Camp confusion

Camp confusion

The Errabore camp was set up in February to shelter tribals fleeing the Salwa Judum-Naxalite conflict. It had about 4,500 refugees packed into a little over a square kilometre. The numbers vary as people come and go. Many have moved to districts like Konta and Jagdalpur, or crossed over to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Most of these adivasis have come from Errabore and other villages within a 10-km radius, which now lie abandoned. Some of these empty villages are visible along the Sukma-Konta stretch of National Highway 221 — groups of forlorn huts with locked doors and broken roofs overgrown with weeds. Others are hidden within the dense forests of Dantewada, where few roads run and the administration is practically non-existent.

Since it began in June 2005, the statebacked anti-Naxalite initiative has cost over 350 lives and emptied about 700 tribal villages. Caught between the two forces, terrorised villagers either flee to, or are forced into, relief camps set up along the highways by the state government. Nearly 49,000 tribal people are now living in temporary shelters in 17 roadside camps and 27 new ‘villages’ that have sprouted across Dantewada, according to the district administration.

Another 20,000 have migrated to Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. Unable to farm their lands, those living in camps have since lost two crops and their access to forests, precipitating a livelihood crisis. Homeless, jobless, landless, they survive on government rations and occasional stints as daily wagers, building and widening roads and digging ponds under rural employment schemes. After spending Rs 300 crore on these settlements, the state government is now thinking of turning the camps into new villages or resettling villagers on nearby lands. But there aren’t enough livelihood options in terms of land and forest produce, which sustain 97 per cent of Dantewada’s people.

Errabore enigma

The camps show the state of confusion. At Errabore, the tarpaulin tents that initially housed the refugees have since given way to more permanent mud huts with thatched or tin roofs supplied by the state government. Heavy rains have turned the dirt roads into sludge. Camp doctors say though there had been some initial epidemic scares, things are under control.

However, there have been a lot of infections, given the cramped conditions. Sanitation continues to be a problem. The village temple, at the centre of the settlement, serves as a meeting point for the residents. Camp leaders stand on the temple steps, megaphone in hand, and warn residents to not step beyond the check posts after dark. Unable to bear the confinement, villagers often slip off to visit their homes during the day and return to the camp before sundown.

The camp is guarded by a state police unit, paramilitaries and 132 SPOs, whose arsenal comprises 50 rifles, bows and arrows, sticks and 30 bicycles. Paramilitary officials admit that it isn’t easy providing security because they can’t keep a tab on the people entering and leaving the place. Since they are unfamiliar with the terrain and the people, they have to rely on the villagers for information. But many villagers have fathers, sons, brothers, sisters and husbands on the other side who often slip in to meet them, carrying back vital information. The villagers had barely begun picking up the pieces after the July 16 attack when floods struck on August 3, sweeping away several homes, cattle and goats. Relief supplies have been slow to reach since the state was struggling to cope with other, worse affected regions in Dantewada and Bastar.

In the meantime, the administration has sent instructions that weekly food supplies for children be halved at all camps. None of the SPOs have been paid since February, when the camp came into being. “We are working with our lives on the line here, yet very few senior officials come to see us and offer support or encouragement,” says Ramlal Malkam, the local school principal, who’s in charge of keeping records of camp facilities. “The district collector assured us that salaries will be paid, but there’s no sign of it yet. It’s not good for the morale of the people.”

The settlement is rife with fear, suspicion and discontent. Forced into cramped quarters, unable to till their lands or go into the forests, the villagers have nothing much to do all day other than sit around and wonder if their neighbour is a Salwa Judum member or Naxalite informer.

Truth has long been a casualty here. Few speak openly about what led them to flee their villages. Over and over, the same phrase is repeated: “Everyone was leaving, so I came too.” Some tell you in private that they were brought against their will by Salwa Judum activists who threatened them with violence, but change their stance in front of other villagers. In this haze of conflicting stories and mumbled explanations, only one thing is clear: everyone wants to go home.

Mandvi Bhima, a refugee at the Dornapal relief camp, about 30 km north of Errabore, sums up the problem: “We were suffering there, but we are suffering here also. To live on your land and farm is one thing, and it’s another to live here almost like a prisoner.”

Flawed effort

Touché. Counter-terrorism experts say no anti-insurgency effort can succeed without the cooperation from local people. “In that sense Salwa Judum is unique,” says Brigadier (retd) B K Ponwar, who’s been brought in to run a new jungle warfare school in Kanker. But even Ponwar, who’s spent most of his career fighting insurgency, admits that “the problem here stems from the neglect of a population that for over a thousand years has lived in the forests” and says such action has to be bolstered with social and economic development.

However, cooperation is one thing, and participation quite another. To deliberately involve civilians in a conflict, especially underage boys and girls, as the Chhattisgarh government has done is, as the Asian Centre for Human Rights has stated, “morally and legally untenable”. The movement is increasingly militarising and criminalising an impoverished people and the end result can only be unhappy.

Besides, how long can the government continue to provide food and security to 49,000 refugees? The chief minister’s colleagues are already asking the same question. A senior BJP leader described Salwa Judum as “a bone stuck in the throat” that could neither be spat out nor swallowed. The state Congress leadership, too, is split on the issue. Former chief minister Ajit Jogi’s faction recently visited the prime minister and declared the movement a failure. They accused the state government of “betraying” the tribals of Bastar.

The Congress high command is yet to make its position on Salwa Judum clear, though Union tribal affairs minister P R Kyndiah has called for a review of the movement, saying it was “turning into a fratricidal war”. Even Raman Singh’s chief security advisor, Punjab’s ex-police chief K P S Gill, has publicly said that the state isn’t equipped to secure the relief camps from rebel attacks. He said it would have been better if people were provided protection in their villages.

India has witnessed in the past what happens when thousands of villagers are relocated to roadside camps without planning for their livelihood options. In 1966, when Mizo National Front guerrillas overran Aizawl, the Indian government retaliated with massive counter-insurgency operations, as part of which they regrouped Mizo villages into virtual concentration camps in order to deny rebels hiding in the hills access to food and water. Tens of thousands of villagers were uprooted and dumped into these camps. Instead of quelling the rebellion, the move spurred more young Mizos to join the rebels.

What was worse, the counter-insurgency operations destroyed the structure of Mizo society, its symbiotic relationship with the land and contributed much to the alienation of Mizos from mainstream India. Similar strategies used in the Philippines and East Timor to quell rebellions had terrible effects.

Exemplary reprisals

The Chhattisgarh example shows the same pattern of counterinsurgency operations doing more harm than good — especially for people in camps. Not only do they have to deal with dislocation and deprivation, they also know that the Naxalite response can be swift and brutal and that they are the soft underbelly.

Ultra-left groups have attacked villages, killed anyone suspected of aligning with the Salwa Judum, burnt houses and destroyed government buildings and schools: on February 28 this year, they killed 29 people in a mine explosion near Konta village while they were returning from a Salwa Judum camp. On April 29, the dismembered bodies of 15 villagers were discovered on the main highway and jungle roads in the district.

On July 16, they attacked the Errabore relief camp, killing 42. State officials say thousands of villagers began fleeing their homes to escape the rebels’ wrath and the administration had to set up relief camps to shelter them.

What the state refuses to acknowledge though is that Salwa Judum itself is also responsible for terrorising and displacing people, and that too under police and administrative supervision. In an audio recording released by the Maoists in August, and widely circulated, former Dantewada police superintendent D L Manhar is heard promising Rs 2 lakh to every village that joins the Salwa Judum movement. The administration says the tape is doctored.