KATHMANDU - While the list of
Nepal's woes may begin with the Maoist insurgency and
murky politics, compounded by an assertive monarchy, its
troubles are unlikely to end before some of its inherent
contradictions are brought to the fore for public
discussion. An irony related to the Gurkhas is a
case in point. The world over they are recognized as
soldiers with a tradition of bravery, honesty and steely
fierceness, but they have been unable to weaken the
ongoing rebellion in their own homeland.
Similarly, Nepal remains one of the leading
suppliers of troops to United Nations-sponsored
peacekeeping missions worldwide, but again, members of
the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) themselves see their own
country deprived of peace and tranquillity.
To
project Nepal as the birthplace of Buddha, the apostle
of peace, is to emphasize a point that is rapidly losing
its relevance. Likewise, when the UN invites Nepal to
make troops available for missions, authorities in
Kathmandu continue to consider it as an honor, but when
the UN leadership expresses its willingness to be of
help to Nepal in extraordinary times, the same
authorities perceive the approach as some kind of
interference.
(Nepalis recruited for the British
army under agreement are traditionally called Gurkhas,
whereas those affiliated to battalions India inherited
from Britain in 1947 are referred to as Gorkhas.)
Intrigues and contradictions aside, Nepal has
not been discouraged from responding to requests for
troops to work in troubled spots around the globe.
Soldiers from Nepal are currently deployed in a dozen
places, including Congo, Liberia, Kosovo, East Timor and
Syria. A Nepali army officer, General Balananda Sharma,
heads the UN's 3,000-strong disengagement force deployed
at the Golan Heights, located between Syria and Israel.
The Nepal army considers Sharma's appointment as the
force commander there a token of recognition of Nepal's
contributions to UN peacekeeping operations since in
1958.
A mission in Sierra Leone has just ended,
and the RNA is currently making preparations to send a
contingent of about 800 soldiers to Haiti. Another RNA
unit - of equivalent strength - is to join a UN mission
within months in Burundi. The next possible destination
of Nepali soldiers is Sudan. The government has a policy
to spare up to 3,500 troops for UN peacekeeping
operations. Over 43,000 Nepali soldiers have already
served under UN auspices thus far. This indeed is a feat
for the RNA, which is now a force of 78,000 soldiers.
On a few occasions Nepal's response has not been
as prompt - or positive. The request placed by the Bush
administration for a battalion of Nepali soldiers to go
to Iraq has been one such exception in recent times.
When Washington approached Nepal - and 19 other
countries, including neighboring India - with a specific
request last August, a cabinet minister in King
Gyanendra's hand-picked government made a public
announcement at an interaction with media persons. "It
is under consideration," said the minister, Kamal Thapa,
hinting that the chance of it being declined was remote.
Indeed, Nepal immediately dispatched two army
officers to Florida in the US to pave the way for the
eventual deployment of Nepali soldiers in Iraq. They are
still in the US waiting for orders from Kathmandu.
Meanwhile, Thapa is no longer in the royal government;
official sources now admit the minister subsequently
dropped the matter as a priority.
He could have
argued that Nepal would not contribute troops unless
they were placed under UN command. But authorities were
ostensibly reluctant to send any kind of a negative note
to the Americans. "The US is still interested in Nepal,"
an American embassy official told Asia Times Online last
week, "contributing troops to peacekeeping and security
duties in Iraq."
Many Gurkhas are already in
Iraq, but in a private capacity, working mostly for
British security firms as private bodyguards, armed
escorts and security advisers, and apparently earning
extremely good money - one report suggest as much as
US$600 a day.
To the Maoists, though, fighting
for a constitutional government minus the royalty, the
US represents an evil force with "imperialist designs".
That is why they don't want to see Nepal developing
closer relations with Washington. Their anger against
Americans has to be seen in the context of the State
Department's decision to put the Maoists on a terrorist
watch list. American wrath against Maoists accentuated
after they shot dead two Nepali staff of the US embassy
in Kathmandu. About 10,000 people have lost their lives
since the Maoists launched their "people's war" in
February 1996.
And the Maoists are obviously
opposed to the RNA conducting anti-terrorist training
with American assistance. The presence of US military
instructors, goes the Maoist argument, would antagonize
Nepal's northern neighbor, China. But Beijing does not
have any sympathy for the Maoists. They describe these
communist rebels as "anti-government guerrillas" and
have vowed to prevent them from entering into Chinese
territory. (The Chinese are embarrassed to see their
Great Leader's name - Mao Zedong - being misused in
another country.)
Chinese diplomats in
Kathmandu, although concerned about Western prompting on
Tibet, have not raised the issue over a few dozen US
military trainers working with the RNA. If they had
serious misgivings regarding the external military
assistance Nepal is getting, the authorities in Beijing
would have conveyed their displeasure during the Nepal
army chief's visit to China last week. Media reports
suggest otherwise - that China actually remains keen to
be of help to Nepal. In other words, they look satisfied
with explanations the US Embassy has repeatedly made
public to deny speculative media reports that the US
plans to make Nepal its military base to monitor events
in both India and China.
New Delhi has also
expressed concern over the question of US assistance to
Nepal, disregarding the fact that India provides more
military assistance than that offered by the US and the
United Kingdom combined. The oft-repeated Indian concern
is based on fears that sophisticated American arms, such
as M16 rifles, could fall into the hands of the Maoists,
who could then smuggle them to India, taking advantage
of the porous border between the countries. Yet INSAS
rifles imported from India could also fall into the
wrong hands.
In hindsight, Nepali authorities
believe that what initially appeared to be their
inability to make a timely decision on whether or not to
commit RNA troops to Iraq has actually become a blessing
in disguise as it has saved Nepal from becoming
embroiled in the US's problems.
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