[comments?] Nepal needs reform, not more guns The Maoist rebellion is a product of gross inequality and misrule
Isabel Hilton Friday May 10, 2002 The Guardian [U.K.] When President George Bush promised more military aid to Nepal's visiting prime minister this week, a White House spokesman justified the extra funds: "Nepal is fighting a Maoist rebellion, and Nepal is an example, again, of a democracy, and the United States is committed to helping Nepal." As though to underline the Nepalese security forces' need for more weaponry, the Maoists launched an overnight attack on a security post in the west of the country - an area in which the government has been claiming impressive casualties recently. There is no doubt that the Maoist insurgency is serious. It began in 1996 when Dr Baburam Bhattrai, a leftwing academic and political activist, went underground to begin the armed struggle, only six years after a largely peaceful mass movement had forced the late King Birendra to return democracy to Nepal. The restoration of democracy had been a moment of hope for one of the world's poorest countries - a country in which education had been deliberately withheld by the oligarchy on the grounds that it gave people dangerous political ideas. It would be good to report that the advent of democracy substantially improved the lot of the average voter, but it did not. After a decade of looting and corruption by the elected politicians, even the unpopular royal family was almost forgiven. When most of them were murdered by the crown prince last June in an evening of unexplained carnage, the popular grief was real. The massacre had two consequences that bear on the present crisis: the murdered king, Birendra, had refused to deploy the army against the Maoists. He seems to have shared a widespread apprehension that the army was likely to indulge in indiscriminate killings that would make the situation worse. The king preferred to rely on the less well-equipped police and to keep the door open for negotiations. Birendra's brother, Gyanendra, who succeeded him on the throne, had no such reservations. Shortly after the mourning period ended and the Maoists launched an offensive, Gyanendra sent in the troops. The result has been a staggering escalation in violence. Half of the 4,000 casualties in the six-year insurgency have occurred in the last six months and the war is now close enough to the capital for gunfire to be audible in the evenings. Meanwhile, tourism has collapsed and Nepal's poverty is worse than ever. As far as its democracy goes, such civil rights as there were have been suspended, the newspapers are censored, hundreds of people have been arrested and held without trial. The Maoists hold about a quarter of the country, and in these areas things are little better: teachers have been targeted, children pressganged as soldiers, suspected government informers summarily executed. Last month, the Maoists offered to resume negotiations with the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba. Mr Deuba was among those who used to favour negotiations: in 1999, he chaired the so-called Consensus Seeking Committee, a government-sanctioned group that tried to reach a negotiated agreement with the Maoists. That committee, which was disbanded after a few months, concluded that the insurgency was a political problem that had its roots in Nepal's profoundly unequal society. Their final report urged the government to negotiate. Mr Deuba has changed his mind. He turned down last month's offer, preferring, apparently, to rely on the promised $20m in US military aid. But unless Nepal addresses the profound defects of its democracy, a military solution is unlikely to bring any lasting peace. The rebels are stronger than the government acknowledges, funded by a compulsory "tax" that they collect from businesses and NGOs, not only in the rural areas but also in Kathmandu, under the noses of the security forces. Nepalis are shocked by the violence of the uprising and appalled by the idea of a Maoist government that has no external support beyond the equally desperate Naxalite rebels in north-eastern India. ButNepal's staggering economic inequalities, the caste-based discrimination, the political corruption and the arbitrary abuse of human rights by the security services undermine the government's claim to the loyalty of the people. Even before the recent escalation of the conflict, Amnesty International challenged the security services' version of events, pointing out that the "Maoists" that they claimed to have killed were often innocent civilians and the alleged subversives whom they arrested frequently disappeared with no semblance of due process. It's easier, in the short term, to label Nepal's insurgents as "terrorists" and to send more guns than to address political reform in a country that has been paralysed for a decade by the shortsighted squabbling of its political class. Whether it will work is another question. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
