Nepal braced for bloodshed, fears of spillover grow
17 Jan 2005 02:16:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Simon Denyer

KATHMANDU, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Nawa Raj Joshi was a teacher for more than 30 years in a small village in western Nepal, until one day Maoist rebels decided they didn't like his politics.

"They beat me with rifle butts and kicked me, and forced me to flee," he said. "But my wife and two sons were not allowed to leave."

A few years later, the rebels came back, this time for his son. "They asked him to accompany them, and he couldn't say no. We think they are trying to force him to join them."

Joshi's story is an every-day one in the Himalayan kingdom, where an increasingly ugly civil war is playing out against some of the world's most stunning mountain scenery.

This month, the conflict, which has already killed more than 11,000 people, took another turn for the worse, with both government and rebels bracing for further violent confrontation.

Last Thursday, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba turned up the heat on the Maoists by announcing plans to push ahead with elections they oppose and at the same time intensify a crackdown.

The Maoists have vowed to "shatter" the vote, and are thought to be planning a major attack against the government to underline their point and mark the ninth anniversary of the start of their struggle in February, according to Nepal's army.

Most worrying, is the state's utter inability to unite in the face of the Maoist threat. Political parties spend most of their time squabbling amongst themselves or with the autocratic and increasingly unpopular king, who has dismissed three governments in the past two years.

"The country is sliding off the edge of a cliff," said Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times weekly. "The political forces and the monarchy are at each other's throats and, most unfathomably of all, they don't seem to know who the real enemy is."

To the casual observer, Nepal's war seem strangely low-key. Tourists still come in their tens of thousands, though fewer than before, and have never been targeted. Kathmandu itself seems peaceful and safe to outsiders -- but not necessarily for locals.

Rights groups say hundreds of suspected Maoist sympathisers "disappear" every year into notorious army or police detention centres. Maoists tend to simply kill their opponents.

But the outside world is gradually being forced to wake up to the war, looking on with increasing frustration and concern.

A FAILING STATE?

Giant neighbour India knows well the risks of a failed state on its porous borders and is stepping up support for the Nepali army, as well as efforts to arrest Maoist leaders on its soil.

The United States and European nations are providing more discrete assistance, but are equally determined to prevent a Maoist takeover, not least because of the signal it would send to other rebel movements around the world.

"We simply don't want to see an old fashioned Communist dictatorship taking over in the 21st century," one diplomat said, defending his country's assistance to an army accused of increasing human rights abuses. "However bad human rights are now, they would be worse under the Maoists."

In India, concern is mounting about the rebels regional ambitions. They have established formal links with Maoist groups in India and say they aim to set up a "Compact Revolutionary Zone" throughout Nepal and northern and eastern India.

Rebels in India's troubled northeast are also thought to be supplying the Maoists with arms, says Nepali magazine editor Yubaraj Ghimire.

"The government of India always seemed to ignore the presence of Nepali Maoists in India, but now they are taking the threat much more seriously."

But there are other risks, too, not least early signs of fragmentation within the rebel movement itself. Not only is there division between hardliners and moderates, but there are warning signs that an ideologically driven movement could be gradually turning into an extortion racket.

"Quite a few Maoist area commanders seem intent on enriching themselves," the diplomat said. "There are incipient signs of warlordism."

Comparisons with Afghanistan may be premature, but the risks are there for everyone to see. It is possible, although unlikely, foreign terrorist groups could be tempted to hide in an anarchic Nepal. It is easier to imagine Nepali warlords turning the countryside into a giant opium or heroin factory, analysts say.

Not only that, says Ghimire, but it would be much more difficult for the state to ever negotiate peace with a fractured rebellion or warlords scattered across the country.

For Nepalis, it could mark their state's final slide towards failure and herald a more protracted era of conflict.

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