Danger in Nepal

It’s not just aging hippies who should feel concerned that the former Shangri-la of Nepal could become a Communist republic.

Besides poverty, Nepal has been cursed by poor political leadership. King Gyanendra was no exception: He came within an ace of being deposed by force in the mass protests of April this year. Within two months, King Gyanendra, 59, had fallen from absolute monarch and deity to a mere taxpaying mortal with a few minor ceremonial roles. And his arch enemies, the Maoists, are now within the citadel of power in Katmandu.

In 1996, a Maoist rebellion broke out in the countryside; since then it has claimed perhaps 13,000 lives. In June 2001, King Gyanendra ascended the throne and vowed to end the Maoist rebellion. In February 2005, he assumed total power. All that stood between the king and the Maoist rebels was the 90,000-strong Royal Nepalese Army (RNA).

Previously, India, Britain and the U.S. had supplied weapons and training to the RNA. Officially, all weapons supplies and offensive military support from the West and India ended in February 2005.

The Maoists stepped up their campaign against an army that had lost its main allies. The rebel force numbered up to 15,000 troops, with perhaps 50,000 part-time militia, and controlled 70 percent to 80 percent of the countryside.

Nepal’s democratic political parties continued to squabble among themselves, while the Maoists opted for a three-phase struggle: against the police, then the RNA and finally the Indian army, which, they assumed, would try to stop them taking Katmandu.

Until April 2005, the old tenets of Maoist insurgency applied still in the countryside, but infiltration into the Katmandu valley proved alluring, almost a replay of Saigon in the last stages of the Vietnam War.

The Maoists recognized that undermining the RNA was the key to victory. The generals had been fiercely loyal to the king. But in November 2005, with Indian help, the seven constitutional parties, or SPA, did a deal with the Maoists. They agreed to end the “autocratic monarchy.”

The parties started mobilizing street protests, most dramatically in the capital; Maoists infiltrated the disorder. April 2006 witnessed three weeks of violent nationwide protest, with police overreaction. Seventeen protesters died and thousands were injured.

A replay of the fall of the shah in Iran seemed possible, though Washington denied that it was ready to spirit away the king in a helicopter.

The democratic parties did manage to respond to the king’s forced climb-down (encouraged by a visit of a high-level delegation from Beijing). The old parliament was resurrected, and former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, an ailing octogenarian, tottered back to head the government.

The revolutionary clamor on the streets abated. That was perhaps the February 1917 event; now a different internal transformation may be taking place: the Maoists’ October Revolution by stealth.

The democratic parties began to work with the Maoist whose leader Prachanda helicoptered into Katmandu after 25 years of exile. The disciplined strategy of the Maoists enabled them to run rings around the failed democratic politicians.

Western intelligence analysts shared a consensus that there would be no military coup unless the army is severely provoked. The top brass appears to be relatively complacent about the implications of current international investigations of the army’s human-rights abuses. The army’s 10th Brigade, for example, despite its training by U.S. forces, has allegedly committed some of the worst excesses. High-level arrests could prompt an army backlash.

A South African-style ’truth and reconciliation’ process may help to heal the psychological wounds of the civil war, but the atrocities on both sides will make reconciliation much harder.

Currently, there is an uneasy official cease-fire, though Maoists continue to dominate the countryside, pursuing the old maxim: bullet and ballot.

The government and the Maoists did succeed in sending a joint letter to the U.N. on the last day of the deadline, Aug. 9. The main request was for United Nations help in confining Maoist fighters and their weapons in cantonments and for international monitoring while the army remains in barracks.

Many opponents of the Maoists feel that as long as the insurgents keep their arms (even if some fighters are in cantonment) there cannot be free elections. Maoists have used ceasefires and dialogue before — in 2001 and 2003 — and took up arms again.

India has reassured the Nepalese army of its support. It is concerned that a rebel victory could fire up the rising tide of Maoist-style insurgencies in a wide arc across the subcontinent.

Nepalese Maoists distrust the United States, but great-power involvement will give heart to the beleaguered Nepalese army and to the probable silent majority who do no want a communist takeover.

If elections take place, some Maoists could join the new parliament but the diehards may return to the battlefield. With renewed international support, the revived Nepalese army could fight and win against what can then be justly termed “terrorists.”

The United States in particular should seriously prepare to help the Nepalese army defeat any rump Maoists who want to fight on. The rebels’ model has been Peru’s Shining Path — that was defeated.

Alternatively, a victory for the Communists, 15 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, would be a propaganda blow for Washington, already reeling from setbacks in the war on terror.

Paul Moorcraft is director of the Center for Foreign Policy Analysis in London.