SPEAKING
FREELY Lest
we forget Nepal By Shyama
Venkateswar and Sanjeev M Sherchan
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
While war unfolds in
Lebanon and India's and Pakistan's nuclear-backed
dispute over Kashmir dominates news from South
Asia, monumental changes are under way in Nepal, a
country in post-conflict transition, which rarely
attracts the attention it warrants and seems
unlikely to do so now.
Yet the arrival of
a United Nations mission last week in Kathmandu,
charged with reporting back on how to help Nepal's
shaky transition to
democracy, is well worth international attention.
There is more at stake than replacing
monarchical rule in the small, impoverished
Himalayan kingdom. No less than in the neighboring
Middle East, in South Asia causes and effects of
armed insurgency versus democratic nation-building
are regional and global, with profound
implications for regional powers such as India,
the "war on terror" and even nuclear politics.
Nepal's decade-long Maoist-led guerrilla
movement has so far led to 13,000 deaths and
disappearances as well as internal displacement,
disruption for millions, wrecked infrastructure
and economic stagnation. Since Maoist rebels and
the political parties agreed to give peace a
chance in April, the guns have mostly remained
silent. But the future of Nepal's democratic
process is uncertain. How can arguments over
decommissioning rebels' weapons be resolved? What
steps will ensure the current fragile agreement
evolves into enduring peace?
These
questions reverberate beyond Nepal's borders.
Throughout South Asia, further progress toward
stability and democracy requires a political
process that can somehow unite disparate elements
including traditional elites, armed insurgents and
millions of landless poor. In this sense, with
insurgent violence in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka, and most recently bomb blasts on Mumbai's
commuter rail, Nepal's tenuous peace process is an
important laboratory for finding regionwide
solutions.
During Nepal's early experiment with democracy-building,
Maoist rebels took part in government as
the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists. Inspired by
Peru's Shining Path and by Mao Zedong,
CPN-Maoists long advocated total land reform -
giving millions of subsistence farmers title to
land they tilled for generations. Allegiance for
youthful Maoist cadre members offered a chance to
build utopia, and more concretely, food and
employment, though not a long-lasting role in
government. Multi-party rule, which began in 1990,
suffered from fractious coalition politics,
instability and misgovernance, and lacked a clear
mandate for any single party. In 1996, the
CPN-Maoists opted out, turning to armed struggle.
Three years ago, King Gyanendra reacted by
usurping executive powers, ruling by decree,
disfranchising the political parties and rolling
back incipient democratic institutions. The stated
rationale was restoring stability, but the result
was more violence and economic and political
collapse. In March, amid the seven political
parties' demands to allow legitimate
representation, widespread protests and growing
international pressure, the king relented.
Now, UN political observers arrive at a
pregnant, delicate moment, in which the ostensible
conflict resolves, only to enter a new and
difficult phase of trying to reintegrate armed
insurgents into the political process, with
terrorism and insurgency on the rise regionwide.
Even as democratic possibilities emerge in Nepal
and elsewhere in South Asia, countervailing forces
are poised to pull them apart. How can they best
be managed?
While one size doesn't fit
all, one general lesson to draw from Latin
American and African post-conflict zones is "don't
rush". Where armed factions linger, a culture of
democracy and consensus-building needs time to
take root before a newly elected government is
relatively safe from military coup. Norms and
values of legitimate representation must gain
understanding and acceptance before a state can
make collective decisions and live with the
outcomes.
Elections, and even intermediate steps
toward democracy such as truth and reconciliation
commissions, may have to wait until the Maoists
buy into the process and all Nepal's stakeholders
have more confidence in political procedures.The
more immediate task is to convene a constituent
assembly to draft a new constitution that can
unite its various factions.
Nepal
undoubtedly must determine for itself how best to
do that. Yet it needs and deserves outside help.
The UN's monitoring role and its current reporting
mission are key. International civil society can
also help by keeping Nepal's transition in the
spotlight and by keeping humanitarian aid flowing.
But after Nepal's own people, the most
important influence over Nepal's future should be
India. No stranger to factional violence, India
has relevant experience doing everything Nepal now
must do: convening a constituent assembly,
creating a constitution, achieving open public
debate and building social consensus on
intractable issues such as caste, and bringing
disparate elements together into a workable
democratic framework. India has also addressed its
own feudal past by instituting successful land
reforms in Kerala and West Bengal.
India
can provide advice and technical help with Nepal's
transition, while taking care not to offend
nationalist sentiment or trample on Nepalese
ambitions for democratic self-determination. The
most evolved democracy of South Asian countries,
India has the most to lose if the region slides
any further toward conflict and terror and the
most to gain from promoting stability and
democracy in the subcontinent. But the rest of
South Asia and the world has a stake in seeing
democracy finally take root in Nepal.
Shyama
Venkateswar is the director of the Asia
Society's Asian social issues program.
Sanjeev M Sherchan is the senior
program officer for the South and Central Asia
programs at the Asia Society.
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Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
