Monitoring Indian Communists - 3

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[url="http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101117_pakistan_and_naxalite_movement_india?utm_source=SWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=101118&utm_content=readmore&elq=4131b8d4208348988255c1d3e60acac2"]Pakistan and the Naxalite Movement in India[/url]

Indian authorities are using the alleged meeting between LeT operatives and Naxalites as evidence that Pakistan is trying to forge relationships with the Naxalites, which India has long suspected. India blamed the LeT for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2001 parliament attack. For the Indian public, LeT also has become synonymous with Pakistani intelligence operations. The group that Indian officials refer to as “LeT,” however, is no longer an ally of Pakistan and has changed so much in recent years that we have started to refer to it and similar groups as “neo-LeT”.



Before this latest accusation, Indian officials implicated at least six other militant groups in Naxalite activities (with varying degrees of Pakistani support). Linking the estimated 10,000-strong Naxalites to militant groups backed by Pakistan, India’s main geopolitical rival and primary source of external security threats, creates a “nightmare” scenario for India. Indeed, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labeled the Naxalites “the biggest internal security challenge” to India. Taken at face value, reports of such an alliance lead to visions of well-trained, well-disciplined Naxal militants expanding their near-daily attacks on low-level rural targets in eastern India (known as the “Red Corridor”) to political and high-tech targets in Calcutta, Hyderabad or even New Delhi. But such visions are alarmist and do not reflect the true nature of the very limited Pakistani-Naxalite relationship.