TIME Magazine
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008
Can Nepal's Rebels Help Rebuild?
By Ishaan Tharoor/Chitwan
— with reporting by Yubaraj Ghimire and Santosh Shah/Kathmandu
Comrade
Sandhya's voice trembles as she speaks of her father. "He was a major
in the Royal Nepalese Army," she begins, cupping her chin with one hand
while rearranging a neat schoolgirl plait with the other. "When he
found out I had gone underground, he said I was no longer his daughter
— only his enemy. The next time he wanted to meet me was on the
battlefield."
That
encounter, to Sandhya's relief, never came to pass. In 1996, as a
14-year-old student from a town north of the capital Kathmandu, she
joined Nepal's Maoist cadres at the moment when their armed insurgency
had just begun to take hold of this rugged Himalayan nation, long a
magnet for foreign backpackers and adventurers. Her father's military
income meant Sandhya did not grow up among the country's many poor, but
she chafed under the rigid caste laws and gender norms that blunted her
parents' ambitions and stripped her of the same opportunities as men.
The Maoists, led by their talismanic leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a.k.a.
Prachanda, promised her and thousands of others nothing less than a
complete reordering of society, and Sandhya gave herself to the
struggle, fighting as a soldier in a decade-long civil war that claimed
over 13,000 lives and displaced countless more.
Today,
Sandhya sits batting away mosquitoes in a sparse wood cabin, part of a
sprawling Maoist cantonment in the southern district of Chitwan. She
believes victory is at hand. A peace process triggered by mass protests
in April 2006 against the autocratic rule of Nepal's King Gyanendra
brought the Maoists into the political mainstream, paving the way for
the extraordinary transformation of a country ruled for two and a half
centuries by Hindu kings into a secular republic. Both the Royal
Nepalese Army and the Maoist guerrillas — the civil war's bitter foes —
returned to their barracks and camps with the stated intention of
eventually reforming into one new national force. "We all want
democracy. No one here wants to fight again," Sandhya insists. Even her
father, who has since retired, has reconciled with Sandhya. "He
respects my decisions now," she says. "He realized I was a figure of
change."
Change
can bring uncertainty, however, not just for Nepal but for other
countries. Nepal, a country of 28 million, is sandwiched between the
world's rising giants, India and China, who both have cast their eye
over the Himalayan nation as a buffer against the other. Any unrest in
Nepal — hostilities have been suspended, not buried — could spill
across into its restive borderlands, particularly Chinese Tibet and the
troubled Indian state of Bihar — developments that Beijing and New
Delhi would view with alarm. Nepal's Maoists, moreover, are still on
the U.S. State Department's list of terror groups. They have traded
their guerrilla hideouts for plush offices in the capital, but had a
fearsome reputation for committing violence when the armed struggle
raged.
Indeed,
the hatreds that fueled the civil war threaten even now to bubble over.
Elections for an assembly that would draft Nepal's new republican
constitution are slated for April 10, but only after much bickering and
dithering. Nepalis of all stripes are losing faith in the seven
parties, including the Maoists, that make up the country's feuding
interim government and see corruption and cynical power-politicking
stifling the nation's slow reconstruction from the ashes of war. Over a
third of the population still lives below the poverty line.
As
the politicians fiddle in Kathmandu, a hundred mutinies burn around the
country: vigilante gangs run rampant in the countryside, while ethnic
groups long marginalized under the monarchy have taken to armed
uprising, especially in the southern lowlands of the Tarai where over
40% of Nepal's population lives. A cocktail of anarchist elements,
militant factions and a growing separatist movement hold sway there and
prove a daunting challenge with elections coming in little more than
two months. "What happened in Kenya could happen here," says Jayaraj
Acharya, a former Nepalese ambassador to the U.N., speaking of the
ongoing ethnic conflict in the African nation triggered by disputed
elections, which has claimed hundreds of lives. "Only here," Acharya
adds, "it will be worse."
A False Dawn
The
security situation in a nepal under cease-fire is dismal. During the
civil war, both the Maoists and the Royal Nepalese Army held brutal
sway over segments of the country, but now, as they wait in their
camps, law and order has deteriorated. Reports filter in every week of
kidnappings for ransom. Last December, a Swiss trekker was beaten up
after refusing to pay money to a few rogue Maoists, a worrying sign for
a country heavily reliant on the money brought in by foreign tourists.
Many in Kathmandu blame the Youth Communist League (YCL), created by
the Maoists less than a year ago, for much of the disorder. Red YCL
banners around parts of Kathmandu urge Nepalis to report "suspicious,
reactionary activity" to cell-phone numbers emblazoned on the cloth. As
soon as night falls in the capital — which, as a bastion for the King's
army, had been safe during all of the years of the civil war — the
usually teeming streets grow deserted. "The police have no motivation
at all right now," complains Kanak Dixit, editor of Himal magazine and an outspoken advocate of democracy. "There is an alarming surge in crime."
Public
safety isn't the only challenge the interim government has failed to
negotiate. Fiscal mismanagement has led to chronic fuel shortages
across the country; lines in Kathmandu extend for kilometers and prices
have tripled in less than half a year. Last week, protests against
rising fuel prices shut down the capital. Kathmandu residents face at
least six hours of power cuts a day. The government has been unable to
raise Nepal's middling growth rate, which hovers around 2%, and funds
many of its programs on an IV drip of foreign aid. Trade-union activism
and general strikes, some suspect spurred in part by the YCL, disrupt
factories in outlying areas and basic services in the cities. During
Christmastime around Kathmandu, sanitation workers had been agitating
for over three months. Piles of garbage festered around every
cobblestoned corner of the city, visceral reminders of a deeper rot
seeping into the nation.
"We
live in a broken state," says Mandira Sharma, a leading human-rights
activist. For the past five years, she and her NGO, Advocacy Forum,
have investigated hundreds of cases of disappearances that took place
during the decade-long civil war. To Sharma, both the Maoists and the
Nepal Army are guilty of a catalog of atrocities, from forced
recruitment to extrajudicial killings. Attaining justice for the
victims (and compensation for the nearly 200,000 displaced) ought to be
as important to the country's push toward democracy as elections. "But
human rights don't seem to be anyone's priorities here," she laments.
"The problem is a failure of political leadership."
Elections
for a Constituent Assembly, which have thus far been canceled twice,
became the focal point of political squabbling. The first date, June 17
last year, was missed for mostly logistical reasons. Nepal simply
wasn't ready at the time to hold a fair and efficient poll. But the
Maoists scuppered the next date, November 22, much to the chagrin of
many Nepalis as well as the international community. Reneging on
earlier understandings, the Maoist leadership grandstanded on a set of
demands that included the outright abolition of the monarchy before its
fate could be determined by popular referendum. When the other parties
— including the establishment Nepali Congress, the party of the
country's current Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala — refused to
accede to the Maoist agenda, the Maoists pulled out of the government
and plunged the peace process into a rancorous impasse.
"It
showed how unnatural the alliance is between all the interests in the
interim government," says Kamal Thapa, a royalist politician who served
as Home Minister under Gyanendra. Up till last year, the Congress Party
had always defended the idea of constitutional monarchy, a commitment
enshrined by their party following similar protests in 1990 that curbed
royal power. But the need to assuage the Maoists changed the equation.
"The Congress has had to understand the new political reality," says
C.P. Gajurel, a top Maoist politician, "and it has been difficult for
them."
The
Maoists see themselves as the agents of democracy in Nepal, stifled by
the objections of reactionary, status-quo forces, while many in the
Congress, let alone in factions aligned still to the ancien régime of
the monarchy, doubt the radical guerrillas' commitment to any political
scenario where they may not retain complete control. Despite a
compromise thrashed out at the end of last year, which set elections
for this April, observers expect conflict to be inevitable. "What more
must we give the Maoists?" asks R.S. Mahat, Nepal's Finance Minister
and a Congress Party member. "Their strategy is simply to create
crisis. They are not honest."
This
distrust speaks volumes of Nepal's present predicament, where parties
spar over everything from the distribution of ministries to the
appointment of ambassadors. "There is no genuine consensus at all,"
says Rhoderick Chalmers, Nepal expert for the International Crisis
Group. Continued discord only strengthens the hand of the weakened
King. Though the throne has lost much of its credibility under
Gyanendra, many Nepalis still look to the institution as a source of
stability and unity. "You can't legislate away the emotional link of
the people," says Thapa. Others, including journalist Dixit, fear
further squabbling and political anarchy could lead to a more ominous
"right-wing backlash ... where royalist elements in the army would step
in on the pretext of stability." Further heightening tensions,
Prachanda, the Maoist leader, made noises as recently as November about
returning the people's war to the jungle if progress toward a republic
wasn't made. "Either through [the Maoists] or through the army," warns
royalist Thapa, "we are going to see some sort of authoritarian
solution."
The End of Kings
The
threat of a coup may be exaggerated, but it points to perhaps the
single greatest achievement of the Maoist insurgency: the unraveling of
a national myth. Nepal came into being through the 1768 military
campaign of King Prithvi Narayan Shah and his army drawn from Gurkha
tribes in the hills near Kathmandu. Ever since, Nepal's polity has
remained largely unchanged: its borders an approximation of the land
conquered, its political élites tied to old families close to both the
monarchy and the army, and its princely rulers all descended from the
same messianic line. Power and legitimacy radiated outward from the
palaces of Kathmandu into a highly hierarchical society in the
countryside, where feudal mores and caste discrimination still hold
sway. Propped up first by the British, keen to have a client buffer to
the north of its imperial heart, and later India, this arrangement
rarely had to fear outside interference and had remained roughly intact
for more than two centuries.
Nepal's
monarchy hammered the nail in its own coffin in spectacular fashion in
2001, when Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down 10 members of the royal
family, including the much beloved King Birendra, and then allegedly
shot himself. The attack, clouded by conflicting reports and conspiracy
theories, sent shock waves around the world and plunged Nepal into
existential crisis. With a centuries-old dynasty virtually eliminated
overnight, in stepped the reigning King's brother, Gyanendra. As the
Maoist insurgency raged, Gyanendra declared a state of emergency in
2005, arresting mainstream political leaders and assuming absolute
power. But he could not quash the Maoists, whose influence grew apace
in rural areas around the country. Rumors swirled depicting Gyanendra
as a man given to superstition and mysticism, who would sooner look to
the stars or a coterie of tantric priests for counsel than his
political advisers. "He wanted control, he wanted to be a heroic
savior," says a source close to the court, "but he had few actual
ideas, if any."
Gyanendra's
power play worked to the advantage of the Maoists. Their urban cadres
and activists played a prominent part in the 19 days of mass
demonstrations in April 2006 that ended King Gyanendra's absolute rule
and led to the reconvening of parliament. The surge of popular goodwill
at the time catapulted the guerrillas out of their jungle redoubts and
into the international limelight. Prachanda, whose very existence had
been in doubt only a few years before, appeared on televisions
regionwide, saluting crowds and pressing the flesh. A King had been
toppled, a war ended, and change in Nepal looked very much on the way.
The Way Forward
Little
has gone according to script since the people-power protests 22 months
ago. In November 2006, the Maoists committed to a peace accord with
other prominent pro-democracy parties in Nepal and joined the new
interim government that would rule until elections for a Constituent
Assembly could take place. But the acrimonious squabbling that followed
has dispelled many of the hopes raised by the success of the mass
demonstrations. "We just felt so proud being Nepali then," says Sanjog
Rai, a college student in Kathmandu. "The protests showed us how united
we were and that feeling of brotherhood gave us real hope for a better
future. Now we're stuck with politicians who have no vision and only
care about keeping power."
There
is a broad consensus among Nepal's strife-worn people that
parliamentary democracy must come sooner rather than later. "A
functioning government can't be in a permanent state of transition,"
says Bojraj Pokhrel, chief of Nepal's Electoral Commission. Now,
Pokhrel will have to manage a staff of over 230,000 election workers
spread across the mountainous country, some in polling stations miles
away from local roads. Highways and bridges were routinely bombed
during the civil war, making transportation in a nation with woeful
infrastructure difficult at the best of the times. Still, Pokhrel is
confident Nepal has the means to carry the elections out. "The people
are all hungry for this," he says.
But
they'll remain disappointed as long as the interim government's leaders
fail to forge any meaningful political unity. "It's a testing time for
them," says Acharya, the former ambassador to the U.N. "One wonders if
they'll prove their statesmanship." The only indication that they will,
most observers drily point out, is that neither the Maoists nor the
Congress Party have any better alternative other than sorting out their
differences and calming the many fractious forces that might undermine
April's polls.
If
they don't, the international community must do more to safeguard
elections and move the peace process forward. Nepal's giant neighbors,
India and China, both backed the monarchy during the civil war,
supplying it with weapons and aid. India, which has close ties with
virtually every faction in Nepal, eventually shepherded the peace
process along, forcing the main political parties to come to terms with
the Maoists. China has remained a bit more circumspect, letting India
flex its geopolitical muscle while building bridges with the Nepali
Maoists it shunned until not long ago and beefing up its hydropower
investments along Nepal's glacial rivers. As the budding superpowers
expand in influence and ambition, many see Nepal falling into the
crosshairs of a new "Great Game" for the 21st century.
Beyond
the turmoil and political intrigue looms the very real chance that
Nepal might join the region's sorry list of failing states — populated
already by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Besides forging
alliances and staging elections, the country and its politicians need
to steel themselves for the thorny task of drafting a constitution that
reconciles its feuding factions and enfranchises all its kaleidoscope
of ethnic groups. "This is a crisis hundreds of years in the making,"
says S.D. Muni, a Nepal scholar formerly at Jawaharlal Nehru University
in New Delhi. "Whole groups have never been in the political structure.
You have to in effect create a new Nepal."
Back
in Sandhya's Chitwan camp, the commander, named Biwidh, clings to such
hope. From a poor, indigenous-minority family, he speaks urgently of
peace and of the need for a competitive, multiparty democracy. A slight
man with a scarred, weathered face, Biwidh looks much older than his 34
years, and describes his time spent warring in the jungle with
primitive rifles and stones in hushed, quick breaths, as if he would
rather forget about it. As Nepal lurches from one crisis to another,
Biwidh says the soldiers in his camp are in a permanent state of
readiness. "If the revolution must be fought again," he sighs, turning
his head to the setting sun, "it will be."
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