“Maoist Insurgency since Vietnam” is a book about
leftist insurgency and government counterinsurgency in Thailand, the
Philippines, Sri Lanka and Peru. The author, Thomas A Marks, is a former US
intelligence officer. Despite this, his book is written in a deceptively
objective style. Sometimes, it sounds as if he's advising the rebels! The book
tries to be both empirical and analytical, but I'm not entirely sure if it
succeeds in this. Also, the “Maoist” moniker in the title is misleading, since
the Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka (including the “Liberation Tigers” or LTTE)
aren't strictly Maoist in ideological orientation. The main problem with the
book is that Marks tries to generalize on the basis of four very different
examples. The political situations in Thailand and the Philippines have certain
similarities, but neither Sri Lanka nor Peru fit the general pattern laid down
by the author. Still, I found his study interesting.
One thing that struck me when reading Marks' study was the dogmatic approach of
the Maoist groups covered. Very often, they attempted to slavishly copy the
Chinese model (“protracted people's war” and “surround the cities from the
countryside”) even when other tactics would have been more effective.
Ironically, this was *not* Mao's approach – he came up with the “Maoist” model
when the Russian model failed in China. The last thing Mao would have wanted
(if I may give some advice to the rebels myself) was for foreign
revolutionaries to copy the Chinese model in nations where circumstances are
very different. This “nationalist” or “exceptionalist” aspect of Maoism seems
to have been lost on the Maoists in Thailand, the Philippines and Peru…
A common mistake was to concentrate on the rural regions even in nations where
many people live in cities, including urban congregations in the rural
countryside. In the Philippines, the Maoist CPP/NDF/NPA more or less completely
missed the urban-centered struggles which brought down the dictatorship of
Ferdinand Marcos. Despite being a strong rebel group, the CPP was outflanked by
the democratic opposition around Corazon Aquino and the reformist wing of the
military. Another strategic mistake was to continue the armed struggle even
after democratization. In the Philippines, the CPP guerillas launched a full
out offensive against Aquino's democratic government, thereby alienating many
potential supporters. It's also obvious from Marks' study that the Maoist
rebels frequently terrorized civilians in “liberated” areas. The Peruvian
Sendero Luminoso is ill reputed in this regard, but the CPP did pretty much the
same thing, including regular blood purges within its own ranks. The Tamil
insurgents were the worst, competing rebel groups spending considerable time
attacking each other. Due to its nationalist character, the Lankan conflict
also involved ethnic cleansing and foreign intervention.
While the Tamil nationalists were at least fighting “on their own turf”, so to
speak, the Maoists frequently made things hard for themselves by not being
nationalist enough. The Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) was internally split
between a pro-Chinese wing and a pro-Vietnamese ditto. This made the party seem
like an alien element in Thai society. It also created serious friction within
its ranks when Vietnam (backed by the Soviet Union) fell out with China. In
1978-79, Vietnam invaded pro-Chinese Cambodia and Vietnamese troops suddenly
reached Thailand's borders. The fact that China's foreign policy had become
pro-American created additional trouble for the CPT, since the Thai government
they were fighting was also pro-American. Marks further argues that the CPT's
attempts to win a mass following were hampered by their verbal attacks on the
King, their anti-Buddhism and the fact that many of their leaders were
ethnically non-Thai. The CPT eventually bit the bullet and “offered” to form a
“united front” with the military regime against the perceived Vietnamese
threat. However, this could just as well be seen as an adoption to Chinese
foreign policy, rather than a real embrace of Thai patriotism.
The classical response to leftist insurgency is, of course, to repress it with
heavy handed methods. More often than not, this simply fans the flames of the
resistance. During the Cold War, the American approach was apparently to
combine military counterinsurgency with attempts to win people's “hearts and
minds” by social reform programs aimed at the village poor. Thus, aid workers
protected by the military would dig wells, build roads or open up schools.
Another important element was to recruit local villagers to anti-Communist
militias armed by the government. This strategy didn't work very well either.
To Marks, it has to be combined with democratization and actual economic
growth, something the local elites (and US allies) were unwilling or unable to
provide. The author argues that it was democratization which broke the back of
the Filipino and Thai Maoist insurgencies. In Thailand, the policies of the
democratic government also led to economic growth. The ranks of the
pro-government militias swelled, and the Maoists were suddenly confronted with
a kind of “reverse people's war”: the people were armed, but united against
them! Most Maoist recruits were “grievance guerillas”, and with alternative
outlets for their grievances, people's war became less attractive. Ordinary
peasants, attacked by both unruly security forces and Maoist insurgents, were
less willing to put up with the latter if the former disappeared due to
political reforms. Instead, they joined the militias to protect their villages
from Maoist terror.
Marks' analysis sounds convincing when applied to Thailand and the Philippines,
but when he proposes something similar for Sri Lanka, he falls short. The civil
war in Sri Lanka was a fierce nationalist conflict between the Sinhalese and
the Tamil, and therefore cannot be solved by democratization (Sri Lanka is
already a democracy), nor by social reforms (since the poor are split along
ethnic lines, they will continue fighting each other over the spoils of the
reforms). Theoretically, the conflict could of course be solved by granting the
Tamils national independence or autonomy, but since that is precisely what the
Sinhala perceive as a threat to their Buddhist holy land, it's not very likely
to happen either. Indeed, it hasn't – since the book was written, the
Sinhala-dominated Lankan government have solved the conflict by brutally
suppressing the Tamil LTTE. The conflict in Sri Lanka has strong resemblances
with the Israeli-Palestine ditto, which is notoriously intractable. It's also
weirdly similar on a symbolic level: the Sinhala, who were supported by Israel,
see Sri Lanka as the chosen land of the Buddha threatened by infidels of an
alien race (compare Zionism), while the Tamil groups had contacts with the PLO
and apparently learned the tactic of suicide bombing from the Middle East!
Peru is host to yet another species of conflict. The notoriously weird and
cultish Sendero Luminoso had very little popular support, and managed to become
the scourge of the nation mostly because the central government and its
military weren't able to control the entire territory of Peru. Indeed, in many
areas, the government hardly even had a physical presence, making it easy for
Sendero (or local bandits of various kinds, sometimes allied with the Maoists)
to fill the vacuum. Note also that the Peruvian governments which failed to
suppress the Senderistas were democratic (albeit presiding over a collapsing
economy), while the government which *did* suppress the insurgency was
authoritarian but not particularly reformist (Alberto Fujimori presumably
didn't dig that many wells in Ayacucho).
It would be interesting to read a follow up study. Since the book was
published, a Maoist people's war has been waged in Nepal. Here, the author's
perspective was vindicated: the insurgency stopped when Nepal became a
democratic republic and the Maoists transformed themselves into a legal
political party. Meanwhile, another group of Maoist rebels, the famed Naxalites
in India, seem to be growing stronger year after year, despite India being a
democracy. I know very little about it, but it seems largely based on
“scheduled tribes”, so there could be an ethnic dimension involved. Or too few
wells dug? Finally, there is Colombia, where non-Maoist leftist guerillas have
fought successive governments in Bogota since time immemorial.
Despite my criticism of some parts of this work, I will nevertheless give
“Maoist Insurgency since Vietnam” four stars. It contains interesting facts,
did clarify some things I didn't know or suspected before, and is probably
indispensable reading if the issues covered interest you.
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