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.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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.
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.
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