India's Maoist insurgency has intensified over the last two years and is beginning to attract the kind of national and international attention formerly reserved for troubled Kashmir or the northeast.

This guerrilla war, waged mostly from the forests of central and eastern India, now poses the country's biggest internal security threat, analysts say.

Around 13 of India's 29 states are affected by Maoist violence.

Also known as Naxalites, the Maoists say they are fighting on behalf of the rural poor and landless and want to build a communist state.

However, the poor are also victims of the insurgency because of brutal, forced membership campaigns.

In many states, private armies and vigilante groups, often government-sponsored, have sprung up to counter the Maoists. These have also forcibly recruited villagers, who are thus caught between the two.

Tens of thousands have been displaced by the fighting between Maoists and counter-insurgents.

In one of the worst-affected states, Chhattisgarh, over 40,000 tribal people have been moved to inadequate government camps. A respected human rights group says there is an "unacknowledged civil war" in the area.

India's government took a new stance on the Maoist insurgency in spring 2006, pulling the affected states together to coordinate their response. It said it would combine improved policing with socio-economic measures to defuse grievances that fuel the Maoist cause.

But critics say that while more security forces have been drafted in, there has been little improvement in the lot of the impoverished tribespeople.

Districts in India	602
Districts affected by Maoist violence	165
Insurgency related deaths in 2005	892 (Ministry of Home Affairs)
Insurgency related deaths in 2006	749 (Asian Centre for Human Rights estimate)
Violent incidents related to the insurgency in 2005	1,594 (Ministry of Home Affairs).
Displaced people in Chhattisgarh state, end 2006	43,740 (Asian Centre for Human Rights, early 2007)