When insurgents suggest peace talks, it could either mean that they are beaten or that they think that the moment has come when they can advance their aims more successfully through negotiations. Added to this latter is that a cease-fire around such talks gives the rebels a breathing space to regroup and reorganize for further violence. This must be the fear for the Nepalese government of King Gyanendra as it grasps the dangerous nettle of entering into negotiations with its Maoist rebels, after seven years of brutal violence.
What the authorities have come to accept, however, is that even by using the army to back up its overstretched and, at times, demoralized police force, a military solution to the rebellion is a long and expensive way off. In seven years, the conflict has cost over 7,000 lives, has brought the fragile economy into deep trouble and blighted the majority of Nepal’s 24 million people who live in the rebel-controlled areas of the countryside.
This has not been in anyway a romantic rebellion. The rebels have often adopted the ruthless tactics of the Shining Path terrorists of Peru. Government health clinics have been forced to close or wrecked. UN food aid sent to areas of need has been turned away or if landed, at great risk to pilots and aid officials, has been burned and destroyed after, of course, the rebels have plundered enough for their own needs. Ordinary, decent members of the community, who have expressed the general reverence for the ruling royal family or who have simply protested that they do not want lawless thugs in their villages, have been taken out and hacked to death.
It has got so that terrified and brutalized country folk long for peace, almost any sort of peace, so that they can return to their already sufficiently harsh but at least fear-free existence.
The rebels now claim that they want a constitutional monarchy. Given their Maoist credentials, this hardly seems likely. Nevertheless that is the position that they have taken, for what will be the fourth attempt at negotiation . For the sake of the talks, they need to be taken at their word.
However, if anything constructive is going to emerge from this parley, it is important that Nepal’s two mighty neighbors, China and India, stand back. There remains the suspicion that it has suited Beijing to have a little spot of instability in the region, just as it is certain that New Delhi has long sought to exercise influence through a succession of Nepalese governments. What is perhaps needed are the offices of another country with absolutely no vested interest. The Norwegians, who have played such a significant part in the peace that has broken out in Sri Lanka, are obvious candidates. However, Nepal’s needs go deeper than simply having an honest peace broker.
The country is mired in poverty. It needs constructive support from the international community to overcome its economic difficulties. There is a major environmental problem of deforestation, which is impoverishing farmland and compounding flooding problems in Bangladesh and Bengal. The certainty that these issues can and will be addressed might help all Nepalese to focus on a constructive future and escape the horrors of further violence.
