abandon cover positions and come into the open, where they were picked off with gunfire.

The crude artillery bear testimony to the Maoists’ changing tactics under pressure from the swelling number of security forces. Their area of influence has shrunk over the years and mounting ambushes are becoming difficult, though not entirely rare. Triggering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is also becoming a challenge.

“We have been recovering IEDs of increasing sophistication,” Jamal Khan, the principal of CRPF’s Institute of IED Management at Pune told HT. “As we have grown better at identifying and defusing IEDs, the Maoists have been forced to adapt”.

The CRPF has been in Chhattisgarh since 2003, but troopers began venturing into the forests in 2009-10 during Operation Green Hunt. “As forces increased and training improved, the Maoists started to rely more on IEDs and less on ambushes,” said a senior CRPF officer, who served at the time in Dantewada, a small town in the conflict zone.

In 2012, the CRPF set up the IED institute to combat this threat. That year, the force identified and defused 587 IEDs, which rose to 1072 IEDs in 2016. As the forces grew more adept at finding IEDs, the guerrillas changed tack. The Maoist rocket was first seen in a 2012 attack on a paramilitary camp in Narayanpur.

“That version was very crude and didn’t fly very well,” said Khan. But since 2015, the Maoists have fired rockets on CRPF camps four times.

The newer versions are more sophisticated: A conical nose filled with explosives is welded into a tail-section filled with lowexplosive propellant fuel. A funnel-shaped nozzle on the tail produces thrust and “fins” loosely screwed to the tail provide stability to the rockets in flight and increase their chances of landing on the nose. Once they strike, a spring-loaded nail strikes a detonator and triggers an explosion.

The rockets have rattled security forces, though they have not resulted in deaths yet. One worry is that the Maoists seem to have retained their technically skilled cadre despite the surrender and capture of many high-profile leaders over the past few years.

“What is left is the real hardcore, the real experienced fighters,” said an officer who recently confronted a Maoist military company.

“Right now they are going from village to village, showing the weapons they looted, saying – We have bounced back.”