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A test of sincerity for Nepali
Maoists
By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Nepal is back in the international
headlines. And once again it is the Maoist rebels who
have made this possible - this time through their
ceasefire offer of January 29. The royal government of
King Gyanendra reciprocated their proposition with
unusual promptness, providing people with immediate
relief from violence and simultaneously making them
inquisitive about the whole affair. Public curiosity was
but natural in the context of the assassination of the
chief the Armed Police Force, Krishna Mohan Shrestha,
just three days before the ceasefire offer when he was
on a early morning stroll on the outskirts of the
capital city.
Cabinet Minister Naryan Singh Pun
- who will lead the government delegation at the peace
talks - says that he began the process several weeks ago
by secretly contacting top Maoist leaders in - and out
of - their hideouts. Some media reports went to the
extent of saying that Pun used his skills to fly the
helicopter he owns to ferry the Maoists to the palace,
where the monarch had face-to-face conversations with
them. The palace later denied these reports.
In
any case, the ceasefire agreement, reached between the
establishment and Maoists without any foreign
participation, has been welcomed by Nepal's neighbors
and friends abroad. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
hopes that the agreement will facilitate "an early start
of talks between the two sides and lead to the peaceful
resolution of Nepal's internal conflict". The United
States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, India and
China were among the first countries to express positive
reactions to the pledge to stop violent activities
forthwith. India expects the process of dialogue to be
conducted in an environment free from violence. China
considers the truce a significant and positive step
toward peace. (It uses the words "anti-government
forces" to refer to Maoists who, from the Chinese
ambassador's point of view, have abused the name of
great Chinese revolutionary, Mao Zedong.) Finland, which
currently heads the European Union, said through its
embassy in Kathmandu that the upcoming negotiations
should create the "right condition for free and fair
elections".
Elections - for the national
parliament as well as for village and town councils -
are critical in the context of restoring the democratic
process interrupted when King Gyanendra dismissed the
country's elected prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, on
October 4. The king accused him of being incompetent in
making arrangements for new elections to the 205-strong
House of Representatives, dissolved in May last year.
The constitution stipulates that fresh polls have to be
conducted within six months. Ironically, even the king's
government, formed on October 11, has failed to announce
new poll dates thus far. Instead, some of the ministers
have begun publicly saying that the elections cannot be
held until the Maoist issue is resolved. And nobody
gives any idea about a timeframe for this.
While
the royal government headed by Lokendra Bahadur Chand
has claimed the ceasefire accord as its solid
achievement, security analysts in the country think that
the concessions extended to the Maoists in the process
are too many, and that there has been no quid pro quo.
The Chand administration has agreed to withdraw
the notification that billed Maoists as terrorists; it
has given an undertaking to ask the international police
organization (Interpol) to retract red-corner warrants
on them; and it has scrapped the public notice putting
bounty on the heads of Maoist leaders. In addition to
this, over 4,000 Maoists workers presently under
detention are being released. "The measures taken by an
elected government to contain a violent insurgency are
being rescinded by an administration which does not have
a popular mandate," says a high-placed civilian official
who declined to be named.
Although officers of
the Royal Nepal Army do not discuss such issues on
record, it can easily be discerned from their casual
remarks that it would have been better if the Maoists
had been told to surrender at least 20 percent of the
weapons that they currently possess. Such a requirement
could have made them more serious about the upcoming
parley for a broader political solution.
Days
before the ceasefire deal with the Maoists was
announced, Defense Secretary Madan Aryal told the media
that the army had recovered only 15 percent of the
weapons that the Maoists had snatched from barracks and
check posts since the end of November, 2001.
The
timing of the ceasefire pact, analysts argue, is also
contentious. It was announced just three days after the
rebels murdered the chief of Armed Police Force, a force
that the government set up specifically to deal with
Maoist insurgency. "It sends a wrong message to the
public that Maoists can get what they want by killing
someone top on the hierarchy," says a member of the
security forces, comprising the Royal Nepal Army, the
Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force. The forces
currently operate under the unified command of the royal
army. Senior army officers agree that soldiers with low
morale can't be expected to take on the rebels if the
proposed talks fail to make any progress. Yet the talks
are unlikely to achieve anything substantive if the
Maoists continue with their original demand to abolish
the monarchy.
This apprehension is based on the
experience that the security forces gained when the
first round of official talks with rebel leaders broke
off in November 2001. The Maoists, who then were allowed
to surface from their underground hideouts to prepare
for the talks, utilized the time - about four months -
to reorganize themselves. Shortly after the end of the
third phase of negotiations, Maoist leader Prachanda
issued a statement unilaterally suspending the talks.
That statement was followed by a series of attacks on
army barracks in which hundreds of soldiers were killed
and the theft of a large quantity of arms and
ammunition. The government was forced to impose a state
of emergency that was allowed to lapse in May last year.
Over 7,000 people, meanwhile, have lost their lives, by
official count.
However, some civilian analysts
prefer to be optimistic. Narahari Acharya, who took part
in the first round of talks on the government side,
believes that the Maoists will not run away from the
negotiating table this time. "They, too, are tired of
the fight," says Acharya, a member of the country's
largest democratic party, the Nepali Congress.
And their leaders were perhaps aware that they
could not escape the glare of the international
community much longer. The Maoists would have been
included in the US list of terrorist outfits worldwide
if they had not quickly entered into the ceasefire
accord, as the US assistant Secretary of State for South
Asia, Christina Rocca, hinted during her visit to Nepal
a few weeks ago.
And in the opinion of former
prime minister Deuba, the Maoists are already a spent
force - desperate for a "safe landing". They appear to
have run out of money, guns and rations, and probably
have read the news about the government's importation of
American rifles and 5,500 machineguns made in Belgium.
Nevertheless, Deuba is cautious. "How can you
trust such an untrustworthy bunch of people?" he asks,
perhaps mindful of the fact that he was premier when
officials first met the rebels for talks in August 2001.
Deuba suspects that the Maoists may once again use their
newfound freedom to re-strengthen, train their cadres
and then abruptly walk out of the negotiation room.
Sudip Pathak, president of the Human Rights
Organization of Nepal (HURON), is among those who want
to be hopeful about the outcome of peace talks. "But my
point is the talks must be conducted in an orderly way
and should include representatives of all stakeholders,"
Pathak insists. Pathak's allusion is to the political
parties. To make the dialogue meaningful, the concerned
parties must agree to create a mechanism to monitor the
ceasefire, and should adopt a code of conduct to govern
the negotiation process.
To the political
parties, sidelined after King Gyanendra's October 4
proclamation, the whole show of the ceasefire has been
something of a jigsaw. Leaders of the Nepali Congress
and UML, a party of moderate leftists, have expressed
surprise at the way in which the monarch chose to ignore
the mainstream political forces representing over 60
percent of the country's population. "It is mysterious,"
says Ishwar Pokharel, a senior UML leader, referring to
the alleged nexus between the extreme right and the
extreme left.
And while they do welcome the
ceasefire, some party leaders appear uncertain about the
course of events to come. And there are politicians who
tend to view the ongoing exercise as a ploy to postpone
elections indefinitely. But those who do not share such
a viewpoint see such politicians as a frustrated lot.
Such politicians may conclude, contends columnist M R
Josse, "that the king has been in cahoots with the
Maoists all along."
Despite suspicion and
frustration, though, the leaders of the major political
parties have not lost hope. "I don't think organizers
can afford to ignore the political parties when the
proposed round table takes place for substantive
discussion," says Acharya of the Nepali Congress. The
other two demands of the Maoists apart from the
abolition of the monarchy are an interim government and
elections for a constituent assembly.
Nepal's
present constitution was drawn up in November 1990, in
the aftermath of a successful pro-democracy movement.
Leftist parties, including those representing the
Maoists, also participated in two of the three elections
held since then. In the first election in 1991, this
radical left group won nine seats and became the third
largest party in the 205-member parliament. But in the
snap polls held at the end of 1994 the radical group
could not win even one seat. That made its leaders
frustrated, and they then declared themselves as
Maoists, went underground, and eventually launched the
"People's War" in February 1996.
(©2003 Asia
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