In Nepal, reconciliation or ruin?
By Richard Halloran
For 10 years, the remote Himalayan kingdom of Nepal has been slipping nearer and nearer to the edge of collapse. The tipping point is now close at hand.
At issue is who will rule the country — the Maoist insurgents who have gained control of large swaths of the countryside by force, the political parties who seem more intent on quarreling than on solving problems, or King Gyanendra and his fellow autocrats who seek to govern with an iron hand.
The American ambassador to Kathmandu, James Moriarty, told a small group in Honolulu: "The next year will be absolutely critical for Nepal. Within the next 12 to 14 months, Nepal is clearly going to be going down one of two paths.
"One is the path of reconciliation between the palace and the parties to come up with a functioning game plan to get the country back to democracy and also to deal with the insurgency," he said during the meeting at the East-West Center here.
The other path is bleaker, he cautioned. There would be no reconciliation, larger demonstrations would erupt in Kathmandu, and the Maoist rebels would mount more violent attacks outside the capital. More than 12,000, including large numbers of civilians, have been killed in the fighting between the insurgents and government soldiers and police.
A critical question: Why should anyone outside this small, poverty-stricken nation of 26 million people sandwiched in the high mountains between China and India be concerned with its fate?
A Maoist victory, Moriarty said, would be a "humanitarian disaster" of enormous proportions and would bring to power a brutal regime that would collectivize agriculture, alter the Hindu social order, and send millions of refugees across the border into neighboring India.
In addition, the Maoists would seek to export their revolution. A region already beset with insurgencies and terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, a potentially belligerent Iran armed with nuclear weapons, and continuing tension between Pakistan and India over the territory of Kashmir does not need another haven and base for guerrillas and terrorists.
"India recognizes that the increasing instability in Nepal has become an increasing threat to the stability in India," Moriarty said. His remarks, initially made not for attribution, were later cleared by the State Department for publication.
Moriarty laid out three steps to persuade the rebels to abandon violence and participate in a fresh democracy:
"We believe," Moriarty said, "that the best way to address the insurgency is through a negotiated settlement that brings the majority of the Maoists back into the political mainstream."
After more than a century of monarchy, Nepal held an election in 1991 in which the Congress Party and the Communist Party received the most votes.
No party, however, held power for more than two years, and attempts at reform failed. Corruption was widespread.
In 1996, the Maoists began seeking to overthrow the parliamentary government and to replace it with a socialist republic. Over the next decade, they recruited 15,000 to 20,000 fighters, including women and children pressed into service as soldiers. Their tactics have been largely guerrilla warfare and terror.
Chinese leaders have claimed that China has not supported the insurgency; American officials with access to intelligence analyses say the same thing.
The Maoists themselves say they have adopted the ideology and strategy advocated by China's revolutionary leader, the late Mao Zedong.
In an unconnected event in June 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra killed his parents, brother and sister, two uncles and three aunts before committing suicide, evidently because his parents refused to accept his choice of a wife. The late king's brother, Gyanendra, was proclaimed king.
King Gyanendra mounted a palace coup in February this year, claiming that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had failed to foster parliamentary government and had been unable to defeat the Maoist insurgency. So far, however, the king appears to have made little progress in restoring control outside of the capital.
Human rights, in particular, continue to suffer. An editorial in the Kathmandu Post noted that international groups have urged the government and rebels alike to cease torture and other violations of human rights.
"Unfortunately," the newspaper said, "no parties to the conflict have paid any heed to the plea made by the rights organizations."
Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
