***** 29 Dec 2002 11:54
Nepal capital paralysed by rebel strike
(Recasts with quotes from government official)
By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A general strike called by Maoist
rebels paralysed Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Sunday but was
generally peaceful.
Most shops were closed and streets were deserted during the day, the
first of a two-day strike called by the Maoists as part of a campaign
to topple the constitutional monarchy.
"There was no untoward incident and normal life remained peaceful,"
Home (Interior) Ministry spokesman Gopendra Bahadur Pandey told
Reuters. "Strict security measures had been in place."
Witnesses said few vehicles plied the streets while shops in the main
business district remained shuttered.
"It is a complete closure," Keshab Prasad Poudel, a resident, told Reuters....
<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP71433> *****
***** December 29, 2002
Insurgents Create Growing Instability in Nepal
By DAVID ROHDE
BHIMSEN NAGAR, Nepal - His former neighbors describe him as
"kindhearted" and "generous." His junior high teacher changed his
name to "Lotus Flower" because he was so gentle and handsome. His
father still shows off pictures of him as a grown man tenderly
placing his hand on his mother's forehead as she lay dying of
leukemia.
"It was his habit to make people smile," said his father, Mukti Ram
Dahal, in a rare interview with a foreign journalist. "He used to do
it with everybody."
But to the rest of Nepal and to the outside world, the man now known
by the nom de guerre Prachanda, or "the fierce one," is the leader of
a violent Maoist insurgency that has claimed more than 7,000 lives
since 1996 in this mountain kingdom that sits as a buffer between
India and China.
The United States has grown so concerned that it is providing $17
million in military equipment and sending American soldiers to train
Nepal's army, a move that has Chinese officials worried about
American meddling in their backyard.
A post-Mao, quasi-capitalist Beijing disowns the rebels and accuses
them of "usurping the name of the leader of the Chinese people."
Indian officials, meanwhile, fear a rising tide of refugees and what
a Maoist victory could do to re-energize sputtering insurgencies in
their own country.
The insurgents, who call themselves the Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist), modeled after Peru's own Maoist Shining Path guerrillas,
have seized control of 40 percent of Nepal and paralyzed its economy
and political system.
Their success has been led by Prachanda, 48, who has managed to
deepen the support for his movement by portraying himself as a
Nepalese Robin Hood facing down corrupt and ineffective governments.
Brilliant and charismatic to his followers, fanatical and
opportunistic to his enemies, Prachanda, the son of a poor but
upper-caste farmer, demands the eradication of chronic rural poverty
and abolition of Nepal's constitutional monarchy, which he calls a
"eunuch parliamentary monarchy." His war has exposed Nepal's vast
inequalities, self-interested elite and, to the surprise of many
longtime Western residents, potential for savagery.
"Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is undefeatable because it is a system based
on truth," Prachanda said in an interview with a Nepalese newspaper
in 1997, a year after he declared a "people's war" on "imperialists"
and "reactionaries." "Marxism says the reactionaries continue to
create problems until they are eliminated."
Since then, the Maoists stand accused of killing 800 civilians deemed
"enemies of the revolution," kidnapping, extortion, forced
conscription and the use of child soldiers. The Royal Nepalese Army,
dispatched a year ago to crush the insurgents, has proven no kinder
to its people, human rights groups say. Government troops are accused
of secret detentions, torture and killing as many as 2,000 civilians
and unarmed prisoners in the past year.
Since the army joined the fight a year ago, the number of deaths has
increased from hundreds a year to 4,300 in the last year alone. A
once peaceful tourist destination now stands as one of the world's
bloodiest corners.
While their ideology may seem antiquated, the group's members have
emerged as master tacticians and motivators who quickly surround
government posts with 1,000 to 2,000 fighters before overwhelming
them. They have also shown a keen, and in some ways curious, interest
in how they are perceived.
The group sent an open letter last March to foreign tourists
explaining that they would not be attacked in Nepal. It begins
"warmest greetings from the materially poor but spiritually rich
people of Nepal." A letter sent to world leaders blaming the
government for the failure of peace talks last year concludes with
the line "looking forward to cordial and mutually beneficial
relations in the days to come."
Chhabi Lal Dahal, as Prachanda was known then, was born in a mountain
village near the town of Pokhara in central Nepal in December 1954,
the eldest of eight children. The timing of his birth was considered
propitious; in Nepalese astrology, having an eldest son in December
signals good things to come.
When Prachanda was 6 or 7, the family moved along with hundreds of
thousand of others from the mountains of central and northern Nepal
to the country's fertile southern plains after King Mahendra, the
Hindu kingdom's ruler at the time, decreed democratic elections and
large-scale land reform. A year later, the king reversed his
decision, dissolved Parliament and arrested top political leaders.
The family was left stranded in this village of 25 families, today a
jumbled and impoverished mix of the country's many ethnic groups and
castes just outside of Bharatpur.
Balaram Bishwakarma, a lower-caste Dalit, or "untouchable," recalled
how Prachanda bounced him on his lap when they were both children.
"He treated every other kid as one of his brothers," he said.
Umanath Lamichhane, a 60-year-old farmer, glowed when he spoke about
him. "He was such a kind-hearted man," he said.
Neighbors recalled asking Prachanda to settle petty disputes and
seeing him move dozens of landless families to vacant,
government-owned grazing areas. His leadership abilities quickly
emerged.
"Everyone who met him would be very quickly impressed, and would
stand to listen to hear what he had to say," said a former Maoist
activist who attended a local agriculture college with him.
By the time Prachanda graduated in 1978, he held a bachelor's degree
and a radical Maoist perspective.
Chinkali Shrestha, headmaster of a high school where Prachanda later
went to teach horticulture, recalled being struck by his absolute
confidence that Maoism would triumph.
Prachanda and other Maoist leaders took their hard-line Communist
faction underground in 1996, after winning only 9 of the 205 seats in
Parliament in earlier elections. Government officials initially
scoffed at the group. But within months, Prachanda and other leaders
had created a highly organized insurgency.
They overran isolated police posts to obtain weapons. They robbed
banks to obtain money. They banned drinking, gambling, trafficking in
women and domestic violence. They staged plays that depicted caste
and ethnic discrimination to recruit cadres. They soon became active
in more than half of the country's 75 districts, forming shadow
"people's governments" in 22 of them.
At first, civilian government officials countered the insurgents with
brutal police sweeps. The corruption, ineffectiveness and harsh
methods of successive governments also aided the insurgents' cause.
Over time, the Maoists' methods, too, grew more brutal. Villagers
were forced at gunpoint to join their cause and pay a war "tax."
Teachers and local activists were kidnapped and murdered. Mainstream
politicians were beheaded.
A recent poll found that if the Maoists were to put down their arms
today, they would win at best 10 percent of the seats in Parliament -
double their showing before, but not enough to control the government.
While both Prachanda and government leaders frequently express a
willingness to talk, negotiations have yet to materialize. Infighting
between the country's king, Gyanendra, and its mainstream political
parties has also hindered the peace effort.
A recent photo captured by the army shows Prachanda as a bearded,
pot-bellied man who scarcely resembles the rail-thin figure who cared
for his dying mother. Critics joke that his belly symbolizes his own
corruption. Prachanda's son, Prakash Dahal, who is in his 20's and
apparently part of the movement, stands a few feet away from him.
Asked about how he felt about his son, Prachanda's father said in the
interview that he feared for his son's life but also that he was
proud that "this great revolutionary leader is a son of mine." He
also added a caveat that echoed the sentiment of many in Nepal as the
death toll soars.
"I also would like some kind of settlement to this problem," he said.
"I'd also like to see a situation where people from either side are
not killed."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29NEPA.html> *****
Reuters, "Nepal Ready to Give Details About Jailed Rebels," December
30, 2002, Filed at 0:21 a.m. ET,
<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nepal.html>.
"A Communication from the Revolutionaries in Nepal on the Current
(September 2002) Situation in the Civil War,"
<http://www.monthlyreview.org/0902bhattarai.htm>.
--
Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
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