The Crisis In Nepal

Background

To understand the reasons behind the current crisis that Nepal it is necessary to have a brief look at its history. Nepal is an ancient kingdom ruled by benevolent and malevolent ,by wise and insane rulers from 700 BC. Around 250 BC, the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had sent emissaries from India to build the four Buddhist stupas at Patan. In 1768, Prithur Narayan Shah, whose family had migrated in the 15th Century from India, became the first king of the Shah dynasty. Describing himself as a Rajput, he conquered the warring tribes of tiny hill kingdoms, and brought the Nepal valley,one of the Himalayan belt’s richest kingdoms, under the Shah dynasty. The death of Pritvi Narayan Shah in 1775,brought along a string of rulers, who despite having been described by historians as incompetents with a streak of insanity running through their veins, made Nepal the largest country in its history, with Garhwal,Kumaon and Sikkim under its control.

In 1846,the massacre at the armoury, known as the “ kot parwa”,took place. The mukhtiyar(or prime minister),of the regent queen, Rajyalakshmi, was killed together with 55 other court officials, leading to an exodus of some 6000 courtier families belonging to the Thapa, Pandey and Basnyat Chettri-caste families. The man behind the massacre was suspected to be General Jung Bahadur Kunwar, who then became the new mukhtiyar. So it was that another Chettri-clan rose to power. Renaming themselves Ranas, they captured power over the Shah kings by subterfuge and by marrying into the Shah family. By a decree passed by a mentally deficient king, the Ranas were to inherit the prime minister’s post,as well as the title of Maharaja conferred on Jung Bahadur, for perpetuity, the inheritance passing not from father to son but from brother to brother. They were destined to rule Nepal, for the next over 100 years. It was said that very few Rana rulers died of natural causes, most being either murdered ,exiled or over thrown through palace coups to make way for their successors. The Rana regime came to an end in 1951, when Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah, crowned king in 1911,was able to overthrow the Ranas(with the aid of India) and restore the present dynasty of Shah kings.

On June 1,2001, the palace massacre took place. King Birendra and his Queen Aishwaraya, were allegedly gunned down in cold blood by Crown Prince Dipendra, who was also supposed to have killed his brother, his sister and five other relatives. Inexplicably the only other persons present in the room, Prince Paras, the son of King Birendra's younger brother, Prince Gyanendra,. and Paras’ mother were spared by Dipendra. It paved the way for Prince Gyanendra, fortuitously(some maintain by design) absent from the dinner at the Narayanhity Palace on business in western Nepal. Prince Gyanendra thus become the 11th King of the Shah dynasty, an accession not welcomed by the people of Nepal, nor by a section of the Army.

Nepal-Foreign Connections

It was in 1768,when the British first came in direct contact with the Nepalese. When Prithvi Narayan Shah, the Gorkha king began his siege of the Nepal valley by blockading the Tibet and India trade routes,the British East India Company had dispatched some troops to aid Jayaprakash Malla, the king. It was the Ranas, heavily dependent on the Brtitish for their own legitimacy within Nepal, that made the British contemptuosly describe(and treat) Nepal as a ‘quasi-British protectorate’, and so it remained till India’s Independence.

King Gyanendra, who is considered one of the wealthiest individuals, having stakes in Kathmandu casinos and some profit-making industrial activities, is a die-hard conservationist. He is the head of the Britain-Nepal Society and the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation.

This association has brought King Gyanendra very close to the British royal household, particularly to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who founded the World Wildlife Fund (since renamed the World Wide Fund for Nature). As a result, the WWF has a very big presence in Nepal; what is disturbing, is the fact that the Maoists are ruling the roost in the large "nature reservations" maintained by the WWF.

While the British still have a say in Nepalese affairs,but so do the Americans and the Chinese. The Americans moved into Nepal in a big way. The US helped Nepal into colonizing Chitwan, a forest tract south west of Kathmandu, and developing it into a model district with educational facilities and healthcare centers. It was here that Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachnanda,the ‘Fierce One’ the shadowy Maoist supremo, moved to with his family, received his basic education and even worked briefly in the US AID-an independent government agency providing global humanitarian aid !

The India Connection

India's geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and substantial economic aid render it the most influential foreign power in Nepal. Nepal acting as the buffer zone between China and India has invaluable strategic implications for India,which cannot be ignored. India’s “unique'' relations with Nepal, with open borders permits 60 lakh Nepalese citizens to work in India without passport. India provides military equipment and has over the years helped to train the Royal Nepalese Army’s counterinsurgency groups. Land-locked Nepal in turn is heavily dependent on India for its economic and social survival. India, traditionally Nepal’s most important foreign friend, thus has the most to lose if there is instability in Nepal. The insurgency in Nepal is already aggravating the security crisis in India’s northeast and other parts.

But India has been accused of military and political interference in Nepal's affairs. Suman Pradhan, a communicator on Nepal’s politics ,writing in the Times of India,is of the view that India is the power most directly linked with Nepal through its open borders. As such what India does will almost certainly be followed by western powers, including the USA and UK. Its policy,therefore, holds the key to help resolve or lengthen the conflict in Nepal. “But despite centuries of amicable interaction”, according to Suman Pradhan, “there exists a deep reservoir of anti-Indian passion just lurking underneath the tranquil Nepali surface”. Much of this, feels Pradhan., can be explained away as the inevitable result of a big country-small country dynamics, but a significant portion of it is due to a sense of inflicted wrongs and heavy-handed policies from the past ,which has been nurtured by all sides of Nepal’s conflict: The Maoist, the Palace, and even political parties. In 1969, Nepal cancelled an arms agreement with India, and ordered the Indians to withdraw their military mission from Kathmandu and their listening posts from the Tibet-Nepal borders. In 1989, the Indian government closed its borders with Nepal to all economic traffic, bringing Nepal's economy to a standstill. It was then that early in the 1990s, Nepal developed closer ties with China.

The Genesis of the Crisis in Nepal

On Feb ,1,2005,King Gyanendra, seized power, effectively ending Nepal’s 14-year experiment with democracy. The immediate reasons for the present crisis goes back to the first tentative steps to usher in some form of democracy. When Judha Jung Bahadur Rana became the seventh maharaja in 1932, there were palpable signs for people’s rights movements. These were inspired by Gandhi and the Arya Samaj, and also by the advocate of armed revolt,Subhas Chandra Bose. So there was even then reports of the political parties plotting the mass assassination of the entire Rana clan in connivance with the then king,Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah. Nipped in the bud, it led to mass arrests, and the incarceration of the king. But the fact that these dissidents had allied with the king, did not mean that they were all monarchists. By 1940,calls for republicanisms had already been made, and by the end of World War II, a struggle, which had the potential to turn violent if need be, had started in earnest.

It was in 1950 that Jawaharlal Nehru,the Indian PM, having backed the Ranas switched his support to the political activists. King Tribhuvan sensing an opportunity to break away from the Rana shackles, sought asylum in the Indian Embassy. The entire royal party was later “evacuated” by an IAF plane to India, leaving behind the 3-year old Gyanendra, to mind the shop. When a deeply humiliated and enraged Maharaja Mohan Shumshere Jung Bahadur Rana., put him on the throne, the country erupted in agitation.. On 15 February 1951,after his three-month exile in India, King Tribhuvan, Bir Bikram Shah returned to Kathmandu to claim the throne as a constitutional monarch in a democratic government.

The period between 1951 and 1960 was to see nine short-lived governments. Between 1990 (when political parties became legal) and the summer of 2004,Nepal was to endure 14 governments. The reasons given for the failure of democracy and why the king took back absolute power are manifold. Some maintain that he and his family undermined democracy-with the Ranas out of the way,the king had no further use for political parties. .Others maintain that the political parties were squarely to blame. When King Birendra ceded power to an elected government the Nepalis watched in frustration the political parties squandering whatever goodwill they may have had by rampant corruption, venality, internal bickering and gross mismanagement. The international community feels that Nepal just wasn’t and still isn’t ready for democracy.

So enter the Maoists.

The Maoist Insurgency

At the time King Birendra got gunned down inside the palace, Nepal was already in a most unstable condition. A burgeoning Maoist insurgency movement, which then controlled about 50 of Nepal's 75 districts, had begun to set up its bases within Kathmandu, the capital. The Maoist group was formed in February 1996 when the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) and the United People's Front (UPF) started their "people's war" for the establishment of a Mao-style dictatorship of the proletariat. This followed a meeting on July 1, 1995 between the Indian Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)—also known as People's War Group—and the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist). Since then, the Maoist group has declared war on the parliamentary system prevailing in Nepal

Pushpa Kamal Dahal was part of a national movement that took place after the failure of democracy in Nepal Calling himself Prachanda, “the Fierce One”, he went underground with his newly founded Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist). Starting what they call "people's war", and believing firmly in Mao Zedong’s maxim that “political power grows out of a barrel of a gun” they aim to turn the impoverished kingdom into a communist state. Their new political thought, Prachand-Path is said to have been modeled after Peru's Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

The hierarchy of the Party founded by Prachanda, is traditional Stalinist. He is the Party Chairman as well as the Commander-in-chief of the Peoples’ Liberation Army(PLA). Beneath is the Party central committee, a politburo and an army command, district and sub-district committees and village heads. Prachanda favours centralization of the party ,the PLA and the United People’s revolutionary Council(UPRC).The UPRC is the rebels’ parallel government set up in 2001. His deputy, Baburam Bhattarai, a JNU graduate, is, however, reported to be at loggerheads over party issues ranging from ideology, India-centric military tactics to the arrest of its leaders made in Indian states. Bhattrai is above all against the concentration of power in the hands of one individual.

Maoist collusion with insurgents across the porous Indo-Nepal border, as well as the assistance they receive from India’s large Nepali population, make it even more difficult to act effectively against them. The threat is spread across the 'Compact Revolutionary Zone,' which stretches from the Nepal border to Tamil Nadu. Fifty-three districts have been identified as 'highly affected' by the threat of violences by the Naxalites, while 17 are 'moderately affected.' Fifty-two districts are 'less affected' and 21 are possible targets.

The Royal Nepal Army

The Royal Nepal Army(RNA) was basically a ceremonial force under the direct control of the King. Between 1996 and 2001,despite political leaders demands to fight the insurgents ,the then King Birendra refused its employment in a counter-insurgency role. Such qualms changed when the Maoists attacked an army post at Dang in November,2001, and the gravity of the situation was realised. The Indians who had undertaken the modernization of the RNA in 1990 with a Rs.500 crore package now stepped in a big way. A massive reorganization and restructuring of the RNA took place, with new raisings and induction of more modern weaponry. By the end of 2003 the RNA consisted of three infantry divisions with nine infantry brigades with necessary supporting arms and logistic units. By this year the RNA has grown from58,000 to 80,000 strong army. With the introduction of the unified command, including police and armed police, the counter-insurgency force has now a strength of 1,40,000.Hari Roka,a Nepal political analyst, writing in the Sunday Times of India of 1 May 2001,feels that by the introduction of irrelevant and sophisticated arms into the RNA ,the US, India and Britain,have reduced it into a “state of complete hardware dependency”. Even though the counter-insurgency forces have a numerical advantage of 10:1 with the Maoists,not much headway has been made by the RNA to contain the burgeoning insurrency. The Maoists armed with an easily replenishable arsenal of crude weapons have managed to cock a snook at the RNA. There is a considered view that the RNA is incapable of effectively dealing with the insurgency, and its activities have been largely confined to making the Nepal valley safe. It is not the fighting quality of the rag-tag insurgents but the territory, perfect for guerilla warfare, that is proving the main deterrent to the RNA.

Since 1996 ,as per studies published by a Human Rights Group, 11,200 people have been killed. The Security Forces claim to have killed 1604 insurgents in that same period. The UN and Human Rights Watch have accused the RNA of having one of the world’s worst human-rights records “far more effective at terrorizing their own citizens than fighting the Maoists”. However, it is the Maoists who are the real terrorists. Besides press-ganging villagers into building roads, they have executed hundreds of their country-men whom they have classified as traitors. Innocent citizens have been caught in the cross-fire, and public works, like schools, clinics, bridges destroyed, forcing villagers to take shelter in neighbouring India.

India’s Dilemma

After the Royal takeover, India, along with the United States and Britain had frozen all military aid to Nepal. With India being the key provider of military assistance to the RNA, such an embargo had serious ramifications for the army. The Nepalese Army Chief, Gen. Pyar Jung Thapa Nepal, had to make a personal plea for continuing of military supplies to his forces, saying suspension would put Nepal's national security in jeopardy. However, King Gyanendra having snubbed India by refusing to grant an audience to the Indian ambassador for nearly two months, did not want to be seen as worried by Delhi’s reaction. Considering India to be Nepal’s strongest international critic, he banned Indian TV channels but allowed international channels like the BBC and CNN, to continue broadcasting during the emergency.

Some analysts feel that if the Maoists come to power in Nepal, both Pakistan and China would get close to the regime. Nepal, may then function as an anti-India nation, participating in the "encirclement" of India. (However, during Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji's recent visit to Nepal, Zhu made it clear that the Chinese Communist Party has no links with the Maoists in Nepal. With the ongoing CBMs with Pakistan,the latter, too, is unlikely to welcome the rise of Maoists- at least not while America is fighting global terrorism, and concerned with China’s expansionist tendencies)

The Indian Government has been wondering whether to continue military assistance to Kathmandu in the light of the political developments. One argument was that if New Delhi acceded to Kathmandu's request, it would be seen as siding with the king against the democratic forces in the country. On the other, if it denied help to the king, it may well lead to the Maoist rebels tightening their grip on the country.

In 1960, his late father,King Mahendra, having sacked the elected government and assumed total powers himself, had won the diplomatic tussle with India who had protested the take-over, by playing the China card, and this time Gyanendra had both the China,and Pakistan card up his sleeve. His calculations have proved to be correct. India had taken six months to knuckle down in 1960 by signing four agreements and re-establishing friendship with Nepal. This time it took just three months.

After the Afro-Asian summit’s side-line meeting with the Nepal King, the Prime Minister of India is reported to have agreed to the re-supply of military aid, albeit with certain stipulations: the King must lift the emergency and restore fundamental rights if the pace of aid is to be quicker, and also release those currently in detention under the Public Security Act.

King Gyanendra has had the last laugh. Immediately after having lifted the emergency(which came as a welcome move both inside and outside the country), the King imprisoned Sher Bahadur Deuba,the ex-PM,under the all-powerful Commission for Corruption Control act. He also announced that those arrested under the Public Security Act would not be released and that no demonstrations ,public meetings and picketing would be allowed in several places within Kathmandu valley. Press censorship will ,of course, continue.( He has,however, now permitted the Indian news channels to broadcast to Nepal, which may be a prelude to gradually easing of other restrictions imposed in Nepal).

India’s Options

India has a stake in the restoration of democracy in Nepal . From India’s point of view, despite the appalling performance of the political parties in the past, the ideal solution would be the establishment of a true constitutional monarchy and a multiparty democracy. The likelihood of the King agreeing to the disbanding of the present power set-up at this juncture is, however, remote. Having meticulously planned the royal coup, by lifting the emergency, King Gyanendra has ensured that he continues to have a unrelenting grip on the country, and that there is no deviation from his ultimate aim of establishing his legitimacy to the throne, acquired under a most bizarre set of circumstances

As the Indians are debating which is the lesser eveil, the Palace or the Maoists. the Maoists,too, are unsure who is their Enemy No 1-India or the Palace. They are of the view that India has made a road map that envisages the formation of an all-party government under the king. It fears that the proposed government will formally invite the Indian Army to Nepal in case the Maoists refuse to join the new dispensation. The fear of the Indian Army interceding in Nepal to stabilize the country, is a fear expressed widely. If such an action was ever even contemplated by India, it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would inflame passions amongst all segments of Nepalese society from the man in the street to the Maoists and the palace,and push all Nepalis to unite against “Indian imperialism”.

It is unlikely that Nepal’s security forces can conclusively defeat the Maoists - with or without military assistance - and, therefore, the only sustainable solution lies in a negotiated settlement. The prospect of a confrontation between the king and political parties while the Maoist insurgency continues is a dangerous one

But right now India has no option but to ensure the defeat ,or at least the containment, of the insurgency in Nepal. India will have to use whatever goodwill or clout it has with the warring groups to bring the palace and the Maoists to the negotiating table. A secret meeting between the Indian communists and the Maoists as reported in the media may be the first tentative step in this direction. The simultaneous pressure on the king with military assistance as the bargaining chip, may just do the trick.

May Cottage ,Barlowganj Lt Gen(Rted) RK Jasbir Singh

13 June 2005

References

1..”Gunning for Nepal”-The Time Magazine 2. “Is it Right for India to Resume Arms Supply to Nepal” & “Royal Dilemma” Times of India.- -Hari Roka,Ashok K Mehta- Suman Pradhan 3. BBC Nepali Services-Rabindra Mishra 4. “Nepal Maoists Split over India’s Strategy”-The Himachal Times-Dr US Kaul 5.Executive Intelligence Review 6. “MaoistInsurgency-A Challenge to the Royal Nepal Army”- AGNI-Lt Gen(Retd) YM Bammi 7. “Forget Kathmandu”- Manjushree Thapa