Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [70]
Dry Cocktail of Rage
All these social factors—the withdrawal of the state, the rise of capital-intensive farming and the depredation of moneylenders, and the incompetence and corruption of the local state, all in a semiarid climate—make up the preexisting crisis upon which climate change now descends. This, like counterinsurgency and war, contributes to the catastrophic convergences of climate, poverty, and violence.
From under the arbor, I can see why Linga Reddy Sama and the other farmers in Jaamni are so pessimistic about farming. They have a clear a set of ideas about the environmental politics of what they are doing: the Bt cotton they use is killing the land. A few say that population growth has led to overharvesting of the forest, which they (correctly) believe is adversely affecting rainfall. Further away in the hills there’s been commercial and often illegal logging. Here, though, the deforestation is a by-product of their local fuel and construction needs.
In the remote forests of Chattisgarh, Naxalite activity is so intense that the paramilitary state police are largely pinned down, restricted to their fortresslike compounds—redoubts reinforced with sandbags, wire, log walls, and gun turrets. When the police venture out, the Naxals ambush. The guerillas also mass their troops for large attacks that sometimes overrun the paramilitary police compounds and detention centers. For example, in November 2005 Naxalite guerillas stormed a jail in Jehanabad, Bihar, “firebombing offices and freeing several hundred prisoners.” In March 2006 “they attacked a police camp in Chattisgarh, killing fifty-five policemen and making off with a huge cache of weapons.” They have bombed railway stations and transmission towers. During the 2009 elections, they took a whole passenger train hostage and attacked a multibillion-dollar iron ore slurry pipeline. 44
The Naxalite weapon of choice is the command-activated landmine. As these are not pressure-detonated mines, they can be planted in a road months before use: rain, mud, traffic, and sunshine bake the road above the mines into perfect camouflage. The buried mines become impossible to detect under the hard-packed tracks, but the explosives are active and linked to long wires that can be connected to detonators and triggered whenever the guerillas are ready.
Like improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Naxalite landmines are effective on several levels simultaneously. Tactically, landmines maim and kill the paramilitary police. Psychologically, the explosives wear down and demoralize the enemy. Politically, the mines function as a social barrier between the counterinsurgency forces and the people whom they seek to control. The situation is so bad that elements in the Indian air force are lobbying to start an aerial bombing campaign upon the parched lands of the Red Corridor.45
Dark Arts of Repression
Instead of robustly embracing new, green agricultural technologies and supports for farmers facing an uncertain climate, the state is focusing on repression. The relative victory over the guerillas in Telangana results from a near-perfect mix of classic guns-and-butter counterinsurgency. At the thin end of the wedge are the above-mentioned Greyhounds, the paramilitary special forces of the state police. Established in the early 1990s, this counterinsurgency force has been highly effective, never hesitating to use violence but also investing enormous energy in intelligence. That is