TAs Nepal continues to reel under the violent efforts of the Maoists
to pursue ‘peaceful’ politics, the question looms ever larger:
just what is on the mind of Maoist leader and now former Prime
Minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda? His Maoists have lost
the reins of power through their own refusal to foster reconciliation.
Yet, no sooner has his custom-made bed been moved out of the official
Prime Minister’s Baluwater residence, than the ‘Fierce One’ claims
that the democratic process is "counterrevolution".
For good measure, he throws in that the goal of the new leadership
– headed by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist
Party of Nepal – United Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) – is to restore
the monarchy; which would seem laughable were it not accompanied
by the orders for the Maoist Young Communist League (YCL) storm
troopers and the various Maoist front organizations to take to
the streets and shut down the country.
Is this method or madness?
Since Prachanda’s resignation as Prime Minister on May 4, 2009,
and the fall of the Maoist-led coalition Government, the Himalayan
former-kingdom has plunged into chaos. Though the new CPN-UML-led
coalition formed the Government on May 23, 2009, it is far from
projecting an impression of strength or stability. Prime Minister
Madhav Kumar Nepal has failed even to give final shape to his
Cabinet, not only because of strong lobbying for ministerial berths
by coalition partners, but also due bickering within his own party.
Furthermore, there effectively has been a split in the Madhesh
Janadhikar Forum (MJF), a crucial ally in the coalition, with
53 Constitutional Assembly (CA) seats, after the appointment of
Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar as the Deputy Prime Minister, much to the
annoyance of the MJF leadership headed by Upendra Yadav. The Yadav
group has expelled the faction led by Gachhadar and six others,
who in turn have approached the Election Commission claiming that
they have majority support in the party.
Meantime, the Maoists have stepped up their nationwide protest,
often accompanied by violence, against President Ram Baran Yadav’s
move reinstating the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), General Rookmangud
Katawal – whom the Maoists had sought to dismiss due to conflict
over the ‘integration’ of Maoist armed cadres and leaders in the
Nepali Army (NA). The Maoists have also disrupted the normal proceedings
of Parliament for the past month, even as attacks on non-Maoist
politicians escalate.
Having unleashed the violence, Prachanda and the Maoist leadership
are now poised to exploit the expected systemic weakness. Yet
the extent to which even they control what they are enabling remains
an open question. Here, understanding the relationship between
the Maoist leadership and the manpower of the movement is critical
in order to understand the course of the Communist Party of Nepal
– Maoist’s (CPN-M) ‘people’s war’ – and to understand the inability
of Prachanda’s erstwhile Maoist-led, pseudo-coalition Government
to produce little beyond chaos, declining livelihood, and intimidation.
Many have argued – certainly it seems to be the opinion of a fraction
of the Indian foreign policy establishment – that Prachanda is
‘really’ a larger than life version of Robin Hood, who has sought
only to address the myriad economic, social, and political grievances
(as well as hopes and aspirations) of the marginalized Nepali
masses. This ‘moral economy of the peasants’ version, however,
simply does not consider the obvious: what if Robin is just a
Hood?
The central question of the nasty decade of Maoist insurgency
in Nepal has been whether the dog wagged his tail, or vice versa.
How much of what occurred – and it was a bloody decade between
1996 and 2006, with the dead augmented an order of magnitude by
mutilations, disappearances, and the like – was planned or simply
the result of being astute enough to exploit events as they were
carried out autonomously or semi-autonomously by others?
What seems clear is that, with a fairly typical (in Nepali terms)
party structure, the CPN-M – led by marginalized elites (the principal
figures among whom, like Prachanda, were Brahmins) – achieved
traction through linkage with dissatisfied tribal formations,
particularly Maggars (who appear historically to have provided
a plurality of those recruited to the British Gurkhas). This was
not unlike what occurred in the Hmong areas of the north during
the unsuccessful effort of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT)
or in the northern Luzon homelands of the Igorots during the 1980s
heyday of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). There,
the leadership was Maoist, the manpower ‘grievance guerrillas’.
Whether the CPT or CPP actually exercised complete command and
control over the tribal formations remains unclear, as it does
in the CPN-M case.
In Nepal, the tribal formations appear to have been the heart
of the main forces, the Maoist battalions, just as the so-called
‘Secret Army’ of the US in Laos was built on Hmong alienated by
North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao abuse. The Maoist battalions were
in essence copies of the Indian Gurkha establishment – no surprise
given the prominence in Maoist training of ex-figures from that
establishment, which presently accounts for more than 40 battalions
of the Indian Army. They were mixed gender, had good discipline,
and fought effectively, using standard, though innovative, tactical
doctrine.
These forces, however, were a distinct minority amidst the violence
that swept across Nepal. They were linked to the numerous local
wars that raged in Nepal’s localities – theoretically, in the
3,913 Village Development Committees (VDCs, counties in Western
terminology). It was at this local level that widespread atrocities
took place.
Efforts to place the onus of human rights abuses on Government
forces do not hold up well, since they essentially sidestep the
massive level of assault and maiming, not to mention destruction
of infrastructure, which was carried out by Maoist local forces.
Even as this debate has continued, what has not been touched is
the connection between such local agency and Maoist central structures,
and the question: How much was ordered versus simply exploited?
The CPN-M leadership has, throughout, claimed absolute control
over the organization – except when it comes to owning up to widespread
depredation. On the contrary, the Maoists continue to fall back
on denying what is undeniable: the fact that their movement wreaked
havoc on the country. Yet the only defence is to claim that the
main forces were the movement, and the rest occurred as commission
by loosely affiliated fellow-travellers. But this would be an
admission that they did not actually control the insurgency.
This is far from an idle issue, since lawlessness continues under
the official umbrella of the YCL storm troopers drawn from the
lumpen ranks (to include street urchins and dragooned youngsters)
but officered by the same Maoist chain-of-command that ran the
main forces. With tacit protection from the erstwhile Maoist-led
Government, YCL continued to engage in various criminal activities,
including murder, extortion, and abduction, silencing political
opponents across Nepal. On occasion, the YCL has also been involved
in quasi-policing activities, such as traffic management, night
patrolling, demolition of illegal houses, and the capture of alleged
gangsters. Backed by the full might of the Maoists, YCL cadres
openly challenged Government authorities, including the police,
and progressively established a parallel authority and system.
As a consequence, the demoralized Police, unable to act due to
continuous political intervention, have been progressively displaced
by armed gangs linked to the major political parties. Even a smaller
party, such as the pro-monarchy Rastriya Prajatantra Party – Nepal
(RPP-N), announced the formation of a 151-member National Youth
Front (NYF) on June 12, in an effort to form a counterforce against
the unruly YCL, and against the Youth Force, the youth wing of
the ruling CPN-UML.
This matters very much, also, as illustrated by ‘Prachandagate’.
The Maoists – by Prachanda’s own recorded admission – packed both
local and main forces into the camps established under United
Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) monitoring for the Maoist armed
cadres, plus thousands of brand new recruits. In any Maoist structure,
main forces (the battalions) are the tip of the iceberg. Most
‘combatants’ are local forces, trained, but lacking high-powered
firearms. It is not that UNMIN ‘miscounted’ the Maoist armed strength.
It is that the inspectors did not know what to count. The structure
is similar to that of any state security apparatus. In Nepal,
for instance, the bulk of the armed representatives of the Government
are not in the Army but in other forces, such as the Police.
Hence – as Prachanda himself said in his defence – most of those
in the camps were indeed ‘combatants’ of sorts but not the ‘real
guerrillas’ that the world was hoodwinked into thinking it was
counting. Further, while UNMIN could count weapons turned in,
it had no way of knowing what was not turned in – and some of
the best and most powerful pieces did not appear in the inspectors’
inventories.
What happened next has already been noted by one and all. The
camps were used to expand the actual main forces (with the Maoists
allowed to retain a proportion of their weapons), while the chain-of-command
raised new local forces – the YCL.
What, then, do the Maoists have in mind for the future of Nepal?
Prachanda speaks constantly of the need to displace parliamentary
democracy in favour of a ‘people’s republic’ (though, as with
the actual name of the CPN-M, now the UCPN-M, a new formulation
has lately been advanced). Addressing a workers' gathering in
Lalitpur on May 29, 2009, the day Nepal observed its first Republic
Day, Prachanda reiterated that he would lead the ‘final fight’
to establish ‘people’s republic’ in the country. Key elements
in the Maoist leadership urge an outright power grab. Prachanda
and his faction appear to feel that this would provoke, at best,
isolation (not least from dominant India), at worst, external
intervention (again, India is a prime candidate). They urge caution,
consequently, noting that the same end can be achieved without
such extreme provocation.
The Maoists themselves are rent by factionalism, with some truly
odious characters not only urging but openly leading violent acts
even as Prachanda counsels… what? As noted accurately in Nepali
media, the ‘Fierce One’ seems all but schizophrenic in his shifts
between conciliatory rhetoric and threats of vengeance to be visited
upon any who seek to thwart his or his party’s grandiose schemes.
From knowledge, though, comes the ability to act. Key issues relating
to the basics of the Maoist military structure that require understanding
include:
• First, the strategic thought of the Maoists, especially of the
factionalism that led to the fierce debates that occurred within
the leadership ranks during the struggle. These offer the Rosetta
Stone to understand Prachanda’s present conduct (and that of his
faction).
• Second, how were operational advances during ‘the war’ related
to the individual positions of the Maoist leadership, especially
Prachanda (who, judging from Nepali cell phone intercepts, spent
much of the decade, not in the theatre of operations, but in India)?
• Third, what were the actual mechanics by which these advances
were achieved? How, for example, did the urban commandos function
in the Kathmandu Valley? Who gave the orders to kill those who
were murdered and left hanging on poles throughout the country?
• Fourth, given the way events have been developing as concerns
New Delhi, what were the relationships of Prachanda and his leadership
with India? What was the agreement both thought they had reached
in 2006? After all, India not only did not arrest him (Nepali
security forces did provide to the Indians details of his whereabouts),
but ultimately intervened decisively in favor of the insurgents.
• Fifth, what was the role played by fellow-travellers (both domestic
and international) in the Maoist effort? At no time did Prachanda
or the Maoists exist as isolated actors. They interacted with
numerous Nepali political parties and individuals (including elements
of the Press and the human rights establishment), as well as numerous
foreign actors, official (certain embassies) and unofficial (certain
INGOs). What was the end-game being pursued by these forces and
how did it influence the conflict? Was Prachanda central or marginal
to these activities?
• Sixth, how do the party factions relate to the present chaos
and unwillingness of the Maoist movement to engage in good-faith
reconciliation? To what extent is Prachanda a prisoner of the
local forces that swept him to power or a shrewd politician playing
the ends against the middle? Put bluntly, what does ‘the unknown
revolutionary’ really believe?
One thing is clear, even to many who have hitherto lived in a
state of false consciousness: Power is the end-game for Prachanda
and the Maoists. All they do revolves around that one goal. Power
can be secured ‘peacefully’ – by which the Maoists mean the system
surrenders to them and their plans for societal dismemberment.
Or it can be achieved violently – what the Maoists are preparing
to do with their street thugs (something they have now announced
unambiguously).
Pick up any volume on the rise of Fascism between the great wars.
There, a reader will find spelled out, chapter and verse, what
is unfolding in Nepal. Only the name of the storm-troopers has
changed to protect the guilty.
