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US dithers over Nepal
aid
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Two weeks after King
Gyanendra seized control of the government of
Nepal on February 1, the administration of US
President George W Bush is still undecided on
precisely how to react, beyond urging the monarch
to free all political detainees and restore
constitutional freedoms.
The State
Department "deplored" the crackdown against
peaceful protesters in Kathmandu last week and
called for those arrested by the security forces
to be "released promptly". It also called on the
government to release hundreds of others who have
been detained over the past week and lift
restrictions on media activities.
At the
same time, US Ambassador James Moriarty warned on
Friday that US aid, which has steadily increased
over the past several years to help Kathmandu cope
with an increasingly powerful self-described
Maoist insurgency, was "at risk".
He also
said that Gyanendra had promised privately to
restore democratic rights within 100 days and
suggested that Washington was prepared to wait
that long before taking tougher action. Moriarty,
who held talks with chief of the army general
staff and opposition leader Pashupati Rana after
the latter's release from house arrest on Friday,
last met the king last Monday, according to the
State Department.
"The king has been
saying that they need three months - 100 days - to
straighten some of this stuff out," Moriarty told
reporters. "And we would certainly expect him to
be addressing these questions within that
time-frame."
By "these questions",
Moriarty referred to "the restoration of
constitutional liberties, freeing of the
detainees, and the beginning of the process of
reaching out to the parties".
But a number
of analysts in Washington told Inter Press Service
(IPS) that Washington should take tougher action
much sooner, lest it be seen by the non-violent
opposition as implicitly backing the de facto
restoration of an absolute monarchy.
"Thus
far, the US administration's approach has been
rhetorically tough, but there's not a lot of
evidence that it goes beyond words," John Norris,
a special adviser on Nepal to the International
Crisis Group (ICG), told IPS.
"The State
Department has issued relatively strong language,
the ambassador has sent word to the king, but we
haven't seen any practical steps - including the
suspension of military or development aid - that
would suggest that the administration is serious
about reversing this situation," he noted.
Washington would be required by law to
suspend most of its economic and military
assistance if it concluded that the king had come
to power as a result of a military coup d'etat.
Officially, the State Department had not
come to a decision as of late Friday, but one
knowledgeable source told IPS that in fact the
administration's operating assumption was that it
was a coup by the king, even though he is now
effectively ruling through the army.
Indeed, Washington, which has been in
close consultations with India as the most
influential outside player during the crisis,
seems uncertain about what to do, in part because
it is unconvinced that any alternative short of a
radical change in Nepal's governance can save what
has been a steadily deteriorating situation,
particularly since the king threw out the
democratically elected government three years ago.
"There aren't really any good answers,"
said Teresita Schaffer, a former assistant
secretary of state for South Asian Affairs who
heads up the South Asia program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"I have difficulty seeing how you restore
pluralistic government in a situation where
pluralistic government hasn't been functioning,"
she told IPS in a telephone interview. "You almost
have to be looking at a new beginning in which
institutions function again. The status quo ante -
highly confrontational politics; politicians who
won't speak to each other on a scale that's really
bad even by South Asian standards - is not what
you want to return to," she said. "What is
ultimately the remedy is the restoration of
governance not just in the cities of Nepal, but in
the boondocks, as well."
Washington, which
considers the Maoists a "terrorist" group,
currently provides about US$45 million a year in
mostly economic but some military aid. In the past
two years, it has provided about $20 million in
aid and training to the Royal Nepalese Army
(RNA).
The military aid is designed to
improve the RNA's counter-insurgency skills, but
most experts agree that it has had little impact.
Despite the RNA's overwhelming firepower compared
to the Maoists, the insurgency now controls as
much as 85% of the countryside, compared to only
about 20% a decade ago.
"The US military
has a tendency to exaggerate its success in terms
of military training; we've seen this in
Afghanistan and Iraq," according to Robert
Templer, head of ICG's Asia division. "I'm not
convinced they've made much headway in making the
army an effective counter-insurgency force. The
critical issue is for the army to develop local
trust and intelligence sources, protect the local
population from intimidation, make it clear that
it is there on the side of the people and not
threatening the public, and none of this
happening," Templer said. "The result is that the
population finds itself caught in the middle
between a very violent insurgency and very violent
military."
Like Schaffer, however, Templer
said redressing the situation would be a major
undertaking. "There has to be a policy of
reestablishing a functioning Nepali state and to
reverse the retreat of the state from most of the
country by reclaiming areas, reopening schools,
hospitals and effectively co-opting the Maoist
agenda."
While that should not necessarily
require vastly increased aid, "much more of the
aid Nepal gets must go to tackle issues of
inequality and caste and ethnic tensions, while
there must be a recognition by the country's elite
that there can be no return to the status quo
ante, that expectations have changed, and people
are demanding that the government be more
responsible to their needs," said Templer.
Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, are
circulating a letter calling on the administration
to immediately suspend all military aid in order
to "reinforce similar moves made in recent days by
the governments of India and the United Kingdom".
The letter, written by Senator Patrick
Leahy, also noted that the administration's
request to double financing for military equipment
to Nepal next year "comes at a particularly
inopportune time, and could be misinterpreted in
Kathmandu as a sign of approval for the palace's
anti-democratic moves".
According to
Templer's ICG colleague Norris, Washington's
failure to cut off military aid is not only
ignoring a key source of leverage on the king, but
is also adding to the skepticism of Nepalis and
South Asians generally about President George W
Bush's commitment to freedom and democratic
values, which he has expounded so vigorously in
recent weeks.
"Part of the reason it's
difficult to take [Bush's rhetoric] at face value
is the fact that the administration actually
increased its support the first time the king
sacked the democratically elected government in
2002," said Norris.
"But there's also a
lot of suspicion that the administration's
rhetoric and reality don't always match up in the
region. You look at South Asia where we've given
[Pakistani] President [General Pervez] Musharraf
carte blanche, you look at Central Asia, where all
the leaders rule in the same way they did during
the Soviet era, and you can understand the
skepticism."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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