How Strong Is The Maoist Peace Camp?

By Sanjay Upadhya
December 21, 2006

The ecstasy over the outbreak of peace has abated somewhat with the government’s ambassadorial appointments ostensibly aimed at spreading universally the message of amity. The severity of the Maoists’ denunciation of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) government’s “ill-timed” decision was less surprising than the swiftness with which they were able to enforce their six-hour stoppage the other day. At a deeper level, though, this public display of the fragility of the peace process offers a timely reminder of the perils of unrestrained optimism.
The success of any peace and reconciliation effort will depend, above all, on the control Maoist chairman Prachanda exercises over his organization. Until the latest outburst, his political and military lieutenants seemed to be firmly behind the process. Moves to sequester Maoist fighters in UN-managed camps appeared to have started well. It was not difficult to attribute the persistence of abduction, extortion and other violations of the peace accords to Maoist maladjustment. Considering the rollercoaster ride the peace process has proved to be over the past several months, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala may be right in refusing to see the latest episode as a crisis.
Yet doubts about the Maoists’ commitment to peace continue to hover over the horizon. How genuine is the peace consensus in the organization and how long might it prevail? Even an informal rift in rebel ranks could torpedo the gains of the last several months. The national anxiety deepens when one considers that a formal split is still possible.
Indian Maoists have been unequivocal in their criticism of Prachanda’s latest path. Accusations of betrayal have been emanating from a wider universe of the international left long sympathetic to the insurgency. In this climate, any breakaway Maoist faction would not find it too hard to find ideological allies. The swiftness with which moral sustenance can translate into military support is evident in the Maoists’ own evolution since 1996.
The essential question remains: what stakes do the Maoists have in peace? For all the triumphalism Prachanda and Co. have been exuding, the Maoists have paid a hefty price for peace. Militarily, they seemed capable of overrunning the capital and establishing their cherished people’s republic. What impelled them to join hands with the parliamentary mainstream against the monarchy? More importantly, what effect has this alliance with one of their two principal adversaries had on the fighters? “Recognition of international realities” – the Maoists’ phrase of choice – hides more than it reveals. From the outset of the April movement that ousted the royal regime, the SPA has been treating the Maoists as the eighth player, not as the representatives of the “new state” the rebels so energetically project themselves as.
The extent to which Prachanda went to praise India could not have gone unnoticed in an organization that began its original 40-point demand with a tirade against New Delhi’s sustained subjugation of Nepal. Even if the entire Maoist entity were to somehow share Prachanda’s political pragmatism, far fewer would be ready to countenance his conversion to capitalism, something unmistakable in his recent pronouncements.
Prachanda may have lost the credibility to revert into a hardcore revolutionary. Prime Minister Koirala may rescue his peace partner by immediately promulgating the interim constitution and inducting the Maoists into an interim government and parliament. How would such a peace feed into the discontent voiced by other constituencies?
The Terai may yet be calmed, especially considering its proximity to the external agent most able to stoke instability. After all, it was only in the latter phase of the Maoist insurgency that violence really gripped regions bordering India. More ominous are the bruises inflicted in India by the identification of Hinduism with the monarchy. A Hindu republic of Nepal carries considerable resonance among constituencies there that are more than capable of articulating their displeasure.
For now, each of the three political forces claims to enjoy the people’s mandate. A souring of the popular mood could erode the credibility of the entire arrangement that began with the House of Representative Proclamation. The wildly varying opinion polls on the monarchy have flustered the SPA and the Maoists. Uncertainty may yet unite them against the palace. Would that be enough to sustain the peace process? Eternal optimism is a feeble basis for peace; it is dangerous when the process is so amorphous.

Can We Ever Reconcile Our Relative Truths?

By Sanjay Upadhya
November 13, 2006

Amid calls for the creation of a truth and reconciliation committee to complete the peace process, Maoist leader Dev Gurung has come out with his own flash of candor.
He wants a separate ministry to oversee the reconstruction of infrastructure lost in the decade-long “people’s war”.
It would have been comforting to accept Gurung’s assertion as the ultimate acknowledgment of responsibility. If those intent on blowing up Nepal into Year Zero in their quest for a utopia could genuinely undergo such a radical change of heart, well, more Nepalis should be encouraged to bare their souls.
But genuineness is not something that can be easily equated with Gurung’s organization. And not entirely because of the scale of the death, destruction and debris the Maoists have unleashed. A fully and credibly disarmed Maoists – if that could ever be achieved – would still retain their lethal verbal weapons of obfuscation and prevarication.
It has become fashionable to cite post-apartheid South Africa as an example of truth being an effective tool for reconciliation. Not every nation is blessed with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Where Nepal is at a real disadvantage is that truth, here, is more likely to be relative. It would be unfair to single out the Maoists on this count.
Let’s begin with the creation of the modern Nepali state. Decades of profuse state-inspired tributes bestowed upon King Prithvi Narayan Shah almost superhuman abilities. If Lord Ram needed his Hanumans and Bibhishans, could the king of Gorkha have achieved much without confidants and commanders?
In the inevitable backlash, democratic Nepal has veered the other way. National unification stands on clusters of eyeballs, nasal cartilage and ear lobes, not to mention corpses. The Capuchin missionaries – the most prominent chroniclers of the fall of Kirtipur – may have been faithful to what they had witnessed. It hardly seems to matter today that they were allies of the Mallas who had persuaded the British to send Captain Kinloch’s ill-fated expeditionary force against the Gorkha army.
The elasticity of our authenticity endures in other ways. Those condemning the conquerors for having imposed conformity through Khas-Nepali words and practices on diverse indigenous peoples rise up in anger each time a foreigner is perceived to be denigrating Nepal.
Political truths are all the more ambiguous. Was King Tribhuvan’s flight to New Delhi part of a carefully devised plan to turn Nepal into a beacon of democracy? Or was the monarch, already under increasing threat from the Rana rulers, pursuing a strategy for survival?
Was the Nepali Congress really the driver of the 1951 changes as it claims? Or did the organization merely provide the street power for an initiative our southern neighbors had devised to counter the radicalization of our northern ones? Democracy resulting as a byproduct is certainly not the same as one genuinely created.
The palace’s consolidation of political power after the dawn of democracy is attributed to ambitious monarchs. Perhaps. But could such a quest have succeeded without the compulsions that seemed to rally most stakeholders around the palace for stability?
King Mahendra’s distress at the emergence of a competing national institution is solely blamed for the overthrow of Nepal’s first elected government. Doubtless, the monarch could barely conceal his antipathy for party politicians in his pronouncements as crown prince. But does that sufficiently explain how up to three-quarters of the 74 Nepali Congress legislators in the lower house could end up supporting the palace? Or is the palace to be blamed for this en masse surrender?
The freedom fighter in Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru could have done nothing less than denounce the royal takeover as a setback to democracy. How do we explain the massive economic assistance New Delhi went on to infuse into the partyless system? Certainly not just because of the torrent of Chinese, Soviet, American and British aid and expertise?
B.P. Koirala based his acceptance of the referendum verdict in favor of the Panchayat system in 1980 on the duties of a democrat. Or was it the anti-communist in him speaking? But, then, who knows how national reconciliation really came to be the euphemism B.P. used to trade house arrest in Emergency-era India for a second stint at Sundarijal? These issues are relevant to understanding why sections of the Nepali Congress – a party that attempted regicide twice in the 1960s and 70s – should still feel compelled to advocate a ceremonial monarchy.
The pragmatism that had taken over Nehru’s Delhi after the 1962 Sino-Indian war could not have melted merely under his grandson’s purported personality clashes with King Birendra. Could Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s landmark visit to China in 1988 have encouraged New Delhi to twist the palace’s arms and slip that 80-page draft memo on the entire gamut of ties to find out which one would work first?
The People’s Movement of 1990 cast a more ominous shadow. Did King Birendra restore multiparty democracy at that late-night meeting or did he simply lift the ban on parties? The distinction is important considering how Nepalis had to spend the subsequent 11 years in a twilight zone. Of course, it took King Gyanendra’s dismissal of Sher Bahadur Deuba’s elected government for our politicians to tell us that the slain monarch was not, after all, the model constitutional monarch they had made him out to be.
The Maoists seem to have been the biggest winners of the April Uprising. Let’s take a closer look. Until last week, the rebels seemed to have won half of their original demands. After the Baluwatar agreement, they have settled for 25 percent, by acknowledging that the House proclamation had already suspended the monarchy.
Yet the real record lies in their virtual silence on the first nine of their 40-point demand. True, Prachanda and his comrades are still calling for a more equitable relationship between Nepal and India. The tone has lost all of its roar now that words like “Bhutanization” and “Sikkimization” have quietly left the comrades’ lexicon. Prachanda must have drawn this important lesson from Madan Bhandari’s tragic end: It makes more sense to attend a global leadership summit down south than to aspire to embody the Great Helmsman up north.
Dr. Baburam Bhattarai certainly recognized the opportunity of the moment and claimed an undeclared working unity with King Birendra. His eloquence impelled him to conclude that Nepalis would rate highly every predecessor of the slain monarch. No one considered it relevant to ask the comrade what he considered to be the most salient features of the reigns of, say, Kings Pratap Singh, Girvan Yuddha, Surendra and Prithvi Bir.
King Gyanendra is expected to take responsibility for 238 years of the Shah dynasty. The 104 years of Rana rule, 30 years of Bhimsen Thapa and the periods an assortment of courtiers manipulated infant kings are all clubbed into one epoch of history. Worse, many descendants of those same Thapas, Pandeys, Basnets, Kunwars and bevy of Bahuns and Newars pretend they can absolve their clans of complicity.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala must certainly feel vindicated today when the Maoists insist he must continue as premier. After the Narayanhity carnage, Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai had clubbed Koirala together with the current king and crown prince in a single “coterie”.
The Nepali Congress dissidents and the CPN-UML would not have succeeded in dislodging an elected prime minister who was also the head of the majority party in parliament without the help of the Maoists. Who knows what kind of flexibility power might encourage our rebels turned rulers to exhibit in the run-up to the constituent assembly elections?
Each Nepali has a copious collection of personal truths capable of overwhelming even the strongest willed reconciliation commissioner. The strident mixture of ancient grudges and modern slights – real and perceived – would require an open-ended commission. The truth, they say, shall set us free. But can we ever reconcile our relative truths?

Precarious Premise Of Peacemaking

By Sanjay Upadhya
October 16, 2006

The grins, quips and all the other breezy displays of optimism surrounding the post-Dasain phase of the peace process have dissolved in the somberness of the indefinite postponement of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA)-Maoist talks.
Given the murkiness of the enterprise, however, another phase of ebullience and enthusiasm could bounce back with surprising speed. The “homework” hiatus should afford the country an opportunity to reflect on the predicaments on both sides.
For the Maoists, blaming the palace and foreign powers for conspiring to keep them out of power would help energize the base and thwart the prospect of serious discontent over the political leadership’s capitulation to the machinations of the mainstream.
When the rebels continue to ascribe to the palace the ability to torpedo the peace process, they are virtually negating the finality of the “historic” proclamation the House of Representatives adopted in May. Yet the SPA – at least the sections of the two Nepali Congress parties that seem to be propelling the ruling alliance – does not seem too bothered.
The Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the other communist constituents may be too busy protecting their own turfs against the imminent influx of their more radical cousins to challenge Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s deepening affection for the monarchy. The mainstream communists, like the republican wing of the Nepali Congress, have evidently recognized the asset a sufficiently and certifiably tamed palace could prove to be.
The two factors supposedly holding back the breakthrough that was so tantalizingly close – the monarchy and Maoist arms – have brought out the painful predicaments of peacemaking. The government’s annoyance with the Maoists eagerness to maintain simultaneous access to their arms and political power – in defiance of international pressure – is understandable.
No less so is the Maoists’ bafflement over the government’s refusal to “suspend” the monarchy, when, for all practical purposes, the House proclamation has already done that.
Introspection is in order. Considering the approaching anniversary, it should begin with the 12-point SPA-Maoist accord reached in New Delhi last year. The reality that the accord stands on flimsier ground than the 1951 Delhi Compromise rests not on the absence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the preponderant player.
The real distinguishing feature is that Jawaharlal Nehru represented India far more credibly than the current Congress premier – and perhaps any future leader of the world’s most populous democracy – can expect to.
The fragility of the peace process becomes more ominous when Maoist chief ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai praises India for facilitating the accord and then blames it for conspiring to keep the rebels out of power, almost in the same breath. If the adroit hair-splitter is making a distinction between those in the Indian Left who mediated the talks with the SPA and the “official sources” who leaked reports to the media that Indian intelligence agencies were “chaperoning” him around New Delhi, then he needs to be more explicit about those negotiations.
The question is, can he? When UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal traveled to Lucknow in November 2003 to meet with Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai, there was palpable mix of outrage and embarrassment in both sides of the border over the ease with which the leader of the opposition could meet “terrorists” on Indian soil.
Those sentiments obscured the more relevant story: Dr. Bhattarai’s candid acknowledgement that the Maoists, like any other political organization in Nepali history, could not advance their objectives by criticizing India. The Indians, for their part, must be equally baffled by how the Maoists, who have vowed to launch massive peaceful urban protests in case the talks fail, could still keep their broader pledge to turn South Asia into a flaming field of Maoist revolutions.”
Such fiery rhetoric cannot obscure the flexibility behind the Maoists’ growth. An organization that took up arms against both the monarchy and parliamentary democracy – more vigorously against the latter until the June 1, 2001 royal palace massacre – has now allied with one.
A 40-point list of grievances heavily targeted against India has now been distilled into diatribe against the 238-year-old monarchy. The obfuscation and prevarication that has gone into justifying such shifts are not helpful. Yet the Maoists persist.
Providing revolutionary ardor to Prithvi Narayan Shah’s famous counsel, the Maoists describe Nepal as a dynamite between two boulders. The yam metaphor of the first Shah king may have contained traces of weakness – as the Maoists allege -- but it still pulsated with a quest for life.
The notion of self-destruction – and its wider devastation -- inherent in the dynamite analogy may not have alarmed many Nepalis. The international community has taken notice. No wonder U.N. General Assembly members on Monday refused to be taken in by the peace-and-democracy platform in Nepal campaign for a two-year seat on the Security Council.

Where Geography And Politics Clash

By Sanjay Upadhya
September 10, 2006

From the assurances emanating from both sides, the audible hardening of positions may not stand in the way of the next summit between Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist supremo Prachanda. The uncertainty over how this transformation might influence the outcome underscores the precariousness of the peace process.
The Maoists evidently see virtue in letting some ambiguity shroud the deliberations of their recent central committee meeting. The firmness of Prime Minister Koirala’s insistence on the primacy of the arms-management issue vis-à-vis the peace process directly stems from the rebels’ strong utterances after the meeting. Yet he is addressing a wider audience.
In confirming Gen. Rukmangad Katuwal as army chief, over the objections of Seven Party Alliance (SPA) politicians, civil society and the Maoists, Koirala has reminded the country that he still retains enough of his record of implacability. In recent comments, the premier has qualified his insistence on giving space to a ceremonial monarchy with an acknowledgement of the people’s ultimate sacrosanct right to choose.
His political priorities are clear. The draft interim constitution is full of blanks waiting to be filled through political consensus between the SPA and the Maoists. The issue of constituent assembly elections – with or without a referendum on the monarchy – lies beyond Koirala’s immediate gaze. Having brought the army under civilian control – if that is what it is – Koirala recognizes the flip side of the achievement: earning and retaining the loyalty of the forces.
With the Maoists and the SPA squabbling over almost every vital element of the 12-point accord, we now know why the signatories came out with separate statements last November. A broader opposition front had become urgent to tame the palace in the immediate aftermath of the Dhaka SAARC summit, where Nepal was instrumental in shifting the geopolitical locus of South Asia by drawing in China as an observer.
Koirala, who Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed as the greatest statesman of the region in June, could not have forgotten the sustained difficulties he had to encounter in scheduling meetings with Singh’s predecessor in the aftermath of King Gyanendra’s dismissal of Nepal’s last elected government in October 2002.
It took five months for the SPA-Maoist accord to achieve what now appears to have been its sole objective. From this perspective, at least, the 12-point accord lost its relevance the moment King Gyanendra reinstated the House of Representatives. Yet the Maoists chose to moderate their criticism of the SPA’s betrayal of the spirit of the April Uprising because it provided an opening to the urban uprising component of the People’s War.
For the Maoists, the series of steps the legislature took toward eviscerating the palace, democratizing the military and secularizing the state helped to undermine the “old state” a decade of murder and mayhem could not. Sooner or later the MPs’ ebullience would end up bordering on the ridiculous. Their penchant for taking repeated oaths and ordering others to do the same set the stage for other absurdities such as “outlawing” discrimination and throwing in internationally recognized heritage sites to bloat the royal assets they proudly covered.
Over time, Maoist military commanders like Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal broke their mysterious silence on the peace process, but not without employing the creative ambiguity the political commissars had long perfected. Once representatives of the republican camp in Nepali Congress, such as Ram Chandra Poudel, began criticizing the Maoists’ haughtiness, chief rebel ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai grew anxious to see, more than anything else, another split in Koirala’s party.
Having seen King Gyanendra struggle for American and Indian sympathy – if not outright support -- for his compulsions in seizing power on February 1, 2005, Maoist leaders certainly did not think they were making any great revelation in suggesting that the key to peace lay in the hands in Washington and New Delhi.
The four-month-old logjam, on the other hand, must have allowed the two capitals to appreciate the complexity of a stalemate the monarch could not break with the three governments he appointed – the last drawing partial representation from the opposition alliance -- before taking direct control. Surely, the SPA and Maoists are alert to the implications of a deepening of any such assessment.
In retrospect, international opposition to royal rule – at least from quarters that mattered the most -- had more to do with geopolitics than with an underlying revulsion for a grand autocratic design of an ambitious monarch. As Koirala and Prachanda prepare for their next discussions and beyond, Nepal’s geography and its politics remain deeply engrossed in search of that ever-elusive state of equilibrium.

Nepal: Ominous Order Amid Murky Mandate

By Sanjay Upadhya
August 21, 2006

It would have been easy to hail the Nepalese government’s decision to revoke its order raising the prices of petroleum products as another triumph of “people power” had it not been so ominous. Two days of violent protests forced an increasingly drifting government to relent on something it has perhaps the least control over.
Clearly, the argument could be made that petroleum prices in Nepal must factor in the inefficiencies of the state monopoly, Nepal Oil Corporation. An organization once known for its outrageously lavish employee bonuses was bound to confront fiscal reality. Yet Nepal’s options on oil remain limited. If the government must watch the streets in making key decisions on such issues, then we must brace for perpetual chaos as part of political life.
The temptation to blame the protests on “regressive” elements linked to a beaten but unbowed palace is understandable. The real problem lies in how the participants in an increasingly uncertain peace process have politicized the issue. The Maoists, under tremendous pressure to disarm by any name, had found another excuse to buy time: demanding the restructuring of the state before they would consent to participate in the government. The rebels’ threat to launch another movement if the government failed to withdraw the petroleum price rise may come back to sting them the day they find themselves in the seat of power and responsibility.
Key constituents of the ruling Seven Party Alliance (SPA) – and their fraternal organizations – were being disingenuous as well. The Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML), whose minister tried to justify a similar price rise in 2004 amid great popular wrath, could have consulted some of those same talking points. By rolling back the price increase in its entirety, the government has chosen to appease the streets. For how long?
A reduction in the rates of increase along with efficient-distribution measures, matched with a more convincing articulation of its compulsions, could have been a more measured response. The reality that the government chose not to do so underscores its unenviable plight. Surely, an entity that could eviscerate the monarchy, secularize the country and accomplish a host of other wonders could not have been seen unable to withdraw the price rises.
This is where the nebulous “mandate” of People’s Movement-II gets murkier. The interpretations of key protagonists have conferred on that mandate an elasticity that risks negating its reality. The wily Maoists have placed themselves on the cooperation and confrontation boats. (The terminology has been deliberately moderated in view of the rebels’ repeated assurances that they would not return to the jungles.) Should the going get rough, we can expect Prachanda and Ganpathy – not obscure lieutenants – to sign the next statement of solidarity between Nepalese and Indian Maoists.
The Maoists’ vicious attacks on Nepali Congress, Nepali Congress (Democratic) and UML politicians are ostensibly part of the confrontation mode. Should the Congress unification process gather pace, the UML would find it harder to postpone its own moment of reckoning.
The Terai has brought another imponderable. For now, the region may be in the grip of violence primarily between the Maoists and a breakaway faction. Should the ambiguity of the people’s mandate spill over, the conflict will have acquired added combustibility. The solidarity demonstrated by Terai-based politicians across party lines following Sher Bahadur Deuba’s land reform effort in 2003 signaled the radicalism of regionalism. There could be a more perilous resurgence, especially when this particular element of ethno-geography finds inadequate resonance in most federalism models.

The Foreign Factor
Given the geopolitical stakes involved, the international donor community could still provide enough financial cushion to the government, enabling it to appease the streets through subsidies and other inducements. The possibility of open-ended external financial commitment diminishes with the emergence of each new global hot spot on the front pages. The external propensity for political intervention need not. With the palace and the army continuing to be hounded, the responsibility for driving the internal processes falls on the SPA and the Maoists.
Last November’s 12-point accord between the two was achieved in a different regional context. Yet the SPA and the Maoists must have acquired much of their momentum from assurances not specified in their separate texts. Recent rifts are perhaps rooted in interpretations and revisions driven by other equally eager external stakeholders after the political marginalization of the palace.
Evidently, the Maoist leadership – backed by allies in civil society -- want to claim the moral high ground here. They cannot credibly criticize the United States for impeding the peace process without addressing the substance and secrecy of their own recent visit to Silguri. (And, of course, the real story behind the Prachanda-Baburam Bhattarai conflict and conciliation last year.)
The external dynamics at play today should shed some light on the first phase of King Gyanendra’s active rule beginning October 4, 2002. The monarch had gone on national TV that night after consultations with, among others, key senior foreign diplomats. The ensuing sequence of events was peculiar.
Lokendra Bahadur Chand seemed acceptable as prime minister to the mainstream parties before the palace-led cabinet expansion turned him into a symbol of “regression”. The Maoists, who were staking their claim to head an interim government in early 2003, were stunned by the reorganization of the government negotiating team and the appointment of Surya Bahadur Thapa as premier.
Thapa, who couldn’t win the full support of his own Rastriya Prajatantra Party, continued on a caretaker basis for almost a month after his resignation in 2004. Prachanda kept insisting he would hold talks only with King Gyanendra as New Delhi and Kathmandu were having a hard time scheduling the monarch’s visit to India. On whose initiative was the visit eventually finalized? Was the royal visit called off just because of the death of a former Indian prime minister or was that only a coincidental cover? How did the monarch’s February 1, 2005 proclamation end up describing the Maoists as terrorists instead?
The murkiness of the people’s mandate may have succeeded in obscuring such questions of the past. It must not be allowed to cloud the future.

Southern Discomfort And Emerging Dynamics

By Sanjay Upadhya
August 8, 2006

The cautious optimism expressed by a senior United Nations assessment mission on the prospects for peace in Nepal must be juxtaposed with a perceptible souring of the Maoist rebels’ relations with India.
The precise nature, severity and implications of this downturn remain in the realm of speculation. The Indian media’s wide coverage of the Maoists’ harassment of Indian nationals in Nepal and New Delhi’s firm acknowledgement of ideological and operation ties between the Nepalese rebels and Indian Naxalites, among other things, convey sufficient bitterness. The timing of the chill, in the aftermath of reported Chinese overtures to the rebels, adds to the overall anxiety.
New Delhi’s request to the Nepalese government to ensure the safety of Indians from Maoist harassment points to the source of tensions. But such threats are nothing new. Indian individuals and establishments, like their Nepalese counterparts, have been subjected to Maoist intimidation and extortion for years. Moreover, in the list of the Maoists’ principal grievances, India-related issues are close second to the monarchy.
The Maoists had moderated their criticism of India, especially after what many saw as a New Delhi-inspired rapprochement between rebel supremo Prachanda and chief ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. The patch-up set the stage for the Seven Party Alliance (SPA)’s 12-point accord with the Maoists reached in New Delhi last November. The Prachanda-Bhattarai rifts, whose seriousness was widely covered by the Nepalese media, were mysteriously healed without much explanation.
The presence of US Ambassador James F. Moriarty in New Delhi during the height of the SPA-Maoist negotiations underscored the urgency with which Washington and New Delhi were comparing notes on Nepal. Leaks in the Indian press left room for speculation on how united the New Delhi government was behind Indian communists’ efforts to mainstream the Nepalese Maoists.
Were Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) leader Sitaram Yechury’s overt initiatives genuinely aimed at bolstering the democratic mainstream in Nepal against an assertive palace? Or was he merely the public face of the Indian Left’s effort to preempt a challenge from Indian Maoists by subverting their ties with the Nepalese Maoists?
Given the enormity of the undertaking, it was perhaps essential for the SPA and the Maoists to leave certain ambiguities in their accord. However, it would be naïve to think that Prachanda and Dr. Bhattarai signed on without having received private assurances on key issues.
Prachanda has acknowledged that Indian officialdom had played a major role in creating the broad anti-palace alliance. It would be safe to assume that the Maoists considered New Delhi the principal guarantor of its interpretation of the unfolding political course in Nepal.
In that case, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to send Karan Singh – undoubtedly a veteran politician but one who enjoyed close family ties to the Nepalese royal family – as his emissary to the monarch must have represented to the Maoists an egregious violation of New Delhi’s undertaking.
The seemingly open-ended existence the reinstated House of Representatives acquired under Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala -- against public expectations of a brief session paving the way for an interim government and constituent assembly elections – must have represented to the Maoists another manifestation of the imperatives that drove the Karan Singh mission.
The almost identical assertions from Washington and New Delhi making the Maoists’ participation in an interim government contingent on their disarming must have been the tipping point. The CPM’s advice to Indian Naxals to follow their Nepalese allies’ example of moderation could have only added the proverbial insult to the Maoists’ festering injuries.
The promptness with which Indian editorial writers and analysts chose to link the Maoists’ harassment of Indians in Nepal to the rebels’ reported contacts with Chinese emissaries should provide a broader setting for analysis. Throughout the decade-long insurgency in Nepal, India benefited from the perception in much of the world that Beijing was somehow behind the conflict. The ideology and the suffix the rebels carried tended to obscure the ease with which the Nepalese Maoists enjoyed safe haven – if not overt official support – across the southern border.
With New Delhi growing increasingly skeptical of China’s motives in South Asia, especially since Beijing received observer status in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the slightest indication of a Chinese-Maoist connection is bound to raise passions in India.
Could the non-communist elements of the Indian establishment have made a conscious decision to sign on to Washington’s efforts to marginalize the Maoists? Assured of having taken a major step toward preserving their turf by hurtling the Nepalese Maoists to swim or sink in the mainstream, have Yechury and the Left front quietly acceded to the New Delhi-Washington consensus?
Prachanda’s three-month extension of the ceasefire and the threats he made in the announcement signal that the rebels have kept their options open. It would be tempting to believe that, having come this far in the peace process, Prachanda and the political leadership may have forfeited the credibility needed within the fighting force to mount a serious challenge to the state should things fail to go their way. Prachanda himself has been trying to rule out – in varying degrees of candor, of course – a return to full-scale violence.
The Maoists’ political leadership has proved too wily in the past not to be able to make the best of any situation. By amplifying the India-related component of their 40-point demand of 1996, they could hope to carve their space on the nationalism plank hitherto espoused by the palace. Clearly, it would be much more difficult for critics – domestic as well as foreign -- to discredit the Nepalese quest for full independence and sovereignty when its advocates can no longer be denounced as a “feudal anachronism.”
The Maoist political leadership’s eagerness to participate in mainstream politics without having much to show for a decade of bloody and bitter insurgency would almost certainly precipitate a serious internal rupture. A formal split led by military commanders and lesser-known political leaders would allow the state to deploy its coercive powers without the encumbrance of military sanctions from principal external stakeholders. The “mainstreamed Maoists,” for their part, could then find it easier to explore and enhance their compatibilities with key domestic and foreign constituencies.
In recent essays criticizing the SPA for reneging on its commitments, Dr. Bhattarai has revealed how alliance leaders pleaded with the Maoists to use their full force to disrupt the municipal polls the royal government held earlier this year. Dr. Bhattarai claims the democracy protests in April would not have succeeded without the massive participation of Maoist cadres. Can we expect future columns to shed more light on the confabulations in New Delhi that led to the SPA-Maoist 12-point accord? They might help illuminate Nepal’s road ahead.

Nepal: New Portrait Of Chinese Pragmatism?

By Sanjay Upadhya

Reports of China having opened direct contacts with Nepal’s Maoist rebels, and possibly having offered arms, have added to the uncertainty gripping Nepal’s peace process. It is difficult to view Maoist chairman Prachanda’s note to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, strongly protesting the letter sent by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, outside this emerging dynamic.
Neither Beijing nor the Maoists have shed light on the nature, substance or even veracity of the reported contacts. Yet any such development would not amount to a “dramatic reversal” of Chinese policy, as sections of the Nepalese and Indian media have suggested.
True, China has refused to consider the Nepalese rebels as Maoists, arguing that their violent actions have denigrated the name and image of the Great Helmsman. Chinese officials, unlike their Indian and American counterparts, have studiously refused to call the rebels terrorists.
Beijing, moreover, defied much of the world by refusing to criticize King Gyanendra’s Feb. 1 2005 takeover of full executive powers. Whether that stemmed from China’s traditional confidence in the Nepalese monarchy or from its desire to see the three domestic players find a solution without external meddling – or perhaps even a careful mixture of both – will continue to be debated. While pragmatism remains the pivot of Chinese foreign policy, its nuances provide important pointers.
If China has opted for realpolitik, with the Maoists having joined the political process, it must be seen in the context of Nepalese developments since King Gyanendra was forced to cede direct control. Indications of a chill in bilateral relations emerged amid reports that Prime Minister Koirala’s government had moved toward reopening the Office of the Dalai Lama in Nepal.
During his meeting in Geneva with Deputy Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing protested the proposed resettlement in the United States of 5,000 Tibetan refugees in Nepal on the basis of official Nepalese travel documents.
Oli, for his part, underscored the gravity of the situation by telling a House of Representatives panel that the Chinese government has taken these matters seriously. So seriously indeed that Beijing expressed its inability to provide duty-free access to Nepalese exports from July 1 as agreed during the royal regime. Chinese Vice-Minister Wu Daewi is due in Kathmandu this week to discuss these and a host of other issues.

Internal And International Dynamics
Beijing’s pragmatism on the Nepalese Maoists is logical also from the standpoint of internal and international dynamics China faces. The rise in public disturbances within China amid a growing urban-rural economic divide has goaded Beijing toward preventing bolder and coordinated demonstrations across villages and provinces.
In March, the National People’s Congress approved a five-year plan implementing measures to address China's growing wealth gap. These measures aim, among other things, to transfer wealth through various means from the booming coastal regions to the less-developed countryside.
A hard-line Maoist government in Nepal spewing tirades against the leadership in Beijing for having abandoned the basic tenets of Maoism could revive nostalgia among sections of the marginalized for the certitudes of Mao’s times. By themselves, the Nepalese Maoists may not represent a serious source of destabilization. However, Beijing is aware of the clandestine support foreign powers could extend to fan the flames of discontent.
If moderating the Nepalese Maoists made good domestic sense for Beijing, it also held promise as a prudent element of its increasingly assertive South Asia policy. Beijing could hardly have been oblivious to the reality that New Delhi’s stepped up its effort to build a broader opposition front between the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoists in November last year after King Gyanendra played a major role in including China as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
This shift in the geopolitical locus of SAARC as well as a solid display in December of China’s preponderance in the emerging East Asian community served to sensitize India. Indian media have begun covering China as a beat that contains elements of cooperation, competition and confrontation. Even in entrepreneurial Mumbai, paeans to the synergies between China’s computer hardware capabilities and India’s software prowess have ceded space to the geopolitical implications of Golmud-Lhasa railroad and the reopening of the Nathu-La trade route.
A shared interest between China and the communist front in India to prevent a firmer American foothold in Nepal may have influenced the political changes of April. If the aftermath failed to thrill the Chinese, they were not alone. The Maoists’ resentment of the SPA government’s reluctance to share the glory of triumph must have opened up the prospect for a new realignment. For those within the country and abroad tempted to conclude that the Maoist political leadership, neck-deep in the peace process, had reached the point of no-return, the rebels’ northern option must have come as a stunning revelation.
For China, political proximity with the Nepalese Maoists would fit into its wider global strategy. The post-9/11 warmth in Sino-American relations has given way to a more sobering analysis of each other’s motives and expectations. The U.S. Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in February contained the fingerprints of neoconservative advocates of the containment of China.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for attempting to play up a “non-existent Chinese military threat.” Chinese analysts, for their part, saw the QDR’s designation of their country as a “strategic threat,” along with the U.S. focus on enhancing its Pacific military assets and increasing its long-range strike capability, as clear preparations for a future conflict.
The contours of a containment strategy were also evident in the Bush administration’s reorganization of the State Department bureau responsible Central and South Asia. Of the 13 countries falling under the bureau, eight border China. Now the U.S. Congress appears set to vote in favor of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, seeking to advance civilian nuclear cooperation despite New Delhi’s weapons program.
For the Maoists, the first group in Nepal to detect in our “ground realities” an imminent “encirclement” of China by its adversaries, bonhomie with Beijing always resided within the realm of possibility.

Eyeball To Eyeball At Putin’s Party

By Sanjay Upadhya
July 13, 2006

In the run-up to the three-day Group of Eight (G8) summit he is hosting in his native St. Petersburg from July 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been sounding increasingly assured about his country’s place in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs.
Moscow has been invited to attend annual summits of the world’s industrialized democracies for some years now. But this is the first year the country has been accepted as a full member. Russia, moreover, was included in the organization without its having attained the economic or democratic development of the other members -- United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy.
Admittedly, this exception was made to promote the continuation of Russia’s free-market economic reforms and democratization. As the other G8 members in varying degrees bemoan Russia’s failure to keep its side of the bargain, Putin expects to exude his nation’s new-found confidence buttressed by, among other things, growing revenues from energy exports.
For US President George W. Bush, who famously looked Putin in the eye in Slovenia five years ago and concluded he could do business with the Russian leader, St. Petersburg will offer moments of reflection. The post-9/11 camaraderie between Washington and Moscow has been replaced by contours of a deepening adversarial relationship.
The turning point was Washington’s involvement in the color-coded revolutions in former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia that put pro-western leaders in power. In response to America’s engagement in its ‘near abroad’, Moscow has assiduously built stronger military, political and economic relations with Iran, Syria, Venezuela and other regimes out of favor with Washington.
In February, Putin invited Hamas representatives to Moscow at a time when Washington was leading an international effort to isolate the newly elected leaders in the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Moscow offered considerable financial aid to what the United States regards a terrorist organization.
In April, American efforts to impose United Nations-backed sanctions on Iran were blocked by Moscow’s support for Teheran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program. Lately, Putin has criticized the US and Japan for their hawkishness on the North Korean missile crisis, saying such a posture would worsen matters.
Russia has joined hands with China in an apparent initiative to resist American efforts to change regimes it dislikes. Moscow and Beijing have reinforced military and energy-trade relations in an effort to bolster their global leverage.
Putin has shaped the St. Petersburg agenda around energy, education, and the eradication of infectious diseases. European nations rely significantly on Russian natural gas supplies. Moscow, which exports oil around the world, recognizes competitively stable energy prices as the key to its long-term economic prosperity.
The other G8 members, too, have energy high on their minds – but in a less salutary sense. The Kremlin’s recent effort to tighten control over energy exports has raised concern in Europe. The Putin administration’s suspension of natural gas supplies to Ukraine several months ago – ostensibly for the former Soviet republic’s efforts to pull itself out of Moscow’s orbit -- left Europe with shortages. Europeans seeking assurances of reliable gas supplies from Russia confront a government setting most of the terms.
The G8 summit would provide Putin an opportunity to showcase the reality of Russia’s resurgence on his watch. When he took office in 2000, Russia was mired in chaos and corruption, where ultra-rich oligarchs were really in charge. The war in Chechnya was becoming increasingly brutal beyond the restive region. Moscow’s default and the ruble devaluation of 1998 left economic prospects uncertain.
Putin believes his firm hand in governance, not only high oil prices, is behind the rise in wages and living standards and Russia’s ability to make the last repayment of its foreign debt. The growth of a middle class in a nation struggling to break free from the Soviet-era worker-nomenklatura divide is as gripping a reality as the high approval ratings Putin has consistently enjoyed. Last week’s killing of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen rebel leader blamed for massive atrocities against civilians, handed Putin a major victory in his war on terror.
The other G8 members are more concerned about the political price Russians are being forced to pay for these successes. Although Russia is far from a return to Soviet-style repression, it is sliding back to a form of authoritarianism. Much of the political opposition to Putin has been bulldozed or bought off. The once-vibrant broadcast media have been forced off the air or taken over by Kremlin allies.
Putin has reversed much of the post-Soviet decentralization of political power by abolishing elected governorships in the provinces. Corruption may be less visible than under Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s ailing and bumbling predecessor, but it certainly has not been less pernicious.
Clearly, Putin expects to deflect criticism of his domestic and foreign policies by using the Iranian and North Korean crises to establish Russia’s credentials as a responsible international player. As he looks Putin in the eye this time, Bush might want to keep his gazed fixed a little longer.

Nepal: Perilous Koirala-Kerensky Parallels

By Sanjay Upadhya
July 10, 2006

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s visceral faith in the Maoists’ full commitment to a nebulous concept of “total democracy” amid a sustained pattern of rebel defiance has invited comparisons with Alexander Kerensky, Russia’s short-lived democratic president in 1917.
Maoist supremo Prachanda’s threat to launch an October Revolution if the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) failed to move in consonance with the rebels’ interpretation of the spirit of the April Uprising prompted American Ambassador James F. Moriarty to inject some sobering history into Nepal’s befuddled political discourse.
Has Koirala become Nepal’s Kerensky? The contrasts between the two men and their times could not be starker. Kerensky, at 36, was in the prime of his life when he embodied Russia’s democratic quest. His opposition to the absolute rule of the Romanovs blossomed during his university days in St. Petersburg. Kerensky, moreover, was an intellectual interested in all aspects of Russian history, culture and literature in addition to politics.
To be sure, Koirala’s plunge into politics at an early age came at the cost of academic life. But that tradeoff put him at the forefront of Nepal’s democracy movement. Koirala, moreover, did not have to work his way up the leadership hierarchy like Kerensky – at least in the context of his undisputed leadership of the SPA. And Koirala has been ready to ally himself with the palace on his terms.
In a country devastated by a decade-long insurgency with its heavy human and development costs, Kerensky’s Russia carries much relevance. The First World War, in which Russia had been involved in for three years, diverted massive amounts of manpower and caused serious food and fiber shortages. The Czarist regime was exposed to increasingly strident charges of gross mismanagement. Yet the collapse of the monarchy was as unexpected as that of the Soviet Union would be 74 years later.
Kerensky was a moderate socialist whose passionate, lifelong goal was to see a Western-style constitutional democracy in Russia. In his ardor to fight off his adversaries on the right, Kerensky simply refused to believe that the Bolsheviks could represent the greater threat.
Koirala, who started out as an implacable anticommunist and thrived on that record, is today bending over backwards to appease the Maoists. His own Nepali Congress is outraged by the government’s apparent capitulation to the rebels.
Dedicated to his country and to democratic principles, Kerensky was a courageous, energetic man with great oratorical skills. It was his willingness to assume command in a time of crisis that allowed Russians to enjoy their brief but unprecedented freedoms. The bitter political infighting that followed Czar Nicholas II’s fall may have allowed Kerensky to establish his indispensability. His lack of vision to tackle the root causes of popular discontent came in handy for the Bolsheviks.
Indeed, it would have required a miracle for Russia to become a vibrant democracy amid the mixture of a disastrous war, massive economic hardships and political factionalism. Yet the Bolsheviks’ triumph was not inevitable. Lenin and Trotsky plotted their course in the chaos conceived in Kerensky’s misplaced confidence. The reality that the world’s first experiment with a “worker state” occurred in a country that was 98 percent agrarian more than debunks the myth of communism’s inevitability.
The most ominous parallel between today’s Nepal and Kerensky’s Russia is that Koirala finds himself straddling between those who see the triumph of total democracy in the sidelining – and perhaps an eventual abolition -- of the monarchy and those demanding more radical social and economic restructuring.
Here Prachanda has taken the most insidious page from Lenin’s playbook. Through his fiery and often contradictory rhetoric, buttressed by an almost insatiable appetite for concessions from the state, Prachanda hopes to exert complete authority. By portraying the government’s failure to meet his impossible demands as a sign of utter ineptitude, the Maoist supremo seeks to evade responsibility. Clearly, the Maoists are banking on the same anarchy the Bolsheviks capitalized on.
In exile, Kerensky believed the Bolshevik regime would crumble imminently and contemplated his triumphant return to power. Koirala and his cohorts, at least, can rely on history to shed any such illusions.

Nepal: The Taming Of The Crew

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 27, 2006

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala probably did not return home expecting an extended convalescence after his surgery at a Bangkok hospital. The plethora of problems that have accumulated on the ground in his absence will not let him put his feet up as much as he might want to.
The Maoists’ – often contradictory -- interpretation of the June 16 eight-point accord, the discord within the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) over certain provisions of the deal, and differences within Koirala’s Nepali Congress on the prime minister’s support of a ceremonial monarchy are illustrative of the multiple layers of the challenges the much-vaunted peace process confronts.
Maoist leader Prachanda and chief ideologue Dr. Baburam Bhattarai are back in Kathmandu after concluding a tour of their base areas to sell the accord to the rank and file. In the run-up to the next “summit”, they have held preliminary talks with senior SPA leaders, who concluded that the eight-point accord was a “mistake” after signing it.
The comments of some SPA leaders, such as Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal, underscore the depths of the differences between the rebels and the mainstream parties. The Maoists’ call for the dissolution of the House of Representatives, the imperative of ensuring fair representation on the panel drafting the interim constitution, the exact status of the Maoists’ weapons before they can be inducted in a new interim government, among other things, would have to be addressed directly during a second “summit”.
More importantly, Prime Minister Koirala needs to take full charge of the SPA side of the process. Consider how top government ministers contradicted one another in responding to the Nepal Army’s rebuttal of the invective Prachanda spewed at the post-summit news conference. With such clumsiness, you certainly do not need the palace to scuttle the peace process.
The Maoists’ primacy over the process cannot obscure serious questions relating to their credibility as a partner. This is something firmly tied to the enigma that Prachanda still remains. Over the years, his perceived eloquence in expounding ideology has been useful in perpetuating the ambiguity the rebels used to build and wreck alliance among and within rival power centers.
Prachanda’s emergence at the news conference has shifted the parameters of the debate. Can his reputation for tolerating no dissent within his organization weld into the imperative of free and open deliberations the multiparty system – at least the SPA version of it -- presupposes?
Would Prachanda’s abiding faith in the Nepalese people’s ultimate rejection of the monarchy in the constituent assembly elections really make him adhere to an opposite popular verdict as he has pledged? Or is the rebel leader’s eagerness to discard “parliamentary republicanism” in favor of a more locally relevant model merely the first draft of an opt-out clause?
Broadly speaking, is peace the real agenda of the entire rebel organization? After all, the Maoists took up arms against both the parliamentary system and the monarchy in 1996 vowing to establish a “people's republic.” Has the wisdom of allying with one foe to defeat the other been widely accepted in the ranks as a tactic or the logical culmination of the insurgency? In the latter case, can the foot soldiers adapt to competitive mainstream politics discarding the Great Helmsman’s adage that power grows out of the barrel of the gun?
Admittedly, the Maoists exhibited remarkable restraint during their massive rally in the capital recently. Many are tempted to believe that the rebels have sincerely chosen the path of pragmatic politics. However, is one example of moderation sufficient to erase the marauding of a decade?
The silence of military strategist Ram Bahadur Thapa “Badal” is becoming deafening by the day. Nanda Kishor Pun “Pasang”, another influential rebel commander, too, is said to be unhappy with the latest turn of events. Matrika Yadav, the most prominent Maoist leader from the Terai, has threatened to boycott the constituent assembly polls unless madhesis get citizenship certificates.
The economic dimensions of the Maoist ostensible transformation are murkier. Can Prachanda’s oft-repeated basic opposition to economic liberalization allow enough room for the encouragement of industry, creation of jobs and growth of for-profit enterprise.
If Prachanda’s sole substantive program consists of exploiting Yarchagumba, that rare fungus found only in the Himalayas and prized in traditional Chinese medicine as an aphrodisiac, then Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat should immediately begin private session in Economics 101 with the rebel leader. The imponderable, of course, is Prachanda’s willingness to listen.

Nepal: Euphoria As An Indispensable Energizer

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 19, 2006

Superlatives are being thrown around with sheer simplicity, drowning out deep skepticism from within the Seven Party Alliance (SPA). For now, supreme relief reigns over ordinary people yearning for peace. This rapture need not be tempered with realism because the risks are implicit in the 8-point accord that emerged from last week’s “summit” between Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist supremo Prachanda.
If the precariousness of the process failed to stand in the way of the signatories, then peace surely must be an idea whose time has come. The Maoists’ participation in the creation of an interim charter and government would finally allow them to shape the future they have been fighting for with such ferocity. More important, it offers an opportunity to bind them firmly to success or failure.
Prime Minister Koirala opened the campaign by stating that his Nepali Congress would go into the constituent assembly elections with an agenda of a ceremonial monarchy. It remains to be seen whether Koirala’s assertion is a reflection of his party’s reading of political realities. The anti-monarchy camp in the Nepali Congress has grown in size and stridency. Whether this group would be able to mount a serious internal challenge to Koirala’s platform would depend in large part on the Maoists.
For now, the premier has been fortified by Prachanda’s willingness to accept Koirala’s remark within the rubric of free speech. The quid pro quo is hard to miss: The crafty Maoist chief extracted a major concession from the prime minister in not having to renounce violence or pledge decommissioning of weapons.
Prachanda’s dominance over the post-“summit” news conference could not shield the stretch marks the Maoists’ famed flexibility has left. Having begun the “People’s War” against both the monarchy and the parliamentary system, Prachanda will have to educate his cadres in the objective realities dictating the alliance with one. It would be naïve, however, to equate the opaqueness of internal Maoist deliberations with inactivity. The rebel leadership’s nationwide tour can be expected to produce some insights into their political acclimatization.
The seniority and stature of the individuals representing the Maoists in an interim government might provide a good measure of their commitment to this process. Lightweights, after all, would be easier to manipulate for posturing and malign and marginalize if things don’t go the Maoist way. For now though, the Maoists recognize more than anyone else that the transparency with which the organization transform itself from a demolition crew into builders of democracy would shape their international legitimacy.
The drafters of the interim statute, meanwhile, can proceed from a consensus on keeping the palace in an entirely titular posture. In retrospect, the chairman of the panel that wrote the current constitution made a monumental blunder by dismissing issues relating to language, ethnicity and gender as irrelevant to the wider imperative of consolidating multiparty democracy. Laxman Aryal, the chief drafter of the interim statute, who was a member of the 1990 panel, would probably not be able to review the transcripts of each of those 16-year-old sessions. As the foremost critic of the successive instances of violations of the constitution – by all parties – he must have accumulated enough perspective.
Much of the groundwork has been laid by the House of Representatives’ proclamation. Since the people are mindful of the platitudes permeating all legal provisions and policy positions since the first dawn of democracy in 1951, the panelists’ real challenge is to inject enough credibility.

Limits To Change
By refusing to disturb the Nepal Army in the security shakeup, Prime Minister Koirala has recognized the limits to change. Speculation that Koirala acted primarily under pressure from the Americans fits into the institutional relationship Washington has been building with the Nepalese military in recent years. How far Prachanda can go on pressing the “de-feudalization” of the military without exposing himself to demands on disarmament is unclear.
Despite rumblings in the Unified Marxist Leninists (UML) and other constituents in the SPA, along with periodic manifestations of public ire on the streets, the palace can probably afford to sit back and let events take their course. For now, the future of the monarchy would be inextricably linked to the clarity with which the SPA and the Maoists can articulate their vision of an alternative. The SPA and the Maoists have been in the game too long not to recognize that blaming King Gyanendra for all of Nepal’s ills since the creation of the state would lose its potency. The temptation to politically eviscerate the monarchy would sooner or later have to be juxtaposed with the imperative to ensuring its ability to discharge the normal responsibilities of a head of state.
Based on his outlook, temperament and background, King Gyanendra might have his own ideas about the future of the nation and the institution. The SPA and the Maoists both succeeded in portraying the royal takeover as a power grab, assisted no doubt by the conduct of certain elements of the royal regime. The fact that the palace could not prevail in advocating the imperative of protecting a small nation wedged between the two Asian giants does not detract from the realities of history and geography. The monarchy, a product of specific Nepalese realities, can be expected to exhibit a paternalistic stake in statecraft. On the other hand, a republic – resulting either from the constituent assembly elections or a decision by the monarch not to accept an unfeasible role – could open up another political front. A system of proportional representation, which is being demanded from different quarters for different reasons, would emphasize the implications of such a development even among those tempted to write off the palace as a political force.

The Near Abroad
Despite the deep bruises it received, India has succeeded in reinforcing its role as the principal external stakeholder in Nepal. Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government strongly criticized the royal takeover, the divisions New Delhi exposed while articulating and advancing its policy on Nepal reflected the fragmentation of the Indian polity.
Throughout King Gyanendra’s direct rule, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was reluctant to support the monarchy because of obvious political compulsions. The BJP’s concern over the secularization of the Nepalese state has allowed the party to back the retention of a constitutional monarchy. However, the organization was less restrained in its criticism of the leeway Prime Minister Singh offered his allies on the left to drive policy on Nepal.
All this underscores the reality that the current turn of events owes much to the quirks of Indian politics. The Indian left could not have led the initiative to forge the SPA-Maoist accord had it not held the key to the survival of the Singh coalition. Doubtless, the radicalization of the Nepali Congress and Nepali Congress (Democratic) in the wake of the royal takeover facilitated the process. The ambivalence of the Indian government was reflected in carefully calibrated leaks in the media.
Over time, the left’s self-interest in moderating and subsequently mainstreaming the Nepalese Maoists – thereby eroding their Indian counterparts’ ability to lay siege to the communist spectrum – must have impressed the Singh government. In the past, Prachanda has been episodically tentative in disowning anything but ideological affinity to Indian Maoists. The prevention of a Maoist takeover of Nepal would bolster the Indian government’s ability to treat the Naxals as an internal security problem. The left channel was worth pursuing, but certainly not to the exclusion of everything else.
The fact that Prime Minister Singh chose to send as his emissary Karan Singh – the scion of the royal family of Kashmir and related to the Nepalese monarch by marriage –underscored his Congress party’s readiness to engage with the palace as a stabilizing force. The Nepalese monarchy’s family and social ties with politically active members of former princely families could heal the political estrangement between New Delhi and Kathmandu.
Although much attention has been focused on the New Delhi-Washington-London consensus on Nepalese democracy, Indian mediation in the kingdom could not have come without close consultations with China. It would be instructive to note that, in the aftermath of the 1990 change, Chinese leaders were quite candid in their acknowledgement of Nepal’s traditional ties with India. Such sentiments were heard less and less amid the flight of the Karmapa Lama to India, ostensibly via Nepal, the resurgence of the pro-Tibetan independence campaign in the kingdom, the ascendancy of the “containment” camp in the United States, along with the intensification of the Maoist insurgency.
The nature of specific arrangements that might have encouraged Beijing to revert to its recognition of Indian role in Nepal can be expected to become clearer in the days and weeks ahead. The Nepalese people certainly deserve an extended phase of euphoria, especially considering the roughness of the road ahead.

Nepal: Premier’s Pragmatism Or Preemption?

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 15, 2006

The steady stretches of the Nepalese plains have spurred Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala accentuate the virtues of the monarchy. Addressing workers of his Nepali Congress party in his hometown of Biratnagar, Koirala said King Gyanendra should be given a ceremonial role in order for the country to enjoy peace and stability. “Denial of space to all players,” the premier cautioned, “would lead to frustration and to even revolt.”
Media coverage of Koirala’s comments left the precise context unclear. Did the premier extend unconditional support for a “ceremonial monarchy”, his contribution to the Nepalese political lexicon? Or did Koirala favor the king’s continued ceremonial role in the run-up to constituent assembly elections, which would ultimately determine the fate of the institution?
Evidently, such hair-splitting did not matter. Irate students took out protests against the premier’s remarks. Maoist supremo Prachanda refused to accept the concept of “ceremonial monarchy” as anything but an oxymoron. Koirala’s assertion, however, did not dissuade the Maoists from holding a second session of peace talks with the government. Within the ruling Seven Party Alliance (SPA), the mood is firmly in favor of a democratic republic. Yet the premier’s remarks did not contain enough firepower to demolish the government.
Why did Koirala make those comments? During his recent visit to India, political prudence prevented his hosts from offering any overt expression of support for the monarchy. Even the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, long considered close to the palace, seemed to acknowledge the supremacy of the Nepalese people’s right to choose their polity. (The party seemed more miffed by Koirala’s haste in making Nepal a secular state.) However, Indian media coverage of Koirala’s visit clearly signaled his hosts’ desire to see the retention of a titular monarchy.
That stood in sharp contrast to the series of events Koirala presided over during preceding weeks. In its effort to democratize the state, the reinstated House of Representatives almost exclusively focused on emasculating the monarchy. Legislators approved a proclamation that imposed sweeping curbs on the king's powers, ending his control over the army, forcing him to pay taxes and leaving him open to questions in parliament and the courts. Under subsequent guidelines, the monarch will no longer open or end parliamentary sessions or announce government policy.
By taming the monarch to the extent of depriving him of a role played by the most titular of heads of state, the SPA may have endeared itself to the Maoist rebels. Those envisaging a peaceful and stable transformation of the Nepalese state had little reason to rejoice.
Could Koirala’s pro-monarchy sentiments be a reflection of his perceptions of India’s thinking? Perhaps. But you cannot accuse the man of inconsistency. He has expressed pro-monarchy sympathies during more trying times in the past. During the height of the Nepali Congress debate last year over whether to delete the party’s traditional commitment to constitutional monarchy from its statute, Koirala appeared at times to lean heavily toward a republic. In private conversations, though, he was known to have described his anti-monarchy tirades as a pressure tactic against the king. Koirala urged more radical members of the party to consider the vacuum the monarchy’s departure would create in a geopolitically sensitive nation.
At one such gathering, Koirala described Narahari Acharya and Gagan Thapa – the two preeminent republicans in the Nepali Congress – as agents of the palace. After the Nepali Congress dropped the reference to constitutional monarchy, Koirala continued to criticize the king’s “autocratic” tendencies in public, all the while keeping open the possibility of a ceremonial monarchy.
After King Gyanendra appointed him premier in April, Koirala overruled his SPA colleagues and went to the palace to take the oath. By retaining the defense portfolio and keeping the home ministry with his Nepali Congress, among other things, critics insist, Koirala is trying to “save” the monarchy against the “spirit” of the democracy movement.
As the custodian of his own political dynasty, Koirala may have baffled many by his defense of the monarchy, especially during its least popular phase. His stand, moreover, would seem out of step with his party’s record. The Nepali Congress, after all, tried to assassinate Kings Mahendra and Birendra, an audacity magnified by the fact that even the Maoist rebels never attempted to physically harm the monarch they are fighting to overthrow.
Maybe Koirala really had the Maoists in mind. The SPA is vexed by the endless conditions the rebels have been putting forth. By extending an olive branch to the palace, Koirala could be alerting the Maoists to the perils of insatiability.
In the end, the anti-Koirala protests, too, serve a purpose. Behind the SPA-Maoist bonhomie lurks some anxiety in the mainstream parties that the palace might strike a separate deal with the rebels. Through the protests, the SPA could be sending a message to the palace.
Regardless of whether Koirala’s comments were a mark of pragmatism or a mode of preemption, they underscore the reality that the palace remains a major player during these precarious times.

Nepal: Perpetual Legislature And Political Legitimacy

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 7, 2006

With the monarch and the upper chamber out of parliament’s perimeter, Nepal is cruising on a legislative course with a third of the mass the current constitution contemplates.
Compare this with the much-maligned direct rule of King Gyanendra, when two-thirds of the legislative aggregation was alive. It’s a different matter that nobody thought of convening the upper house while the speaker of the dissolved lower chamber was busy attending international conferences in his official capacity.
But who is concerned about the constitution? Members of the reinstated House of Representatives (HoR), having monopolized the assembly, are operating on an open-ended tenure. In their frenzied fealty to the “historic mandate” of the April Uprising, MPs
evidently feel comfortable with stretching their interpretation of popular aspirations and expanding their job description accordingly.
To be sure, much of what has passed for legislative deliberation over the last five weeks boils down to vendetta. But, then, expecting the newly empowered political class to desist from vengeance would be tantamount to rejecting basic human nature. The amalgamation of incarceration and humiliation the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) endured during the palace’s 15-month direct rule could not have been conducive to conciliation.
In the passions of the moment, it is easy to miss the bigger picture. The Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist-Leninists (UML), as the principal drafters of the 1990 constitution, virtually claimed ownership of the subsequent 12-year political process. The sense of finality that set in from the outset impelled some to insist that the constitution did not need to be amended for another 30 years. When King Gyanendra began exercising his constitutional responsibilities in forms unpalatable to the political parties, governance assumed an exclusive political content.
The pendulum has swung in the other direction with the attendant kinetic energy. Having succeeded in casting the monarchy as the principal obstacle to “total democracy” – a convenient euphemism for their predominance – SPA leaders have temporarily obscured their own role in precipitating the return of royal assertiveness.
The emasculation of the monarchy, in the SPA’s view, is the principal precondition of the moment. The wider political climate undoubtedly favors that interpretation, as the virtual silence emanating from the royalist parties/factions in the legislature underscores.
Through the “landmark” HoR proclamation, the SPA has sought to tame the palace in the run-up to the constituent assembly elections, which would determine the future of the monarchy. The SPA and its opponents both recognize that the legality of current actions can be fought over another day. For now, the focus is on ensuring the supremacy of a parliament on life support. For how long?
SPA leaders insist that the legislature must remain active until an alternative is found. The Maoists want the HoR and the government dissolved in favor of a national conference and interim government. Despite his rhetoric, Maoist supremo Prachanda recognizes that the SPA is carefully weighing its options.
Among individual constituent parties and factions within, choosing between the Maoists and the monarchists requires careful deliberation and an abundance of time. Having split the premiership and speakership between them, the Nepali Congress and the UML have consented to the existence of the breakaway Nepali Congress (Democratic) as an independent entity.
Mindful of the Maoists’ opposition and the political loss to the Nepali Congress, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s government has rejected the UML’s demand for the restoration of the local bodies. While announcing that civil servants would run those bodies, the government signaled its tentativeness by adding the “for the time being” proviso.
In seeking to bolster their public persona, legislators have overreached to address a “final status” issue like turning Nepal into a secular state. The argument that Nepal’s Hindu identity was an appendage of active monarchy and therefore deserving of a democratic makeover has been rubbished by avowed critics of the king. Legitimacy acquires the greatest slipperiness where sincerity looks like smugness.
It took 15 months for King Gyanendra’s roadmap to be discredited. The SPA can consider its democratic character a cushion against such a swift and sharp reversal of perceptions. Their principal claim to the moral high ground – that errant politicians are always ready to face the wrath of the people – is already sounding hackneyed. And, lest we forget, we still have to figure out the kind of constituencies the assembly is going to represent.
There is a more immediate operational disadvantage for the SPA. In the spring of 1990, the parties had reclaimed power after three-decades of partyless direct rule by the palace. The 15-month interregnum this time – considering that the government King Gyanendra ousted on Feb. 1, 2005 before assuming direct control contained two of the three principal SPA constituents – has considerably constricted the alliance’s comfort zone.
The ideology-vs.-personality clashes within parties and their factions, the assertion of power by non-political actors, representational resentments that led to the squandering of political capital and the other factors that created an anguished electorate are all capable of returning to the forefront of the national consciousness – and with a vengeance.

Troubling Moves On The South Asian Chessboard

By Sanjay Upadhya
August 29, 2005

The Bush administration’s decision last month to welcome India to the “nuclear club” – weeks after the two governments signed a 10-year defense cooperation agreement—has prompted contrasting reactions from two principal quarters in Asia.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry expressed deep concern that the two developments would destabilize the strategic balance in South Asia.
Asserting that it had conveyed its concerns to Washington, Islamabad reiterated its commitment to maintaining a credible deterrent in both conventional and non-conventional weapon systems to rectify any imbalance.
China, on the other hand, has been rather muted in its official comments. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said: “[T]he international community has reached a consensus on relevant nuclear issues. We hope the relevant cooperation between U.S. and India will be conducive to safeguarding the regional peace and stability in Asia”.
The Chinese media, which hardly veers from the official viewpoint, has been more candid on a central theme: the U.S. strategy to contain China. The prevailing view in Beijing is that the U.S. perceives India as a counter-balancing force to a ‘rising’ China and, therefore, feels the need to draw India into its fold. Another U.S. aim, Chinese analysts and media commentators point out, is to use the influential pro-American lobby within India to affect Sino-Indian relations.
Predictably, Washington and New Delhi prefer to shrug off such interpretations. There is enough evidence in the public domain, however, suggesting that a new American containment policy has been in the works for some years, particularly from neoconservative quarters.
Although China may not be where the Soviet Union was once was in terms of American threat perceptions, the Asian giant is clearly dominating public discourse in a unique way. Toward the end of the 1990s, economics had begun sidelining the democracy and human rights issues that traditionally dominated the U.S. media coverage since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.
In the years after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, corporate America began investing too heavily in the Chinese economic miracle to want the Communist Party dethroned. The ideals of freedom and liberty amounted to little on corporate balance sheets. The American media, which increasingly came under the ownership of many of these same U.S. corporate behemoths during this period, were understandably reluctant to portray the Chinese regime in a poor light.
President Bill Clinton, who came into office criticizing his Republican predecessor’s “coddling of Chinese dictators” ended a principal front of Washington’s annual foreign policy battles by making permanent China’s most-favored-nation status.
Over time, the Chinese economic challenge began acquiring clear political and security dimensions. Earlier this month, U.S. fears forced a Chinese company to withdraw its $18.5 billion bid for Unacol, America’s eighth-largest oil firm. What would ordinarily have been considered a deepening of the globalization process suddenly became a national security threat. How could precious energy reserves be placed in the hands of a firm still linked to China’s communist government?
The modern-day version of the Red Scare has been fueled by media disclosures about how U.S. intelligence agencies failed to recognize China’s rapid modernization of its armed forces and space program. Indeed, the U.S.-China relationship has taken an unusual form. In the post-9/11 environment, China and the U.S. have come closer against international terrorism. Washington has all but subcontracted its policy on North Korea to Beijing, the last remaining external influence on the reclusive regime in Pyongyang.
President Bush, deciding the United States and China should begin holding regular senior-level talks on a range of political, security and economic issues, has formed a permanent committee. At the same time, the Chinese have been building relations with regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America that are out of favor with the West – from Nepal to Zimbabwe to Venezuela.
On the surface, the Chinese government’s tepid response to the emerging U.S.-India partnership would seem remarkable. However, Beijing seems confident of options other than public confrontation. China, which inaugurated its own strategic partnership with India during Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit in April, appears to bank on New Delhi’s willingness and ability to stand up to American pressure.
Specifically, China expects the deep suspicion of foreigners in the Indian psyche – rooted in the subcontinent’s experience with British colonialism—to limit Washington’s room for geo-strategic maneuver.Concurrently, China is expanding its influence in South Asia with its growing economic strength. The largest beneficiaries of Chinese economic aid in the region are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Beijing has long maintained a strong strategic alliance with Islamabad. Financial largesse to the other deprived economies of South Asia has allowed China to deepen its strategic influence in the region.
China views Bangladesh as a gateway into India’s troubled northeastern states. An important part of this region is Arunachal Pradesh, to which China lays territorial claims. Energy-hungry China is also attracted by Bangladesh vast natural gas reserves. Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar – with which Beijing already enjoys close ties – ensures that these reserves are accessible to China.
For China, Sri Lanka represents a strategically vital post on the Indian Ocean stretching from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. After the 9/11 attacks, Washington has assiduously sought access to Sri Lankan ports, airfields and air space for its military operations. Beijing shares New Delhi’s desire to keep Colombo out of Western alliances.
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict between Sinhalas and Tamils has strained relations with India, which has a Tamil-majority state of its own, and limits New Delhi’s options in the island nation. Beijing has the advantage of being unrestrained by any such factor.
Nepal’s strategic location between the two Asian giants makes the kingdom important to both. Nepal borders the Chinese province of Tibet on the one hand and Naxalite-dominated Indian states on the other. China, which successfully persuaded Nepal to crush a brief Tibetan uprising in the early 1970s, is anxious to avoid the kingdom once again becoming a launch pad for the Tibetan independence movement.
Contrary to belief in some quarters, the Chinese government has no political or financial ties with Nepal’s Maoist insurgents, who control a vast swath of the countryside. The Nepalese insurgents do have cross-border links with Maoist groups in India, which are believed to have influence in almost 40% of India’s 593 districts.
Chinese media have consistently refused to call the rebels Maoists and have voiced displeasure at what they consider an exploitation of their late leader’s good name. Nepalese Maoists, for their part, denounce Chinese communists as counter-revolutionaries.
After King Gyanendra dismissed Nepal’s multiparty government and took full political control February, angering India and the western world, China described the move as an “internal matter”. Weeks later, Beijing sent Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Kathmandu in a clear gesture of support to the royal regime. Clearly, China wants Nepal to avoid Indian or western influence that could spark fresh trouble in Tibet.
Moreover, Chinese media have voiced concern that an unstable Nepal could provide fertile ground for Islamic separatists active in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang. To forestall such possibilities, China is working to integrate Nepal into the Tibetan economy.
These four South Asian nations affirm that Tibet and Taiwan are integral parts of China. They also support China’s entry to join the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation. By far, Pakistan retains the greatest strategic significance for China. A nuclear power—like China and India—Pakistan has blocked India from accessing western and Central Asian nations close to China. By keeping up to 700,000 Indian soldiers preoccupied in Kashmir, Pakistan has indirectly relieved some pressure off Chinese forces on the disputed Sino-India border.
The Pakistani port of Gwadar, built jointly by Beijing and Islamabad in the restive province of Baluchistan, provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The port will enable China to monitor vital energy shipments from the Persian Gulf, through which 80 percent of the world’s oil exports flow.
From China’s perspective, Pakistan will remain the regional pivot. Its outspokenness on the emerging U.S.-India strategic partnership would serve Chinese purposes as well. Islamabad can be expected to mount a strong campaign on Capitol Hill to pressure U.S. lawmakers not to adopt legislation enabling U.S.- India civilian nuclear energy cooperation.
Some American specialists have criticized the deal as a misguided reward for proliferation, especially at a time when Washington is pressuring Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons programs. Islamabad can be expected to intensify this debate. Pakistan could also seek the help of remnants of the “cold warriors” within the Washington establishment in order to impede greater U.S. military cooperation with a country that was once firmly lodged in the Soviet camp.
With four nuclear powers competing for influence, the South Asian chess game can only get more dangerous.

Don’t Ignore The Real Sovereignty Issue

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 15, 2005

Fifty-five years after Nepalis were introduced to democracy, we are still debating that old debate. Where should the nation’s sovereignty reside? It looked like the democratic constitution of 1990 had settled that question for good. The drafters explicitly formalized the transfer of sovereignty from the palace to the people. A worse revelation was to come. Nepalis still do not seem to be able to resolve our problems internally.
The democratic leaders of the 1950s sojourned to the Indian capital during critical crises. As the principal architect of the compromise that ushered in democracy, New Delhi considered itself a legitimate stakeholder in the kingdom. After all, the king, prime minister and young revolutionaries had met for the first time under the auspices of the Indian prime minister.
For an influential section of Nepalis, however, the embrace was too tight. The emergence of northern neighbor from decades of civil war changed domestic dynamics. Ideology was no bar to cooperation between the world’s only Hindu kingdom and the officially atheist monolith.
India was hardly out of the picture during the palace’s three-decade non-party rule that began in 1960. The premium was on quiet diplomacy. It turned out that many agreements and memorandums – some supposedly inimical to Nepali interests—were concluded in secret. Critics claim the royal regime in effect gave away the territory of Kalapani to India – by allowing Indian troops to retain military posts in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian war of 1962 – in exchange for New Delhi’s support.
Kalapani and other issues have been used in recent years to question the palace’s nationalist credentials. The record shows that, during the same period, the royal regime sought to defend the kingdom against infringements on sovereignty by heightening its international profile. Nepal became a member of the United Nations Security Council, for instance, which extricated the country from the category of Himalayan kingdoms India claimed fell within its exclusive sphere of influence.
With the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990, the “India factor” became a more prominent part of the political lexicon. For many, the Indian Embassy emerged as a fourth power center, after the palace, Nepali Congress and communists. Few know for sure whether the Indian ambassador really had such a dominant role in creating and destroying governments. But the perception stuck and many politicians capitalized on it in different ways.
Following King Gyanendra’s takeover of full executive control, a new movement to restore democracy has gripped Nepal. Leaders have promised a fight to the finish this time. Despite all the heat and dust generated on Kathmandu’s streets, Nepalis have discovered that the political parleys with real significance are being held in New Delhi.
Former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala and ex-deputy premier Bam Dev Gautam may represent opposite poles of mainstream politics. Today both are camping in New Delhi to seek Indian imprimatur on the roadmap to democracy. Surya Bahadur Thapa, the royalist most closely identified with India—and who does not seem to mind – is scheduled to arrive later this month.
A careful reading of the Maoists demands shows that they have greater substantive grievances with India than with the monarchy. They, too, are in the Indian capital awaiting a compromise. (Too bad they are too young to join their colleagues in professing “medical treatment” as the purpose of their visit.)
King Gyanendra, for his part, is scheduled to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the G-77 summit in Qatar. The optimism generated by their first meeting in Jakarta in April, on the sidelines of an Afro-Asian summit, proved short-lived.
To be sure, democracy, human rights, freedom of the press are too sacrosanct not to be universal. If foreign governments or entities extend any kind of support toward those goals, should that be construed as harmful intereference? You don’t have to be a xenophobe or isolationist to resent the groveling, though. The country, moreover, has recognized the price of external support.
The cardinal truth is that democracy is in the eye of the foreign beholder. The partyless panchayat system was democratic enough for India as long as it didn’t overtly challenge New Delhi’s version of the Monroe Doctrine. When Nepal tried buying Chinese arms at bargain prices in 1988, it was clear India had no room for economics in its geopolitical calculations. A crippling trade and transit embargo propelled the movement to restore multiparty democracy.
Those with the greatest propensity for cross-border consultations should be the first ones to recognize the perils. The prime ministerial system had begun to take hold in Nepal under Girija Prasad Koirala between 1991 and 1994. New and more contentious issues between Nepal and India burst out into the open. The opposition regularly stalled parliament and took to the streets against Koirala’s “sell-out” of Nepal’s water resources. Spokesmen for high-level Indian delegations in town would give reporters a wink and whisper that the real bilateral discussions were going to be held at the palace.
After a point, blaming Indians for brazen interference won’t do much good. Indian politicians and diplomats are not paid to advance Nepal’s national interest. Eventually, the ability of Nepalis to resolve differences within the country will determine our national resiliency.
How ready are Nepalis to believe that other Nepalis are as good as they are? Casting mainstream politicians as a corrupt crowd of degenerates craving power under the garb of civil liberties is as dangerous as castigating the palace’s roadmap as a trajectory to a feudal past. Or denouncing the Maoist rebels as misguided murderous marauders.
Clearly, Nepalis today face three competing visions for the future and these must be debated on their merits. Maybe – just maybe – then we could get past the real sovereignty debate.

Republicanism: How About A Real Public Debate?

By Sanjay Upadhya
June 8, 2005

Amid the flurry of political activity in Kathmandu and New Delhi in recent weeks, the myth surrounding the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990 is being dispelled. From the outset, it was clear that the tripartite agreement among the royal palace, the Nepali Congress and a disparate alliance of communist factions was an uneasy one.
The main communist faction, the Marxist-Leninist, had officially expressed qualified support for the new constitution. The party’s objections primarily centered on the role and privileges of the monarchy. It was hardly a secret that the communist parties’ acceptance of constitutional monarchy was a tactical decision. The comrades, not too surprisingly, saw the palace as a useful counterweight to the Nepali Congress’ ambitions.
In the aftermath of King Gyanendra’s February 1 takeover of full executive powers, the Nepali Congress, too, has signaled that its support for constitutional monarchy is, at best, driven by expediency.
Ever since King Gyanendra dismissed the last elected government in October 2002 for failing to hold elections, Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala has been warning that the king’s political ambitions would compelled him to contemplate an alliance with the Maoist rebels to abolish the monarchy. This is surely a leap of faith for a man who headed the government that inaugurated the unleashing of state power against the rebels, who have been fighting since 1996 to establish a communist republic.
Now Koirala’s one-time deputy, Ram Chandra Poudel, has gone a step further by asserting that King Birendra was not satisfied with the powers granted him under the constitution. For a party that proclaimed that King Birendra was the paragon of virtue when it came to adherence to the constitution, Poudel’s disclosure was revealing departure. Moreover, Poudel must have had to summon much antipathy to speak in the way he did against the former monarch around the fourth anniversary of the palace massacre that wiped out most of the royal family.
The monarchy, to be sure, could not have been satisfied with the restricted political role the two major parties envisaged for him in the new constitution. What King Birendra announced on the night of April 8, 1990 was merely the lifting of the ban on political parties. The ensuing days witnessed a struggle for power on the streets and in the media. The scales were tipped against the palace, already weakened by a crippling trade and transit embargo imposed by India. Fifteen years later, the palace stepped in to claim a role it believed it never had relinquished under the tripartite agreement.
Among the leaders still detained by the royal government after the lifting the state of emergency on April 30 are leading proponents of a constituent assembly. This is a key demand of the Maoists, who expect the elected body to transform the kingdom into a republic. The detentions indicate that the palace is ready for a showdown regardless of the quarter it emanated from.
Koirala, the leader of the seven-party anti-palace alliance formed last month, is currently in India for medical treatment. He has been holding talks with sympathetic Indian leaders in an effort to consolidate the democracy movement in Nepal. Advocating a “fight to the finish for full democracy”, he may be contemplating some kind of alliance with the Maoists, who have acknowledged opening their own contacts with key Indian leaders. It remains unclear, though, whether the latest consultations would help clarify the republican agenda.
Indeed, precious little has been heard so far. Considering the Nepalese political parties’ propensity for polarization while in power – a trait preponderant during the two phases of multiparty democracy in 1951-1960 and 1990-2002 – the contours of a republican future need to be drawn clearly. The process needs to begin with a precise definition of the relationship between the head of state and head of government, including role, functions and powers.
To some extent, a United States-style presidential system might help avoid conflicts. Since such a model would be seen centralizing power in one branch, legislative and judicial checks and balances acquire special attention.
An Indian-style prime ministerial model would envisage a titular head of state. Since the president would be the supreme commander of the armed forces, the command-and-control conflicts the mainstream parties see under the monarchy would still exist. This issue acquires additional urgency in view of the heavy politicization of the police force and bureaucracy under successive elected governments.
Irrespective of the model, effective safeguards against potential conflicts between the executive and legislative branches must be put in place. Questions relating to the president’s tenure, including impeachment, must be addressed vigorously, considering the frequency with which no-confidence motions were introduced against the prime minister in the past.
The prime minister’s prerogative to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections, a subject of much divisiveness in the past, must be clearly addressed. There are legitimate issues concerning the judiciary, especially since each prime minister that dissolved the House of Representatives was eventually challenged in the Supreme Court.
In the case of direct elections to both offices, the issue of power-sharing by a president and prime minister representing rival parties becomes crucial. French-style “cohabitation” under which jurisdictions for foreign and domestic policies are clearly laid out, might provide some insights.
Awaiting greater clarification, though, is the precise mechanism of ushering in a republic. The current discussions on a constituent assembly remain superficial. Worse, they presume that the popular verdict is already known. Will voting be conducted along the present first-past-the-post system or proportional representation? How can traditionally underrepresented groups expect their voices and concerns to be heard? Would the people’s representatives elected on diverse platforms assemble to vote on a future model? Or would the issue be put directly to a referendum? Considering the deep divisions in the electorate, how would each of the alternative outcome scenarios be addressed? Who exactly will be drafting a new constitution? Discussions have focused too narrowly on how the palace might react to an adverse result. How would the mainstream parties and the Maoists respond to an outcome not to their liking?
In the case of a republican victory, how would the ambiguities contained in the Maoists’ commitment to their ultimate goal of establishing a communist republic be addressed? This question becomes all the more important in view of the growing interest and influence of external powers in Nepal.
For China, India, United States and Britain, among other countries, the monarchy has been the pivot of stability since the 1950s. Public support, tradition and continuity have conferred special legitimacy to the institution, which external powers have acknowledged and incorporated in their policies vis-à-vis the country.
A full Maoist takeover would hardly be acceptable to them, albeit for different reasons. The United States, which sees its victory over communism as a seminal event of the last century, would hardly countenance such a brazen reversal of that reality. Moreover, Washington has designated the rebels a terrorist group.
The Maoists, who have carefully calibrated their postures in keeping with the exigencies of the moment, may be ready to shed some of their doctrinaire policies and rhetoric in exchange for legitimacy.
However, it remains doubtful whether they would be ready to change the party name and flag in exchange for western support, especially when the far more moderate Unified Marxist Leninists have not been able to do so.
Despite misguided attempts to portray a Chinese hand behind the insurgency, it is clear that Beijing would hardly acquiesce in the emergence of a hard-line Maoist government in Nepal. The Nepalese Maoists continue to espouse aspects of the Cultural Revolution—including class conflicts and retribution – which modern-day Chinese communists would prefer to forget. Moreover, at a time when economic reforms have left a huge rural-urban income divide in China, the communist leadership in Beijing cannot be unaware of the destabilizing effects of a homegrown yet antiquated ideology in a volatile part of South Asia.
As for India, extreme left-wing insurgencies grip some 40 percent of the country’s 593 districts. A full-fledged Maoist takeover in Nepal would serve to energize these groups into forging their wider compact revolutionary zone in South Asia. Considering the long and porous border between the two countries and the peoples’ longstanding links, sections in the Indian establishment might be willing to contemplate a Maoist-dominated republican Nepal under the presidency of, say, the Nepali Congress.
Indeed, New Delhi’s recent decision to open direct channels of communication with the Nepalese Maoists, purportedly under the auspices of leftist supporters of the ruling coalition, could be aimed at facilitating such an alliance. Would the vociferous Hindutva element in India accede to the destruction of the world’s only Hindu kingdom?
Despite the much-hyped bonhomie between China and India, New Delhi’s enthusiasm in defining a new state structure in Nepal would clearly sensitize Beijing. Growing cooperation between the world’s two most populous nations cannot mask the reality that they are also competitors. The limits to conciliation have been on display for some time.
Despite India’s full recognition of Tibet as an integral part of China, Beijing has hardly shown unequivocal reciprocity on the issue of Sikkim, the Himalayan kingdom India annexed in 1974. China’s reticence on India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council provides yet another illustration of this complex relationship.
In keeping with its massive economic expansion, China has decided to deepen its strategic influence in the region, especially with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. According to a report published in April by Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation, Nepal’s strategic location makes the kingdom an important part of South Asia. Nepal’s borders meet China’s restive western province of Tibet on the one hand, and Naxalite-dominated Indian states on the other.
China has traditionally viewed the monarchy as the cornerstone of its Nepal policy. Weeks after describing the royal takeover as an “internal matter,” China sent Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Nepal in a clear gesture of support. Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top advisory body, reaffirmed his country’s support during a meeting with King Gyanendra in April on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia conference in Hainan.
In return, the Jamestown report says, China wants the Nepalese government to stay clear of any foreign (Indian or the U.S.) influence that could make trouble in Tibet. To further the goal of status quo in Tibet, China is integrating Nepal into the Tibetan economy, and laying a highway that will connect the two. Chinese President Hu Jintao, who served as Communist Party secretary in Tibet from 1988 to 1992, perhaps best understands the importance of this integration.
The United States, which joined India and Britain in arming and training the Royal Nepalese Army in its fight against the Maoists, has embarked on a deft policy. While the other two countries responded to the royal takeover by announcing a suspension of military assistance, the United States adopted a watch-and-wait policy. Publicly, Washington continues to emphasize policy coordination with New Delhi and London. Behind the scenes, Washington has engaged with Beijing, already is a key intermediary in the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The Bush administration, aware of China’s recent moves to fill a vacuum in Asian leadership, has assigned Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick to head a permanent U.S. delegation to talk with China one a variety of international issues, including Burma, Nepal and Sudan.
In a 2002 report, the U.S. research organization Stratfor wrote that Washington has relatively little interest in Nepal’s insurgency. However, it added, the Pentagon likely would not mind having another emergency air base or logistics center close to Pakistan and Central Asia. “In looking toward the longer term, the United States definitely wants as much of a presence on the border with China as possible,” the report said.
Beijing is well aware of Washington’s intentions and is no doubt concerned about the U.S. encirclement that is already taking place, Stratfor said. “The U.S. military has bases in Pakistan, throughout Central Asia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and it has relations with Mongolia, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. Nepal is another link in the chain,” it added.
Referring to India’s strategic decision in the mid-1990s to move closer to the United States, Stratfor said New Delhi hoped to benefit from increased trade, eventual access to U.S. weapons systems and the formation of a strong alliance to counter China.
“However, American involvement with Nepal and Sri Lanka raises conflicting impulses. On one hand, New Delhi is glad to see Washington trying to clean up the insurgencies that have spilled over into its borders for years. On the other hand, there is a visceral reaction against foreign involvement in India’s backyard, especially when those foreigners maintain strong ties with Indian rival Pakistan.”
The report added: “Many in India’s foreign policy circles are concerned that Washington may replace India as the dominant power in South Asia, assuming that Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan prefer the freedom that comes with casting their allegiance with a distant giant rather than one close to home.” This, according to Stratfor, has dampened India’s hope of becoming the dominant power in the Indian Ocean and interacting with Washington as a near equal.
In an earlier report, Stratfor underscored Nepal’s strong geo-strategic value to world powers. “The power that stations its space-linked surveillance, intelligence and navigation systems on Nepal’s high mountains gets geo-strategic leverage over several Asian regions, from Central Asia to South-East Asia,” the report said.
Clearly, Nepal must brace for new domestic and international challenges. Proponents of a republican agenda need to persuade the people that the new model would be more effective than the monarchy in address these challenges. Rhetorical threats must not be allowed to take the place of substantive discussions. The accusation that King Gyanendra in this day and age is bent on reviving autocracy is an insult to the intelligence of the Nepalese people.