India's War Within (30 images)

Photographer Adrian Fisk and reporter Gethin Chamberlain travelled into the naxal heartland of Chhattisgarh, in central India, to assess the scale of the Maoist naxal insurgency.
They found large parts of the country outwith the reach of the security forces, and millions of people denied a vote because of the scale of the security operations needed to defend the polls.
They went into the heart of naxal territory, into villages emptied by the state's scorched earth policy, and...
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Photographer Adrian Fisk and reporter Gethin Chamberlain travelled into the naxal heartland of Chhattisgarh, in central India, to assess the scale of the Maoist naxal insurgency.
They found large parts of the country outwith the reach of the security forces, and millions of people denied a vote because of the scale of the security operations needed to defend the polls.
They went into the heart of naxal territory, into villages emptied by the state's scorched earth policy, and found survivors caught in a nightmare, between the naxals and the state-sponsored Salwa Judum militia. In one village survivors whose homes had been burned by the militia were living out of the one remaining house, its walls daubed with naxal commandments ordering them not to vote, not to do anything to help the state.
Walking deep into the forests, they stumbled on the extraordinary sight of a naxal war memorial celebrating the women who had died for the Maoist cause. "Our force is fighting for the poorest of the poor, the people who have nothing," the naxals there said. "My force does not kill anyone without a reason. If you are in the police or a police informant then that is a mistake and you will be killed for that."
In the police forts on the edge of naxal territory, they found frightened and disillusioned special police officers (SPO's) living in constant fear of attack from the guerillas. They met the police commander for the worst affected district, who called the naxal conflict the "biggest casualty theatre for the Indian government in the country. It is a full blown war and the naxals are migrating from guerillas to a full blown conventional army." It is a war, some police officers admitted, they were losing.
Much has been made of the threat from Pakistan to India's security, but the truth is that the naxal insurgency is the most effective current threat to Indian democracy. This is India's own war on terror and one it shows no sign of winning.
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