Yes, I'm going through creatures quickly now ...
I've got a complementary post up now, btw, here's the beginning:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde, aah, the Naxalites.
Cogitamus
April 26, 2009
In all of the previous post about the bustling, if bewildering political landscape of India, I skipped over one of the most interesting parts - and one that adds to the volatility. The increasing grip on inland territories of Maoist guerrillas is not something widely associated with India - Nepal, sure, but India? Yet the so-called Naxalites control large swaths of India's rural heartland.
How much is somewhat hard to establish. The government and much of the media do like to lump any local recalcitrance in with the Maoists. When minor ethnic groups on the far borders of the country resist the central authorities, they're often labelled Maoist by default as well, whether or not there is a link - or so one of my fellow bloggers at Observationalism, who did mediation work in the northeastern state of Nagaland, said.
Naxal affected areas in India Moreover, while hardcore Maoist guerrillas do control extensive chunks of forested territory in east and southeast India, they arguably possess something of a hybrid identity. There's the ideology and rhetorics of revolutionary communism. But often they seem as much interested in petty banditism. Distant cousins, perhaps, of the FARC in Colombia, those revolutionary communists who turned into drug and war lords.
Still - India is no Colombia, obviously, but even so some 500 civilians and police were killed in insurgent clashes last year, Reuters reported. In 2006, Prime Minister Singh described Maoist violence as "the single biggest internal security challenge" faced by India. Sources quoted on Wikipedia put the number of guerrillas at 10-20,000 and claim "the guerrillas control an estimated one fifth of India's forests, as well as being active in 160 of the country's 604 administrative districts." See also the map to the right from the Indian news site IBNlive (click on the map and scroll down to see it in full size).
That's not peanuts. And when there are elections, they attack.
Reuters and this openDemocracy update report that Maoists killed at least seventeen people on the first polling day, April 16, attacking polling officials and security personnel across four states (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Orissa). Five election officials were killed in a landmine blast in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district, and seven Border Security Force personnel were killed in a landmine explosion in Jharkhand's Latehar district. Maoists opened gunfire at two polling stations, in the Gaya district of Bihar and in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, and there were further gun battles in two districts in Jharkhand state and a village in Chhattisgarh, where a police trooper was killed. Eight poll officials were kidnapped in Jharkhand. In Orissa state, Maoists raided four polling stations and set fire to voting machines. And that's just among other things. Reuters reported that "in some Maoist-hit areas people did not vote, fearing attacks by the rebels who had threatened to cut off their hands."
That, mind, was just the first of the five voting days that will take place before the month-long elections are complete. The Maoists hit international headlines this week, ahead of the second round of voting last Thursday, when up to 250 rebels seized a train carrying several hundred passengers as it travelled through Jharkhand state. [..]
Read on...
Made this map to go with the item:
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace