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Nepal has developed a guerrilla movement that could put a revolutionary state within a few hundred miles of Delhi. India, however, provides a safe haven for the revolutionaries. How are we to understand this development, and what is to be done about it? Three distinct initiatives may be needed, each of them requiring collaboration with overseas partners. All three will need a steadiness of political purpose which has not, hitherto, been a characteristic of this otherwise delightful Kingdom.
This paper first appeared in the Royal United Services Institute's Newsbrief.
The goals of insurgency dictate both its means and the paths which can be taken to its eventual settlement. All movements have supporters with individually-diverse motives. Nevertheless, the goals of internally-coherent movements fall along a continuum. At one end of this, insurgents have practical goals, such as political or economic inclusion. The movement accepts the general thrust of society, and it is open to political compromise and settlement. Its use of violence is constrained by its political aims.
Insurgency movements which are located at the other end of this spectrum do not, however, accept the basic values of their society. Their goals may be to extirpate modernity, or otherwise to discipline human nature through ideology, force and isolation. Such groups are not open to political accommodation, and nothing objective constrains their use of violence. Such, unhappily, is the nature of the "Maoist" insurgency movement in Nepal. After a slow start, the movement - The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist - has now covered the entire country. Several thousand people have been killed and areas have been depopulated. The economy is in trouble and the stability of the government of Nepal may be in question.
This development creates two grounds for external concern. First, Nepal's population is growing swiftly. Its economy is extremely dependent on tourism and foreign earnings. Protracted instability will be catastrophic for its long-term social, economic and political prospects.
The Maoist rebels have a program that operates at three levels. At the grass roots, it manifests concern over village issues: corruption, social breakdown and moral lapses. At the rational, national level, it sets out a program of regionalism, ethnic equality and social concern. Its fundamental goals are, however, to eliminate external influences and to force people into a particular model of communal rustic virtue, where they are to live in ignorance and obedience. Such a model cannot be the basis for long term stability and security. The world does not need another potentially rogue state, in the manner of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Second, India would find a poor neighbour in a Luddite Nepal. It is, of course, unlikely that India would allow such a situation to last. However, the cost of managing a semi-annexed running sore on its border would be high, and the prospects of a stable settlement would be weak.
The Nepali Himalayas offer hydroelectricity potential that is both less subject to religious controversy than India's own river-heads and close to its economic heartland. The exploitation of these is probably essential for India's compliance with the Kyoto treaty. Instability would, of course, deny such projects.
In addition, there is already substantial co-operation between the Maoists and the (many) schismatic groups that operate within India, from Assam to the deep South. A heartland for terrorism that is located a few hundred miles from Delhi cannot be an attractive prospect. Finally, Indian relations with China could be rendered more complex by these developments.
The Nepali Maoist movement has emerged from inchoate rural dissent to fill a political and institutional vacuum. Its aim are often expressed in vaporous rhetoric. The following is taken from their website, maintained - as is much of their funding, organisation and training - from Delhi.
"This plan of initiation of the people's war would be based on the principle that everything is an illusion except state power. While remaining firm on the principal aim of the armed struggle as to capture political power for the people, the Party expresses Its firm commitment to wage relentless struggle against all forms of deviationist thoughts and trends including economism, reformism and anarchism."
The Maoists began as a regional movement, seeking autonomy under the rhetoric of 'class struggle'. It has, however, found more effective ammunition in the ethnic divisions and caste distinctions of Nepali society. In addition, the publicity which democracy has turned onto the self-serving incompetence of the existing elite have offered it easy targets. Its ostensible goals are regional autonomy, secularism and equality of opportunity. However, its actions are brutal and normative. Its attitude to the citizens is that they are to be 'managed' in the familiar totalitarian manner, denying pluralism, opportunity and choice.
Civil war is seldom kind to civilians. The movement funds itself by extortion from "rich peasants", which is to say from any family with a bullock and as many terraced fields as would fit into a suburban lawn, or with a single literate individual. It mans its forces by kidnapping young men, and it motivates them through threats of death to their families. Its leadership uses this conscripted army to destroy such hard targets as police stations, foot bridges, schools and children.
Nepal has many potential fault lines in its society. It supports around a hundred distinct languages, a plethora of caste divisions and two world religions. There are a host of lesser belief systems. It lacks easy natural resources and has yet to develop its human potential. Income per capita, when corrected for purchasing parity, amounts to around US$250 per annum. Health care and communications are often rudimentary, and access to education and information can be scant. Rural credit is seldom available, and many land owners are heavily in debt to rapacious money lenders. The landless serve in near-indenture, for subsistence wages.
The physical and economic geography of Nepal dictates that the lowlands will be wealthy as compared to the mountains, and that the wet East prospers more than the arid West. It is no coincidence that insurgency developed from the isolated, dry valleys of the North-West. Nepal's greatest potential political rift lies, however, between the lowlanders of Indian origin, jointly called the Pahari, and the Asiatic uplanders, collectively referred to as Bhotia. The elite castes of the Pahari, called the Bahun, are politically and economically dominant. The insurgents are primarily Bhotia.
The wave of insurgency has been precipitated by a national political vacuum. The public are strongly aware of institutional ineptitude and corruption. The traditional Bahun elite are perceived to repress social mobility and to be disdainful of the problems faced by ordinary people. The massacre of the Royal family by the Crown Prince - and the way in which the news of this was managed - has deeply damaged the traditional respect in which this group were held. The Maoists make much of the imposition of Indian caste-based values by the Bahun on Nepal, and of their effective monopoly on access to government jobs, political power and economic weight. Of 55 senior civil service appointments made in 2000, 47 went to Bahun and 5 to the Chhetri, a middle-ranking Pahari group. The Bhotia make up around 50% of the population, but only 3% of the civil service entry in 2000.
The monarchy established a national council in 1962. Selected from many local Panchayats, or councils of wise people, it gave twenty years of gradual change. Free elections were rejected in a national referendum in 1980. However, allegedly Indian-backed agitation continued, leading to a bombing campaign in 1985. The government managed these disturbances until 1990, when strikes paralysed the Kathmandu valley. Free elections were called. These gave victory to the India-affiliated, Bahun-dominated Nepali Congress Party. Power had, therefore, shifted from the Bahun monarchy to a Bahun oligarchy.
In the decade which followed, parliamentary life was dominated by very public internal feuding amongst the elite. Ordinary Nepalis had once felt that the monarchy held their best interest at heart and clad as it was in its mystique, few saw any evidence to counter this. The public and undignified charade of the past decade has, however, shattered faith in paternalism and has generated considerable anger against the elite.
The abolition of the Panchayats weakened effective local administration. Law enforcement, in particular, fell to the police. They became detective, arbitrator, judge, tax collector and executioner, all rolled into one poorly-paid individual. Corruption proliferated, and rural communities felt themselves abandoned to a predatory petty bureaucracy.
The Maoists stepped into this institutional gap, expanding from their Western hinterland onto the national scene. Their initial political thrust was against local corruption, falling social standards in villages and divisive accumulations of wealth. Its position, once pragmatic and parochial, has since become increasing influenced by sweeping anti-Bahun and anti-Indian sentiments.
Popular-level positioning places the Maoists as the "peoples' justice". Targets such as money lenders, corrupt officials and supposedly wealthy land-owners are 'tried' and murdered; and their example encourages a flow of contributions from lesser targets and businesses. More recently, ideological targets that symbolise modernisation have received particular attention, such as clinics, communications and schools. A strongly rejectionism, anti-modernist thread is apparent in at least some of the leadership.
Low confidence and reduced tourism has weakened the economy. Law and order has broken down in large areas of the country. The end of the 2002 monsoon season allows the Maoists to demonstrate their civil and military presence across the whole country. They have paralysed Kathmandu with strikes and, in effect, demonstrated their ability to close down the capital's power supplies, communications and commerce at will.
Nevertheless, Nepal is not doomed. There are far, far worse places in the world in which to be poor. Social divisions are not irreparable, and communities still function. Capable individuals seem able to find their way. There is corruption but, by the lights of other Asian nations, it is corruption's tentative and a shame-faced younger brother.
Unhappily, senior politicians filled the first half of 2002 with solipsistic infighting. The Prime Minister was, for example, expelled from his own party. The King dismissed the government in early Autumn and, despite the continuation of democratic forms, the palace and the armed forces have now taken a much tighter grip on the situation. A grip is not, however, the same thing as a sense of direction, and it would seem that three fundamental measures are needed if central government is to re-establish its legitimacy, let alone its power base.
First, it is for Nepal's leadership to recapture national confidence. There has to be discipline. There has to be unity of voice and aim, itself based on a clear assessment of the issues. Effectiveness in delivering solid leadership is as vital to success as any military campaign. Communications from the new power structure has been platitudinous at best, and the guerrillas still tell all the best tales.
The Maoists have two great strengths: that the Nepali elite continue to make public fools of themselves, and that the ethnic minorities continue to feel themselves excluded. There are, therefore, two thrusts to a political response.
This is a long list, aimed at those who may have personally much to loose from these steps. However, they must recognise that they will lose much more through inaction.
Second, India must give serious thought to its policy of harbouring terrorists. It must rethink its relationship with Nepal, as current policy is neither coherent nor always constructive. Nepalis remember that India blocked road transport into Nepal for months in order to coerce its cooperation in respect of a single commercial contract. There is some direct military assistance, but collaboration at the level of intelligence and policing is rudimentary.
Third, military measures will work only if these are subservient to and preceded by a genuine change in the political landscape. The Maoists have classified the area West of the Annapurna-Dauligiri massifs as the Magarant autonomous region. This is their heartland. The Western lowland borders with India are home to the Tharu, another excluded group who offer support and sympathy. Resentment against the Maoists, by contrast, peaks in the East. In theory, therefore, influence should be rolled back from the East, working separately amongst the highly distinctive ethnic groups. As each region gains autonomy and safety, so individuals in the Maoist cadres can escape their indenture without reprisals.
In practice, however, strong military measures conducted in the rural parts of Nepal against a formless enemy are likely only to continue to provoke support for the Maoist movement, and to foster resentment at the central authorities. In the absence of a political carrot, the application of sticks alone will mean that regions can only be pacified for a time. The nature of the terrain, and the peripatetic, self-sufficient way of life is such that it is virtually impossible to seal any region effectively. The most effective carrots are the reform of central government, the re-establishment of effective regional self-government, transparent policing and judiciary, paths to self-improvement for ethic groups, rural communications and rural education.
Nepal needs political resolution, clarity and resources, in roughly that order. It also needs India to act with clarity and rationality. Nations which are foreign to the region can, however, best help where Nepal is most weak: with analysis and with focused resources such as communications, air support and training. Were discrete but seasoned political advice to be made available in a form which was acceptable to the government of Nepal, then this would clearly be the greatest gift of all.
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