yet another article that shows little hope for nepal....
NEPAL
Dec 2nd 2004
The Himalayan kingdom is a gathering menace
LIKE a severely disturbed individual, a failed state is a danger not
just to itself but to those around it and beyond. That was a lesson
indelibly learned on September 11th 2001. After 20 years of war,
Afghanistan had become such a state, no longer functioning in any
conventional sense. Unable to offer its own citizens anything other
than poverty and fear, it was also unable to prevent itself from being
hijacked by drug barons, war lords and jihadists of every stripe, from
those who merely hoped to establish a new caliphate in central Asia to
those whose target was the heart of the world's most powerful nation.
From a failed state, to borrow from Yeats, mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world, less through deliberate design than through negligence. But
there is also a second danger. Neighbours, like nature, abhor a vacuum,
and are tempted to rush in. However high-minded their motives, they can
trigger competition and conflict; from the Balkans in 1914 to central
Africa now, there is no scarcity of depressing examples. Which is why
the eyes of the world ought to be focused more clearly on Nepal.
The country in no way resembles its seductive image as a hashish-tinged
Shangri-La of pagodas and Himalayan treks. In fact, after nine years of
a vicious civil war that has seen at least 10,000 people killed, the
government has abandoned much of its territory to Maoist guerrillas.
Its own soldiers commit human-rights violations on a horrific scale. A
despotic monarch treats his own elected politicians with contempt. As
we report (see article[1]), there is no chance that the government can
defeat the rebels; there is, however, a small but growing possibility
that the rebels could defeat the government.
If this were purely an internal matter, the world could afford to look
shamefacedly away. But it isn't. Nepal's Maoists have formed links with
India's own Maoist insurgents, who go by the local name of Naxalites,
and, says India, with some of the vicious groups fighting secessionist
wars in its north-east. As the Nepali Maoists have advanced, so have
the Naxalites. They now pose a serious security threat in half a dozen
of India's states, including three of the largest. There are
indications that they menace Bangladesh, too. Were the Maoists to
triumph in Katmandu, the Naxalites would surely be greatly emboldened.
There is no danger to the survival or the integrity of India, but its
desperately poor states like Bihar have little chance of progressing
with a civil war raging on their soil. There is also the possibility,
which cannot be discounted, that India will be tempted to intervene in
Nepal. That would cause intense disquiet in China, Nepal's other big
neighbour.
THINK PREVENTIVELY
Nepal might seem too remote a place for anything much to be done. But
there are a few possibilities. India and America, the Nepalese
government's main supporters, urgently need to tell it that its brutal
methods, far from defeating the Maoists, are increasing support for
them. The deep division between the king and the political parties
means that this is a three-way fight, not just a two-way one. The king
needs to be induced to return the country to proper constitutional
monarchy. UN mediation has not been attempted, but should be. India is
wary, for a bad reason: fear of setting a precedent for Kashmir. Yet in
the end, a peacekeeping operation may well be needed. It would be wise
to start thinking about one now, rather than waiting for Nepal's
complete collapse.
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[1]
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=3446340
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