India Steps Up Its Fight Against Naxalites
Late-night digging along the back roads of Bastar, a dense jungle region in India's northern state of Chhattisgarh, can only mean one thing if there's nothing to show for it the next day: Maoist rebel activity. So when a group of villagers in the state's Kanker district, the gateway to Bastar, were kept awake for nights on end last month by repeated chinking from metal striking rock on a nearby road, they knew something was up.
They were right. The Maoists, commonly known in India as Naxalites, had dug a tunnel five feet under the surface of a paved back road that was used by security forces from the nearby Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College. The insurgents' tunnel's exit points, on the side of the road, were well concealed with alternating layers of sandbags and dirt. But before the Naxalites got around to booby-trapping the underground tunnel with improvised explosives cobbled together from scavenged pieces of iron and heisted explosive materials from state-owned mines, it had been filled in. The villagers had tipped off commandos from the college.
Naxalite rebels, whose leaders claim to follow Maoist doctrine on armed people's struggle, have been waging a guerilla war against the Indian government since their first uprising in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari in 1967. For over three decades a phlegmatic response from central and state security organs did little to prevent the then isolated Naxal insurgency from foraying into underdeveloped forest and jungle regions in central and eastern India where it gained support of impoverished tribal groups and villagers. By 2001, some Naxalites had gained sway over 51 districts, and with the state response mechanism to their movements still weak, that number quadrupled in less than a decade. Naxals now operate in 223 districts, spread out over one-third of India along a vertical belt commonly referred to as the Red Corridor...
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They were right. The Maoists, commonly known in India as Naxalites, had dug a tunnel five feet under the surface of a paved back road that was used by security forces from the nearby Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College. The insurgents' tunnel's exit points, on the side of the road, were well concealed with alternating layers of sandbags and dirt. But before the Naxalites got around to booby-trapping the underground tunnel with improvised explosives cobbled together from scavenged pieces of iron and heisted explosive materials from state-owned mines, it had been filled in. The villagers had tipped off commandos from the college.
Naxalite rebels, whose leaders claim to follow Maoist doctrine on armed people's struggle, have been waging a guerilla war against the Indian government since their first uprising in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari in 1967. For over three decades a phlegmatic response from central and state security organs did little to prevent the then isolated Naxal insurgency from foraying into underdeveloped forest and jungle regions in central and eastern India where it gained support of impoverished tribal groups and villagers. By 2001, some Naxalites had gained sway over 51 districts, and with the state response mechanism to their movements still weak, that number quadrupled in less than a decade. Naxals now operate in 223 districts, spread out over one-third of India along a vertical belt commonly referred to as the Red Corridor...