India's Maoist insurgency

India's raging Maoist insurgency has gone almost completely under the radar in this country. The violence has worsened over the last couple years, and this year has been especially bloody for security personnel. Here is a good summary of what this insurgency is about:

Around 13 of India's 29 states are affected by Maoist violence. Also known as Naxalites, the Maoists say they are fighting on behalf of the rural poor and landless and want to build a communist state.

However, the poor are also victims of the insurgency because of brutal, forced membership campaigns.

The MIPT database says:

The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) was formed in September 2004 with the merger of the Maoist Communist Center (MCC) and People's War Group (PWG), the two main left-wing extremist groups in India. Both the MCC and the PWG were militant organizations who had waged a decades-long war against the Indian government with the goals of peasant revolution, abolition of class hierarchies, and expansion of Maoist-controlled “liberated zones." These zones were to serve as the foundation of an independent “Maoist” state. Despite some ideological disputes between the two groups, the CPI-Maoist has seamlessly combined the Maoist philosophy of MCC with the more Marxist-Leninist viewpoint of PWG, with Maoist philosophy prevailing slightly.

In addition to maintaining a continuity of philosophy with the MCC and PWG, the CPI-Maoist has also kept their dedication to extreme violence in order to achieve its aims. The CPI-Maoist has been responsible for a high frequency of terrorist incidents, including the killing of policemen, schoolteachers, and various government officials. The combination of the two groups has created a formidable fighting force with an estimated 6500-7000 cadres under arms, mostly located in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and parts of West Bengal.

There was a bloody clash on Monday between the Maoists and Indian forces.

Twenty-five police personnel, including 16 CRPF men and six special police officers (SPOs), were killed in an ambush by Maoists near Regadagatta village in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh on Monday.
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As the ambush occurred in a forest, about 10 km. from the road between Erraborre and Gaganpalli, reinforcements could reach only by Tuesday afternoon.

Local and official sources said that when the CRPF party, accompanied by 84 SPOs, reached a naxalite camp late on Monday evening, some Maoists took to their heels.

As the police party chased them, about 400 Maoists and their tribal supporters surrounded them from a nearby hillock and opened fire. They used smoke bombs and rocket launchers and blasted mines.

In March, 55 security personnel were killed in a large-scale attack on a police camp.

Last year, with good reason, the Indian Prime Minister said the Maoists were India's greatest internal security threat.

The violence is unrelenting. Yesterday five Maoists were killed in Karnataka. A peace activist in Chhattisgarh was killed by Maoists on July 8. Two civilians were killed there on July 6. Two civilians were killed there on July 4. Two civilians were killed there on July 1. And on and on.

These are only a very of the incidents involving Maoists. SATP has a good timeline here going back to the start of the year.

The Naxal Terror Watch Blog does a good job of tracking the insurgency as well.

According to the Asian Centre for Human Rights:

A total of 749 persons were killed in 2006 which included 285 civilians, 135 security personnel and 329 alleged Naxalites. Chhattisgarh accounted for 48.5% of the total killings as a direct consequence of the anti-Naxalite Salwa Judum campaign.

(See also this report.)

From this report:

According to the estimate of the Asian Centre for Human Rights, a total of 249 persons including 69 civilians, 113 security forces, and 67 alleged Naxalites have been killed in the Naxalite conflict during January – June 2007. There has been about 45% decrease in the number of killings in comparison to the same period in 2006 which saw the killing of at least 460 persons. However, the conflict is intensifying as reflected from the number of killing of the security forces.

Imagine if we had that kind of violence in the US.