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...just weeks ago, New Delhi decided to challenge the rebels who carry Mao Zedong's name and who are waging the bloodiest insurgency India has ever seen. The government announced that 50,000 paramilitary troops would be part of Operation Greenhunt, with tough-talking Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram promising to "wipe off the Maoist movement in the next two [to] three years." As part of this campaign, police and paramilitary forces last week engaged in a four-day "area domination" exercise near the village of Dantewada in the Dandakaranya Forest. But the Maoists were not about to let this incursion...
...like checking the road for land mines ahead of time, were massacred within minutes. The guerrillas - both men and women - then took away AK-47 and Insas rifles, mortars, magazines of ammunition and bulletproof jackets from their victims. Of the 80 Indian troops on exercise, 76 were killed. (See "India Steps Up Its Fight Against Naxalites...
...three-hour attack, a Maoist spokesman justified the massacre in a three-page faxed statement, saying, "The CRPF battalion deployed in [Chhattisgarh] were killing innocent people, burning villages, raping women and displacing ... people. We also wanted to take revenge of the killing of our top leaders." (See how India's schools have been caught in the cross-fire in the fight against the Maoists...
...most significant government setback in the undeclared war between the two Indias. The Maoists thrive in the "other" India - the one that is impoverished and left behind as one-fifth of the country's populace has begun to thrive, while the other 800 million suffer with growing resentment from chronic poverty and live without electricity, roads, hospitals, proper sanitation or clean water - the classic breeding ground for left-wing extremist violence. As Mao himself prescribed in 1927, "It's necessary to bring about a brief reign of terror in every rural area ... To right a wrong it is necessary...
...India is groping for answers on how to respond to the Maoist attack. Chidambaram's strategy had appeared to be working. Many top Maoist leaders, including Politburo members, were arrested, and the Maoists offered to negotiate. Their chief military officer, Kishanji - the nom de guerre of Mallojula Koteswara Rao - even gave out his cell-phone number to Chidambaram to facilitate talks. "But actually they were retreating so that they can regroup. This is how the Maoists always operate. But still we have not learned anything," says K.P.S. Gill, formerly one of India's top police officers, who advised the Chhattisgarh...