KATHMANDU - Nepal's Maoist insurgency,
which began in 1996, shows no signs of abating. Armed
rebels continue to kill security personnel as well as
civilians as their outlawed leaders issue statements - from
their hideouts - saying they will return to the
negotiating table only if the United Nations is invited
to be involved in the peace process. To prove that their
threats are not hollow, Maoists shot dead exactly 12
security personnel on the day that Prime Minister Sher
Bahadur Deuba was to host a party to celebrate King
Gyanendra's 58th birthday last week. One of those killed
was a senior police officer based in the capital, who
was shot in broad daylight, making people more
frightened than ever before. (Royal birthday
celebrations continued nevertheless.)
"The
Maoists are a bigger problem than the king," Deuba said
in an interview in the Nepali Times weekly (July 2-8).
But he has yet to show how he will respond to the Maoist
issue.
The first formal talks with the Maoists
- who are fighting to establish a republic in place
of the constitutional monarchy - started in August
2001, about a month after Deuba became prime minister for
the first time; he was later sacked by the king for
"incompetence". But they broke down, giving the Maoists
an opportunity to reorganize. The second attempt to
bring the Maoists to the negotiating table produced a
ceasefire agreement in January 2003, three months after
King Gyanendra staged a constitutional coup and
appointed a new prime minister to head the royal
government.
The ceasefire lasted for
seven months, but broke down amid reports that soldiers of
the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) shot dead 19 detainees,
suspected Maoist rebels, in the eastern hill district
of Ramechhap. On the basis of a probe conducted on
the demand of human-rights groups, the RNA subsequently
admitted that some soldiers had gone beyond their
mandate.
The existing sense of mutual mistrust
in the country is both deep and pervasive. Besides, the
Maoists' trust in Deuba is not what it used to be,
because he is now seen as the king's appointee (since
June 2). Hence the need to have a third party as a
witness to the peace process. Deuba wants to begin this
process as early as possible as the king has publicly
directed him to end the ongoing conflict and create a
stable environment so that parliamentary elections can
take place by the end of this Nepali year 2061
(mid-April 2005).
The Nepali intelligentsia,
together with most of the mainstream political parties,
do not see any harm in involving a third party,
preferably the United Nations, in the mediation process
as local efforts have been fruitless to date. Even Padma
Ratna Tuladhar, a prominent left-leaning politician who
has worked as a facilitator, has accepted that
cooperation with external parties and individuals has
become essential.
Editors Society Nepal, in
a recent resolution, urged the government to seek
UN assistance "in mediation and peace-building". In
its view, the present state of helplessness must be
ended forthwith if further losses of lives are to be
avoided. More than 10,000 people have died in the struggle, and tens
of thousands have been injured. The insurgency affects
all 75 districts within Nepal, three of which are in the
bowl-shaped Kathmandu Valley, and the future for the
poverty-stricken country's 24.8 million people cannot be
bright as long as the insurgency rages.
President Girija Prasad Koirala of the
Nepali Congress, the largest democratic party, with
centrist credentials, told an audience in the eastern town
of Biratnagar on the weekend that the political alliance of
four parties he currently heads will initiate "open
dialogue" with the Maoists if the UN agrees to become a
partner by ensuring security. "We are seeking guarantees
for security since the rebels do not trust the
government's security arrangements and it is not
possible for us to go to Maoist strongholds" without UN
security guarantees in place.
Even Deuba's
main partner in the ruling coalition, the United Marxist
Leninist party (UML) - Nepal's largest left-wing party -
is not opposed to UN participation in efforts aimed at
resolving the drawn-out conflict. The Rashtriya
Prajatantra Party (RPP) is an exception: it is known for
its pro-palace stance. Although Deuba has been
non-committal, his colleagues in the Nepali Congress
(Democratic), a breakaway faction of the main Congress
party, do not see any reason to resist the plan to seek
UN assistance as long as the government takes care of
the security concerns of Nepal's two immediate
neighbors.
"The UN is at the service of the member
states," said Matthew Kahane, UN resident
coordinator to Nepal. He has dismissed speculation that
the UN is trying to impose itself on any mediation, but
expresses the world body's concerns from time to time in
the context of Secretary General Kofi Annan's
apprehensions about the deteriorating situation in
Nepal.
In his report to the Security Council in
early June on the protection of civilians in armed
conflict, Annan listed Nepal as one of four countries
providing "the worst examples where civilians have been
suffering". Annan has offered his good offices to find a
peaceful way out.
Samuel Tamrat, Annan's special
envoy, has visited Nepal four times since the breakdown
of talks at the end of August 2003. The UN's assessment
of Nepal's situation is perhaps based on the challenges
the UN's office in Kathmandu and field units in
far-flung districts have faced in recent years.
"Continued attempts to force the UN agencies to pay
contributions put the future of our development programs
[in Nepal] at risk," a joint statement by UN agencies
said on March 12. The situation remains unchanged.
There have been other offers of mediation.
Switzerland said on June 6 that it was prepared to step
into the ring as a mediator. Finland is equally keen to
be of help to Nepal. "Finland is interested in assisting
Nepal," said Pauli Mustonen, head of the Finnish Embassy in
Kathmandu, adding that "it is for the government of
Nepal to take a decision". Another Nordic country,
Norway, has been deeply involved in the peace process
between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
India, Nepal's southern neighbor sharing a porous 1,800-kilometer-plus
land border, is also open to play some sort of
role. Ambassador Shyam Saran, who will become India's
next foreign secretary on August 1, has said New Delhi
is prepared to listen, should Kathmandu make an
overture.
Unlike India, China considers
the insurgency Nepal's internal problem, and there have
not been any reports of rebels taking shelter in Tibet
or in mainland China. "Although there are some
difficulties now being faced by Nepal, we believe that
Nepal has the capability and great wisdom to handle well
its domestic affairs and appreciate all efforts
conducive to the restoration of peace and stability in
Nepal," said Sun Heping, the Chinese ambassador in
Kathmandu, on May 14. China has reportedly assured
Nepali authorities that it will provide all "legitimate
assistance" on request.
The question remains,
though, whether Nepal should get any one of its
immediate neighbors involved. This is a delicate
question and has become an issue of debate in public
forums. "When both parties think about third-party
mediation, Nepal should not think of bringing India or
China between the two warring factions as they might be
motivated by personal benefits," British Ambassador
Keith Bloomfield told a Kathmandu audience recently.
Separately,
in a newspaper article published on July 2, the
British envoy supported the idea of taking external expertise to
work out a viable peace plan. He has cited Norway's
role in Sri Lanka. The only caveat he has is as
follows: "Third parties support the process, but they don't
control it." There is no harm in taking lessons from elsewhere,
he suggested. The United Kingdom, the United States
and India are the three main countries to have been in
close consultations on Nepal in the past few years.
Bloomfield's suggestion to exclude both of
Nepal's neighbors, particularly India, from a possible
list of mediators needs to be examined in the context of
what happened in Sri Lanka after India militarily
intervened in that island nation's affairs in the late
1980s. It eventually proved counter-productive and the
cost of intervention was high - a Tamil suicide bomber
killed premier Rajiv Gandhi on Indian soil. J N Dixit,
India's envoy in Colombo at that time, has written in
his memoirs that his country's intelligence agencies
compounded the problem leading to the final debacle.
Dixit now occupies the high-profile post of national
security adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
New Delhi's policy on Nepal is a confused mix
of preferences and prejudices. It supplies weapons to
the RNA, enhancing its ability to take on the rebels, yet
it does not deny shelter to rebel leaders in
Indian territory; its law-enforcement authorities detain some
of those who are arrested within India, and hands over
others to their Nepali counterparts without completing
extradition procedures, as stipulated in a 1953 pact
between the countries.
Delhi talks about cross-border terrorism, but
is opposed to propositions to regulate the movement of
people across the border. George Fernandes, India's
defense minister in the previous government, said last September
that his ministry had found evidence that Maoists from
Nepal were receiving arms training in India's Bihar
and Jharkhand states. Likewise, India billed Nepal's
Maoists as terrorists even before the Nepal government put
that tag on members of the banned Communist Party of
Nepal (Maoist). Yet India thinks Maoists should be
brought into the "political mainstream", as Ambassador
Shyam Saran said last Friday.
Diplomatically, New Delhi
is not opposed to Nepal's bid to restore peace through
the UN, which is preferred to other alternatives, such
as the European Union, South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation members, a Nordic country or a
neutral European nation such as Switzerland. "Nepal
itself should decide whether it wants the United Nations
or any other country to mediate to solve the Maoist
problem," the Indian envoy said during his valedictory
interaction with Kathmandu-based journalists.
Most of Nepal's
diplomats and foreign-policy experts agree that it would be prudent
for a small country sharing borders with two
big countries, China and India, to welcome mediation
from a neutral organization such as the UN or a neutral
country such as Switzerland. "The UN is the most
credible organization with no strategic interest in Nepal,"
said seasoned diplomat Yadav Kanta Silwal. He also referred
to Nepal's constitution (1990), which says the
country's foreign policy "shall be guided by the principles of
the United Nations Charter".
If the UN became
engaged, both China and India - and other UN countries -
would be kept in touch with developments. Besides, China
is one of the five permanent members of the Security
Council, which regularly receives situation reports from
the secretary general.
Silwal agrees with those
who believe that China and India stand to gain by the
UN's presence in Nepal as it would remove their current
concerns derived from the perception that the US is
unnecessarily expanding its role in the landlocked
Himalayan kingdom.
Experts who support the
UN's involvement say work should begin with the presence
of a few representatives as witnesses in preliminary
talks. Subsequently, the UN could act as facilitator to
monitor agreements and raise funds to execute concrete
action. Afterward, it could be asked to act as
mediator, but only in the event of the talks stalling.
"Of course we should accept UN mediation
if it prevents Nepal from being declared a failed
state," said Hiranya Lal Shrestha, a former member of
parliament who worked in its Foreign Relations Committee. The
UN could be told to take back its soldiers once its
mission was completed, argued Shrestha, but it would be
difficult to do so if India or China were allowed to send
troops into Nepal. (A UN force might be required as the
Maoists have indicated they would only deposit their
weapons with such a force.)
Opponents of UN
mediation say the organization is too bureaucratic to be of
real help. Professor Nicholas Haysom, who once worked as
a legal adviser to Nelson Mandela when he was president
of South Africa, is one of them. He was in Kathmandu
last month and expressed a preference for a neutral or a
group of neutral countries.
Foreign Secretary
Madhu Raman Acharya Nepal sees election-monitoring (when
they are held), humanitarian relief, human-rights
monitoring and continuation of development works in
conflict-affected areas as some of the jobs that the UN
could efficiently handle. But the question of political
mediation, he says, is something to be decided by the
political leadership. Some of Acharya's colleagues in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are aware that cases of
conflict where the UN has been involved have tended to
be protracted affairs.
Outside
officialdom, Professor Lokraj Baral of the Center for
Contemporary Studies does not think there is a role for the UN
in Nepal as it does not have the authority to fulfill
the Maoists' demands, or stop the government from
pushing its own substantive agenda.
To some
analysts and scholars, addressing India's sensitivities
is more crucial than anything else, including Nepal's
independent status. They allude to Delhi's dispute with
Pakistan over Kashmir and say that since the issue
remains unresolved - despite more than 50 years of UN
involvement - India is averse to the world body coming
again to South Asia.
"It is in the self-interest
of Nepal that we do not displease India," the Kathmandu
Post quoted Minendra Rijal, a prominent member of the
political party Premier Deuba heads, as saying. To him,
the situation in Nepal is "not bad enough to warrant UN
intervention". Critics also cite the examples of Rwanda
and Srebrenica where the UN failed, deliberately putting
aside examples where the UN has succeeded: Namibia,
Cambodia, Mozambique and East Timor. Former foreign
minister Ram Sharan Mahat is reluctant to support the
idea of bringing in the UN because it validates the
theory that Nepal is almost a failed state, with the
existence of two regimes and two armies - a claim the
Maoists have been making all along.
However,
human-rights activists appear to support the proposition
to make the UN a key player in efforts to resolve the
Maoist insurgency. "It is absurd to reject the very
concept [about the UN] simply because it has come from
the other [Maoist] side," said Krishna Pahadi, a
human-rights activist. But it remains unclear, he added,
whether the Maoists have knocked on the UN door with
honesty and sincerity, or just as a ploy to get their
comrades released from Indian jails. If the UN comes in,
said Pahadi, the Maoists will have to stop forced
conscription of under-age children, abductions, violence
and extortion. In his view, the UN presence would also
put pressure on the government on complaints relating to
disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary
arrests and impunity. Even by opening an office in
Kathmandu, the UN Commission for Human Rights could make
a good start, he observed.
Some analysts say
there is no point in retaining Nepal's UN membership
- acquired in 1955 - if the government does not
have faith in the world body. Nepal should also stop contributing
troops to UN peacekeeping missions
worldwide if this is indeed the case.
It
should be
noted that not even the world's lone superpower, the United
States, has been able to write off the UN completely with
regard to Iraq. Perhaps there is a lesson here for tiny
Nepal.
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