By Sanjay Upadhya
June 3, 2005
The most levelheaded assessment of Nepal’s current crisis has come from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In a delayed disclosure, US Ambassador to Nepal James F. Moriarty last week quoted Madam Secretary as saying that what King Gyanendra had done would “crystallize” events.
Some of the cloudiness has begun to lift. Seven mainstream parties have begun what they call a final fight for full democracy. In a clear application of the pre-emption doctrine, their student wings have vowed to resist the royal government’s plan to rewrite the school curriculum along “nationalistic” lines. Journalists, too, are out on the streets for the protection of press freedom from, among other things, a draconian order in the offing. Other professional organizations are mulling all means of protest short of thronging the streets, which, of course, they have not ruled out.
In yet another sign of a return to normalcy, senior politicians have begun visits to India for consultations with exiled colleagues, Maoist leaders and – not too surprisingly—influential Indian personalities. (At least those who have not been turned back from the airport.) All this suggests that the royal regime may be in its final breaths, right?
Not quite. The mainstream parties have not been able to inject credibility into their claim of forging an alliance with the Maoists. King Gyanendra has long dismissed such threats as “pressure tactics” and the parties have done little to prove him wrong.
Forget the congenitally republican communist parties in the mainstream. The key question here is whether the Nepali Congress would abandon its faith in constitutional monarchy and go all out for a republican agenda.
Over the decades, the party has thrived on perpetuating the myth that Nepal’s monarchy somehow owes its existence to the democrats’ magnanimity. The monarchy, moreover, proved to be a vital cushion when the party was in power. Blind royal assent of its policies meant firm adherence to the principles of constitutional monarchy. When the monarch sought clarifications on critical national issues, it represented unwarranted royal interference.
Indeed, if the rank and file shares Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala’s contention that the monarchy has been at the root of Nepal instability, then a republican alliance with the Maoists should not be difficult to reach. After all, this is a party that tried to assassinate two kings in the 1960s and 70s.
The Maoists, for their part, remain skillful practitioners of realpolitik. Having succeeded in exploiting rifts within political parties and between mainstream parties and the palace over the years, they are now getting a taste of their own medicine. Maoist supremo Prachanda, weeks after justifying the disciplinary action he had taken against chief ideologue Baburam Bhattarai, suddenly dispatched his nemesis to read the pulse of the Indian establishment. Lest we read too much into the turnaround, Prachanda replaced Dr. Bhattarai with confidante Krishna Bahadur Mahara as president of the underground Maoist government.
Vacillation is a term few associated with the Maoists until recently. But, then, who knows what kind of possibilities this unpredictability can throw open. Dr. Bhattarai, whose mastery of the language has dignified the Maoists’ pursuit of crass convenience, urged a BBC Radio interviewer not to take politicians’ public utterances too literally. Translation: the Maoists want to keep open their channels of communication with the palace, too.
As for broad-based consultations with external powers he has so long demonized, Dr. Bhattarai is too erudite a student of history. The United States ended up supporting the Khmer Rouge, after it became the dominant partner of a coalition in exile. Pol Pot may go down in history as one of the worst mass murderers. His henchmen – from Hun Sen downwards – dominate the leadership of today’s democratic Cambodia.
In successive public pronouncements, King Gyanendra appears firm on carrying through the agenda he unveiled in the Feb. 1 proclamation taking over full executive powers. Terms like globalization, free trade, knowledge-based society are primarily coming from an institution that has been reviled as the most archaic in Nepal.
Critics often wonder why a king committed to reactivating a multiparty democracy attuned to the challenge and opportunities of the 21st century can be so dismissive of the political leadership.
Because he sees a distinction between the message and the messengers. Now, Dr. Rice, isn’t that clear as crystal?
Monday, June 05, 2006
Nepal And India: Conundrum Of Closeness
By Sanjay Upadhya
May 24, 2005
The much-extolled close relationship between Nepal and India has unmasked the conundrum that it is. A shared religious, cultural and social heritage has been at the core of these “special relations,” a term New Delhi prefers, often to the consternation of Nepalis. The complexities of the relationship have now come to define deliberations.
India’s flip-flop on the political crisis in Nepal is emblematic of the contradictions that lurked beneath the surface. In the immediate aftermath of the royal takeover, India took a hard-line against King Gyanendra’s regime. New Delhi pulled out of a South Asian summit in Bangladesh, officially citing the security situation in the host country. The move, however, underlined India’s intention to avoid granting legitimacy to the monarch, who in his twin role as head of government would have attended the conference. The Indian government’s decision to suspend military aid proved more problematic.
As the world’s most populous democracy, India was naturally predisposed to react the way it did. India’s displeasure with the palace’s effort to marginalize major political parties was evident in subsequent comments. Politicians of all Nepalese mainstream parties have an affinity with India. Some participated in the Indian independence movement as student activists. Others spent years in exile in Indian cities while political parties remained banned between 1960 and 1990.
Indeed, India’s “setback to democracy” refrain has a larger relevance. A claimant to a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council could not have broken ranks with the three veto-wielding western democracies: United States, Britain and France.
The ‘specialness’ of bilateral ties immediately posed a problem. India insists that Nepal is treaty bound to request New Delhi for any military assistance. Going by that interpretation, India’s voluntary arms embargo would free Nepal from a menacing element of the relationship. The fear of China or Pakistan stepping into vacuum injected some realism in New Delhi. The meeting in Jakarta between King Gyanendra and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brought some clarity to bilateral relations, but not much. Depending on which Indian official one turned to, arms supplies were either under constant review or already on their way to the Royal Nepalese Army arsenal.
Clearly, the Indian government is deeply split over Nepal. The Ministry of External Affairs saw a hard-line against the palace as a way of bolstering its democratic credentials globally and an opportunity to boost its credibility among Nepalis suspicious of Indian intentions. The Ministries of Defense and Home Affairs believed an arms embargo on the kingdom would strengthen the hands of the Maoists rebels fighting to overthrow the monarchy – and, by extension, their Indian allies. Intelligence reports say armed Indian Maoists groups have a presence in 170 districts in 15 states of India, suggesting they may pose a greater threat to Indian security than the Kashmir insurgents do.
Each of the ruling alliance members in New Delhi had their own fraternal constituencies in Nepal. The communists were the most vocal critics of Prime Minister Singh’s assurance to King Gyanendra on a resumption of military supplies. As supporters of the government from outside, the communists’ made their political intentions clear. When Prime Minister Singh’s government tried to appease the communists, the Indian army started getting jittery. Indian Army chief Gen. J.J. Singh, who turned down an invitation to visit the kingdom days after the palace takeover, felt the politicians in the Home and Defense Ministries were more concerned about their own political turf. Apparently, he went directly to Prime Minister Singh’s national security adviser pleading for a lifting of the embargo. Dipping morale among 40,000 Nepalese serving in the Indian army, together with the imperative of preserving deep links with the Royal Nepalese Army forced Gen. Singh into action.
The royal government, too, mobilized an important Indian constituency: the grass-roots Hindu nationalist groups backing the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although the BJP was understandably hesitant to publicly back the palace takeover, it allowed leading MPs to voice their views. To the faithful flock, an atheist communist assault on the very existence of the world’s only Hindu kingdom was no small matter.
There is another constituency that can be expected to grow more vociferous in support of engagement with the royal regime: India’s business community. A leading entrepreneur closely associated with business interests of Nepal’s royal family has just been elected head of the influential Confederation of Indian Industry.
In a rare flourish of candor, Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar recently wrote on how India has always been riding two boats, one of the king and the other of political parties. “We have played one against the other for our own interest and seen to it that neither of the two emerges so strong that it does not need us,” he added. That in essence has been India’s twin-pillar policy. Accordingly, New Delhi continues engagement with the royal regime while backing the opposition alliance. The Royal Nepalese Army, apparently irked by the ambiguity surrounding the arms supplies, uncovered a third element. At a news conference last week, it came out with a tape recording purportedly showing India’s intention to open conditional direct talks with the Nepalese rebels.
India’s jugglery of factional interests in Nepal will undoubtedly continue to masquerade as coherent policy. This time Nepal seems to be in a mood of reciprocity, having borrowed some pages from its giant southern neighbor’s playbook.
May 24, 2005
The much-extolled close relationship between Nepal and India has unmasked the conundrum that it is. A shared religious, cultural and social heritage has been at the core of these “special relations,” a term New Delhi prefers, often to the consternation of Nepalis. The complexities of the relationship have now come to define deliberations.
India’s flip-flop on the political crisis in Nepal is emblematic of the contradictions that lurked beneath the surface. In the immediate aftermath of the royal takeover, India took a hard-line against King Gyanendra’s regime. New Delhi pulled out of a South Asian summit in Bangladesh, officially citing the security situation in the host country. The move, however, underlined India’s intention to avoid granting legitimacy to the monarch, who in his twin role as head of government would have attended the conference. The Indian government’s decision to suspend military aid proved more problematic.
As the world’s most populous democracy, India was naturally predisposed to react the way it did. India’s displeasure with the palace’s effort to marginalize major political parties was evident in subsequent comments. Politicians of all Nepalese mainstream parties have an affinity with India. Some participated in the Indian independence movement as student activists. Others spent years in exile in Indian cities while political parties remained banned between 1960 and 1990.
Indeed, India’s “setback to democracy” refrain has a larger relevance. A claimant to a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council could not have broken ranks with the three veto-wielding western democracies: United States, Britain and France.
The ‘specialness’ of bilateral ties immediately posed a problem. India insists that Nepal is treaty bound to request New Delhi for any military assistance. Going by that interpretation, India’s voluntary arms embargo would free Nepal from a menacing element of the relationship. The fear of China or Pakistan stepping into vacuum injected some realism in New Delhi. The meeting in Jakarta between King Gyanendra and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brought some clarity to bilateral relations, but not much. Depending on which Indian official one turned to, arms supplies were either under constant review or already on their way to the Royal Nepalese Army arsenal.
Clearly, the Indian government is deeply split over Nepal. The Ministry of External Affairs saw a hard-line against the palace as a way of bolstering its democratic credentials globally and an opportunity to boost its credibility among Nepalis suspicious of Indian intentions. The Ministries of Defense and Home Affairs believed an arms embargo on the kingdom would strengthen the hands of the Maoists rebels fighting to overthrow the monarchy – and, by extension, their Indian allies. Intelligence reports say armed Indian Maoists groups have a presence in 170 districts in 15 states of India, suggesting they may pose a greater threat to Indian security than the Kashmir insurgents do.
Each of the ruling alliance members in New Delhi had their own fraternal constituencies in Nepal. The communists were the most vocal critics of Prime Minister Singh’s assurance to King Gyanendra on a resumption of military supplies. As supporters of the government from outside, the communists’ made their political intentions clear. When Prime Minister Singh’s government tried to appease the communists, the Indian army started getting jittery. Indian Army chief Gen. J.J. Singh, who turned down an invitation to visit the kingdom days after the palace takeover, felt the politicians in the Home and Defense Ministries were more concerned about their own political turf. Apparently, he went directly to Prime Minister Singh’s national security adviser pleading for a lifting of the embargo. Dipping morale among 40,000 Nepalese serving in the Indian army, together with the imperative of preserving deep links with the Royal Nepalese Army forced Gen. Singh into action.
The royal government, too, mobilized an important Indian constituency: the grass-roots Hindu nationalist groups backing the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although the BJP was understandably hesitant to publicly back the palace takeover, it allowed leading MPs to voice their views. To the faithful flock, an atheist communist assault on the very existence of the world’s only Hindu kingdom was no small matter.
There is another constituency that can be expected to grow more vociferous in support of engagement with the royal regime: India’s business community. A leading entrepreneur closely associated with business interests of Nepal’s royal family has just been elected head of the influential Confederation of Indian Industry.
In a rare flourish of candor, Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar recently wrote on how India has always been riding two boats, one of the king and the other of political parties. “We have played one against the other for our own interest and seen to it that neither of the two emerges so strong that it does not need us,” he added. That in essence has been India’s twin-pillar policy. Accordingly, New Delhi continues engagement with the royal regime while backing the opposition alliance. The Royal Nepalese Army, apparently irked by the ambiguity surrounding the arms supplies, uncovered a third element. At a news conference last week, it came out with a tape recording purportedly showing India’s intention to open conditional direct talks with the Nepalese rebels.
India’s jugglery of factional interests in Nepal will undoubtedly continue to masquerade as coherent policy. This time Nepal seems to be in a mood of reciprocity, having borrowed some pages from its giant southern neighbor’s playbook.
Nepal: Perils Of International Ambivalence
By Sanjay Upadhya
April 19, 2005
Amid a paralyzing internal political standoff and palpable international ambivalence, revenge killings sparked by vigilante justice threaten to accelerate Nepal’s slide into chaos.
Political parties, still haunted by their three-decade marginalization by an all-powerful palace that ended in 1990, are perhaps naturally inclined to see every step of an assertive monarch as “regressive”. Their stance, while understandable, is nonetheless unsettling. Even the worst critics of King Gyanendra’s February 1 takeover of full executive powers, after all, cannot deny that Nepal needs to be lifted from its worst crisis in history.
To be sure, there is enough blame to go around. The country could have continued its endless debate on the best course of action against the raging Maoist insurgency. But for how long before all the interlocutors were consumed by the conflagration?
While much of the world has denounced King Gyanendra’s assumption of full executive powers, key capitals still seem busy weighing the wider impact of the monarch’s action against the longer term implications of a consummation of the first communist revolution since the end of the cold war. Pronouncements on isolating the royal regime by cutting off all forms of assistance are challenged from within by pleas for engagement with the palace to save Nepal and stabilize South Asia.
The king, for his part, has set out to reactive the democratic process by announcing elections to municipal bodies within a year. He has reinstated the posts of zonal commissioners in an effort to streamline the central administration’s control and coordination in the districts, where the insurgency is most virulent. The appointment of zonal commissioners, considered pillars of the partyless Panchayat system, has brought back bitter memories in the democracy camp, many constituents of which remember them as tools with which the palace enforced its rule. What must not be lost sight of, however, is the fact that former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, the king’s fiercest democratic critic, not long ago conceded that zonal commissioners were one of the few features of partyless rule that worked and should not have been scrapped. His point that the absence of such a mechanism was partly to blame for an effective early counterinsurgency operation is worth remembering.
The leaders of the major political parties see the recent moves as part of a “conspiracy” to legitimize the royal takeover. Their call for a common agenda against the palace’s attempt to regain the power it lost in 1990 has drowned sane pleas from within their ranks for conciliation. Clearly, the obsession with the notion that a monarchy genuinely seeking a more constructive role in governance is somehow at the root of Nepal’s problems stands in the way of a settlement.
In immediate terms, the state of emergency, detention of political leaders and imposition of censorship, among other things, have limited Nepal’s room for engagement with its international friends.
While some of them are being loosened, these restrictions need to be lifted in tandem with signs of improvements in the security situation before the restoration of the democratic process can begin. The reactivation of democratic institutions – through municipal polls and then ultimately national elections within the three-year time frame laid out by the king—would depend on the cooperation of political parties and the Maoists. Both are facing their own moments of truth. The demand for a leadership change is gaining ground in all three major mainstream parties: the Nepali Congress, the breakaway Nepali Congress (Democratic) and the United Marxist Leninists. Younger leaders are becoming more vociferous in demanding, among other things, changes in the parties’ internal functioning and a re-examination of the relationship between the leadership and the people. Efforts to reunite the two Congress factions have gained pace.
The Maoists, who successfully exploited divisions in the mainstream parties, now find themselves mired in their own conflict.
Indications of a moderate-hardliner split were sufficiently evident during the two failed peace talks in 2001 and 2003. After the royal takeover, government and security officials have been claiming that the rifts have deepened to the point where battles between rebel ranks could break out any moment. Even if the split between Maoist supremo Prachanda and the party’s chief ideologue, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, is not as damaging as the official line suggests, recent pronouncements by both men signal some level of serious discord.
This churning process within the mainstream parties and the insurgents would have to run its course before its impact on the national scene can be gauged. The international community does not have the luxury of time. What the Maoists represent may be a historically discredited ideology. In Nepal, mired in deepening inequalities of all kind, it retains its luster. The message and method of the rebels are two different things that need to be seen for what they are. Specifically, the rebels’ shrewdness for ambiguity must be taken more seriously. Addressing the Nepalese people and the political parties, Prachanda has appealed for support for the Maoists’ campaign for “full democracy” through “the twin objectives of a constituent assembly and a multiparty people’s republic.”
To an international audience, Prachanda has described his “People’s War” as “a totally new 21st century war [also against] the evil of the imperialist world, the hypocrisy of so-called democracy that a superpower like the U.S. represents.” (TIMEAsia, April 25, 2005).
A state on the verge of failure gripped by an ideologically driven agenda for international struggle—could the perils of the world’s ambivalence be any clearer?
April 19, 2005
Amid a paralyzing internal political standoff and palpable international ambivalence, revenge killings sparked by vigilante justice threaten to accelerate Nepal’s slide into chaos.
Political parties, still haunted by their three-decade marginalization by an all-powerful palace that ended in 1990, are perhaps naturally inclined to see every step of an assertive monarch as “regressive”. Their stance, while understandable, is nonetheless unsettling. Even the worst critics of King Gyanendra’s February 1 takeover of full executive powers, after all, cannot deny that Nepal needs to be lifted from its worst crisis in history.
To be sure, there is enough blame to go around. The country could have continued its endless debate on the best course of action against the raging Maoist insurgency. But for how long before all the interlocutors were consumed by the conflagration?
While much of the world has denounced King Gyanendra’s assumption of full executive powers, key capitals still seem busy weighing the wider impact of the monarch’s action against the longer term implications of a consummation of the first communist revolution since the end of the cold war. Pronouncements on isolating the royal regime by cutting off all forms of assistance are challenged from within by pleas for engagement with the palace to save Nepal and stabilize South Asia.
The king, for his part, has set out to reactive the democratic process by announcing elections to municipal bodies within a year. He has reinstated the posts of zonal commissioners in an effort to streamline the central administration’s control and coordination in the districts, where the insurgency is most virulent. The appointment of zonal commissioners, considered pillars of the partyless Panchayat system, has brought back bitter memories in the democracy camp, many constituents of which remember them as tools with which the palace enforced its rule. What must not be lost sight of, however, is the fact that former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, the king’s fiercest democratic critic, not long ago conceded that zonal commissioners were one of the few features of partyless rule that worked and should not have been scrapped. His point that the absence of such a mechanism was partly to blame for an effective early counterinsurgency operation is worth remembering.
The leaders of the major political parties see the recent moves as part of a “conspiracy” to legitimize the royal takeover. Their call for a common agenda against the palace’s attempt to regain the power it lost in 1990 has drowned sane pleas from within their ranks for conciliation. Clearly, the obsession with the notion that a monarchy genuinely seeking a more constructive role in governance is somehow at the root of Nepal’s problems stands in the way of a settlement.
In immediate terms, the state of emergency, detention of political leaders and imposition of censorship, among other things, have limited Nepal’s room for engagement with its international friends.
While some of them are being loosened, these restrictions need to be lifted in tandem with signs of improvements in the security situation before the restoration of the democratic process can begin. The reactivation of democratic institutions – through municipal polls and then ultimately national elections within the three-year time frame laid out by the king—would depend on the cooperation of political parties and the Maoists. Both are facing their own moments of truth. The demand for a leadership change is gaining ground in all three major mainstream parties: the Nepali Congress, the breakaway Nepali Congress (Democratic) and the United Marxist Leninists. Younger leaders are becoming more vociferous in demanding, among other things, changes in the parties’ internal functioning and a re-examination of the relationship between the leadership and the people. Efforts to reunite the two Congress factions have gained pace.
The Maoists, who successfully exploited divisions in the mainstream parties, now find themselves mired in their own conflict.
Indications of a moderate-hardliner split were sufficiently evident during the two failed peace talks in 2001 and 2003. After the royal takeover, government and security officials have been claiming that the rifts have deepened to the point where battles between rebel ranks could break out any moment. Even if the split between Maoist supremo Prachanda and the party’s chief ideologue, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, is not as damaging as the official line suggests, recent pronouncements by both men signal some level of serious discord.
This churning process within the mainstream parties and the insurgents would have to run its course before its impact on the national scene can be gauged. The international community does not have the luxury of time. What the Maoists represent may be a historically discredited ideology. In Nepal, mired in deepening inequalities of all kind, it retains its luster. The message and method of the rebels are two different things that need to be seen for what they are. Specifically, the rebels’ shrewdness for ambiguity must be taken more seriously. Addressing the Nepalese people and the political parties, Prachanda has appealed for support for the Maoists’ campaign for “full democracy” through “the twin objectives of a constituent assembly and a multiparty people’s republic.”
To an international audience, Prachanda has described his “People’s War” as “a totally new 21st century war [also against] the evil of the imperialist world, the hypocrisy of so-called democracy that a superpower like the U.S. represents.” (TIMEAsia, April 25, 2005).
A state on the verge of failure gripped by an ideologically driven agenda for international struggle—could the perils of the world’s ambivalence be any clearer?
Pulling Nepal Back From The Precipice
By Sanjay Upadhya
April 13, 2005
Having endured scathing criticism from much of the world for his February 1 decision to take direct control of the government, Nepal’s King Gyanendra now has a special opportunity to present his case on the sidelines of two major regional forums later this month.
The monarch is scheduled to participate in the 50th anniversary commemorations of the Asian-African summit, considered by many the precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement, on April 22-23 in Bangdung, Indonesia. The following day he is to arrive in Boao, in the Chinese province of Hainan, to attend what is described as the Asian equivalent of the Davos economic forum.
The stakes for the Nepalese entourage could not be higher. The detention of political leaders, declaration of a state of emergency, and imposition of harsh censorship has isolated the royal government. Britain and India have suspended military aid to help fight the nine-year-old Maoist insurgency, which has claimed close to 12,000 lives, while the United States is mulling similar action.
Nordic governments have announced a freeze in further development assistance until democracy is restored. The Royal Nepalese Army has come under heavy criticism at the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva over reports of abuses during its counterinsurgency operations.
The government remains defiant amid the international outcry. In a televised address to the nation on February 1, King Gyanendra justified his takeover, saying the political parties had misgoverned the country since the restoration of democracy in 1990 and blaming them for the rise of the Maoists. He said he needed three years to restore peace, put democracy back on track, and hold fresh elections. He asserted that he needed to suspend civil liberties to focus on the fight against the insurgents. That continues to be the message coming from senior Nepalese ministers and officials.
Predictably, the estranged political parties have decided to mount active resistance against the royal government, which is reminiscent of their conduct during the last opportunity Nepal had to restore peace. In 2003, the mainstream parties, while continuing to voice support for a favorable outcome in the government-Maoist negotiations that were under way, focused their energy on confrontation with the palace, which had just stepped into day-to-day politics for the first time in 12 years. While blaming the obstinacy of the palace-appointed government and “foreign powers” for the collapse of the peace process, the Maoists also lashed out against the mainstream parties’ demand to restore parliament and introduce reforms through amendments “to the old moribund constitution” they had declared war against.
The Maoists, who rebuffed subsequent governments’ peace overtures by insisting they would only talk directly with the king, evidently see in the current crisis an opportunity to mount their much-vaunted strategic offensive against what they consider a tottering state. The government, for its part, appears determined to inflict a decisive blow on the rebels in an effort to force them to the negotiating table.
How far the military’s recent battlefield victories against the Maoists and reports of a deepening schism within rebel ranks will change the dynamics of the nine-year-old conflict remains unclear. There are ominous signs the international community must not ignore. In parts of the country, armed villagers have begun attacking those they suspect of being Maoists. The rebels, for their part, have retaliated against those they consider state-sponsored vigilantes. Amid the mayhem, thousands of villagers have fled across Nepal’s southern border into India.
Regional alignments have been rapidly shifting. India’s initial tough response to the royal takeover, including its decision to halt military assistance, has given way to a sobering recognition in political, diplomatic and academic circles in New Delhi of the possibility of China and Pakistan stepping into the vacuum. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing became the highest ranking foreign leader to visit the kingdom since the royal takeover. In the aftermath of Li’s visit, Nepalese and Chinese officials have stepped up deliberations on various sectors – from transportation to trade—signaling a desire on both sides to offset the kingdom’s traditional dependence on India. Before Li’s visit, Nepal and Pakistan held their first joint economic commission meeting in 10 years. Islamabad extended a $5 million credit line for boosting the kingdom’s industrial and commercial development and growth and has promised to provide military assistance if requested.
In the midst of these fast-moving events, a credible roadmap for renewal has become all the more urgent. Restoring the status quo ante cannot lay the basis for an effective agenda for change. The sturdiness of democratic institutions can be ensured only by restoring the people’s faith in them. Theoretically, elected representatives can provide people-oriented governance, but the Maoists have vowed to sabotage fresh elections. The restoration of parliament, dissolved three years ago by an elected prime minister exercising his constitutional prerogative, has been advanced as a way out of the crisis. Indeed, such a move may provide the framework for creating a broad-based government. Considering the skirmishes and deadlock successive sessions of parliament have witnessed in past years, advocates of this option need to be more forthright on how a broad-based government would develop a political, security and socio-economic strategy to address the insurgency and the underlying issues.
To the extent that a reform agenda has been formulated, it is centered on constitutional changes to limit royal powers, ensure civilian control over the military, and codify the supremacy of parliament over the palace. Blaming the current crisis on royal assertiveness would be a monumental abdication of responsibility by the other principal players. If the political mainstream and sections of civil society are so convinced that the palace is indeed the problem, then a more credible approach would be deliberations with the Maoists on the structures and sustenance of a republican Nepal. A constitutional monarchy that would exist merely to bear silent witness to the partisan politics of the day is not what Nepal needs.
King Gyanendra has put his throne on the line at a time when Nepal is facing the most serious crisis of its 237-year existence. This is an opportunity for the Nepalese people and their international well-wishers to launch efforts to pull the kingdom back from the precipice. The obsession with viewing the king’s intervention as little more than a palace power grab will not help such efforts.
April 13, 2005
Having endured scathing criticism from much of the world for his February 1 decision to take direct control of the government, Nepal’s King Gyanendra now has a special opportunity to present his case on the sidelines of two major regional forums later this month.
The monarch is scheduled to participate in the 50th anniversary commemorations of the Asian-African summit, considered by many the precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement, on April 22-23 in Bangdung, Indonesia. The following day he is to arrive in Boao, in the Chinese province of Hainan, to attend what is described as the Asian equivalent of the Davos economic forum.
The stakes for the Nepalese entourage could not be higher. The detention of political leaders, declaration of a state of emergency, and imposition of harsh censorship has isolated the royal government. Britain and India have suspended military aid to help fight the nine-year-old Maoist insurgency, which has claimed close to 12,000 lives, while the United States is mulling similar action.
Nordic governments have announced a freeze in further development assistance until democracy is restored. The Royal Nepalese Army has come under heavy criticism at the United Nations Commission for Human Rights in Geneva over reports of abuses during its counterinsurgency operations.
The government remains defiant amid the international outcry. In a televised address to the nation on February 1, King Gyanendra justified his takeover, saying the political parties had misgoverned the country since the restoration of democracy in 1990 and blaming them for the rise of the Maoists. He said he needed three years to restore peace, put democracy back on track, and hold fresh elections. He asserted that he needed to suspend civil liberties to focus on the fight against the insurgents. That continues to be the message coming from senior Nepalese ministers and officials.
Predictably, the estranged political parties have decided to mount active resistance against the royal government, which is reminiscent of their conduct during the last opportunity Nepal had to restore peace. In 2003, the mainstream parties, while continuing to voice support for a favorable outcome in the government-Maoist negotiations that were under way, focused their energy on confrontation with the palace, which had just stepped into day-to-day politics for the first time in 12 years. While blaming the obstinacy of the palace-appointed government and “foreign powers” for the collapse of the peace process, the Maoists also lashed out against the mainstream parties’ demand to restore parliament and introduce reforms through amendments “to the old moribund constitution” they had declared war against.
The Maoists, who rebuffed subsequent governments’ peace overtures by insisting they would only talk directly with the king, evidently see in the current crisis an opportunity to mount their much-vaunted strategic offensive against what they consider a tottering state. The government, for its part, appears determined to inflict a decisive blow on the rebels in an effort to force them to the negotiating table.
How far the military’s recent battlefield victories against the Maoists and reports of a deepening schism within rebel ranks will change the dynamics of the nine-year-old conflict remains unclear. There are ominous signs the international community must not ignore. In parts of the country, armed villagers have begun attacking those they suspect of being Maoists. The rebels, for their part, have retaliated against those they consider state-sponsored vigilantes. Amid the mayhem, thousands of villagers have fled across Nepal’s southern border into India.
Regional alignments have been rapidly shifting. India’s initial tough response to the royal takeover, including its decision to halt military assistance, has given way to a sobering recognition in political, diplomatic and academic circles in New Delhi of the possibility of China and Pakistan stepping into the vacuum. Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing became the highest ranking foreign leader to visit the kingdom since the royal takeover. In the aftermath of Li’s visit, Nepalese and Chinese officials have stepped up deliberations on various sectors – from transportation to trade—signaling a desire on both sides to offset the kingdom’s traditional dependence on India. Before Li’s visit, Nepal and Pakistan held their first joint economic commission meeting in 10 years. Islamabad extended a $5 million credit line for boosting the kingdom’s industrial and commercial development and growth and has promised to provide military assistance if requested.
In the midst of these fast-moving events, a credible roadmap for renewal has become all the more urgent. Restoring the status quo ante cannot lay the basis for an effective agenda for change. The sturdiness of democratic institutions can be ensured only by restoring the people’s faith in them. Theoretically, elected representatives can provide people-oriented governance, but the Maoists have vowed to sabotage fresh elections. The restoration of parliament, dissolved three years ago by an elected prime minister exercising his constitutional prerogative, has been advanced as a way out of the crisis. Indeed, such a move may provide the framework for creating a broad-based government. Considering the skirmishes and deadlock successive sessions of parliament have witnessed in past years, advocates of this option need to be more forthright on how a broad-based government would develop a political, security and socio-economic strategy to address the insurgency and the underlying issues.
To the extent that a reform agenda has been formulated, it is centered on constitutional changes to limit royal powers, ensure civilian control over the military, and codify the supremacy of parliament over the palace. Blaming the current crisis on royal assertiveness would be a monumental abdication of responsibility by the other principal players. If the political mainstream and sections of civil society are so convinced that the palace is indeed the problem, then a more credible approach would be deliberations with the Maoists on the structures and sustenance of a republican Nepal. A constitutional monarchy that would exist merely to bear silent witness to the partisan politics of the day is not what Nepal needs.
King Gyanendra has put his throne on the line at a time when Nepal is facing the most serious crisis of its 237-year existence. This is an opportunity for the Nepalese people and their international well-wishers to launch efforts to pull the kingdom back from the precipice. The obsession with viewing the king’s intervention as little more than a palace power grab will not help such efforts.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Nepal: Between The Dragon And The Peacock
By Sanjay Upadhya
December 19, 2005
Having been upstaged by China at two Asian forums in as many months, strategic thinkers and policy analysts in New Delhi have begun deliberating in public what they surely must have been counseling in private for some time.
Despite the subsequent gloss provided by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, China’s inclusion as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation at last month’s summit in Dhaka came against the wishes of India. The sop of tagging Tokyo as a fellow observer in the forum does not seem to have soothed New Delhi’s anxieties.
While Nepal emerged as the convenient whipping boy for India, having linked Afghanistan’s full membership to observer status for China, New Delhi could not have been oblivious to the support Kathmandu’s position enjoyed in Islamabad, Colombo and Dhaka. After his Dhaka “gesture”, King Gyanendra was presented with a 12-point accord between the mainstream parties and Maoist rebels that had been in the works in New Delhi for quite some time. To what extent the Indian government is officially prepared to advance that platform to tame the “wayward” monarch remains unclear. At least in public, Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran sounded a conciliatory note during his three-day visit to Kathmandu earlier this month. As the full range of India’s options in what it has long considered its exclusive sphere of influence was being debated, New Delhi got another view of China’s growing regional clout. At the East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month, Beijing succeeded in keeping the U.S. out of the forum and in preventing India, Australia and New Zealand from playing a central role in propelling the region’s economic integration.
Worse, from New Delhi’s perspective, Beijing wants future East Asian summits to be confined to Asean+3—South Korea, Japan and itself. In the words of the Indian Express, these developments show that China has acquired a veto over future economic and political arrangements in Asia, something India needs to respond to urgently.
Such tensions between the regional giants would scarcely have been news to anyone firmly rooted in the realities of the recent upswing in their ties. Beijing and New Delhi have resolved not to let the political differences stand in the way of a robust economic partnership. Even such relationship would contain distinct dimensions of cooperation and competition. Areas of complementarities, such as developing the high-tech sector, would have to be juxtaposed with spheres of rivalries, such as attracting foreign investment.
The Chinese government’s recent announcement that it would revise its national income statistics in line with a recent census is bound to accelerate competition with India. The new figures would establish China firmly as the world’s fourth largest economy. The luster of that distinction alone would be sufficient to attract those without the time or patience for precise details on, say, the cost of capital in China and stock market returns in what is still essentially a state-driven economy.
Coupled with China’s calm but consistent campaign to preempt what it considers U.S.-led efforts at encirclement, the different sub-regions within Asia are bound to become even more conspicuous theaters of Beijing’s engagement.
For Nepal, precariously perched between China and India, these developments have ominously raised the stakes. Following King Gyanendra’s takeover of full executive powers on February 1, Sino-Nepalese relations have acquired unprecedented momentum in different spheres, including military cooperation. Weeks after dispatching 18 truckloads of arms and ammunition to Nepal, China has sent a team from the People’s Liberation Army to the kingdom. Nepal has become an arena where some Indians analysts are tempted to believe they are best positioned to challenge China. The kingdom remains that part of South Asia which has been traditionally most vulnerable to Indian pressures. It is also the least able to resist such pressures.
Since China has stepped up its cooperation with the kingdom with considerable deftness, allowing the Nepalese side to announce and explain new initiatives, India has received few opportunities to publicly voice displeasure at Beijing’s growing involvement. The circuitous route, however, is becoming clearer. India has begun talking about a “reappraisal/rationalization” of trade and transit facilities Nepal has been enjoying. Over time, that posture can be expected to morph into a wider articulation of the consequences of Nepal’s inability to address Indian security concerns.
The last time Nepal incurred India’s wrath for cozying up to China, the kingdom suffered from what was in effect a stifling trade and transit embargo. Whether Nepal has improved its ability to withstand such restrictions 15 years later remains unclear. Judging from the public pronouncements of key palace aides, the royal regime appears no less inclined to fight to the finish.
There is an ominous addition to the dynamics. Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of the Unified Marxist-Leninist party, has emerged as the principal critic of China for its support of an otherwise internationally isolated royal regime. There is a potential for greater instability in the kingdom, should ongoing street protests take an anti-Chinese turn.
For India, such an escalation would no doubt amount to another manifestation of the demonstrators’ desire for total democracy. Whether Nepal can bear the fallout is what Nepalis should really be worrying about.
December 19, 2005
Having been upstaged by China at two Asian forums in as many months, strategic thinkers and policy analysts in New Delhi have begun deliberating in public what they surely must have been counseling in private for some time.
Despite the subsequent gloss provided by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, China’s inclusion as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation at last month’s summit in Dhaka came against the wishes of India. The sop of tagging Tokyo as a fellow observer in the forum does not seem to have soothed New Delhi’s anxieties.
While Nepal emerged as the convenient whipping boy for India, having linked Afghanistan’s full membership to observer status for China, New Delhi could not have been oblivious to the support Kathmandu’s position enjoyed in Islamabad, Colombo and Dhaka. After his Dhaka “gesture”, King Gyanendra was presented with a 12-point accord between the mainstream parties and Maoist rebels that had been in the works in New Delhi for quite some time. To what extent the Indian government is officially prepared to advance that platform to tame the “wayward” monarch remains unclear. At least in public, Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran sounded a conciliatory note during his three-day visit to Kathmandu earlier this month. As the full range of India’s options in what it has long considered its exclusive sphere of influence was being debated, New Delhi got another view of China’s growing regional clout. At the East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month, Beijing succeeded in keeping the U.S. out of the forum and in preventing India, Australia and New Zealand from playing a central role in propelling the region’s economic integration.
Worse, from New Delhi’s perspective, Beijing wants future East Asian summits to be confined to Asean+3—South Korea, Japan and itself. In the words of the Indian Express, these developments show that China has acquired a veto over future economic and political arrangements in Asia, something India needs to respond to urgently.
Such tensions between the regional giants would scarcely have been news to anyone firmly rooted in the realities of the recent upswing in their ties. Beijing and New Delhi have resolved not to let the political differences stand in the way of a robust economic partnership. Even such relationship would contain distinct dimensions of cooperation and competition. Areas of complementarities, such as developing the high-tech sector, would have to be juxtaposed with spheres of rivalries, such as attracting foreign investment.
The Chinese government’s recent announcement that it would revise its national income statistics in line with a recent census is bound to accelerate competition with India. The new figures would establish China firmly as the world’s fourth largest economy. The luster of that distinction alone would be sufficient to attract those without the time or patience for precise details on, say, the cost of capital in China and stock market returns in what is still essentially a state-driven economy.
Coupled with China’s calm but consistent campaign to preempt what it considers U.S.-led efforts at encirclement, the different sub-regions within Asia are bound to become even more conspicuous theaters of Beijing’s engagement.
For Nepal, precariously perched between China and India, these developments have ominously raised the stakes. Following King Gyanendra’s takeover of full executive powers on February 1, Sino-Nepalese relations have acquired unprecedented momentum in different spheres, including military cooperation. Weeks after dispatching 18 truckloads of arms and ammunition to Nepal, China has sent a team from the People’s Liberation Army to the kingdom. Nepal has become an arena where some Indians analysts are tempted to believe they are best positioned to challenge China. The kingdom remains that part of South Asia which has been traditionally most vulnerable to Indian pressures. It is also the least able to resist such pressures.
Since China has stepped up its cooperation with the kingdom with considerable deftness, allowing the Nepalese side to announce and explain new initiatives, India has received few opportunities to publicly voice displeasure at Beijing’s growing involvement. The circuitous route, however, is becoming clearer. India has begun talking about a “reappraisal/rationalization” of trade and transit facilities Nepal has been enjoying. Over time, that posture can be expected to morph into a wider articulation of the consequences of Nepal’s inability to address Indian security concerns.
The last time Nepal incurred India’s wrath for cozying up to China, the kingdom suffered from what was in effect a stifling trade and transit embargo. Whether Nepal has improved its ability to withstand such restrictions 15 years later remains unclear. Judging from the public pronouncements of key palace aides, the royal regime appears no less inclined to fight to the finish.
There is an ominous addition to the dynamics. Madhav Kumar Nepal, general secretary of the Unified Marxist-Leninist party, has emerged as the principal critic of China for its support of an otherwise internationally isolated royal regime. There is a potential for greater instability in the kingdom, should ongoing street protests take an anti-Chinese turn.
For India, such an escalation would no doubt amount to another manifestation of the demonstrators’ desire for total democracy. Whether Nepal can bear the fallout is what Nepalis should really be worrying about.
China’s ‘Nepal Card’?
By Sanjay Upadhya
November 29, 2005
A week that began with the Economist magazine attempting to make sense of China’s emerging robust diplomacy—aimed at creating what President Hu Jintao calls a “harmonious world”—ended with one more display of Beijing’s finesse. The Chinese army, according to news reports, escorted eighteen trucks carrying arms and ammunition to Nepal’s border where plain-clothed Nepalese troops took over.
Ever since King Gyanendra dismissed a multiparty government and took over full executive powers in February, sparking strident global condemnation, China has loomed large over the kingdom. India, Nepal’s preponderant neighbor to the south, and Britain responded to the takeover by seeking to ostracize the royal regime. The United States appeared to give the king – who argued he was compelled to act because political parties failed to control a 10-year-old Maoist insurgency—the benefit of the doubt.
Beijing, for its part, refused to criticize King Gyanendra’s takeover, describing it as an internal matter. For the international media, that was tantamount to unqualified support for the monarchy.
When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao left out Nepal in his South Asian itinerary, the omission was interpreted as evidence of Beijing’s unwillingness to undermine its vital relations with Washington and New Delhi. But Beijing dispatched Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Kathmandu in late March to enhance bilateral relations. The occasion may have been the 50th anniversary of Sino-Nepalese diplomatic ties a period that has seen at least three systemic convulsions in the kingdom – but the implications of Li’s visit were broader.
On the eve of Wen’s arrival in New Delhi in May, Indian officials briefed reporters that Nepal would figure high during his talks with his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Barely anything of substance figured in news coverage of the talks, as far as events in Nepal were concerned.Since his takeover, King Gyanendra has visited China to attend an economic forum of Asian nations. Unconfirmed reports suggest a formal visit may be on the cards. Several Nepalese ministers and the chief of the Royal Nepalese Army have visited Beijing. A host of delegations at lower levels have exchanged visits, eager to explore newer avenues of cooperation.
Although perennially wary of traditional rivals China and Pakistan seeking to exploit any vacuum in the kingdom, India firmly rallied behind the anti-palace camp. Many Indian analysts were confident that Nepal’s effort to play the “China card” – shorthand for Kathmandu astutely playing off one giant neighbor against the other—was doomed in view of the improvements in Sino-Indian relations.
By the time Nepalese Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey returned from Beijing in August with a pledge of $12.3 million in Chinese budgetary support, New Delhi had already begun an overt effort to forge an alliance between opposition parties and Maoist insurgents against the palace.
In a significant statement last month, as India stepped up efforts to redraw Nepal’s political alignments, China’s Ambassador in New Delhi, Sun Yuxi, announced his government’s readiness to help India crush its own nagging Maoist insurgencies in several states. Some Indian analysts immediately deciphered the statement as a cover for an intensification of Chinese military support for Nepal’s battle against Maoist insurgents, who draw significant support from allies in India.
When Royal Nepalese Army chief Pyar Jung Thapa, returning from talks in China last month, announced that Beijing had pledged military assistance worth almost a million dollars, Washington, too, began taking a harder line against the palace.
Nepal’s effort earlier this month to have China included in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation as an observer evidently rattled New Delhi. It prompted Washington, which has been coordinating its policy on the kingdom with India and Britain, to revise its view that the Maoists could not be trusted as a legitimate political force.
U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty flew into New Delhi for official consultations, where senior Nepalese leaders were already huddled in negotiations with Maoist rebel leaders through active Indian mediation. Moriarty emerged from talks with Indian officials to say that King Gyanendra had “tough choices” to make and backed efforts to “mainstream” the Maoists.
Moriarty rejected the possibility of China taking advantage of the flux in Nepal, saying Beijing had assured Washington that it wanted Kathmandu to have better relations with New Delhi. Before the full implications of that cryptic assertion could emerge, Chinese military supplies began entering Nepal.
How far those 18 truckloads went in goading Washington to summon Moriarty for consultations remains unclear. A key element of China’s robust diplomacy, however, was on full display. Gestures of Chinese support relating to more sensitive aspects of Nepal’s security and stability have been announced by Kathmandu.
Such discretion has not stopped Nepalese leaders from criticizing China. United Marxist-Leninist general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal, for instance, has emerged as the principal China critic in recent weeks. Given his central role in the New Delhi conclave, the Chinese could hardly have expected him to express anything inconsistent with India’s views.
What Is China Up To In Nepal?
During India’s trade and transit embargo in 1988-89, China had failed to come in direct support of Nepal. After all, it was Nepal’s decision to buy Chinese arms that had precipitated that embargo. Premier Li Peng arrived on a visit to Nepal as India’s stranglehold was tightening. At a news conference, Li suggested that Nepal resolve its differences with India – an assertion that jolted the palace, which had taken a confrontationist course with New Delhi. Obviously, Beijing was unwilling to jeopardize its warming ties with New Delhi over events in the kingdom. When the embargo morphed into a pro-democracy campaign, the beleaguered palace-led partyless system could hardly have counted on support from Chinese leaders, already on the defensive for their violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square student protests.
In the early 1990s, the perception that China had abandoned Nepal to India’s sphere of influence appeared to deepen as top Chinese leaders became increasingly candid in acknowledging the kingdom’s traditional multifaceted ties with its giant southern neighbor. By mid-decade, as Nepal struggled to sustain multiparty democracy, a sudden shift was palpable. Chinese leaders began describing Nepal’s open border with India as a security threat to their own country. Reports that the Karmapa Lama – widely seen as the third important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism—had escaped to India via Nepal heightened Chinese concerns.
The spread – and increasing lethality – of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal triggered repeated Chinese condemnation of the espousal of terrorism in the name of Mao Zedong. Having once served as a base for U.S.-armed anti-Chinese Tibetan fighters, moreover, could an unstable Nepal become a staging ground for Muslim Uighur separatists?
A New Paradigm
Changes at the global level had their impact. The post-9/11 period saw a marked improvement in Sino-American ties – in sharp contrast to the tensions that characterized the first nine months of the President George W. Bush’s administration. The Chinese, nevertheless, could not have been oblivious to the return of Cold War-era terms like “containment” and “encirclement” in Washington. By the time Hu Jintao, a former governor of Tibet, became president in 2003, China had already begun boosting ties with Asian, African and Latin American nations, many of which had fallen out of Washington’s favor.
Despite the hysteria gripping certain sections in Washington, China, by most accounts, will remain militarily incapable of blocking the projection of American power. Moreover, China’s economic miracle is fueled by exports; it must maintain acceptable relations with its largest trading partner. So what drives China’s diplomatic ebullience?
A white paper released in Beijing last year offered useful insights. Noting that “new and profound readjustments have taken place in the relations among the world’s major countries,” the paper observed that a confused pattern had emerged. “While cooperating with and seeking support from each other, [these countries] are checking on and competing with each other as well,” it added. Beijing clearly conveyed its desire to use this cooperation-competition paradigm to pursue its perceived interests.
In South Asia, China has been willing to set aside long-running border disputes with India in the interest of building stronger trade and business ties between the two countries. On other issues, such as the recent U.S.-India pact virtually acknowledging New Delhi as the world’s sixth official nuclear power, Chinese media have warned that other powers could make “nuclear exceptions” with their friends and weaken the global non-proliferation regime. Obviously, the message was aimed at audiences both in Washington and New Delhi. In reality, China’s Nepal card – not vice versa – should be of greater interest to all those paying attention to the relentless twists and turns in the kingdom.
November 29, 2005
A week that began with the Economist magazine attempting to make sense of China’s emerging robust diplomacy—aimed at creating what President Hu Jintao calls a “harmonious world”—ended with one more display of Beijing’s finesse. The Chinese army, according to news reports, escorted eighteen trucks carrying arms and ammunition to Nepal’s border where plain-clothed Nepalese troops took over.
Ever since King Gyanendra dismissed a multiparty government and took over full executive powers in February, sparking strident global condemnation, China has loomed large over the kingdom. India, Nepal’s preponderant neighbor to the south, and Britain responded to the takeover by seeking to ostracize the royal regime. The United States appeared to give the king – who argued he was compelled to act because political parties failed to control a 10-year-old Maoist insurgency—the benefit of the doubt.
Beijing, for its part, refused to criticize King Gyanendra’s takeover, describing it as an internal matter. For the international media, that was tantamount to unqualified support for the monarchy.
When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao left out Nepal in his South Asian itinerary, the omission was interpreted as evidence of Beijing’s unwillingness to undermine its vital relations with Washington and New Delhi. But Beijing dispatched Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Kathmandu in late March to enhance bilateral relations. The occasion may have been the 50th anniversary of Sino-Nepalese diplomatic ties a period that has seen at least three systemic convulsions in the kingdom – but the implications of Li’s visit were broader.
On the eve of Wen’s arrival in New Delhi in May, Indian officials briefed reporters that Nepal would figure high during his talks with his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Barely anything of substance figured in news coverage of the talks, as far as events in Nepal were concerned.Since his takeover, King Gyanendra has visited China to attend an economic forum of Asian nations. Unconfirmed reports suggest a formal visit may be on the cards. Several Nepalese ministers and the chief of the Royal Nepalese Army have visited Beijing. A host of delegations at lower levels have exchanged visits, eager to explore newer avenues of cooperation.
Although perennially wary of traditional rivals China and Pakistan seeking to exploit any vacuum in the kingdom, India firmly rallied behind the anti-palace camp. Many Indian analysts were confident that Nepal’s effort to play the “China card” – shorthand for Kathmandu astutely playing off one giant neighbor against the other—was doomed in view of the improvements in Sino-Indian relations.
By the time Nepalese Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey returned from Beijing in August with a pledge of $12.3 million in Chinese budgetary support, New Delhi had already begun an overt effort to forge an alliance between opposition parties and Maoist insurgents against the palace.
In a significant statement last month, as India stepped up efforts to redraw Nepal’s political alignments, China’s Ambassador in New Delhi, Sun Yuxi, announced his government’s readiness to help India crush its own nagging Maoist insurgencies in several states. Some Indian analysts immediately deciphered the statement as a cover for an intensification of Chinese military support for Nepal’s battle against Maoist insurgents, who draw significant support from allies in India.
When Royal Nepalese Army chief Pyar Jung Thapa, returning from talks in China last month, announced that Beijing had pledged military assistance worth almost a million dollars, Washington, too, began taking a harder line against the palace.
Nepal’s effort earlier this month to have China included in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation as an observer evidently rattled New Delhi. It prompted Washington, which has been coordinating its policy on the kingdom with India and Britain, to revise its view that the Maoists could not be trusted as a legitimate political force.
U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty flew into New Delhi for official consultations, where senior Nepalese leaders were already huddled in negotiations with Maoist rebel leaders through active Indian mediation. Moriarty emerged from talks with Indian officials to say that King Gyanendra had “tough choices” to make and backed efforts to “mainstream” the Maoists.
Moriarty rejected the possibility of China taking advantage of the flux in Nepal, saying Beijing had assured Washington that it wanted Kathmandu to have better relations with New Delhi. Before the full implications of that cryptic assertion could emerge, Chinese military supplies began entering Nepal.
How far those 18 truckloads went in goading Washington to summon Moriarty for consultations remains unclear. A key element of China’s robust diplomacy, however, was on full display. Gestures of Chinese support relating to more sensitive aspects of Nepal’s security and stability have been announced by Kathmandu.
Such discretion has not stopped Nepalese leaders from criticizing China. United Marxist-Leninist general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal, for instance, has emerged as the principal China critic in recent weeks. Given his central role in the New Delhi conclave, the Chinese could hardly have expected him to express anything inconsistent with India’s views.
What Is China Up To In Nepal?
During India’s trade and transit embargo in 1988-89, China had failed to come in direct support of Nepal. After all, it was Nepal’s decision to buy Chinese arms that had precipitated that embargo. Premier Li Peng arrived on a visit to Nepal as India’s stranglehold was tightening. At a news conference, Li suggested that Nepal resolve its differences with India – an assertion that jolted the palace, which had taken a confrontationist course with New Delhi. Obviously, Beijing was unwilling to jeopardize its warming ties with New Delhi over events in the kingdom. When the embargo morphed into a pro-democracy campaign, the beleaguered palace-led partyless system could hardly have counted on support from Chinese leaders, already on the defensive for their violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square student protests.
In the early 1990s, the perception that China had abandoned Nepal to India’s sphere of influence appeared to deepen as top Chinese leaders became increasingly candid in acknowledging the kingdom’s traditional multifaceted ties with its giant southern neighbor. By mid-decade, as Nepal struggled to sustain multiparty democracy, a sudden shift was palpable. Chinese leaders began describing Nepal’s open border with India as a security threat to their own country. Reports that the Karmapa Lama – widely seen as the third important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism—had escaped to India via Nepal heightened Chinese concerns.
The spread – and increasing lethality – of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal triggered repeated Chinese condemnation of the espousal of terrorism in the name of Mao Zedong. Having once served as a base for U.S.-armed anti-Chinese Tibetan fighters, moreover, could an unstable Nepal become a staging ground for Muslim Uighur separatists?
A New Paradigm
Changes at the global level had their impact. The post-9/11 period saw a marked improvement in Sino-American ties – in sharp contrast to the tensions that characterized the first nine months of the President George W. Bush’s administration. The Chinese, nevertheless, could not have been oblivious to the return of Cold War-era terms like “containment” and “encirclement” in Washington. By the time Hu Jintao, a former governor of Tibet, became president in 2003, China had already begun boosting ties with Asian, African and Latin American nations, many of which had fallen out of Washington’s favor.
Despite the hysteria gripping certain sections in Washington, China, by most accounts, will remain militarily incapable of blocking the projection of American power. Moreover, China’s economic miracle is fueled by exports; it must maintain acceptable relations with its largest trading partner. So what drives China’s diplomatic ebullience?
A white paper released in Beijing last year offered useful insights. Noting that “new and profound readjustments have taken place in the relations among the world’s major countries,” the paper observed that a confused pattern had emerged. “While cooperating with and seeking support from each other, [these countries] are checking on and competing with each other as well,” it added. Beijing clearly conveyed its desire to use this cooperation-competition paradigm to pursue its perceived interests.
In South Asia, China has been willing to set aside long-running border disputes with India in the interest of building stronger trade and business ties between the two countries. On other issues, such as the recent U.S.-India pact virtually acknowledging New Delhi as the world’s sixth official nuclear power, Chinese media have warned that other powers could make “nuclear exceptions” with their friends and weaken the global non-proliferation regime. Obviously, the message was aimed at audiences both in Washington and New Delhi. In reality, China’s Nepal card – not vice versa – should be of greater interest to all those paying attention to the relentless twists and turns in the kingdom.
South Asia 101: Democracy And Geopolitics
By Sanjay Upadhya
November 14, 2005
Before he flew into Dhaka to attend the much-delayed summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned of the danger of failed states emerging in the region. Long before he left the Bangladeshi capital, Dr. Singh must have discovered the futility of India’s worry of having to bear the neighborhood’s burdens alone.
Without a seat at the conference table, China had already become part of regional deliberations. India’s “near abroad” had stepped out far ahead in time.
India’s proposal to include Afghanistan as SAARC’s eighth member was expected to sail through – until Nepal stepped in. The Nepalese delegation threatened to veto Afghanistan’s entry unless China was included in the organization as an observer or dialogue partner. The 13th summit of South Asia’s premier grouping already had its share of bad luck. Last year’s tsunami had forced Bangladesh to reschedule the conference for early February. In protest against King Gyanendra’s dismissal of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s multiparty government and takeover of full executive powers, India pulled out of the rescheduled summit.
New Delhi imposed an arms embargo on the Royal Nepalese Army battling a fierce Maoist insurgency in the kingdom. Over the months, India-Nepal relations have hit rock bottom. The Singh government’s handling of the Nepal crisis has revealed ruptures in the Indian political establishment as well.
Playing the gracious host, Bangladesh, where the organization was founded 20 years ago, urged the Indian and Nepalese delegations to sort out their differences. SAARC, which operates on the principle of consensus, eventually configured a compromise. Afghanistan would be invited to join immediately, while the SAARC council of ministers would decide the structure of China’s—and Japan’s—association at a meeting next July.
In asserting India’s equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, Singh had the option of coming out explicitly against China’s inclusion in SAARC. It had geography on its side, although globalization has diminished the value of that attribute. Then reality set in. If India could see virtue in forging closer links with the Association of South East Asian Nations, could China be faulted for wanting to do the same with SAARC?
For some reason, Indian leaders, who can take on the sole surviving superpower with remarkable assurance, find themselves significantly restrained when it comes to China. Indian objections to China’s entry were couched in such terms as “modalities”, “precedence” and “memorandum of understanding”.
Officially, Pakistan supported Afghanistan’s membership – in one of the rare instances of cooperation between South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals—so it could avoid India’s direct censure for having spoiled the party. In response to Indian concerns over where to draw the line once such a broad welcome mat were placed at the SAARC door, one Pakistani official urged everyone to look at the bright side: the organization’s popularity.
Amused, the other three members – Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives – joined the host in urging New Delhi and Kathmandu to resolve their differences in the interest of preserving what they had. Thirteen summits in 20 years was hardly a record to be proud of. China, for its part, remained studiously silent over the entire affair.
Much of India’s antagonism was heaped on Nepal and perhaps will continue to be. With Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala currently in New Delhi and United Marxist-Leninist general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal just back from extensive consultations there, it was hardly surprising to see the seven-party anti-palace alliance criticize King Gyanendra for playing the so-called “China card”.
But was the issue really the surprise the Indians accused Nepal of springing at the last minute? On the eve of the summit, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman reasserted his country’s desire to strengthen cooperation with South Asian countries to achieve common prosperity. In less official settings, the Chinese have been more candid in their desire to join the group.
More significantly, the Chinese spokesman’s remark came against the background of Beijing’s steady extension of its economic reach in South Asia. China’s trade volume with all South Asian nations is close to $20 billion a year, of which $13.6 billion is with India. Although they run trade deficits with Beijing, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal receive significant economic assistance from China.
In a clear display of China’s growing political influence in the region, all four nations affirm the “one-China” policy that views Taiwan as an inalienable part of the mainland. Similarly, they recognize Tibet as an integral part of China.
On the sidelines of the summit, Dr. Singh was anxious to re-educate King Gyanendra on the basic tenets of democracy. In the main sessions, the Indian prime minister got a crash course on geopolitics.
November 14, 2005
Before he flew into Dhaka to attend the much-delayed summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned of the danger of failed states emerging in the region. Long before he left the Bangladeshi capital, Dr. Singh must have discovered the futility of India’s worry of having to bear the neighborhood’s burdens alone.
Without a seat at the conference table, China had already become part of regional deliberations. India’s “near abroad” had stepped out far ahead in time.
India’s proposal to include Afghanistan as SAARC’s eighth member was expected to sail through – until Nepal stepped in. The Nepalese delegation threatened to veto Afghanistan’s entry unless China was included in the organization as an observer or dialogue partner. The 13th summit of South Asia’s premier grouping already had its share of bad luck. Last year’s tsunami had forced Bangladesh to reschedule the conference for early February. In protest against King Gyanendra’s dismissal of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s multiparty government and takeover of full executive powers, India pulled out of the rescheduled summit.
New Delhi imposed an arms embargo on the Royal Nepalese Army battling a fierce Maoist insurgency in the kingdom. Over the months, India-Nepal relations have hit rock bottom. The Singh government’s handling of the Nepal crisis has revealed ruptures in the Indian political establishment as well.
Playing the gracious host, Bangladesh, where the organization was founded 20 years ago, urged the Indian and Nepalese delegations to sort out their differences. SAARC, which operates on the principle of consensus, eventually configured a compromise. Afghanistan would be invited to join immediately, while the SAARC council of ministers would decide the structure of China’s—and Japan’s—association at a meeting next July.
In asserting India’s equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, Singh had the option of coming out explicitly against China’s inclusion in SAARC. It had geography on its side, although globalization has diminished the value of that attribute. Then reality set in. If India could see virtue in forging closer links with the Association of South East Asian Nations, could China be faulted for wanting to do the same with SAARC?
For some reason, Indian leaders, who can take on the sole surviving superpower with remarkable assurance, find themselves significantly restrained when it comes to China. Indian objections to China’s entry were couched in such terms as “modalities”, “precedence” and “memorandum of understanding”.
Officially, Pakistan supported Afghanistan’s membership – in one of the rare instances of cooperation between South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals—so it could avoid India’s direct censure for having spoiled the party. In response to Indian concerns over where to draw the line once such a broad welcome mat were placed at the SAARC door, one Pakistani official urged everyone to look at the bright side: the organization’s popularity.
Amused, the other three members – Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives – joined the host in urging New Delhi and Kathmandu to resolve their differences in the interest of preserving what they had. Thirteen summits in 20 years was hardly a record to be proud of. China, for its part, remained studiously silent over the entire affair.
Much of India’s antagonism was heaped on Nepal and perhaps will continue to be. With Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala currently in New Delhi and United Marxist-Leninist general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal just back from extensive consultations there, it was hardly surprising to see the seven-party anti-palace alliance criticize King Gyanendra for playing the so-called “China card”.
But was the issue really the surprise the Indians accused Nepal of springing at the last minute? On the eve of the summit, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman reasserted his country’s desire to strengthen cooperation with South Asian countries to achieve common prosperity. In less official settings, the Chinese have been more candid in their desire to join the group.
More significantly, the Chinese spokesman’s remark came against the background of Beijing’s steady extension of its economic reach in South Asia. China’s trade volume with all South Asian nations is close to $20 billion a year, of which $13.6 billion is with India. Although they run trade deficits with Beijing, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal receive significant economic assistance from China.
In a clear display of China’s growing political influence in the region, all four nations affirm the “one-China” policy that views Taiwan as an inalienable part of the mainland. Similarly, they recognize Tibet as an integral part of China.
On the sidelines of the summit, Dr. Singh was anxious to re-educate King Gyanendra on the basic tenets of democracy. In the main sessions, the Indian prime minister got a crash course on geopolitics.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Nepal's Year Of Clarity Without Conviction
By Sanjay Upadhya
February 3, 2006
A year after seizing full executive powers, King Gyanendra has baffled many in Nepal and abroad by essentially pledging to the stay the course. After a tumultuous year – a qualification opponents, supporters and those indifferent to the royal takeover would probably agree on – the punditocracy had expected the monarch either to begin a process of reconciliation with the mainstream opposition and Maoist rebels or to take a harder line against them.
In a nationally televised address on Feb. 1, marking the first anniversary of his takeover, the monarch insisted that Nepal's overall situation had improved. He vowed to hold next week's controversial municipal elections as scheduled, clearing the way for national elections next year. In content, tone and demeanor, the monarch appeared resolute. Widespread international condemnation and growing internal opposition do not seem to have distracted him terribly.
In the weeks and months since he dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's multiparty government, King Gyanendra has made it amply clear that his roadmap for Nepal's renewal draws important coordinates from its partyless past.
The monarch was quick to appoint prominent members of the Panchayat system to his cabinet. Some senior bureaucrats of the time were brought back for public duty. Although politicians who broke away from the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist Leninists continue to serve in the royal cabinet, they don't seem to be setting the agenda.
Panchayat-era institutions like zonal administrators have been revived. The state media has been projecting the royal roadmap with Panchayat-era zeal. King Gyanendra himself has been regularly touring the countryside, mingling with ordinary people in a way befitting a politician running for office.
Despite this clarity, the royal government continues to face a serious credibility crisis. Palace advisers must have factored in the stridency of the criticism the takeover would trigger from Nepal's mainstream parties, civil society, the private-sector media and much of the international community. Barely months after the takeover, prominent royalists began voicing disenchantment with the palace's rule.
Haunted By The Past
Within the mainstream alliance, the loudest criticism of King Mahendra – the father of the present monarch who introduced the Panchayat system after ousting Nepal's first elected government in 1960 – resonates as the sturdiest confirmation of one's democratic credentials. The newly ascendant ex-panchas seem to be held back by a sense of collective shame. Clearly, the royal government's real crisis is one of conviction.
King Gyanendra has carefully avoided using the word "Panchayat" in his public pronouncements. His ministers have been speaking of their past cryptically, if at all. By no contemporary standard could the Panchayat regime be defined as democratic. In retrospect, the three-decade ban on political parties alone was enough to expose the emptiness of any such claim. But was the regime really the monster its critics continue to denounce it as?
No doubt, the Panchayat philosophy considered political opposition as an alien institution detrimental to Nepalese society. Countless politicians and activists were imprisoned for years purely for their political beliefs. Countless others lost their lives trying to restore democratic rule.
However, these facts do not tell the entire story. Political opposition existed in at least three forms since King Mahendra's takeover. At the first level were the banned Nepali Congress and communist parties, which sought to overthrow the royal regime by overt or covert means.
The second front consisted of smaller opposition parties that offered policy alternatives without directly challenging the royal regime. The third group consisted of legislators who sought to liberalize and democratize the partyless system from within.
By casting the Panchayat system as the product of an ambitious king's desire to monopolize power before elected politicians gained excessive control, critics have blocked a broader contextual inquiry. King Mahendra repeatedly characterized parties as corrupt, divisive and pawns of foreign powers. In fairness, his strong distrust of parties as agents of modernization partially rested on their performance during the 1950s.
Nepal, more importantly, was part of a wider group of newly emerging nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America that could not shield themselves from the emerging dynamics of the Cold War. The competing pressures exerted by the United States and the Soviet Union, in search of newer spheres of influence, were enough to turn many of these countries into non-party, one-party or military regimes. Nepal confronted added pressures from the growing tensions between its two giant neighbors, China and India.
Within its quadrangular confines, the Panchayat system's achievements in developing infrastructure, integrating the economy and heightening the kingdom's international profile stood out. Democratic leaders who praise King Birendra for his emphasis on peace and development are, in effect, lauding the role he played during the Panchayat years.
Through regular national and local elections, the partyless system contributed to raising the people's democratic awareness. There was no shortage of accusations of rigging and other electoral machinations. But, then, such complaints were no less clamorous during the parliamentary and local elections held after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990.
If the Panchayat system's achievements rested on the systematic repression of the people, as critics continue to claim, then Nepalis probably still have to unearth all those mass graves buried somewhere out there. If the monarchy is indeed responsible for the impoverishment of Nepal, then one must wonder why the Maoist rebellion did not break out during the Panchayat system, when the palace was at the zenith of its power. If the repressiveness of that regime foreclosed that possibility, then the openness of the last 15 years seems to have left much uncovered.
For their part, western governments warning King Gyanendra against a return to the past are being disingenuous. In a clear display of bipartisanship, the White House invited King Mahendra and King Birendra on state visits – the first under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson and the second under Republican Ronald Reagan. President Reagan not only endorsed King Birendra's proposal to have Nepal declared a Zone of Peace, he recommended that other governments should do so. The White House's clear reference was to India, the principal critic, which saw the proposal as the king's effort to undermine New Delhi's influence in Nepal.
Queen Elizabeth paid two state visits to Nepal, the first weeks after King Mahendra's takeover. King Birendra played host to European luminaries like French President Francois Mitterand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Indian presidents and prime ministers basked in royal hospitality while singing paeans to the monarchy's role in strengthening the traditional ties between the two nations. Could the partyless system have been sustained without the generous financial assistance provided by the international community?
In ignoring the broader context in which the palace-led partyless system existed for three decades, Nepal's post-1990 democratic leadership ended up unprepared for the post-9/11 shift in the dynamics of international relations.
Indeed, for the anti-palace alliance and Maoist rebels, the wholesale denunciation of the Panchayat regime, understandably, continues to be politically expedient. The palace had endured enough criticism for the partyless system's flaws to have started advancing its achievements.
King Gyanendra's cabinet includes diverse elements from the Panchayat past, beginning with Dr. Tulsi Giri, the man who broke with the Nepali Congress in 1960 to bolster the royal regime. Kirti Nidhi Bista, another politician with an early background in multiparty politics, remained a favorite with Kings Mahendra and Birendra. Tanka Dhakal, Kamal Thapa, Niranjan Thapa and Bhuban Pathak entered politics as pro-Panchayat student leaders, emerging as first-generation panchas.
Conventional wisdom dismisses these men as nothing more than Stalin's henchmen or Hitler's storm troopers. However, they could have begun to set the record straight by showing greater candor in addressing their partyless past in the wider canvas of that system's context, nature and role. Instead, they spent most the past year trying to flaunt the government's supposed democratic credentials.
After all, the Panchayat system, even during its most restrictive form between 1975 and 1980, was far more accountable to the people than the current regime is.
Through forthrightness, the palace could have entered more forcefully in a constructive debate about its future. The cost of failure is all too apparent. The royal regime's proposal to develop Nepal as a "transit corridor" between two Asian powerhouses has failed to generate the national discussion it deserves. The palace's effort to correct the distortions in Nepal's foreign policy, in keeping within its rights as a sovereign nation, continues to be brushed off as the brandishing of the "China card" by the Nepalese media. The Royal Nepal Army is subjected to the most stringent human rights standards, while the Maoist rebels can get away with blatant violations of commitments made to the international community.
Can the people really be blamed for failing to grasp, much less be galvanized, by a royal agenda so clear yet so lacking in conviction?
February 3, 2006
A year after seizing full executive powers, King Gyanendra has baffled many in Nepal and abroad by essentially pledging to the stay the course. After a tumultuous year – a qualification opponents, supporters and those indifferent to the royal takeover would probably agree on – the punditocracy had expected the monarch either to begin a process of reconciliation with the mainstream opposition and Maoist rebels or to take a harder line against them.
In a nationally televised address on Feb. 1, marking the first anniversary of his takeover, the monarch insisted that Nepal's overall situation had improved. He vowed to hold next week's controversial municipal elections as scheduled, clearing the way for national elections next year. In content, tone and demeanor, the monarch appeared resolute. Widespread international condemnation and growing internal opposition do not seem to have distracted him terribly.
In the weeks and months since he dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's multiparty government, King Gyanendra has made it amply clear that his roadmap for Nepal's renewal draws important coordinates from its partyless past.
The monarch was quick to appoint prominent members of the Panchayat system to his cabinet. Some senior bureaucrats of the time were brought back for public duty. Although politicians who broke away from the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist Leninists continue to serve in the royal cabinet, they don't seem to be setting the agenda.
Panchayat-era institutions like zonal administrators have been revived. The state media has been projecting the royal roadmap with Panchayat-era zeal. King Gyanendra himself has been regularly touring the countryside, mingling with ordinary people in a way befitting a politician running for office.
Despite this clarity, the royal government continues to face a serious credibility crisis. Palace advisers must have factored in the stridency of the criticism the takeover would trigger from Nepal's mainstream parties, civil society, the private-sector media and much of the international community. Barely months after the takeover, prominent royalists began voicing disenchantment with the palace's rule.
Haunted By The Past
Within the mainstream alliance, the loudest criticism of King Mahendra – the father of the present monarch who introduced the Panchayat system after ousting Nepal's first elected government in 1960 – resonates as the sturdiest confirmation of one's democratic credentials. The newly ascendant ex-panchas seem to be held back by a sense of collective shame. Clearly, the royal government's real crisis is one of conviction.
King Gyanendra has carefully avoided using the word "Panchayat" in his public pronouncements. His ministers have been speaking of their past cryptically, if at all. By no contemporary standard could the Panchayat regime be defined as democratic. In retrospect, the three-decade ban on political parties alone was enough to expose the emptiness of any such claim. But was the regime really the monster its critics continue to denounce it as?
No doubt, the Panchayat philosophy considered political opposition as an alien institution detrimental to Nepalese society. Countless politicians and activists were imprisoned for years purely for their political beliefs. Countless others lost their lives trying to restore democratic rule.
However, these facts do not tell the entire story. Political opposition existed in at least three forms since King Mahendra's takeover. At the first level were the banned Nepali Congress and communist parties, which sought to overthrow the royal regime by overt or covert means.
The second front consisted of smaller opposition parties that offered policy alternatives without directly challenging the royal regime. The third group consisted of legislators who sought to liberalize and democratize the partyless system from within.
By casting the Panchayat system as the product of an ambitious king's desire to monopolize power before elected politicians gained excessive control, critics have blocked a broader contextual inquiry. King Mahendra repeatedly characterized parties as corrupt, divisive and pawns of foreign powers. In fairness, his strong distrust of parties as agents of modernization partially rested on their performance during the 1950s.
Nepal, more importantly, was part of a wider group of newly emerging nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America that could not shield themselves from the emerging dynamics of the Cold War. The competing pressures exerted by the United States and the Soviet Union, in search of newer spheres of influence, were enough to turn many of these countries into non-party, one-party or military regimes. Nepal confronted added pressures from the growing tensions between its two giant neighbors, China and India.
Within its quadrangular confines, the Panchayat system's achievements in developing infrastructure, integrating the economy and heightening the kingdom's international profile stood out. Democratic leaders who praise King Birendra for his emphasis on peace and development are, in effect, lauding the role he played during the Panchayat years.
Through regular national and local elections, the partyless system contributed to raising the people's democratic awareness. There was no shortage of accusations of rigging and other electoral machinations. But, then, such complaints were no less clamorous during the parliamentary and local elections held after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990.
If the Panchayat system's achievements rested on the systematic repression of the people, as critics continue to claim, then Nepalis probably still have to unearth all those mass graves buried somewhere out there. If the monarchy is indeed responsible for the impoverishment of Nepal, then one must wonder why the Maoist rebellion did not break out during the Panchayat system, when the palace was at the zenith of its power. If the repressiveness of that regime foreclosed that possibility, then the openness of the last 15 years seems to have left much uncovered.
For their part, western governments warning King Gyanendra against a return to the past are being disingenuous. In a clear display of bipartisanship, the White House invited King Mahendra and King Birendra on state visits – the first under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson and the second under Republican Ronald Reagan. President Reagan not only endorsed King Birendra's proposal to have Nepal declared a Zone of Peace, he recommended that other governments should do so. The White House's clear reference was to India, the principal critic, which saw the proposal as the king's effort to undermine New Delhi's influence in Nepal.
Queen Elizabeth paid two state visits to Nepal, the first weeks after King Mahendra's takeover. King Birendra played host to European luminaries like French President Francois Mitterand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Indian presidents and prime ministers basked in royal hospitality while singing paeans to the monarchy's role in strengthening the traditional ties between the two nations. Could the partyless system have been sustained without the generous financial assistance provided by the international community?
In ignoring the broader context in which the palace-led partyless system existed for three decades, Nepal's post-1990 democratic leadership ended up unprepared for the post-9/11 shift in the dynamics of international relations.
Indeed, for the anti-palace alliance and Maoist rebels, the wholesale denunciation of the Panchayat regime, understandably, continues to be politically expedient. The palace had endured enough criticism for the partyless system's flaws to have started advancing its achievements.
King Gyanendra's cabinet includes diverse elements from the Panchayat past, beginning with Dr. Tulsi Giri, the man who broke with the Nepali Congress in 1960 to bolster the royal regime. Kirti Nidhi Bista, another politician with an early background in multiparty politics, remained a favorite with Kings Mahendra and Birendra. Tanka Dhakal, Kamal Thapa, Niranjan Thapa and Bhuban Pathak entered politics as pro-Panchayat student leaders, emerging as first-generation panchas.
Conventional wisdom dismisses these men as nothing more than Stalin's henchmen or Hitler's storm troopers. However, they could have begun to set the record straight by showing greater candor in addressing their partyless past in the wider canvas of that system's context, nature and role. Instead, they spent most the past year trying to flaunt the government's supposed democratic credentials.
After all, the Panchayat system, even during its most restrictive form between 1975 and 1980, was far more accountable to the people than the current regime is.
Through forthrightness, the palace could have entered more forcefully in a constructive debate about its future. The cost of failure is all too apparent. The royal regime's proposal to develop Nepal as a "transit corridor" between two Asian powerhouses has failed to generate the national discussion it deserves. The palace's effort to correct the distortions in Nepal's foreign policy, in keeping within its rights as a sovereign nation, continues to be brushed off as the brandishing of the "China card" by the Nepalese media. The Royal Nepal Army is subjected to the most stringent human rights standards, while the Maoist rebels can get away with blatant violations of commitments made to the international community.
Can the people really be blamed for failing to grasp, much less be galvanized, by a royal agenda so clear yet so lacking in conviction?
Milosevic’s Defiance In Saddam’s Defense
By Sanjay Upadhya
March 20, 2006
It turns out that Slobodan Milosevic did much more than simply evade the clutches of justice. The former Yugoslav president set a precedent for peers facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Through a mixture of crude theatrics, legal hair-splitting and utter insolence, the worst offenders could expect to diminish the prosecution’s case. In Saddam Hussein’s defiance from the witness stand in Baghdad this week, Milosevic’s spirit was alive.
Whether the former Yugoslav president’s death was self-inflicted, a case of murder or a result of natural causes will perhaps never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. It may even be immaterial. The “Butcher of Belgrade” is likely to live on through the stinging epithet rather than his epitaph.
The Balkan wars unleashed on Milosevic’s watch have left a murderous legacy. The Croatian war claimed some 20,000 lives, the Bosnian war 100,000 and the Kosovo conflict 10,000. Millions of lives continue to be convulsed in different ways. The 66 charges he was facing in The Hague spoke enough of his record in office. His death was a setback for the evolving international justice system when it was so close to achieving the first conviction of a former head of state.
There are elements of the Milosevic story that defy easy characterizations. In a BBC interview the other day, Lord Owen described Milosevic as someone who honored his pledge. A genocidal maniac might exhibit bright moments of lucidity. Earning the compliment – even if unintended -- of an international statesman would have required greater sanity.
Milosevic was sane enough to act as his own defense attorney at The Hague. A particularly coherent moment arrived in late 2003, when he cross-examined retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark. Referring to Clark’s first meeting with Radko Mladic, Milosevic asked the former NATO supreme commander to describe his relations with the Bosnian Serb general.
Clark described Mladic as angry and belligerent. Milosevic, however, recalled otherwise. He said both Clark and Mladic had described the meeting to him as very cordial. “Mladic
praised you a great deal, that you had a lot of understanding, and then also you said to me all the best about Mladic. Isn't that right, General Clark?” Milosevic continued.
Clark said he did not remember making any complimentary remarks about Mladic, adding it was difficult to engage in a cordial conversation with him. Milosevic then pointed to front page photograph in the Belgrade weekly Nin in which Mladic and Clark were seen wearing each other’s caps.
Surely, Milosevic must have prepared similar questions for British Prime Minster Tony Blair and former U.S. president Bill Clinton, whom he wanted to question at the trial. Milosevic’s failing health intervened; the world was deprived of what would have been groundbreaking exchanges.
To be sure, Milosevic could not have unleashed such devastation without willing partners. Lesser known players have been convicted; Bosnian Serb leaders like Radovan Karadzic and Mladic still remain at large. Since he towered above them all, Milosevic bore most responsibility.
No doubt, supporters will continue to rue how a nationalist was brought down as part of a “conspiracy” against Yugoslavia – Milosevic’s principal defense. For most, Milosevic, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot before him, will stand convicted as charged in the public consciousness.
The architects of the international justice system must confront the lesson. As the wheels of the legal system inch forward, minutely and methodically adhering to its core principles, public memory will have been distracted. Future Milosevics will no doubt try to use each delay and distraction to plant enough skepticism to convey the impression of the triumph of victors’ justice.
Saddam Hussein may or may not have followed the twists and turns of Milosevic’s trial to emulate his defense. The former Iraqi strongman has clearly capitalized on his own people’s nostalgia for the safety, security and certainty of his regime. Amid daily losses of lives and limbs, as Milosevic might have ruminated, old mass graves lose their power to offend.
March 20, 2006
It turns out that Slobodan Milosevic did much more than simply evade the clutches of justice. The former Yugoslav president set a precedent for peers facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Through a mixture of crude theatrics, legal hair-splitting and utter insolence, the worst offenders could expect to diminish the prosecution’s case. In Saddam Hussein’s defiance from the witness stand in Baghdad this week, Milosevic’s spirit was alive.
Whether the former Yugoslav president’s death was self-inflicted, a case of murder or a result of natural causes will perhaps never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. It may even be immaterial. The “Butcher of Belgrade” is likely to live on through the stinging epithet rather than his epitaph.
The Balkan wars unleashed on Milosevic’s watch have left a murderous legacy. The Croatian war claimed some 20,000 lives, the Bosnian war 100,000 and the Kosovo conflict 10,000. Millions of lives continue to be convulsed in different ways. The 66 charges he was facing in The Hague spoke enough of his record in office. His death was a setback for the evolving international justice system when it was so close to achieving the first conviction of a former head of state.
There are elements of the Milosevic story that defy easy characterizations. In a BBC interview the other day, Lord Owen described Milosevic as someone who honored his pledge. A genocidal maniac might exhibit bright moments of lucidity. Earning the compliment – even if unintended -- of an international statesman would have required greater sanity.
Milosevic was sane enough to act as his own defense attorney at The Hague. A particularly coherent moment arrived in late 2003, when he cross-examined retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark. Referring to Clark’s first meeting with Radko Mladic, Milosevic asked the former NATO supreme commander to describe his relations with the Bosnian Serb general.
Clark described Mladic as angry and belligerent. Milosevic, however, recalled otherwise. He said both Clark and Mladic had described the meeting to him as very cordial. “Mladic
praised you a great deal, that you had a lot of understanding, and then also you said to me all the best about Mladic. Isn't that right, General Clark?” Milosevic continued.
Clark said he did not remember making any complimentary remarks about Mladic, adding it was difficult to engage in a cordial conversation with him. Milosevic then pointed to front page photograph in the Belgrade weekly Nin in which Mladic and Clark were seen wearing each other’s caps.
Surely, Milosevic must have prepared similar questions for British Prime Minster Tony Blair and former U.S. president Bill Clinton, whom he wanted to question at the trial. Milosevic’s failing health intervened; the world was deprived of what would have been groundbreaking exchanges.
To be sure, Milosevic could not have unleashed such devastation without willing partners. Lesser known players have been convicted; Bosnian Serb leaders like Radovan Karadzic and Mladic still remain at large. Since he towered above them all, Milosevic bore most responsibility.
No doubt, supporters will continue to rue how a nationalist was brought down as part of a “conspiracy” against Yugoslavia – Milosevic’s principal defense. For most, Milosevic, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot before him, will stand convicted as charged in the public consciousness.
The architects of the international justice system must confront the lesson. As the wheels of the legal system inch forward, minutely and methodically adhering to its core principles, public memory will have been distracted. Future Milosevics will no doubt try to use each delay and distraction to plant enough skepticism to convey the impression of the triumph of victors’ justice.
Saddam Hussein may or may not have followed the twists and turns of Milosevic’s trial to emulate his defense. The former Iraqi strongman has clearly capitalized on his own people’s nostalgia for the safety, security and certainty of his regime. Amid daily losses of lives and limbs, as Milosevic might have ruminated, old mass graves lose their power to offend.
The Unfolding ‘Great Game’ In South Asia
By Sanjay Upadhya
April 12, 2006
South Asia’s growing geo-strategic profile is being raised several notches by another global player. Japan plans to create a special South Asia department in its Foreign Ministry, designed to coordinate diplomacy with India and monitor China's regional influence, the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported April 5. The new department will also be responsible for focusing greater attention on Pakistan and other South Asian nations, the newspaper said.
During the Cold War, ideological inhibitions and the insularity of South Asian economies had pushed the region to the margins of Japanese diplomacy. Although Tokyo saw South Asia as strategically important, especially in view of the sea-lanes vital to its oil imports from the Middle East, development cooperation with the region took precedence over everything else. As South Asian nations began liberalizing their economies and opening their doors to foreign investment in the early 1990s, Japan's economic involvement in the region grew substantially.
The timing of Japan’s latest effort to step up engagement with South Asia is significant; it comes weeks after the Bush administration merged the State Department’s South Asian and Central Asian bureaus into a single unit. Afghanistan, which is set to officially join the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a full member later this year, is seen as the vital bridge between the two volatile regions of Asia. The United States and South Korea have applied for observer status at SAARC, a position China and Japan have been granted.
Geopolitical Shift
The geopolitical locus of South Asia underwent a dramatic shift last November when Nepal successfully tied Afghanistan’s SAARC membership to observer status for China. New Delhi’s strong initial opposition to the linkage crumbled as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka backed Nepal.
Clearly, the simultaneous inclusion of Japan – a traditional rival of China to which India has been warming up in recent years -- was intended to mollify New Delhi. For Tokyo, a formal foothold in South Asia comes amid a resurgence of popular opinion in favor of a more vigorous international role.
A recent poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun found 71 percent of Japanese want the country's constitution to "clarify the existence of the Self-Defense Force." Fifty-six percent said the constitution should be modified to take the SDF into consideration. The poll also put the number of those who want the pacifist Article 9 of the constitution revised at 39 percent - the highest percent in five years.
Ever since coming to office in 2000, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has argued the need for Japan to come out of the humiliation of its defeat in the Second World War and consider itself as a regional, if not global, power. In Beijing’s view, Tokyo has already embarked on assertive internationalism, especially in view of its deployments in Iraq, joint development of anti-missile systems, in-air refueling capabilities and interoperability among the various branches of service. China, which opposes Japan’s and India’s bids to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, is anxious to offset a Tokyo-New Delhi alignment in South Asia.
Asian Giants’ Rivalry
To be sure, relations between India and China have come a long way since their brief but bitter border war in 1962. The upturn has been spurred in large part by the two Asian giants’ booming economic ties. China is set to replace the United States as India's leading trade partner in the near future. New Delhi and Beijing, which recently held their second "strategic dialogue," have declared 2006 as a friendship year. They have agreed to cooperate, rather than compete, for global energy resources vital to fueling their growing economies.
Overall relations, however, are still inherently fragile. Contrasting cultures, disparate international outlooks, divergent political systems, and competing geostrategic interests, among other things, have left India-China ties vulnerable to sudden deterioration.
The U.S.-India nuclear deal, which aims to recognize New Delhi as the sixth nuclear power as well as open up civilian nuclear supplies, despite India’s refusal sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is only one of several contentious areas. Beijing believes the deal, signed during President George W. Bush’s visit to India early last month, would have a negative impact on the global nuclear order. The official Chinese media have been less reticent in voicing their concern; editorial writers and opinion columnists warn that if Washington made a nuclear exception for New Delhi, other powers could do the same with their allies.
Two other developments have forced Indians to sit up and ponder. Last November, New Delhi was taken aback by the emergence of a pro-China bloc comprising Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh at the 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka. A month later, at the first East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, China largely succeeded in confining India to the periphery of a future East Asia Community.
Chinese Strategic Contours
The strategic contours of China’s South Asia policy are becoming clearer. After Pakistan and Myanmar, Beijing is skillfully employing economic and military means to draw India’s other smaller neighbors into its own sphere of influence. The People’s Liberation Army’s recent incursions and road construction in Bhutanese territory are aimed at pressuring the tiny Himalayan kingdom to end its protectorate ties with India.
China has been steadily enhancing cooperation with Nepal, where King Gyanendra’s takeover of full executive powers last year prompted widespread international condemnation and arms embargos from traditional suppliers India, Britain and the United States. Spurning Indian pleas not to step into the vacuum, Beijing has supplied arms to King Gyanendra’s government, which – ironically enough -- is fighting a vicious Maoist insurgency.
Amid a downturn in India’s relations with Bangladesh, over such issues as illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and trade, China has gained naval access to the Chittagong port. Through a road link with Bangladesh via Myanmar, China hopes to access Bangladesh’s vast natural gas reserves. China, the major arms supplier to Bangladesh, recently offered to provide Dhaka with nuclear reactor technology, heightening Indian anxieties.
China's growing regional assertiveness has had its impact on bilateral relations with India. During the last round of border talks in September, Indian analysts detected a hardening of Beijing stance on their long-running territorial dispute. Moreover, China,
which finally seemed to have come around to recognizing India’s 1975 annexation of the former Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, now appears to be going slow on formalizing that position.
U.S. Written All Over
Beijing’s fears that Washington was using New Delhi and Tokyo as part of a broader campaign to contain China were further enflamed in February by the publication of the U.S. Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for attempting to play up a “non-existent Chinese military threat.”
Chinese analysts see 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 full implications of a U.S.-led China-containment strategy in South Asia are yet to emerge. In an already volatile region, perceptions have a dangerous way of defining reality.
April 12, 2006
South Asia’s growing geo-strategic profile is being raised several notches by another global player. Japan plans to create a special South Asia department in its Foreign Ministry, designed to coordinate diplomacy with India and monitor China's regional influence, the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported April 5. The new department will also be responsible for focusing greater attention on Pakistan and other South Asian nations, the newspaper said.
During the Cold War, ideological inhibitions and the insularity of South Asian economies had pushed the region to the margins of Japanese diplomacy. Although Tokyo saw South Asia as strategically important, especially in view of the sea-lanes vital to its oil imports from the Middle East, development cooperation with the region took precedence over everything else. As South Asian nations began liberalizing their economies and opening their doors to foreign investment in the early 1990s, Japan's economic involvement in the region grew substantially.
The timing of Japan’s latest effort to step up engagement with South Asia is significant; it comes weeks after the Bush administration merged the State Department’s South Asian and Central Asian bureaus into a single unit. Afghanistan, which is set to officially join the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a full member later this year, is seen as the vital bridge between the two volatile regions of Asia. The United States and South Korea have applied for observer status at SAARC, a position China and Japan have been granted.
Geopolitical Shift
The geopolitical locus of South Asia underwent a dramatic shift last November when Nepal successfully tied Afghanistan’s SAARC membership to observer status for China. New Delhi’s strong initial opposition to the linkage crumbled as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka backed Nepal.
Clearly, the simultaneous inclusion of Japan – a traditional rival of China to which India has been warming up in recent years -- was intended to mollify New Delhi. For Tokyo, a formal foothold in South Asia comes amid a resurgence of popular opinion in favor of a more vigorous international role.
A recent poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun found 71 percent of Japanese want the country's constitution to "clarify the existence of the Self-Defense Force." Fifty-six percent said the constitution should be modified to take the SDF into consideration. The poll also put the number of those who want the pacifist Article 9 of the constitution revised at 39 percent - the highest percent in five years.
Ever since coming to office in 2000, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has argued the need for Japan to come out of the humiliation of its defeat in the Second World War and consider itself as a regional, if not global, power. In Beijing’s view, Tokyo has already embarked on assertive internationalism, especially in view of its deployments in Iraq, joint development of anti-missile systems, in-air refueling capabilities and interoperability among the various branches of service. China, which opposes Japan’s and India’s bids to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, is anxious to offset a Tokyo-New Delhi alignment in South Asia.
Asian Giants’ Rivalry
To be sure, relations between India and China have come a long way since their brief but bitter border war in 1962. The upturn has been spurred in large part by the two Asian giants’ booming economic ties. China is set to replace the United States as India's leading trade partner in the near future. New Delhi and Beijing, which recently held their second "strategic dialogue," have declared 2006 as a friendship year. They have agreed to cooperate, rather than compete, for global energy resources vital to fueling their growing economies.
Overall relations, however, are still inherently fragile. Contrasting cultures, disparate international outlooks, divergent political systems, and competing geostrategic interests, among other things, have left India-China ties vulnerable to sudden deterioration.
The U.S.-India nuclear deal, which aims to recognize New Delhi as the sixth nuclear power as well as open up civilian nuclear supplies, despite India’s refusal sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is only one of several contentious areas. Beijing believes the deal, signed during President George W. Bush’s visit to India early last month, would have a negative impact on the global nuclear order. The official Chinese media have been less reticent in voicing their concern; editorial writers and opinion columnists warn that if Washington made a nuclear exception for New Delhi, other powers could do the same with their allies.
Two other developments have forced Indians to sit up and ponder. Last November, New Delhi was taken aback by the emergence of a pro-China bloc comprising Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh at the 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka. A month later, at the first East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, China largely succeeded in confining India to the periphery of a future East Asia Community.
Chinese Strategic Contours
The strategic contours of China’s South Asia policy are becoming clearer. After Pakistan and Myanmar, Beijing is skillfully employing economic and military means to draw India’s other smaller neighbors into its own sphere of influence. The People’s Liberation Army’s recent incursions and road construction in Bhutanese territory are aimed at pressuring the tiny Himalayan kingdom to end its protectorate ties with India.
China has been steadily enhancing cooperation with Nepal, where King Gyanendra’s takeover of full executive powers last year prompted widespread international condemnation and arms embargos from traditional suppliers India, Britain and the United States. Spurning Indian pleas not to step into the vacuum, Beijing has supplied arms to King Gyanendra’s government, which – ironically enough -- is fighting a vicious Maoist insurgency.
Amid a downturn in India’s relations with Bangladesh, over such issues as illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and trade, China has gained naval access to the Chittagong port. Through a road link with Bangladesh via Myanmar, China hopes to access Bangladesh’s vast natural gas reserves. China, the major arms supplier to Bangladesh, recently offered to provide Dhaka with nuclear reactor technology, heightening Indian anxieties.
China's growing regional assertiveness has had its impact on bilateral relations with India. During the last round of border talks in September, Indian analysts detected a hardening of Beijing stance on their long-running territorial dispute. Moreover, China,
which finally seemed to have come around to recognizing India’s 1975 annexation of the former Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, now appears to be going slow on formalizing that position.
U.S. Written All Over
Beijing’s fears that Washington was using New Delhi and Tokyo as part of a broader campaign to contain China were further enflamed in February by the publication of the U.S. Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for attempting to play up a “non-existent Chinese military threat.”
Chinese analysts see 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 full implications of a U.S.-led China-containment strategy in South Asia are yet to emerge. In an already volatile region, perceptions have a dangerous way of defining reality.
Nepal: Above The Din, King Reframes The Debate
By Sanjay Upadhya
April 24, 2006
King Gyanendra was probably the last person who expected the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) to jump at his latest olive branch and call off the ever-surging street protests against his direct rule. For one thing, the SPA leaders could not afford to avoid a certain degree of posturing in the interest of self-preservation amid the increasingly strident anti-monarchy sloganeering.
For another, the mainstream political parties, much like the palace, would want to measure how much of the sentiments expressed on the streets could actually be extrapolated as the collective sentiment of the nation. Nepal’s experience with the people’s pulse is far from reassuring.
The People’s Movement of 1990 undoubtedly represented Nepalis’ aspirations for democracy and accountability. However, the riots sparked a decade later by Indian actor Hrithik Roshan’s alleged slander of Nepal and Nepalis did not reflect our overall view of Indian pop culture. Nor could the upheaval triggered in 2004 by Iraqi insurgents’ murder of 12 Nepalis be interpreted as an endorsement of U.S. President George W. Bush’s war against Islamic extremism.
The unpredictability and fickleness of mob psychology are not the only reasons behind the SPA’s belligerence. King Gyanendra’s speech on Friday assured a return to the pre-February 1, 2005 status, when political parties – barring those in power—were already agitating against the monarch’s dismissal of an elected government and his practice of hiring and firing premiers.
Then there is that other imponderable. Until the Royal Proclamation, the Maoists were surging ahead with the urban-uprising phase of their much-touted strategic offensive against the state. By reaching out to the palace at this stage, the SPA would have vindicated the Maoists’ contention that the political mainstream was congenitally predisposed to perilous compromises.
Instead, the rebels are now facing their moment of truth. Will they succeed in roping in the mainstream opposition – or at least a considerable section of the communist constituents—into an avowedly Maoist utopia? Or, grasping the content of the street protests, will the rebels become more energetic in espousing open and competitive democratic republicanism of republican democracy – whatever it is?
What Friday’s royal proclamation did was redraw the battle lines of the political conflict. By returning executive power to the people and urging the SPA to name a new premier, King Gyanendra appeared to have met a major demand of his principal foreign critics. The sense of relief expressed in New Delhi, Beijing, Washington and London was uniformly palpable.
Whether a new multiparty/interim government is formed under the controversial Article 127 or Article 128 or on any other basis may be a bone of contention for the principal domestic players. Those professing a huge stake in Nepal’s security and stability would see the greatest redeeming value in the shape and form reconciliation would assume.
For the palace, the restoration of the House of Representatives could finally emerge as an attractive proposition. The 1990 constitution, after all, envisages the crown as integral a part of parliament as the upper and lower houses. It is unclear whether that would be enough to appease the streets. At another level, it may be beside the point.
Admittedly, the demonstrations Kathmandu Valley has seen over the last three weeks dwarf those of 1990. Moreover, the protests are more widely spread across the kingdom. These realities, however, must be juxtaposed with other principal differences. In 1990, there was a resurgence of democracy across the globe. Philosophically, too, the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets then connoted a sense of finality – the end of history in the memorable words of Francis Fukuyama.
Today, the grand enterprise of democracy building is rooted in the imperative of an enabling state as well as an acknowledgement of local realities. Fukuyama, for his part, has had no problem acknowledging that his exuberance was rather premature. Amid the continuing mass defiance of curfews, more and more people would be tempted to draw parallels between what is happening in Nepal and the French Revolution. King Gyanendra, no doubt, has an eye on that moment of human history. Looking past Louis XVI, his gaze – like that of much of the world—seems fixed on avoiding the fate Marat, Danton and Robespierre subsequently brought upon themselves and their nation.
Nepal: Clarity At Home, Cloudiness Abroad
By Sanjay Upadhya
May 8, 2006
Despite the discordant notes sounded here and there, Nepal’s normalization process has made an agreeable start. Since issues of constitutionalism will remain in the back-seat for a while, the tenure, remit and jurisdiction of the revived House of Representatives will be driven by political imperatives. By unanimously voting for elections to a constituent assembly, which would draft a new constitution, the legislature has broken the state’s stalemate with the Maoist rebels.
By annulling the municipal elections, compensating families of “martyrs” and setting up a judicial commission to probe the royal regime’s excesses, the government has satisfied the short-term circumstances needed to focus on the big picture. For all their bluster, the Maoists, too, seem ready to engage with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s government. For each hard-line statement, ostensibly aimed at the more militant party cadres, Maoist supremo Prachanda has come out with soothing words of conciliation. Perhaps it won’t be too long before Prachanda sheds decades of obscurity to take command in full public view. With the mainstream parties and the Maoists warning the people against “royal conspiracies,” it’s clear the palace remains a player. Prime Minister Koirala intends to proceed toward constituent assembly polls after drawing the Maoists in an interim government. There can be no better way of ensuring the rebels’ commitment to the integrity of the process and sanctity of the outcome. The tasks of reaching out to the rebels and drawing up the modalities for the assembly can proceed on parallel tracks.
The discontent within the SPA over the allotment of ministerial portfolios and the speakership of the reinstated lower house cannot be dismissed as a reversion to the parties’ inherent weakness for power. Civil society is entitled to admonishing the political leadership every step of the way. Even the worst critics of the parties and politicians cannot, however, obscure the reality that without their leadership, the streets protests would not have acquired the political legitimacy to succeed.
With its principal objective achieved, the SPA will require a different kind of adhesive to remain relevant. Without proper distribution of responsibility, the constituents cannot be expected to unite behind a common endeavor. A more judicious distribution of ministerial portfolios is essential to maintaining the political balance needed to sustain the open and transparent system envisaged. With the Maoists on board, the challenge of reconciling ideological and procedural disagreements will become more daunting.
Given the politically charged atmosphere, the constituent assembly elections have been primarily linked to the future of the monarchy. In days and weeks ahead, the SPA and the Maoists will no doubt recognize the perils inherent in such a narrow frame of reference. During the drafting phase of the 1990 constitution, such issues as exclusion, oppression, distributive injustice were dismissed as distractions from the larger task of consolidating democracy. The country has paid a heavy price for that haughtiness. These issues hold the key to our collective salvation irrespective of whether Nepal becomes a ceremonial monarchy or a republic. More troubling, however, are the critical questions relating to the external dynamics of Nepal’s conflict. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, explaining why he did not meet with the king during his recent visit to Kathmandu, emphasized that the palace had ceased to be a political player. At the same time, Boucher defended his meeting with Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) chief Gen. Pyar Jung Thapa, saying the United States continued to view the military as an important player.
How much of Boucher’s stance on the monarchy stemmed from the political atmosphere prevailing on the streets? What kind of role does the United States envisage for the RNA? Washington elevation of the RNA in its calculations became when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell held talks with the top brass at Army HQ in the absence of a single representative of the elected government of the day. Boucher’s elevation of the military cannot be seen in isolation from domestic efforts to re-brand the institution. What kind of resistance could be expected from within the RNA to any reorganization effort? When the time comes for creating a national army, can the United States, so bitterly opposed to the Maoist political leadership, accept the integration of ideologically driven former guerillas? Persistent reports in the Indian media suggest New Delhi, too, desires to build on its traditional relations with the RNA. How “national” could the military be with Washington and New Delhi vying for influence?
Despite its principal role in defusing the immediate crisis, India has emerged bruised. If there is any consensus among Indians about their latest experience in Nepal, it is that New Delhi has managed to alienate the palace, parties and Maoists. India would certainly prefer a modicum of stability in Nepal in the run-up to the constituent assembly elections to craft a more coherent policy. Will the political and institutional schisms already evident in New Delhi permit one?
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) views the latest developments in Nepal as less a defeat for the world’s only Hindu monarch than a moment of glory for the Indian left. The Indian army and the internal security apparatus, for their part, will closely observe the Maoists’ transformation as part of their overall threat perception. New Delhi could find itself sharing Washington’s dilemma vis-à-vis the creation of a national army in Nepal. China, the most silent stakeholder in Nepalese stability, is unlikely to lose its faith in quiet diplomacy. Had the royal regime, behind the heat and dust of the democracy movement, reached any security-related accords with Beijing? If so, how far can the new government go toward revising or even annulling them without discomfiture in public?
This brings us to the crux of the crisis. For all the noise about autocracy, King Gyanendra’s takeover was in large part driven by the urgency of consolidating Nepal’s space between the two Asian giants. The king’s domestic and foreign adversaries succeeded in obscuring that compulsion with the democracy garb, aided in no small measure by the royal regime’s impaired articulation faculties. Whether Nepal retains the monarchy or becomes a republic, its geostrategic vulnerabilities will persist. The storm clouds on horizon threaten to offset the clarity at home.
Nepal: All Not Quiet On The Southern Front
By Sanjay Upadhya
May 29, 2006
A month after King Gyanendra bowed to mass protests and reinstated the House of Representatives (HoR), a constitutionally dead legislature has been exhibiting remarkable political life.
Considering that a government-opposition standoff prevented the winter session of parliament from holding a single session a couple of years ago, the current unanimity is encouraging. Those MPs who were more inclined to use their fists more than their fiery oratory inside the chamber today seem capable of keeping up civility. Perhaps King Gyanendra should be commended for his sustained shock therapy.
Palace-bashing is something the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) has spent little time on. This stands in sharp contrast to the aftermath of the 1990 political change. The reason could be less dignified than a shared commitment to look ahead. From the day he was enthroned, King Gyanendra has heard anything but criticism. The worst the SPA or the Maoist rebels can say now would merely be a tedious reiteration of familiar calumnies.
Furthermore, the SPA and the Maoists have largely desisted from exulting in an air of finality. Deep inside, each is not fully confident of the other’s motive. Publicly, though, each remains confident of molding the other in its spirit, if not in shape.
For all their posturing, the SPA and the Maoists recognize that the royal regime’s failure was not rooted in the palace’s lack of procedural content. The palace’s failure to articulate its convictions will remain a PR model any government would studiously avoid emulating. Clearly, the royal regime’s refusal to acknowledge any association with the Panchayat system was its principal flaw. The return of pre-1990 faces could still have been justified on account of their loyalty to the palace. If Narayanhity Palace was really embarrassed by that other P word, then the last thing it should have done was to revive the zonal administrators.
Contradictions abound under the SPA government, too. Since political expediency will continue taking precedence over constitutionalism in the near term, the HoR Proclamation will remain the locus. By obliterating the government’s royal prefix, taking from the king command of the army and the ability to name his own successor, eliminating royal perks and veto powers and imposing taxes on the king’s income and property, the SPA has succeeded in appeasing the streets in the run-up to the constituent assembly elections.
Predictably, the apparent open-ended tenure of the HoR has rankled the rebels. Despite their opposition, the Maoists will find engagement with the SPA their best route to reshaping the state. As long as his foot soldiers use their R&R to raise funds, Maoist chairman Prachanda can afford to lash out at the SPA’s superciliousness and also claim a stake in government. (According to one newspaper report, he appears to have lowered his sights to the deputy premier’s post.)
On the external front, India has emerged as the principal stakeholder, a status reinforced during Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran’s recent visit to Washington. The State Department spokesman emphasized that Washington and New Delhi were virtually of one mind on Nepal. The National Security Strategy released by the White House earlier this year, after all, lists Nepal as a challenge requiring a regional approach, just like the Israeli-Palestinian issues and the conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
Since China is unlikely to reverse its full faith in quiet diplomacy, India will determine and drive the public manifestation of regionalism.
What is disturbing, however, is India’s own quandary. The anti-government sections of the political class and the media have been savaging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s virtual subcontracting of his government’s Nepal policy to the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The establishment of a secular Nepal has worried not only the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party but also Congress leader Karan Singh, the foreign minister in waiting who New Delhi dispatched to Kathmandu when the royal regime was in its dying days.
For many Indians, it seems the world’s only Hindu republic had contemporary relevance. When you hear some newly empowered Nepalese complaining of India’s complicity in pro-Hindu-state demonstrations, you cannot avoid an eerie foreboding – one that transcends whether Nepal remains a ceremonial monarchy or becomes a republic.
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