Spotlight
Farewell to arms
ANUJ CHOPRA
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It's a fragile peace for now as Nepal's Maoists try to achieve their goals through the processes of parliamentary democracy.
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Photo: Anuj Chopra
Ballot power: Pratiksha addressing an election meeting.
IT has been five hours on the road from Kathmandu. As our destination nears, the countryside gets more idyllic: old wooden houses; vast tracts of land full of blooming maize crops; little children waving at passers-by. Then, unexpectedly, a red flag. The car grinds to a halt. A gun ominously darts out from a foxhole. I realise I'm in rebel territory.
This is the headquarters of the Fourth division of the Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA), a rag-tag army of Nepal's Maoists.
A day before this, I was in another camp in the Nawalparisi district, to try and meet the rebels. I was banished from speaking with cadres after a lanky deputy commander politely broke the news that he couldn't get permission from "higher ups". This time, I keep my fingers crossed.
With the traditional lal salaam (a salute by clinching the fist against the heart), I'm greeted by Pratiksha, a pleasant lean man, who is the commander of this division. (Pratiksha is his revolutionary nom de guerre. He refused to divulge his real name.)
A bevy of young rebels, rifles slung across shoulders, march in ungainly, long columns. Another bunch is busy playing volleyball close by. All of them are waiting to disarm.
Changing landscape
For more than a decade, Nepal 's Maoists have carried out a protracted armed struggle in rural and remote areas of Nepal. It's been quintessentially an armed struggle akin to Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung's organised peasant insurrection. But now, Nepal's destiny is about to change. This gun-totting tribe, underground for years, is morphing into a part of the political mainstream.
Under a novel power-sharing agreement with Nepal 's seven-party ruling alliance, the Maoists will join the interim government, followed by elections for a special assembly to rewrite the Constitution. Until then, the Maoists are sequestering their troops in seven main camps, like this one, and 21 satellite camps. Here, under United Nations supervision, they're readying to lock up their arms in padlocked containers.
Teevrata Singh, a young diminutive rebel, joined the Maoists three years ago. Her village in remote Nepal is severely backward and poor. Economic deprivation and a lack of opportunities automatically made people incline towards the revolution that the rebels espouse. "The rich get richer," she says, a large, archaic .303 riffle in hand. "It's us poor who suffer. I decided to pick up a weapon only to get my rights." At 22, she's adept at guerrilla warfare. She's been a part of innumerable raids on military camps and doesn't flinch when she says she's killed several Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) soldiers.
She's glad now that their movement is taking a new turn. "I've lived in hiding for years," she says. "I can't wait to resume a normal life again." Her fellow rebels echo the same sentiment.
Against monarchy
A warm winter sun reveals itself in a sullen sky, and conversations get thicker. Over a steaming cup of Nepali tea with a strong cardamom and ginger flavour, the rebels mention how much they abhor King Gyanendra and want the monarchy abolished. "No one wants the King to rule us. They don't even want him as an emotional symbol," says Pratiksha. "People need to choose their own leaders."
For now, there are 40 U.N. monitors working in rebel cantonment camps, trained and deployed to carry out the arms monitoring process. The number of U.N. monitors will continue to expand progressively until they reach their full contingent of 186 monitors.
It's still a daunting challenge to disarm the rebels. There's still contention over their numbers. The army has 90,000 troops, and the Maoists want it shrunk by half. The Maoists joined an interim Parliament last month and are scheduled to join an interim government that would conduct the election. But this has been delayed for months, angering the former guerrillas.
Despite the challenges, analysts say what's happening in Nepal is quite unprecedented. India 's ferocious Maoists, for instance, have spread to 16 of the country's 28 states, and they're spreading like wildfire, killing hundreds and are India's biggest internal security threat. And there's no solution in sight. Nepal, on the other hand, presents a searing case study to our conflict-ridden world: how an armed revolution can be successfully quelled, not by military might, but through dialogue.
But, what's the guarantee that the Maoists won't pick up arms and Nepal won't slip into anarchy again? For now, the Maoists are keeping the keys to U.N. containers and keeping their options open. They continue to carry weapons for "protection of top-rung leaders" like their chairman, Prachanda.
The U.N.'s top human rights official, Louise Arbour, is calling for former Maoist rebels to be prosecuted for human rights abuses — disappearances, brutal beheadings and torture — during Nepal's civil war. It would be "catastrophic", she says, to grant amnesties on either side.
Brig. Gurung's house was raided and blown up twice by the rebels last year. He's the spokesperson for the RNA. It roils him, he says, every time he sees the same rebel combatants in their area, moving around scot-free. He wishes there's accountability for their deeds.
"You can never trust them," says Ram Rajiv Sitaula, a manager at a large company that manufactures lager beer at a plant just outside Kathmandu. Last year, a colleague of his was kidnapped by the rebels and later released in exchange for a sizeable ransom. And extortion threats have been frequent in the last decade and continue even after the peace accord was signed in November. "The rebels are worried about their image — they'll soon fight elections," he tells me. "Let's hope things remain calm."
James Francis Moriarty, America 's ambassador to Nepal recently accused the rebels of violating the peace accord by going on recruitment frenzy to keep a sizeable chunk of PLA cadres out of U.N. cantonments. And the U.S. is keeping the Maoists on their terrorists list for the moment.
Different means
Later that day, Pratiksha goes out to a cleared forested patch, two miles away, to address a gathered crowd of locals from neighbouring villages. People listen in rapt attention. "We're not driven by the gun," he says. "We're intellectually driven. We picked up arms only to fight the feudal system of the State. Now it's no longer an armed struggle. Our means are different. The ballot will be our strength."
Strange words from a man who has practised communism and staunchly rejected parliamentary democracy for a decade. His speech invites a burst of applause. In a private moment later on, I ask Pratiksha if it was likely the Maoists would return to their old method of armed rebellion again. He stops to ponder. His head wrinkles with thoughts. And then with a smile, "If there's no other way."
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