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Maoists take their battle to Nepal's
heart
By Deepak Thapa
KATHMANDU - It has been more than two weeks
since the end of the ceasefire between the government
and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). When the
rebels declared, on August 27, that there remained no
justification for the seven-month-long truce, all had
not seemed lost. Since they had not explicitly stated
that the ceasefire had ended, there still seemed a hint
that it was a pressure ploy to force concessions out of
the government. For its part, the government once again
urged the Maoists to return to the negotiating table,
even while it declared that it was ready to face any new
challenge.
But the very next day, August 28, the
Maoists made clear their intent when they struck in the
heart of Kathmandu. Two army colonels were shot, one of
them fatally, sending the establishment into a tizzy
over what could follow. Even more brazen was the attack
the next day on a former state minister for home
affairs, Devendra Raj Kandel. It was during Kandel's
tenure that the Nepali government had declared the
Maoists "terrorists" and announced rewards for the
capture or killing of top Maoist leaders. Although
Kandel survived the assassination attempt, there was no
doubt now where the Maoists were going to focus their
attention - Kathmandu.
In fact, during the
ceasefire, the Maoists had made it quite clear that
Kathmandu would not be spared in the next round of
fighting, should the hostilities resume. Maoist leaders
had proclaimed as much in their public pronouncements as
well as in private conversations. In the preceding seven
years, the capital had seen only occasional bombings,
and these had not done much damage. The killings and
sabotage had been overwhelmingly limited to the rural
hinterland.
In a repeat of what the country saw
in the initial days of the nine-month emergency imposed
in November 2001, an average toll of 10 Maoists killed
has been reported every day in various encounters since
the breakdown of the peace process. There have, however,
not been any major battles so far. The one exception was
in the western Nepal district of Rolpa, in the heart of
Maoist country, when a "long-distance patrol" of a
combined force of the army and the armed police was
pinned down in a gully by Maoists for nearly 24 hours.
The government troops ran out of ammunition and the
army's newly-acquired night-vision helicopters had to go
to the rescue. Details of this engagement are yet to be
revealed by the army, and neither have any authoritative
independent reports emerged.
Besides the Rolpa
encounter, the Maoist dead are accounted for in minor
skirmishes. The rebels themselves have, so far, not
mounted any major attacks in the manner they did during
the earlier fighting. They have struck soft targets,
such as soldiers and policemen on leave or on guard
duty, suspected informants among ordinary folk, and
abandoned police posts. They have also laid booby traps
on highways and roads, injuring security personnel and
civilians alike. The Maoists have also called for a
three-day bandh (general strike) starting
September 18, and past experience suggests that this
could be the occasion for greater violence. All in all,
a strategy designed to strike terror among the general
population appears to have been adopted, and it seems to
be succeeding to some extent. People in the already
sparsely populated western Nepal are fleeing their homes
by the thousand, with the majority going to India to
find work.
To meet the new exigencies brought
about by the renewed fighting, the army has entered an
expansion phase. In the past two years, it has already
grown by 10,000 to reach 60,000. It is currently
planning to add another 5,000 soldiers to its force. In
the field, counter-insurgency experts from the US
military, numbering around 50, are believed to be
conducting training. But the army's image received a
severe battering when the National Human Rights
Commission indicted it for the massacre of 17 people in
Ramechhap district in eastern Nepal, on August 17, the
very day the government and the Maoists sat down to the
much-awaited third round of talks. The killings, and the
implied insecurity for the Maoists, were cited as one of
the reasons for the Maoist withdrawal from the talks.
Much of the action is still going on in the
hills and plains outside Kathmandu, but the detached
complacency of the capital's denizens has now been
shattered. In the past week a series of bombs exploded,
including one that killed a schoolboy. These daring
attacks have forced the government onto the back foot,
and security for top government officials and
politicians has been tightened. Security personnel have
also been ordered not to venture out unless absolutely
necessary. Kathmandu's security apparatus was put under
the unified command of a major-general of the army. An
11 pm to dawn curfew was imposed in parts of the
Kathmandu Valley, outside the city limits. The capital
appears to be in the grips of a siege mentality.
But that did not prevent the Maoists from
shooting dead two people in a busy area on Kathmandu's
outskirts on Friday, September 12. One of them was
affiliated to the students' body allied to the Rastriya
Prajatantra Party - the party of Prime Minister Surya
Bahadur Thapa, and the other an ordinary bystander. The
government's response was a night time curfew in
Kathmandu, as well as in the twin city of Lalitpur. For
now, the siege seems complete.
Deepak
Thapa is a Kathmandu-based journalist and
editor.
Published with permission from the
South Asia Intelligence Review of the South
Asia Terrorism Portal
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