GLOBAL TERROR GROUPS

WRITTEN BY OVIYA NAGENDRAN

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PREFACE This book contains all the resourceful information about the leading terror groups all around the world. From their origin to the accomplishment of their work was thoroughly defined in this book. Students who are interested in doing research about terrorism, can use this book as a reference guide. This book also a great feast, who had interest in crime, investigation etc.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. TERRORISM 2. TALIBAN 3. ISIS 4. LASHKAR-E-TAIBA 5. AL-QUEDA 6. NAXALITE

Global terror groups

TERRORISM No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism -Barack Obama

Terrorism is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” We quickly see that this definition is unspecific and subjective. 1 The issue of subjectivity in this case means that there is no internationally recognised legal definition of terrorism. Despite considerable discussion, the formation of a comprehensive convention against international terrorism by the United Nations has always been impeded by the lack of consensus on a definition. In our coverage of terrorism, we rely strongly on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which defines terrorism as “acts of violence by non-state actors, perpetrated against civilian populations, intended to cause fear, in order to achieve a political objective.” Its definition excludes violence initiated by governments (state terrorism) and open combat between opposing armed forces, even if they’re non-state actors. In our definitions section we provide the GTD’s more detailed definition, in addition to others such as that of the United Nations. To be considered an act of terrorism, an action must be violent, or threaten violence. As such, political dissent, activism, and nonviolent resistance do not constitute terrorism. There are, however, many instances around the world of authorities restricting individuals’ freedom of expression under the pretext of counter-terrorism measures. Human rights groups, such as amnesty

international and human rights watch, publish reports on such cases of censorship. The inclusion of damage to private and public property in the definition of terrorism is a point of contention, but it is generally accepted in legal and statistical contexts.

Oviya Nagendran To be classified as terrorism, actions must be designed to have far-reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target. In other words, an action must aim to create terror through “its shocking brutality, lack of discrimination, dramatic or symbolic quality and disregard of the rules of warfare”. Additionally, targeting non-combatant, neutral, or randomly chosen people – generally, people not engaged in hostilities – is a necessary but not sufficient condition to constitute terrorism. The US State Department includes in the definition of ‘non-combatant’, “military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty.” They “also consider as acts of terrorism attacks on military installations or on armed military personnel when a state of military hostilities does not exist at the site.”8 As such, actions during open combat, where a state of military hostility exists, do not constitute terrorism. Terrorist actions must be also conducted either by an organization with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure (whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia), or by individuals or a small collection of individuals directly influenced by the logical aims or example of some existent terrorist movement and its leaders (typically referred to as a ‘lone wolf’ attack). Finally, the action must be perpetrated by a subnational group or non-state entity. Equivalent actions perpetrated by the armed forces of nation states are given different classifications, such as ‘war crime’ or one-sided violence.

Global terror groups

TALIBANS The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they couldn’t stop our mind from thinking. – Malala Yousufzai.

FORMATION:

The group was formed in the early 1990s by Afghan mujahideen, or Islamic guerrilla fighters, who had resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89) with the covert backing of the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI). (Pakistan is thought to have provided logical support to the Taliban during the U.S. war, though Islamabad denies this.) They were joined by younger Pashtun tribesmen who studied in Pakistani madrassas, or seminaries; Taliban is Pashto for “students.” Pashtuns comprise a plurality in Afghanistan and are the predominant ethnic group in much

Oviya Nagendran of the country’s south and east. They are also a major ethnic group in Pakistan’s north and west. The movement attracted popular support in the initial postSoviet era by promising to impose stability and rule of law after four years of conflict (1992–96) among rival mujahideen groups. The Taliban entered kandhar in November 1994 to pacify the crime-ridden southern city, and by September 1996 seized the capital, Kabul, from President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik whom they viewed as anti-Pashtun and corrupt. That year, the Taliban declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate, with Mullah Mohammed Omar, a cleric and veteran of the anti-Soviet resistance, leading as Amir al mu’ minin, or “commander of the faithful.” The regime controlled some 90 percent of the country before its 2001 overthrow. The Taliban imposed a harsh brand of justice as they consolidated territorial control. Taliban jurisprudence was drawn from the Pashtuns’ pre-Islamic tribal code and interpretations of sharia coloured by the austere Wahhabi doctrines of the madrassas’ Saudi benefactors. The regime neglected social services and other basic state functions even as the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice required women to wear the head-to-toe burqa, or banned music and television; and jailed men whose beards it deemed too short. LEADER:

Global terror groups

The Taliban have been led for decades by a leadership council, called the Rahbari Shura. It is better known as the Quetta Shura, named for the city in Pakistan where Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s first leader, and his top aides are believed to have taken refuge after the U.S. invasion. (Omar died in 2013 and was succeeded by Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who was killed in a 2016 U.S. air strike in Pakistan.) Today, the Rahbari Shura is thought by analysts to oversee the Taliban government’s work, though its precise role is unclear. It is led by Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has not been seen publicly in years. (Taliban officials claimed in 2021 that Akhundzada visited an educational institution, but no photos or videos of such an appearance were made public.) The government is led by a thirty-three-member caretaker cabinet. All ministers are men and are former Taliban officials or individuals loyal to the group. A majority are ethnic Pashtuns, and some are considered terrorists by the United States and are sanctioned by the United Nations. Mohammad Hassan Akhund, who was close with Omar, is acting prime minister. Taliban cofounder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who led peace negotiations with the United States, is Akhund’s deputy. Sirajuddin Haqqani—who is acting head of the Haqqani network, a

Oviya Nagendran militant group in Afghanistan’s southeast and Pakistan’s northwest with close ties to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Pakistan’s intelligence services— is the acting interior minister. Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub, Omar’s son, is acting defense minister. Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi is the acting foreign minister, and Zabihullah Mujahid is the government’s spokesperson. WORLD RESPONSE ON TALIBAN: During the U.S. war in Afghanistan, governments and international bodies joined U.S.-led efforts to oust the Taliban and bolster Afghanistan’s government, democratic institutions, and civil society. They have taken various actions since 2001.

U.S. troops quickly overthrew the Taliban after they invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. The Taliban then waged an insurgency against the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The group withstood counterinsurgency operations from the world’s most powerful security alliance, the north Atlantic treaty organisation (NATO), and three U.S.

Global terror groups administrations over the course of a war that killed more than U.S. troops and contractors and over 1,100 NATO troops. Some 47,000 civilians died, and an estimated 73,000 Afghan troops and police officers were killed between 2007 and 2021. Tens of thousands of Taliban fighters are also believed to have died. The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan peaked at around 100,000 in 2011. NATO assumed leadership of foreign forces in 2003, marking its first operational commitment outside of Europe. At its height, NATO had more than 1,30,000 troops from fifty nations stationed in Afghanistan. In the 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement, the United States committed to withdrawing all U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan if the Taliban carried out commitments that included cutting ties with terrorist groups. The United States completed its troop withdrawal in August 2021.

The UN Security Council first imposed sanctions on the regime for harboring al-Qaeda in 1999 and expanded the sanctions after 9/11. They target Taliban leaders’ financial assets and ban them from most travel. The Security Council also imposed an arms embargo on the Taliban. The United States and the European Union maintain additional sanctions, which have hindered aid deliveries since the Taliban’s takeover. Meanwhile, the United States has blocked the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars in assets. For years, the Afghan government depended on assistance from dozens of countries; 75 percent of the government’s public expenditures were covered by grants from international partners, according to a 2019 World Bank report. Many of these countries suspended aid after the Taliban took over, sparking concerns of further economic turmoil. But in 2022, aid picked up, with donors providing over $2 billion by July. Still, UN officials said an additional $2 billion was required by the end of the year to meet the country’s humanitarian need.

Oviya Nagendran Many Western countries, including the United States, shut down their diplomatic offices in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. They have refused to recognize and establish diplomatic ties with the Taliban government, which calls the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. (A handful of states, including China and Russia, have accredited Taliban-selected diplomats.) In addition, the UN General Assembly has indefinitely postponed a vote on who can represent Afghanistan at the United Nations.

Global terror groups

ISIS The conflict with the ISIS is entering a new and uncertain phase. As the caliphate collapses, the resulting shards may prove nettlesome to contain – Alex Wilner

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and, since June 2014, the Islamic State, transnational Sunni insurgent group operating primarily in western Iraq and eastern Syria. First appearing under the name ISIL in April 2013, the group launched an offensive in early 2014 that drove Iraqi government forces out of key western cities, while in Syria it fought both government forces and rebel factions in the Syrian civil war. In June 2014, after making significant territorial gains in Iraq, the group proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate led by the leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi. International efforts to defeat the group led to its decline, and both Syria and Iraq considered ISIL effectively defeated by November 2017, though ISIL continued to hold a small amount of territory until March 2019. Certain affiliates with only weak ties to ISIL leadership, most notably Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISKP; also called ISIS-K), remained active elsewhere.

Oviya Nagendran From its stronghold in Al- Raqqah , ISIS expanded outward, launching successful offensives in both Syria and Iraq. After Iraqi government forces attempted to suppress protests in the predominantly Sunni cities of Fallujah and Al- Ramadi, ISIS joined local militias in fighting back and took control of those cities in January 2014. The capture proved a propaganda boon for ISIS, which flaunted its “liberation” of those cities to aggrieved Sunnis across western Iraq. ISIS fighters then pushed north, shocking government troops and taking Mosul—Iraq’s second largest city—without resistance in June. As ISIS advanced, it used social media to disseminate videos and images that appeared to show ISIS gunmen executing large numbers of captured Iraqi soldiers. In late June the group released an audio message declaring a caliphate in the territory controlled by ISIS, with Baghdadi as the caliph. In accordance with that declaration, the group began referring to itself simply as “the Islamic State.” The group’s claims to universal leadership of the Muslim community were widely rejected by other Muslim groups. ISIS began to assume some governmental functions in the areas under its control, such as collecting taxes and organizing basic services. Policing, education, and health care were carried out in accordance with its hard-line interpretation of Islamic law. Yet witness accounts and the group’s own propaganda indicated that ISIS continued to rely on extreme violence against civilians to enforce its edicts and to ensure the compliance of the populace: public executions, amputations, and lashings were routine, and the corpses of the executed were often displayed to the public as a warning against disobedience. There were also widespread reports of sexual violence carried out by ISIS, including forced marriages and sex slavery.

Global terror groups ISIS’s quick advances in Iraq alarmed the international community and set off a political crisis in Baghdad that ultimately led to the toppling of Maliki. Calls for international intervention increased, and on August 8 the United States launched air strikes in Iraq to prevent ISIS from advancing into the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. The strikes did halt ISIS’s advance but did not dislodge it from territory in Iraq where it had become entrenched.

ISIS continued to produce gruesome and provocative propaganda. A series of videos in August and September showed ISIL fighters beheading Western journalists and an aid worker in retaliation for the U.S. air strikes. Those images deepened fears that ISIS posed a global threat. ISIS demanded ransom payments and other concession from foreign governments in exchange for the return of hostages, and it executed the hostages if the governments refused. Most of the hostages were journalists and aid workers, but in late December 2014 the group captured a Jordanian pilot after his fighter jet crashed during a mission against ISIS in Syria. News of the

Oviya Nagendran pilot’s capture met with consternation in Jordan, where a large proportion of the public had opposed the country’s participation in the anti-ISIS coalition. Support for military action surged in February 2015, however, after an ISIS video showed, the pilot being burned to death by his captors. Furthermore, once ISIS took control of territory in Iraq and Syria, it engaged in a campaign of cultural cleansing, destroying Shi and Christian places of worship, as well as Sunni shrines that it deemed idolatrous, such as the Mosque of the Prophet Jonah in Mosul. In early 2015 it turned its attention to the region’s ancient heritage. Videos were released showing members of ISIS destroying Assyrian artifacts in the Mosul Museum and demolishing ruins at Nimrud and Hatra in Iraq. In May 2015 ISIS took control of palmyra, a city in the eastern Syrian desert that was the site of one of the middle east s largest collections of Greco-Roman ruins. By August ISIS fighters had begun demolishing monuments there. In late September 2014, meanwhile, the United States, leading an international coalition that included Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, expanded its air campaign to include targets in Syria. Russia undertook its own intervention in the Syrian Civil War in September 2015, launching a campaign of air strikes in support of the Assad regime over the objections of the U.S.led coalition conducting air strikes against ISIS. Some of Russia’s air strikes hit ISIS, but the majority appeared to focus on other rebel groups in direct conflict with Assad’s forces. The international and local forces were able to contain ISIS and begin to push it back. ISIS reached its peak by early 2015, controlling over 41,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria and ruling over at least eight million people, but by mid-2015 the group had begun losing ground. DECLINE:

Global terror groups By mid-2015 ISIS appeared to be wearing down under the strain of its simultaneous confrontations with Kurdish forces and their Western allies, pro-Assad Syrian forces, and Iraqi forces. Kurdish troops gradually consolidated their hold on the areas of northern Syria along the Turkish border and by early 2016 had drawn within striking distance of Al-Raqqah. Government forces also slowly regained lost territory in Iraq, retaking key cities including Al-Ramadi in December 2015 and Fallujah in July 2016. Meanwhile, an escalating U.S.-led air campaign weakened ISIS’s grip on key strongholds, enabling local forces to recover. On July 9, 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul, the largest city that ISIS had controlled, to announce that the city had been fully recaptured by Iraqi forces. In October the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced victory in Al-Raqqah, ISIS’s former capital. Assad’s forces continued to pressure ISIS, forcing them out of Dayr alZawr in November 2017. Later that same month both the Syrian and Iraqi governments declared ISIS defeated, though ISIS still held an insignificant amount of territory on the outskirts of Iraq and Syria. The group lost the last of its territorial holdings in March 2019 when the SDF liberated the Syrian village of Al-Bāghūz. On October, 26, 2019, Baghdadi killed himself as U.S. forces closed in on him in Idlib province, Syria. Yet despite these existential setbacks for ISIS, thousands of fighters, affiliates, and sympathizers of the decentralized organization remained at large, and questions about the fate of those in detention lingered.

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Global terror groups

LASHKAR E TAIBA And so we continued to live in fear, hoping that we would not get caught. Fear had become our constant companion at the dreadful lashkar e Taiba camp – Vivek Pereira.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, (Urdu: “Army of the Pure”) also spelled Lashkar-eTayyiba or Lashkar-e-Toiba, Islamist militant group, begun in Pakistan in the late 1980s as a militant wing of Markaz-ud-Dawawal-Irshad, an Islamist organization influenced by the Wahhābī sect of Sunni Islam. It sought ultimately to establish Muslim rule over the entire Indian subcontinent. Though based in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba initially operated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, on the Pakistan-India border, but by the first decade of the 21st century the group had expanded its reach farther into India. Jammu and Kashmir was claimed by both India, a largely Hindu country, and Pakistan, a largely Muslim country, and the dispute gave rise to many armed groups within Jammu and Kashmir.

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Many of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s members were Pakistani or Afghan. It was believed that the group had ties with Afghanistan’s Taliban government and with the wealthy Saudi extremist and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Fighters from Lashkar-e-Taiba and another militant Muslim group, Hizb-ulMujahideen, were killed in August 1998 when U.S. cruise missiles struck bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, and a senior alQaeda official was captured in a Lashkar-e-Taiba safe house in Pakistan in March 2002. Lashkar-e-Taiba made its first incursions into Jammu and Kashmir in 1993. In the late 1990s it was alleged that Lashkar-e-Taiba received funding from agencies of the Pakistani government, an allegation the government denied. The group began operating in the Jammu region, which had large numbers of non-Muslims. Working in conjunction with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba began a program of attacks against Hindus and Sikhs. ATTACK ON MUMBAI:

Global terror groups In 2000 Lashkar-e-Taiba had a falling out with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which had declared a short-lived cease-fire with India. The group lost more allies in 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the United States led to the removal of the Taliban government in Afghanistan by U.S.-led military forces. On December 13 that year, Lashkar-e-Taiba undertook a suicide attack on India’s parliament complex in the capital, New Delhi, in conjunction with Jaish-e-Mohammed, another militant group. In response, the United States government froze the U.S. assets of Lashkar-e-Taiba and declared it a terrorist organization. Under pressure from the United States to crack down on such militant groups and to avoid a war with India, the government of Pakistan banned the group in January 2002 and arrested its leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, but he was released a few months later. He established a charity organization known as the Jamaat ud-Dawa, which became widely viewed as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives were believed to have continued their attacks throughout the first decade of the 21st century. Those incidents primarily aimed at Indian security forces. In 2006, however, the group was implicated in a considerably more deadly attack against civilians in Mumbai (Bombay), India’s most-populous city. On July 11 of that year, multiple bombs tore through Mumbai’s commuter train system during the evening rush hour, killing more than 180 people and injuring some 800 more. The bombs were all placed in first-class train compartments in an apparent effort to target India’s professional class. Following the attack, which India linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, Pakistan once again detained Saeed and once again released him, claiming that India’s investigation was biased. Two years later, in the evening on November 26, 2008, 10 gunmen landed boats in Mumbai, spread out to popular tourist destinations, and began shooting people. The gunmen, who were well-armed and

Oviya Nagendran well-trained, eventually met up in two luxury hotels and a Jewish outreach centre. They took hostages at all three locations and held off Indian police and military for three days. More than 170 people died in the attacks, including nine of the attackers. One was captured alive, however, and confessed that he was a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, that he had trained in Pakistan, and that the attackers had come to Mumbai by boat from Karāchi. He was convicted of murder in India in 2010 and was executed in November 2012. REACTION OF INDIA: The terrorist attacks in Mumbai exposed loopholes in the security system that India had in place to deal with this “new brand” of terrorism—urban warfare characterized by symbolic attacks, multiple targets, and high casualties. Subsequent reports indicated that several intelligence warnings by Indian as well as U.S. sources had preceded the attacks but that authorities, citing the lack of “actionable intelligence,” had ignored them. Moreover, there was an inordinate delay in the deployment of India’s elite National Security Guards, whose commandos reached the besieged hotels some 10 hours after the first shootings took place on November 26. The lack of coordination between authorities in the Indian capital of New Delhi and officials in Maharashtra state also weakened the immediate crisis response. India’s interior minister, Shivraj Patil, who was widely criticized in the aftermath of the attacks, tendered his resignation on November 30, 2008, declaring that he took “moral responsibility” for the assault.

Global terror groups

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AL- QUAEDA Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, bush or al- Qaida. Your security is in your own hands- Osama bin laden.

al-Qaeda, Arabic al-Qāʿidah (“the Base”), broad-based militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. Al-Qaeda began as a logistical network to support Muslims fighting against the Soviet Union during the Afghan War; members were recruited throughout the Islamic world. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued to oppose what its leaders considered corrupt Islamic regimes and foreign (i.e., U.S.) presence in Islamic lands. Based in Sudan for a period in the early 1990s, the group eventually reestablished its headquarters in Afghanistan (c. 1996) under the patronage of the Taliban militia.

Global terror groups

Al-Qaeda merged with a number of other militant Islamist organizations, including Egypt’s Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group, and on several occasions its leaders declared holy war against the United States. The organization established camps for Muslim militants from throughout the world, training tens of thousands in paramilitary skills, and its agents engaged in numerous terrorist attacks, including the destruction of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1998), and a suicide bomb attack against the U.S. warship Cole in Aden, Yemen (2000; see USS Cole attack). In 2001, 19 militants associated with al-Qaeda staged the September 11 attacks against the United States. Within weeks the U.S. government responded by attacking Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. Thousands of militants were killed or captured, among them several key members (including the militant who allegedly planned and organized the September 11 attacks), and the remainder and their leaders were driven into hiding. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 challenged that country’s viability as an al-Qaeda sanctuary and training ground and compromised communication, operational, and financial linkages between al-Qaeda

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leadership and its militants. Rather than significantly weakening alQaeda, however, these realities prompted a structural evolution and the growth of “franchising.” Increasingly, attacks were orchestrated not only from above by the centralized leadership (after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, based in the Afghan-Pakistani border regions) but also by the localized, relatively autonomous cells it encouraged. Such grassroots independent groups—coalesced locally around a common agenda but subscribing to the al-Qaeda name and its broader ideology—thus meant a diffuse form of militancy, and one far more difficult to confront. With this organizational shift, al-Qaeda was linked—whether directly or indirectly—to more attacks in the six years following September 11 than it had been in the six years prior, including attacks in Jordan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Israel, Algeria, and elsewhere. At the same time, al-Qaeda increasingly utilized the Internet as an expansive venue for communication and recruitment and as a mouthpiece for video messages, broadcasts, and propaganda. Meanwhile, some observers expressed concern that U.S. strategy—centred primarily on attempts to overwhelm al-Qaeda militarily—was ineffectual, and at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, al-Qaeda was thought to have reached its greatest strength since the attacks of September 2001. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed by U.S. military forces after U.S. intelligence located him residing in a secure compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, 31 miles (50 km) from Islamabad. The operation was carried out by a small team that reached the compound in Abbottabad by helicopter. After bin Laden’s death was confirmed, it was announced by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, who hailed the operation as a major success in the fight against alQaeda. On June 16, 2011, al-Qaeda released a statement announcing

Global terror groups that Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s long-serving deputy, had been appointed to replace bin Laden as the organization’s leader.

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NAXALITES The Naxalite revolution- an ultra-left Maoist movement- in Bengal, and elsewhere in India, in the late 1960s provide one strand of ‘the lives of others. – Neel Mukherjee

Naxalite, general designation given to several Maoist-oriented and militant insurgent and separatist groups that have operated intermittently in India since the mid-1960s. More broadly, the term— often given as Naxalism or the Naxal movement—has been applied to the communist insurgency itself. The name Naxalite is derived from the town of Naxalbari (Naksalbari) in far northern West Bengal state in northeastern India, which was the centre of a tribal peasant uprising against local landlords in 1967. Although the rebellion was suppressed, it became the focus of a

Global terror groups number of communist-led separatist movements that sprung up in remote, often tribal areas in India—at first primarily in northeastern India but later more widely in other parts of the country. The rise of Naxalism corresponded to the growth of militant communism in India, particularly the creation of the Communist Party of India–MarxistLeninist (CPI-ML) in 1969, and to the emergence of such rebel groups as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the Peoples’ War Group (PWG).

Naxalite groups generally have claimed to represent the poorest and most socially marginalized members of Indian society (notably tribal peoples and Dalits [formerly untouchables]) and to adhere to the Maoist doctrine of sustained peasant-led revolution. For decades they have waged guerrilla warfare against such targets as landlords, businesspeople, politicians, and security forces, and they have disrupted infrastructure by damaging transportation, communication, and power lines. In the process, they often have been able to establish bases of operation in remote forested areas. Naxalite groups have come to control large territories in many of the states of eastern India—notably Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and West Bengal—

Oviya Nagendran and their influence has spread even wider beyond those areas. Often Naxalite groups have taken over governing functions and provided social services within areas under their control, although they also have been accused of using harsh enforcement tactics. National and state governments in India consistently have labeled Naxalite groups as terrorist organizations and declared them to be illegal. The original CPI-ML has not operated as a legal political party (though several offshoots of it have), and the more recent Communist Party of India-Maoist (formed in 2004 by the merger of the MCC and the PWG) has been outlawed. Police and security forces have responded to the Naxalites with various raids and military campaigns aimed at counteracting the guerrilla attacks and flushing the rebels out of their sanctuaries. Those operations have had mixed success, in part because authorities often have not provided adequate services in the territories where they have reestablished control. In addition, the fighting frequently has reverted to the government and Naxalite sides each retaliating against the other. Thousands of people have been killed during the decades of the insurgency, and tens of thousands have fled the fighting to become refugees.

BIBILIOGRAPHIES https://www.worlddata.info/terrorism/groups.php https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-State-in-Iraq-and-the-Levant https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lashkar-e-Taiba https://www.britannica.com/topic/al-Qaeda https://www.britannica.com/topic/Naxalite https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism