The article describes the intelligence activities of the Maoists and analyses how they were able to develop a critical advantage in many areas over their opponents and makes contribution to the existing literature on the complexity of insurgent intelligence operations in the global South, something that the extant literature is very reluctant to acknowledge. This article therefore makes a significant contribution to the literature by describing the intelligence activities of the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (the ‘Maoists’) during their period of insurgency from 1996 to 2006.
However, Africa and South Asia are more or less absent from intelligence writing despite the fact that these geographical regions have been the focus of the vast majority of post-Second-World War violence. 2, 3 Geographically, this has also been reinforced by a bias in intelligence writing towards the Anglosphere, with an increasing number focussing on Soviet and post-Soviet space 4 and also the treatment of foreign intelligence services and non-state actors. As a result, the intelligence literature rarely analyses comparative intelligence services within insurgent groups or the demand or usage of intelligence by those groups. Intelligence operators can also be extremely difficult to reach and are rarely willing to talk on record about previous experience of intelligence gathering and use, particularly where post-conflict measures like transitional justice are in operation.
#Insurgency 2 series
1 This is for a series of good reasons, not least because insurgent groups tend to be very secretive generally, and intelligence tends to be particularly sensitive, but also they also tend to lack formal, codified and documented systems that can be analysed by researchers after the events. The literature on intelligence rarely addresses intelligence structures and use within insurgent groups.
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