Nepal: Truce Truculence
By Sanjay Upadhya
The profound skepticism with which the Nepalese government has responded to the Maoist rebels' latest peace overtures
would ordinarily appear irresponsible. A nation that has lost over 12,000 lives and countless billions in property over
nine years of carnage is predisposed to clutching at even the weakest straw of peace.
Based on Nepal's experience, however, the government's stance is logical. During the last two peace processes – in 2001
and 2003 – the Maoists used the ceasefires and negotiations to reorganize and rearm. Once rejuvenated, they broke the
truce and unleashed a bloodier spiral of death and destruction, prompting an equally violent response from the state.
Innocent civilians caught in the crossfire have paid the heaviest price.
At a tactical level, the rebels this time succeeded in thwarting the royal regime's effort to garner international
support for its fight against terrorism. King Gyanendra cancelled plans to lead the Nepalese delegation to the United
Nations General Assembly after the Maoists' unilateral truce announcement, although government officials tried their
best to deny any connection.
The Maoist ceasefire is widely being interpreted as a show of support to the mainstream political parties, which have
been warming up to the rebels since King Gyanendra dismissed a multiparty government and took full political control on
Feb. 1. In recent weeks, the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist-Leninists – the two largest constituents of the
seven-party anti-palace alliance – have diluted their support for the monarchy.
Their failure to come out unequivocally in support of a democratic republic has alienated younger and more militant
members. Admittedly, this section will have been enthused the most by the latest Maoist overture.
There is much more than meets the eye here. Maoist supremo Prachanda has ruled out the restoration of parliament –
dissolved by Nepal's last elected prime minister in 2003 -- as a solution to Nepal's crisis. This is a blow to the
Nepali Congress's freshly re-elected president Girija Prasad Koirala, who considers such a move the first step toward
restoring constitutional rule.
Koirala was instrumental in articulating and achieving a modicum of understanding with the rebels to counter the
palace's growing political assertiveness. Prachanda, for his part, would be the last person to forget that Koirala's
party enjoyed a majority in the dissolved legislature. The rebel leader recognizes that a restoration of the house would
restore an elected government. Such an eventuality would expose the rebels to the combined vigor of the palace and
parliamentary parties.
This would explain Prachanda's sudden infatuation with UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal, whose is less
enthusiastic about restoring a legislature in which his party would be relegated to its previous place on the opposition
benches. The other members of the mainstream alliance, too, recognize the limited viability of a house that, even in
normal circumstances, would have had completed its five-year tenure.
Although the mainstream alliance has mooted the possibility of an all-party government emerging from a restored
parliament, deep suspicions and distrust among constituents continue. The history of their partnership is hardly
reassuring. This leaves an interim regime and a constitutional assembly as the minimum point of consensus between the
mainstream and the Maoists.
The Maoists are mindful of their other flank. Shortly after the ceasefire announcement, Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur
Mahara ruled out the prospect of peace talks between his party and the royal government. Logically, this ruled out the
possibility of a resolution of the bloody insurgency, considering the government holds all the levers of power. Instead,
Mahara said the rebels would hold talks with the opposition alliance, members of civil society and the international
community.
Where and how would the Maoists negotiate with them? What about the Maoist proposal for an active United Nations role, a
demand backed by over 60 human rights groups but vigorously opposed by India? While answers were being sought, Prachanda
issued another statement leaving open the prospect of dialogue with the royal regime if it reciprocated the truce. His
next statement once again seemed to foreclose that possibility.
Prachanda's ceasefire announcement reinforces the reality that the Maoists still consider a "democratic republican
order" as a temporary solution. The rebel leader simply ignored the issue of joining the political mainstream, a term he
has derided in previous comments. And for good reason.
The Maoists believe things are moving according to plan. Their strategy involves a protracted "people’s war" and the
surrounding of cities from the countryside they control, over the three phases of strategic defensive, strategic
equilibrium, and strategic offensive. Clearly, the rebels, who believe they are now in the last phase, now aim to
precipitate an urban insurrection.
From the Maoists' perspective, an alliance with the agitating political parties is feasible to the point of abolishing
the monarchy. How far their enduring commitment to the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat would go in
sensitizing pro-republic democrats remains unclear.
The circumstances surrounding the ceasefire announcement have thrown up another set of ominous questions. Prachanda
ordered the truce two days after signing a statement with Ganapathy, the general secretary of the Communist Party of
India (Maoist), reiterating their "pledge to fight unitedly till the entire conspiracies hatched by the imperialists and
reactionaries are crushed and the people’s cause of socialism and communism are established in Nepal, India and all over
the world." Coming after such fiery rhetoric, it would be difficult to see the Maoist ceasefire as an offer in good
faith.
The confusion was confounded by reports in a section of the Indian media that the ceasefire was announced at New Delhi's
behest to create international pressure on King Gyanendra, who has been cold-shouldering India. This has raised
suspicions among many Nepalese who are traditionally wary of India's motives in Nepal.
Recent developments would vindicate such sentiments. In May, leaders of India’s Left parties, which support the ruling
coalition in New Delhi, held consultations with top Maoist leaders, including chief ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, who
were brought to the Indian capital by intelligence agencies. Prachanda, who months earlier had stripped Dr. Bhattarai of
his party positions and at one point had described him as an Indian agent, suddenly rehabilitated Dr. Bhattarai under
mysterious circumstances.
Moreover, Koirala and other top leaders of most mainstream parties took turns visiting New Delhi for consultations
before a formal proposal for a mainstream-Maoist alliance was made public from both sides.
Irked by the sustained royal snub, New Delhi has begun reviewing its traditional support for constitutional monarchy.
Because of divisions within the political and security establishments in the Indian capital, a formal policy shift has
not been announced.
One section believes that the Maoists cannot be defeated militarily and that their emergence as a major political force
in Nepal must be accepted. This section, primarily ensconced within the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, counsels
that involving the Maoists in the political process – preferably in alliance with mainstream parties -- would moderate
the rebels' rhetoric and policies.
The mainstream parties and the Maoists, which have enjoyed the patronage of New Delhi during different periods of their
existence, would be more amenable to Indian security, political and economic sensitivities than a monarchy committed to
expanding Nepal's sovereign space by, among other things, loosening India's stifling dominance of the kingdom.
The opposite section, representing the Indian home and defense ministries, rejects the very notion of moderating the
Maoists. It believes that abandoning the kingdom to the rebels would only embolden Maoist insurgents in India, active in
some 40 percent of the country’s 593 districts, to achieve their wider objective of establishing a compact revolutionary
zone in South Asia.
Recent revelations in the Indian press that Nepal and China had signed a multi-million dollar arms deal during Nepalese
Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey recent visit to Beijing would be enough to enervate those who consider the kingdom
within India's exclusive sphere of influence. Despite the recent upswing in New Delhi's ties with Beijing, Chinese
overtures to the royal regime are still seen by many in the Indian establishment as a step toward undermining India's
strategic foothold in kingdom.
This development could generate greater pressure on the Indian government, which officially remains committed to
constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy as the two pillars of stability in Nepal, to publicly announce a policy
that excludes the monarchy.
Having achieved his principal objective – preventing King Gyanendra from taking Nepal's fight against terrorism to the
United Nations General Assembly – Prachanda immediately started threatening to withdraw the truce. What about his
conflicting statements about talks with the government? Already having come this far, the rebel leader might have
thought he could entice the royal regime into a compromise on his own terms. The stubbornness of the government is
likely to expose the truce for the farce it is.
ENDS