Insurgencies, whether on domestic soil or abroad, are notoriously difficult to defeat. The British faced them in British Malaya, Kenya, and in Northern Ireland. In British Malaya, they had a modicum of success putting it down. In Kenya, they courted abject disaster. And in Northern Ireland, thanks to U.S. intercession, the parties brought about a fragile peace. It isn’t just the United Kingdom. The French, who had sought so tenaciously to hang on to Algeria, ultimately threw in the towel. And on April 14, in a televised address to the nation, U.S. President Joe Biden declared an end to a nearly two-decade-long war and then counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.
Even fighting insurgencies on one’s home turf can be long, painful, and costly. India’s government received such an unwelcome reminder earlier this month when Maoist rebels, known as the Naxalites, killed 22 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in an ambush in the mineral-rich state of Chhattisgarh in central India. This insurgency has witnessed significant ebbs and flows since 2010, when then-Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the Naxalites constituted “the biggest internal security challenge facing our country.” Over a decade later, despite changes of government at national and local levels, the specter of the Naxalites still stalks the land.
