The end of the civil war (2006)

This is an old essay I came across today. It was written in the summer of 2006 when the Maoists took their first steps to entering the political mainstream after years in hiding, and a decade-long civil war...

My home is in Nepal’s terai, or lowland, region, a few hours drive south of Kathmandu. The Maoists have not been very active in the southern parts of the country until recently. I first heard of them in 1997 when I was a student in Darjeeling. To me then, they were a distant and small group of extremists in the steep, rugged hills that make up much of Nepal.

Now, nearly 10 years later, the Maoists are bringing major political change to the leadership of Nepal, a poor country where the repeated failure of governments to raise the standard of living has only deepened poverty.

The rapid dismantling of the king’s powers over the last few weeks were but the first steps leading to a dramatic shift in Nepalese politics that could forever alter the outlook of the state.

Sometimes when one reads news reports about Nepal, the picture presented is as though change is nearly completed and all problems are about to come to an end. It’s a black and white view. In fact, there are lots of major questions and issues still up in the air regarding the Maoists, their policies and the leadership of Nepal. A lot remains unanswered.

But not in doubt is that the Maoists — or the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) — will soon be part of the interim government that is to govern Nepal until a new constitution is framed.

Despite appearances, the rapid rise of the Maoists and their arrival in Kathmandu this year is not directly behind the sudden decline of the monarchy. In fact, things have fallen in place for the Maoists and they have been the beneficiaries of a void in Nepal’s leadership which had long existed and had grown markedly since the massacre of King Birendra and his family in 2001. The appeal of the Maoists has stemmed from the apathy of Nepal’s leaders to the public. The squabbling and infighting over trivial affairs only exacerbated affairs.

It is unclear whether a government that includes the Maoists will produce their promised reforms for the people. “Once the war is over, we believe we can develop economically and otherwise at a very fast pace,” their chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal — known simply as Prachanda, or ‘the fierce one’ — told the BBC recently.

Since the Maoist army began seizing power in remote villages 10 years ago, more than 12,000 people have died in the conflict. At first local police chiefs were assassinated; then the quest for money to finance the rebellion led to extortion and the killings of citizens and raids on banks. This is not to suggest that the Maoists were the sole perpetrators of violence, for the atrocities committed by the state were also as numerous as they were ghastly.

How Maoist is the ideology? Nepal’s insurgent-based party appears to be more pragmatic than Maoists elsewhere — for instance, it says that it is not against private ownership. In its rural strongholds, it is said that women are no longer subordinated as happens elsewhere in this — until recently — officially Hindu kingdom, and the Maoists also claim to have done away with casteism. For now, however, the evidence is that the Maoists still use fear to control their areas. Anybody even suspected of informing the police or the army is killed.

A current big issue in Nepal is that the insurgents refuse to disarm before new elections — still not scheduled — to Nepal’s Constituent Assembly, which is to draft a new constitution. Prachanda says the Maoists will keep their arms until the people are given their rights. Many fear that as long as the Maoists refuse to give up their weapons, free and fair elections to a Constituent Assembly cannot be held.

There is an air of inevitability in Nepal: the current king and the traditional parties have been tried and failed and many believe that ordinary Nepalese think that now the Maoists have to be tested. Keeping in mind the Maoist history of violence and intimidation, the future of the country remains uncertain.

As direct rule imposed by King Gyanendra crumbled, even the governing parties seemed to accept the Maoists. In June, the Home Minister traveled to a rebel outpost in the west of Nepal to escort the Maoist leaders to Kathmandu. The government flew Prachanda and his deputy to Kathmandu in a chartered helicopter. In the capital, the two were driven to the Prime Minister’s residence in an official car amid tight security.

Barely three months earlier, they had been the most sought-after “terrorists” in Nepal. Now they were given a reception due only to heads of state. The script could not have panned out any better for rebel leader Prachanda and his deputy, the Maoists’ chief ideologue, Dr Baburam Bhattarai.

The insurgency began only in 1996. On February 4 of that year, Bhattarai, then the chairman of the parliamentary wing of the United People’s Front (UPF), put a 40-point letter to the Prime Minister, which said that if steps were not taken to meet their demands by February 17, “we will be forced to adopt the path of armed struggle against the existing state power”. Soon after, the UPF pulled out of electoral politics and Bhattarai and the little-known Prachanda, who headed the clandestine wing of the UPF, formed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with Prachanda as its chairman.

Few Nepalese took serious note of the Maoists in the first few years. The political parties, the late King Birendra and the people by and large failed to comprehend the effectiveness of the insurgency. All of them thought that the Maoists’ grand designs to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic were little more than ridiculous.

With leaders who are ruthless and pragmatic, the Maoist force — armed mostly with weapons seized from defeated army units — has grown into a cohesive political unit. It’s estimated that one-third of the insurgents are female and recruits are as young as 14.

Today, the Maoists call the shots in the capital. For few, the rise of the Maoist insurgency from its humble beginnings ten years ago has been somewhat unprecedented. For many others, however, the rise of the Maoists in Nepalese politics was but an eventuality.

The mid-western districts in which the insurgency took root are among the poorest in the country, plagued with class and gender differences, very little arable land and the lowest rates of literacy. These districts had seen hardly any development as the proceeds of Nepal’s paltry economic growth were spent in or near the capital. The mid-west is also among Nepal’s most inaccessible countryside, suiting the Maoists’ guerrilla-style warfare.

In the areas they control, the Maoists have declared war on alcohol and gambling. Prachanda says that he sees Nepal in future as “free from caste, class, regional and gender exploitation”.

The Maoists have been helped by the complete failure of the political parties and ironically, even by King Gyanendra who curbed basic freedoms on February 1, 2005, to meet the insurgent threat. The politically astute Maoists declared a ceasefire and claimed that they wanted to hold talks with the king, but he refused to speak with “terrorists”.

The Maoists and the traditional political parties then entered into an uneasy marriage aimed at King Gyanendra. Following King Gyanendra’s failure to do anything significant to counter the insurgency, the Nepali people went on to the streets. Protests forced the King to abandon political power in April and Nepal’s leadership went back to the political parties.

In this manner, with the king complete sidelined, and the political parties already squabbling amongst themselves, the Maoists are the only political entity to have made gains. The Nepali political party leaders are still not trusted by the people and in a sense, there is a crisis of leadership in Nepalese politics. The current Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala is 84 and nobody is even being talked about as his successor.

Over the last few weeks, the Maoists have been determined in pushing their ideas. The king’s powers have been taken away; the country is no longer a Hindu Kingdom — it’s a secular state; an interim constitution is being drafted; an interim government will soon be formed; and an agreement has been reached to elect a constituent assembly.

Long on promises, the Maoists pose many questions. Will they seek to establish a totalitarian state, in spite of their commitment to democracy? Will they abolish private ownership? Will they curb political freedoms? It is not possible for the Nepalese to trust the Maoists and forget all about their chequered past, but Nepal now has no choice.