NEPAL, WHAT NEXT?
by B.Raman
Despite the claims of Prince Regent Gyanendra and Prime
Minister G.P Koirala that King Birendra of Nepal, the Queen and four other
members of the family died due to an "accidental discharge of an
automatic weapon", it is widely believed in official circles in
Kathmandu that they were killed by Crown Prince Dipendra, since proclaimed
King, in a fit of anger in a state of inebriation following a family
quarrel after dinner on June 1.
The only eye-witnesses were reportedly Mr.Dhirendra, the
youngest brother of the late King, who lost his royal title after marrying
a foreigner, Princess Sruti's husband Gorakh and two of the ADCs of the
late King. The identities of the ADCs have not been revealed; nor have
they been questioned by the Police to ascertain the exact circumstances of
the massacre.
It is also not clear whether Dipendra sustained his
brain injury while trying to commit suicide after killing his parents and
others or whether he was shot at by the ADCs. He is reported to be brain
dead and in an irreversible coma and is unlikely to be ever able to
function as a King.
Thus, Prince Regent Gyanendra is for all practical
purposes the de facto King and will become de jure after the death of
Dipendra He is a well-known environmentalist of Nepal and Chairman of the
King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation.
Though there were rumours in the past of his having
secret links with the Maoists and of his wanting/trying to use them to
weaken the traditional/mainstream political parties and thereby further
strengthen the position of the royalty, these rumours were
unsubstantiated. These were also unlikely because the royalty and the
mainstream political parties are both the main targets of the Maoists.
Moreover, last year, the Maoists had attacked a number of industrial and
business enterprises, including a tobacco factory owned by Gyanendra, in
order to drive foreign multinationals out of Nepal.
The fact that the Ranas, who revolted against King
Tribhuvan in 1950-51, had appointed the then three-year-old Gyanendra as
the King, had also put a question mark over his head in the past, but he
had remained loyal to King Birendra and maintained a low political
profile, confining himself to environment protection related activities.
There is considerable concern in political and
non-political circles in Kathmandu over the possibility of the Maoists
taking advantage of the resulting uncertainty in the country, which is
likely to continue until Gyanendra establishes himself firmly with a
satisfactory working relationship with the Government and the political
class. Another source of concern would be the role of the 35,000-strong
Army? Would it transfer to the new King its unquestioned loyalty of the
past to the late King Birendra? What would be its attitude to the new
royal family in general and the Government in particular if it apprehended
a triumph of the Maoists? Would it be tempted to take over the
administration of the country with or without the approval of the new King
under the pretext of preventing a Maoist take-over?
It was in February 1996, that the Nepal Communist Party
(Maoist) and the United People's Front (UPF) started their "people's
war" for the establishment of a Mao style dictatorship of the
proletariat in Nepal following a meeting on July 1, 1995 between the
Indian Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (People's War Group) and the
Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) after which they issued the following joint
statement: "The Parliamentary system of the reactionaries is facing a
crisis everywhere, but the revisionists still are shamelessly trying to
take the people along that path. It has, therefore, become essential to
eliminate the counter-revolutionary confusion of the parliamentary system
and lead the people toward people's war. The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
revolutionaries of all countries thus bear the historic responsibility of
unitedly providing leadership to the imminent world revolution so as to
direct it along the path shown by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao by
thwarting revisionist conspiracies."
The "people's war", initially started in six
districts, has since spread to more than 50 out of a total of 75 and has
recently shown signs of having extended its bases to the neighbourhood of
Kathmandu and even Kathmandu, causing concern amongst Western countries,
which have a large number of their tourists visiting Nepal, and local and
foreign businessmen. The chief commander of the Maoist insurgents is
Comrade Prachanda, whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal and its chief
ideologue Baburam Bhattarai.
The Chinese authorities have taken care to avoid any
suspicion of a link with the Maoists and during his visit to Kathmandu
last month, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China was reported to have
reassured the Nepalese leaders that Beijing and the Chinese Communist
Party had nothing to do with the Maoists, who, according to Beijing,
seemed to be operating independently. There is so far no reason to doubt
the Chinese assertion, but if the Maoists ultimately triumph in capturing
power in Kathmandu, the immediate beneficiaries would be China and
Pakistan.
There are indicators of assistance to the Maoists from
the intelligence services of North Korea and Pakistan, who could be acting
in tandem or separately, and from the Maoist Shining Path guerillas of
Peru. Since 1996, there have periodically been reports of the presence of
Peruvian Maoist ideologues and guerilla warfare experts with the Maoist
groups operating in Nepal.
The Nepal Police, which till now has been mainly
responsible for counter-insurgency operations against the Maoists, has had
very little professional training in such operations and has a very weak
intelligence collection capability. The five-year-old "people's
war" has already cost over 1,500 fatal casualties, the majority of
them being Maoists, many of them allegedly killed in false encounters by
the police. The police casualties have also been high (over 200).
The Nepalese counter-insurgency experts allege that the
Maoists have also been receiving arms and ammunition and explosives from
the People's War Group of India. The ineffective performance of the Police
against the Maoists could be attributed to the following:
* The lack of will of the political leadership due to a
fear of a popular backlash if too strong an action was taken against
the guerillas. In the last general elections in 1999, the various
leftist parties of the country--there are eight of them-- received
37.7 per cent of the popular vote, an increase of 5.82 per cent over
the 1994 general elections. The political leadership is afraid that
many of these leftist sympathisers might gravitate towards the
Maoists.
* Lack of professional training and modern weapons.
For
political reasons, the Government is reluctant to seek Indian
assistance. The Maoists allege that Kathmandu has been in receipt of
training assistance from the US and the UK. Even if true, this has not
made substantial difference.
* The reluctance of the army to get involved in
counter-insurgency lest the army's involvement result in its
politicisation. Moreover, while the elected Prime Minister is
responsible for all police deployment over which the King has no
control, the King has the ultimate authority for Army deployment over
which the Prime Minister has little control. The Army's reluctance is
also attributed to the fact that an unestimated number of ex Gurkha
servicemen of the Indian and British armies have joined the ranks of
the Maoists and the Army is, therefore, afraid of its soldiers getting
infected if it participated in counter-insurgency against the Maoists.
Moreover, the political leadership itself, while
periodically making statements about the deployment of the Army and
indirectly blaming the late King for the difficulties faced by it in doing
so, seems to be wary of calling in the Army in a big way lest it
antagonise the leftist sympathisers in the general populace. It has
avoided calling a meeting of the National Defence Council (NDC),
consisting of the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Army chief,
which only can recommend to the King the use of the Army for
counter-insurgency.
Individual political leaders (but not the Prime
Minister) and Police officers have periodically been critical of the Army
for not supplying to the Police modern arms and ammunition and for not
going to the assistance of police stations besieged by the Maoists on the
ground that the Army could not intervene without the orders of the King.
On the other hand, the Chief of the Army Staff, General
Prajjwal Sumsher JB Rana, has been insinuating that the political
leadership has not been serious in wanting to deal with the Maoists effectively
as, otherwise, the Prime Minister would have convened a meeting
of the NDC. He said in April last year that the NDC should have been
activated as national security had been threatened by the Maoist
insurgency, but the political leadership had not done so. "It is
immaterial who is in the government; the crucial point is, the NDC should
be activated for the sake of greater national interest," he said.
He termed the Maoist movement a serious issue for
national security. "In such a serious moment, it is important that
the role and responsibility of an apolitical institution like the Army is
expanded," he added, hinting thereby that it was the political
leadership and not the Army which was against giving the Army a greater
role.
This contentious debate regarding the role of the Army
in dealing with the Maoists, involving the palace, the political
leadership and the Army, had not been satisfactorily resolved during the
days of the late King and could assume worrisome proportions under the new
King.
The ever-inherent tensions in the Nepalese State,
Government and civil society and amongst the three institutions of the
State viz, the King, the political executive and the Army, could get exacerbated
in the months to come if the different dramatis personae do not
conduct themselves with balance and this could provide external forces
inimical to India an opportunity to fish in troubled waters. If the
internal situation deteriorates in the coming months either due to an
aggravation of these tensions or due to an uncontrollable increase in
Maoist activities, India would be the main sufferer.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
