These classified reports reveal that Maoist leaders have been secretly visiting China’s Yunan province for arms training and China has set up a weapon manufacturing facility in Myanmar’s Kachin province. The Kachin factory produces near-exact replicas of AK 47 rifles which are supplied to the Maoists. The Indian government has long been aware that the Maoists are equipped with sophisticated weaponry, and now the source is known.

 Even more dangerous is the growing proximity of the Maoists with Pakistan based Islamic terror group Lashkar-i-Taiba and terrorist leader Dawood Ibrahim. The Indian Maoists have also cooperated with Islamic terrorist run, drug operations. Several Indian states report that Maoists are pressuring local farmers to grow poppy (for opium and heroin) on their farms.

Maoists now talk of working with Islamic terrorists (who want to make Kashmir part of Pakistan), Kashmiri separatists, and Islamic radical groups determined to make India a Moslem state. The Maoists seek to make India a communist dictatorship and are willing to work with other anti-Indian groups, even if those groups have goals that ultimately clash with those of the Maoists. The Maoists have declared their goal of overthrowing the government in New Delhi in two decades, though these plans are mere day dreams, given the fact that the Maoists have of late lost several key leaders. The Indian government has declared Left Wing Extremism, another name for Maoists, as the single biggest internal security challenge for India.

 However, the pace at which the Maoists have been reaching out to the outside world in their armed struggle against India is being viewed by Indian security officials as a serious challenge. Indian security and intelligence agencies are concentrating on the funding of the Maoists. A significant point that has come up recently is their newly-discovered proximity to some Europe- based organizations which have also funded the Maoists in Nepal in the past. One such organization that has come on the radar screen of the Center is the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). – RAJEEV SHARMA