Tribals in crossfire as India's Maoist war spreads

MANGAPET, India (Reuters) - Wailing parents scooped up the bones of loved ones as eight cremated corpses smoldered by the road, the latest victims of a Maoist rebel war that has put tens of thousands of tribal people in the crossfire.

"Where were the police? They were drunk, hiding with their weapons," shouted Gopal Ran Udhe, who lost his son in a Maoist attack on a nearby police post that killed 55 police and tribal militia members in one of India's worst rebel attacks in decades.

The ashes spread out over the grass were ankle deep. Tribal people burned incense and picked a few remaining bones to throw to the river in a traditional Hindu ritual.

Villagers recounted how tribesmen, surrounded by up to 500 rebels, quickly ran out of bullets for their 80-year-old rifles as Maoists bombarded the base with grenades and homemade bombs made from lunch boxes.

The majority of victims were government-hired tribal militia, "Special Police Officers", who critics say are an example of how ill-equipped tribal people are increasingly put in the front line by authorities desperately looking for ways to beat the rebels.

Thousands of tribal people in this central state of Chhattisgarh have seen ancestral lands turned into a war zone of landmines, ambushes and refugee camps as a 40-year-old Maoist insurgency in India gathers momentum.

The region is now a stronghold of up to 4,000 well-armed Maoists, police say, who freely roam the forests of southern Chhattisgarh in what locals call the "red zone".

Known as Naxalites, the rebels operate in nearly half of India's states.

"The Naxalites take away our food. The police come and harass us," said Madvi Kosa, a villager whose son was one of the 55 killed in the post.

"We want to be neutral but being neutral is becoming impossible," he said in his hut near the burnt-out base.

While many tribal people at first gave support to Maoists, most have turned against rebels who they say killed community leaders, suppressed their religion and stole food.

Over the last two years, an anti-Maoist movement among tribal people known as "Salwa Judum" (Campaign for Peace) has surfaced, and some 50,000 villagers have been pushed into refugee camps in a controversial plan to defend them.

But with little sign of the Salwa Judum making inroads against the rebels, criticism has grown that the movement was forced on villagers by a government unable to defend its own people.

The state is one of the most thinly policed in India. Many police keep to their bases, afraid of landmines and ambushes.

Surrounded by wire fences, the refugee camps have forced villagers off their lands and emptied villages.

But hundreds of tribals have still been killed in the last two years.

"For the first few months Salwa Judum was home-grown, and welcomed," said Lalit Surjan, chief editor of a group of newspapers in Chhattisgarh.

"It has since been taken over by the government and grown beyond its means. We have been asking them to call off Salwa Judum because the state just can't protect them."

CAMPS A SAFE HAVEN?

Some villagers say they feel safer in camps, but many inhabitants complain formerly self-sufficient villagers have been left begging for food and work.

Many village women make a meager living working as bricklayers or selling firewood to markets.

"We'd prefer to go back. But we don't have much choice. If we go back they will kill us," said Janaki Devi, who lives in one of the camps.

Worried modern weapons could fall into Maoist hands, authorities have so far refused to give the militia new rifles. And they often get no more than a dozen bullets each for the old ones.

Mahendra Karma, the founder and head of Salwa Judum and a lawmaker for the Congress party, claimed the Maoists would "be eliminated in a few months."

Some tribal people have been willing to join the militia for what is a relatively good wage of 1,500 rupees ($33) a month, often acting as guides.

Security officials say Salwa Judum and the militias are crucial.

"They are another weapon --- of intelligence and information," said Brigadier B.K. Ponwar, a senior counter-terrorism official.

But the strategy failed at the police post, where there was no warning of the attack. Six militia members disappeared after the attack and police suspect they were Maoist spies.

"The Salwa Judum has not brought any peace," said Narayan Mandvi, a community leader at Ambeli, the village where the peace movement was founded in 2005. Mandvi has refused to move to a refugee camp.

Despite sparking off Salwa Judum, the village still has no paved road. Maoists often visit and threaten to kill uncooperative villagers.

Mandvi spoke a few miles from the destroyed police post, which has become a symbol of a lack of security in the region.

"The Maoists have left their calling cards for the tribals," said one police investigator, who asked to remain anonymous.

"Come back to the villages or face the same fate as your protectors."