Terrorism Data Analysis: Naxal Terror in India
In the Sukma district of Chattisgarh state, 22 Indian soldiers were ambushed by PLGA. According to reports, Maoists were trying to disrupt a road construction near Silger-Jagargunda, Sukma district. The road jeopardizes their existence. The attack was lead by PLGA chief Madvi Hidma.
I wanted to analyze terrorism trends in India over the last 5 decades. So I have downloaded the global terrorism data(1972–2017) from Kaggle.
Data Analysis
Let us start by importing the CSV data to a data frame and display the top 5 records.
import pyforest
terror_data=pd.read_csv("terror.csv")
terror_data.head()
We have created a data frame. Now I will search for Indian data and only keep relevant columns for my analysis. There is a total of 135 columns in the CSV file.
india=terror_data[terror_data["country_txt"]== "India"]india_terrorism=india[["iyear", "imonth","provstate", "city", "attacktype1_txt","target1", "gname","gsubname","motive", "weapdetail", "nkill","location"]]
We will count the number of terrorist attacks in India over the years starting from 1972 till 2017.
india_terrorism["iyear"].value_counts()
2016 was the deadliest year for India in terms of terrorist attacks while 1981 was the most peaceful one.
Terror attacks in the ’70s (1972 -1980)
The 70s was the time when India was dealing with the deadly insurgency in Mizoram. I mentioned in my Myanmar article that Mizoram has freshly come out of violence which is why the Myanmar issues should be handled with extreme caution.
terror_70 = india_terrorism[(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1972) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1973) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1974)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1975)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1976)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1977)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1978)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1979) ]
terror_70
People Killed by Terrorist Organizations(gname)
terror_70["nkill"].sum()
terror_70=terror_70.groupby("gname").sum()
terror_70["nkill"]
Naxalites and Maoists killed 7 out of 35 people in the 70th century. which is 20 percent of all terror attacks.
Terror attacks in the 80s(1980–89)
This decade saw a deadly insurgency in Punjab. A lot of unfortunate incidents took place in this decade.
terror_80 = india_terrorism[(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1981) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1982) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1983)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1984)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1985)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1986)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1987)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1988)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1989) ]terror_80
People Killed by Terrorist Organizations(gname)
Total people killed by Terror attacks.terror_80=terror_80.groupby("gname").sum().sort_values(by="nkill", ascending=False)
terror_80["nkill"]
terror_80["nkill"].sum()
Total 3079 people were killed in terror attacks in the 80th century. Naxalites killed 41, PLA killed 20, Maoists killed 11. PWG killed 9, tribal separatists killed 5, the communist party killed 1. Total 87 people have killed by left-wingers which are 2%of the total casualties.
Terror attacks in the 90s(1990–99)
This was the decade of militancy in Kashmir. The majority of attacks were carried out in Kashmir and Punjab. Insurgency in Punjab ended by the end of the 90s.
terror_90 = india_terrorism[(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1990) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1991) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1992)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1993)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1994)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1995)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1996)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1997)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1998) |(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 1999)]
terror_90
terror_90_count=terror_90["gname"].value_counts()
terror_90_count.head(60)
People Killed by Terrorist Organizations(gname)
terror_90=terror_90.groupby("gname").sum().sort_values(by="nkill", ascending=False)
terror_90["nkill"].head(50)
An important point I wanted to mention here is, Ranbir Sena which we can see in the list above was an Anti-Naxal militant organization created mostly by upper-caste men to end Naxal terrorism.
terror_90["nkill"].sum()
PWG, MCC, Naxalites, PLA, Maoist, tribal guerrillas, Maoist farm laborers were all forms of left-wing extremism. They killed 500 people out of total of 6211, which is 8%.
Terror attacks in the 20th century(2000–09)
This decade saw the formation of the CPI- Maoists group in 2004 which started the deadly insurgency against the Indian govt leading to thousands of Maoists, Policemen, Civilians getting killed.
terror_20 = india_terrorism[(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2000) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2001) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2002)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2003)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2004)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2005)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2006)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2007)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2008) |(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2009)]terror_20
terror_20_count=terror_20["gname"].value_counts()
terror_20_count.head(60)
People Killed by Terrorist Organizations(gname)
terror_20=terror_20.groupby("gname").sum().sort_values(by="nkill", ascending=False)
terror_20["nkill"].head(50)
terror_20["nkill"].sum()
Total 1451 people our of 6148 were killed by left extremist groups. which is 23 % of all terror related deaths. It can be even higher because the “unknown” attackers also had a lot of left extremist groups but for the simplicity I’m not making any assumption.
Terror attacks in the 21st century(2010–17)
terror_21 = india_terrorism[(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2010) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2011) | (india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2012)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2013)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2014)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2015)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2016)|(india_terrorism['iyear'] == 2017)]terror_21
terror_21_count=terror_21["gname"].value_counts()
terror_21_count.head(60)
People Killed by Terrorist Organizations(gname)
terror_21=terror_21.groupby("gname").sum().sort_values(by="nkill", ascending=False)
terror_21["nkill"].head(50)
terror_21["nkill"].sum()
Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-Maoist), Maoists, People’s Liberation Front of India, People’s Liberation Army,CPI Marxist, Jharkhand Liberation Tigers, Jharkhand Prastuti Committee (JPC) were the terrorist organizations with leftist ideology, they killed 2349 people out of total 3851 ( from 2010 to 2017)which is overwhelming 60%.
States Affected by Maoism
Although there are a plethora of Maoist organizations, however, I’m only considering the parent organization(CPI-Maoist) for simplicity.
naxal=india_terrorism[india_terrorism["gname"]=="Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-Maoist)"]
naxal["provstate"].value_counts()
The motive of attack by Maoists
naxal["motive"].value_counts()
Most of the time villagers get killed by Maoists for being an informer of the police.
