Word: naxals
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government considers to be the worst affected by Maoist activity, the rebel movement has taken on a particularly bloody dimension, with Naxalites orchestrating police massacres, bombings, bank and mine robberies, informant murders and kidnappings on a routine basis. By Nov. 2, "left-wing extremism" - Delhi's euphemism for Naxal terrorism - was responsible for 834 civilian, security-force and Naxal deaths throughout 10 states this year, according to data collected by the South Asia Terrorism Portal...
...previous years, Chhattisgarh took the biggest hit, sustaining 237 casualties. While last month's brazen attempt in the state to attack India's only anti-Naxal police training camp reveals how low the insurgents' perception is of the state's ability to fight them, it also, says the college's director, gives the institution further insight into how to fight this battle. "I've always told our men that they can't win the war against the Naxals without gaining the trust of the villagers and forest dwellers," says Brigadier Basant Ponwar, who served in the army for 35 years...
...Tucked away on 300 acres of hilly jungle terrain, just north of a notorious Naxal stronghold, the college is strategically positioned to drill police forces in a strategy that until recently was reserved for training select army special forces: fight a guerilla like a guerilla. "Police are trained for carrying out normal law-and-order duties. They're not prepared for jungle combat or jungle living, but that's precisely what they must know to take on Naxals," explains the state's director general of police, Vishwa Ranjan. For decades the state had dismissed the Naxal movement's creeping ascendancy...
...college has already taught 11,500 police personnel from eight states how to raid Naxal hideouts, conduct search-and-destroy operations at gun-manufacturing camps, clear roads of improvised explosives using sniffer dogs, set up roadside checkpoints and set up covert outposts in enemy territory. During the 45-day course, commandos-in-training get up at dawn for early morning conditioning, including three-mile runs up steep, rocky knobs plus strength training, yoga and meditation. (Ponwar insists that all officers who still have a paunch by the end of the course are failed.) To dispel officers' fear of the jungle...
...Meanwhile, national efforts to bring this decades-long insurgency to a swift end are also intensifying. India's new hard-line Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, is not convinced that states, if left to their own devices, will be able to reassert state authority over Naxal-dominated territories anytime soon. That's why this month, tens of thousands of paramilitary and border security forces were withdrawn from other regions and deployed in rebel districts in northern and central India. "Our newest strategy is to win complete control over small areas under Maoist influence, hold them, and not withdraw forces until development...