How agencies choked Maoist lifelines

External weapons pipelines dismantled as intelligence-led strategy cripples Maoist operational capacity.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

Recovered items on display at the media conference at DGP office as 37 cadres of CPI (Maoist) surrendered on Saturday. ANI

(ANI)

For years, the fight against the naxals was described as a battle of boots in the jungle—encounters, ambushes, and cordon-and-search operations. What has received far less attention is the parallel war waged quietly by Indian security agencies to dismantle the movement's external arteries: the arms pipelines, cross-border brokers, and foreign-linked supply chains that kept Maoist violence alive long after its ideological appeal had waned.

The current collapse of Maoist operational capacity is not just the result of eliminating commanders like Madvi Hidma. It is the outcome of a coordinated, multi-front strategy that combined internal military pressure with the systematic disruption of every external support mechanism.

Indian security planning evolved from reactive counterinsurgency to a definitive two-pronged doctrine. The first prong, internal domination, focused on breaking Maoist control over territory, leadership, and finance through saturation deployment, permanent camps, intelligence-led strikes, and command decapitation.

The second prong, external isolation, aimed at severing the flow of weapons, ammunition, explosives, and training that entered Maoist zones through transnational and inter-group corridors.