Insurgency a cause of concern for Nepal

The uprising in Nepal launched by the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) has come like a bolt from the blue and is a bit of an anachronism at a time when the world at large has rejected the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism in favour of laissez-faire capitalism.

When Communism has failed and the world is heading towards a more global capitalist society with a free market economy, in a remote part of South Asia a People's War is being waged to establish the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.'

Having realised the gravity of the situation, Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is desperate, but firm in his resolve to crush the rebellion. He has sought the backing of the capitalist world and has visited the U.S. and Britain where he met his counter-parts to seek support and aid. President George W. Bush pledged a $20 million grant in military assistance and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair too has backed him in his resolve to take the Maoists by their red horns.

Neighbouring India, which surrounds Nepal on three sides, and the other giant neighbour China too are concerned over the developments in the only Hindu kingdom in the world.

For the two giant neighbours of Nepal, who went to war in 1962, the Himalayan kingdom has long been regarded as a neutral buffer state and neither of them would relish an unstable Nepal. As far as India is concerned, Nepal is its virtual satellite state.

And although China is a communist state and the Maoists in Nepal derive their inspiration from Mao tse-Tung, Beijing claims that it does not support the rebels since they differ in principle to the philosophy of Mao. On the other hand, the Maoists do not consider China as the torch-bearer of Maoism as they believe that it has deviated from Mao's ideology by opening up its economy to the capitalists.

No doubt the Berlin Wall has been pulled down and the Iron Curtain torn apart, but these changes mean nothing to the impoverished Nepalese. In the semi-feudal and caste based Nepal, time has stood still for centuries and the conditions giving rise to a smouldering class conflict as envisaged by Marxs and Engels has been at work for a long time.

Since the 1990s, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) has exploited these conditions has explosively ignited the powder keg in the past few weeks by carrying out a violent insurrection against the constitutional monarchy and the multi-party government. The revolt which began simultaneously in a large number of rural areas has inflicted heavy losses on the poorly armed government forces.

Landlocked Nepal, a country that is known for its brave Gurkha soldiers and awesome natural beauty where the king is considered as the reincarnation of one of the Hindu gods Vishnu, is one of the poorest countries with the lowest per capita income in the world. Its society is mostly agrarian wherein about 85 per cent of its nearly 25 million people live in the rural areas. Most of them are illiterate peasants, sharecroppers and tenants. A few landowners and settlers from India own most of the land. The distribution of wealth is uneven and social and economic disparities are widespread.

Moreover, many Nepalese are suspicious about India's "big brotherly" attitude, which the Maoists term it as "Indian expansionist exploitation and oppression".The Maoists' demands include the removal of Indian troops from the northwestern Kalapani area, stationed since India's border war with China in 1962 – the 35 square kilometre area claimed by Nepal and India – and the abrogation of the 1950 Indo-Nepal Friendship Treaty that gives political and economic leverage to India over Nepal, besides scrapping the Mahakali river water sharing treaty. The antagonism towards India also springs from the fact that Indians control to a large extent the economy of Nepal due to the open borders.

Hence the Maoist's protracted class struggle is being directed against imperialism, feudalism, domestic bourgeoisie and "Indian expansionism". Nepal's Maoists model themselves after the Shining Path guerrillas of Peru and derive their strength from the Revolutio-nary Internationalist Movement, which was founded on the basis of the Declaration of the Revolutio-nary International Mov-ement (RIM) adopted by the second conference of Marxist-Lenin-ist parties and organisations in 1984.

The RIM groups together the nucleus of the Maoist revolutionaries the world over. Among its members are India's Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the People's War Group (PWG). The MCC and PWG form the core of the Naxalites that are fighting against the establishment in the states of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh respectively.

The People's War began on February 13, 1996 when the CPN (Maoist) led by its general secretary Pushpa Kamal Dahal, whose nom de guerre is Prachanda, and Baburam Bhattarai's Maoist Samyukta Jana Morcha (United Peoples Front) carried out simultaneous attacks in different parts of Nepal. And all along it has remained confined mostly to the countryside.

However, the sudden spurt in the Maoist activities recently is due to varying factors. Political instability, rampant corruption and assassination of King Bhirendra and his family allegedly by the late Crown Prince Dipendra have weakened the socio-politico fabric and has further alienated the rural masses from the ruling class.

King Gyanendra who took the crown from his late brother is unpopular, as many of his subjects believe that there is more than meets the eye in the palace killings. The Maoists too believe there was a greater conspiracy. This weakness of the state is now being exploited by the Maoists to get rid of the "class enemies" and to carry their ideology further.

The Nepal Government has identified more than 35 districts as Maoist flashpoints. Until the last few months the conflict had claimed around 2,500 lives, but it mounted to around 4,000 when the Maoists launched their vigorous attacks in the last few weeks in their endeavour to attack cities by encircling them with "liberated" villages.

Since the start of the insurgency, successive governments treated the rebels as a law and order problem, and has sought to contain them by means of police operations. Many of such operations led to the killings of innocent civilians in remote villages. In this respect, Amnesty International has blamed both the rebels and the government for violating human rights.

However, the state justified such authoritarian policies in the name of suppressing the insurgency. But first it should address the basic inequalities that plague the Nepali society, the root cause of the Maoist insurgency.

Although the government tried to win the insurgents by holding the olive branch, three rounds of peace talks in November last year failed to yield a breakthrough. It was because the Maoists insisted on abolishing of the constitutional monarchy and implementing their 40-point programme, which was mainly directed against India and that called for cutting of the "apron strings" that binds Nepal to India.

As the truce failed Prime Minister Deuba declared a state of emergency and King Gyanendra ordered the Royal Nepal Army to crush the rebels.

If timely steps are not taken to check the "People's War and New Democratic Revolution" &#