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3 Nepal: Little peace for the
peacekeepers By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Nepal's fledgling peace
process is becoming one of the first
preoccupations of the new United Nations secretary
general, Ban Ki-moon. Next Thursday, the Security
Council is expected to discuss and approve a plan
for setting up a field office with the twin
responsibilities of monitoring movement of arms
and armies (belonging both to Maoist insurgents
and to the state) and extending assistance for
conducting polls for a constituent assembly,
initially scheduled for June.
Whether the
rapidly deteriorating law-and-order situation will
make such an exercise feasible within months
remains a matter of
conjecture. The departure this
weekend of UN representative Ian Martin for New
York must be seen in the light of this emerging
scenario.
To those who have seen Nepal
sending peacekeepers for UN missions worldwide in
the years since 1958, a reverse scenario seems
incredible. Soldiers from Nepal, the native land
of the Gurkhas, used to receive instant affection
and cooperation wherever they worked - from
Lebanon to Cyprus and from Haiti to the Congo.
While members of the Nepalese army continue even
today to take up UN assignments in different parts
of the globe, they no longer enjoy the privilege
of being identified as the men from the country
that also takes pride in being the birthplace of
the Buddha, the messenger of peace.
Nepal
ceased to be a peaceful country after Maoists
launched an armed insurgency in early 1996. The
rebellion claimed more than 13,000 lives in a
decade before the rebel leaders agreed to be one
of the two parties to a peace accord signed in
late 2006. But despite the pact - and several
other confidence-building measures - Nepal's
population of about 25 million is not securely
free from Maoist intimidation and extortion.
For example, cantonments have been set up
in various places to house combatants, and the
government has already released money for their
upkeep, but Maoist groups continue to collect
"taxes" from a number of sources, ranging from bus
drivers working in national highways in Terai
(flatland in the south) to schoolteachers in
remote hill districts. Senior Maoist leaders have
given interviews to media defending the
continuation of their tax collections. This
practice will continue until the party joins the
government, Baburam Bhattarai recently told a
radio interviewer.
Violations of the
agreement continue to take place across the
country. Understandings and agreements reached at
the central level, between the Maoist leadership
and leaders of seven political parties in power,
are being visibly ignored by the Maoist cadres at
district and village/town levels. Hundreds of
thousands of internally displaced persons have,
for instance, not been allowed to return to
villages where they had homes and farmlands. Their
properties have been forcibly seized by Maoist
workers.
To make matters worse, the Maoist
leadership resisted government decisions to
re-establish hundreds of police stations uprooted
by rebels during the insurgency. Civilian
officials assigned to run village and town
councils as secretaries are hesitant to return to
their work stations, fearing Maoist attacks.
The coalition government led by Prime
Minister Girija Prasad Koirala contends that
police presence and resumption of routine work by
village secretaries would help restore an
atmosphere conducive for elections to the
constituent assembly, but Maoist leaders tend to
look at the government initiatives as a ploy to
stop them joining the interim government per the
provisions of peace accord. On Wednesday, top
Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda)
issued a statement abandoning his earlier stand on
police posts and village secretaries.
But
doubts persist whether the rank-and-file members
would be willing to abide by the orders from the
high command. Another point that makes local
denizens apprehensive is that particular provision
of peace accord under which boxes containing rebel
weapons would have a single-lock system, and the
keys would be in the possession of Maoist guards.
Of course, there is a role for the UN to place a
security device in the area where the weapons are
stored, but its effectiveness is seriously
doubted. Besides, the UN has been asked to send in
only civilian monitors.
When can Maoists
join the interim government that is currently
headed by Koirala, who also heads the country's
largest political party, the Nepali Congress?
Koirala says that once the process of arms
management begins with promised UN assistance, the
country will embark on the political steps that
have been previously agreed upon. Promulgation of
an interim constitution, replacing the one enacted
in 1990, would pave the way for creation of a
330-member interim legislature from where a
full-fledged interim cabinet would be formed to
oversee forthcoming elections.
While it
may not take more than a couple of weeks for the
UN mechanism to be operational for arms
management, the ongoing debate on the interim
constitution could be protracted. The draft
leaders of seven parties as well as Maoists agreed
on - and initialed - on December 16 has sparked a
major controversy nationwide. And the points of
disagreements are not confined to flaws and
clumsiness in the Nepali language employed to
write it. Some of the disputes are related to
substantive issues.
These include a demand
to spell out each of the fundamental rights a
citizen is entitled to. The current draft
stipulates that
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