Topic Left Wing Extremism

The harder part of defeating an insurgency begins after the guns fall silent: turning territorial access into a state that people encounter not as a force, but as part of everyday life. A road can be built through a forest…

Ending an insurgency can restore the state’s control over territory. It cannot, by itself, restore the political relationship between the state and the people who live there. Imagine a village where the guns have finally gone silent. The roads are…

India’s Maoist insurgency did not grow in a political vacuum. It found its deepest roots where the formal state existed on paper but failed to become a reliable institution in everyday life. What happens when a place becomes more valuable…

India’s Maoist insurgency did not become militarily marginal simply because the state used more force. The decisive change was that the state learned how to remain inside the territory it was trying to control. A counter-insurgency becomes very different when…