The following piece is part 5 of 5 in a series of presentations extracted from the 7th chapter of a book that is currently in press: Dr. Thomas A. Marks "MAOIST PEOPLE'S WAR IN POST-VIETNAM ASIA (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2007).
Readers should note that this book was authored prior to developments such as the advent of the Young Communist League (YCL), the Madhesi peoples' uprising, and the neutralization of the law and order functions of the state by the current government. Hence, these are not discussed.
However, the impact of such developments on the trajectory of the Nepali Maoist movement (while significant) does not impair the validity of the historical context (or future projections) outlined in the author's writing.
Note: This writing is presented with the EXPLICT CONSENT of the author, Dr. Thomas A. Marks. Pictures have been removed to facilitate publication, but the captions remain, since they include useful information.
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Conclusions
By this point, much should be obvious. In particular, the success of any insurgency using the people’s war approach is as much dependent on state incapacity as on its own capacity. The two go hand-in-hand. What has changed since the end of the Cold War, particularly as terrorism itself has become an overarching factor, is the incorporation of terror as insurgent weapon of choice into the Maoist approach. Mao would not have approved, but it is noteworthy that the final two cases discussed, where such approach was used – Peru and Nepal – displayed a lack of state capacity perhaps beyond anything Mao could have imagined. Strategic contempt for one’s enemy was one matter, he cautioned. Taking him lightly operationally was another altogether. Yet we now see states so lacking in institutional glue as to be of minimal competence across the spectrum, in strategy, operational art, and tactics.
Those being recruited mirror this reality. Nepali youth have flowed into the CPN(M) counter-state not because of a sea-change in life-circumstances objectively but subjectively. This process has been seen globally. New awareness of options in a world of globalism has produced upheaval in a wide variety of states. Radical political actors, whether Islamists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, or Maoists in Nepal, have brought incorporation to the margins, or, more correctly, the “margins of the margins.” The incorporation, however, is into the counter-state.
Any insurgency seeks such an end. It, of course, is a practitioner of political violence. Mao, although setting forth some astonishingly violent rhetoric, constantly sought to keep winning allegiance and “struggle” balanced, because he recognized the disruptive effect imbalance could have on a liberation movement. It can surely be argued from the foregoing pages that only the CPT, for all its other mistakes, at least had this balance correct. Just as surely, it can be argued that the Maoists have got the balance wrong and have paved the way for their own demise.
The outcome will depend on the temporal element. Any military conflict has a way of even small mistakes turning into larger disasters because of the friction of war. It always was unlikely that the CPN(M) could defeat the state outright, or even nibble it to death; international actors were willing to invest enough aid to see to that, and the Nepali insurgents had no prospect of resource enhancement from the likes of drugs or seriously lucrative smuggling. What was possible within such parameters was depressing: a bloody stalemate. It was to this reality that drove the Maoist shift in emphasis between its lines of operation.
Such shift by leadership highlights a fundamental point: Changes in personalities do make a significant difference. In all of the previous cases, dramatic changes of leadership put in place correct counter-insurgency approaches that produced victory for the state over the counter-state. Sri Lanka, of course, can be used to support either side of the point, though it still supports the general thrust, as changes in leadership were associated with each of the major positive shifts in the conflict. It should not be forgotten that the Maoists were twice vanquished and that the Eelam movement was on the verge of liquidation when India intervened. In Nepal, we see the consequences of inadequate leadership when outmatched in a fashion simply not seen in the other cases. That such occurred in a struggling democracy should prove sober cause for reflection.
Crisis in democratic states can produce various solutions. In our cases, the changes at the helm were especially salient in those conflicts that most resemble Nepal in their people’s war parameters: Thailand (to Prem), the Philippines (to Aquino), and Peru (to Fujimori). In political parameters, Sri Lanka might be the more apt comparison – democracy mired in corruption and inefficiency – but only if one forgets the pronounced drift that had taken hold in Thailand under Thanom/Praphas, the Philippines under Marcos, and Peru under Garcia. In short, all four of our Asian cases (and Peru) were struggling with major challenges posed by the very factors that had facilitated insurgent mobilization. That the public was more willing to support reform as opposed to revolutionary action allowed the old-regimes to prevail.
The Nepali public is likewise inclined. There is little revolutionary impulse visible – as opposed to mobilization of a youth population for which, to quote the famous explanation for an explosion of rioting in Los Angeles, “There is no Little League in Watts.” That is, where there are no alternatives, becoming part of something, whether a gang or a riot, is a potent tool for mobilizing, especially by a counter-state that seeks to do just that. Inevitably, as state response gathers momentum, a rethinking of choices and hence of options will occur.
This should not be interpreted as a mere “The good guys are gonna win.” At the end of the day, in our “most like Nepal” cases, the old-order was finished. States that emerge victorious from insurgent challenges rarely if ever come out looking as they went in. Thailand began as a military-dominated oligarchy and ended as a parliamentary democracy. The Philippines saw democracy restored after more than a decade and a half of martial law. Peru swept away the old political elite, went through a period of authoritarianism, and ultimately emerged a more democratic state, especially in the areas where rondas campesinas dominated – self-defense, as the Greeks and the Roman Republic understood, the most potent mobilizing element for transformation of subjects to citizens. The same could well happen in Nepal.
Most sources claim such was already happening even as the insurgency germinated. An entire stratum of talent had already demonstrated itself fully capable of existing in the “multi-tasking environment” of the global environment. That such individuals do not presently run Nepal may require little explanation beyond the obvious: to earn “real money,” Nepalis may attend to various careers, but politics is certainly not one of them, unless one has found a way to divert public income to private gain. But our cases have demonstrated that the mobilization of new talent that is an inevitable part of a war effort produces demands for new approaches and procedures.
This can be seen especially within the security forces but is not limited to them. The inevitable counter-argument is that cultural factors will prevent such from ever moving beyond the theoretical, that the hierarchical structure of Nepal, with its deference to authority and aversion to risk of any sort (most of all, seemingly, decision-making), will prevent change sufficient to “save the system.” There is more than a little tautology in these claims, set forth most prominently in arguments that the Nepali monarchy – unlike all others throughout history and around the globe, most particularly the Thai – is incapable of reform and adaptation.
What needs to be advanced first and foremost is that Nepali culture has not prevented certain forms of action that lead to ends selected by the participants. Micro-development projects, for instance, a fundamental component of the Peruvian counter-insurgency, are standard fare in Nepal, as is local government. That the local gentry frequently end up playing an important role in both of these only highlights the obvious fact that all societies turn to local power for local solutions. The CPN(M) claims to be mobilizing new local powers but shows little sign of doing so. Its leaders remain overwhelmingly estranged members of the old-order elite, especially teachers and politicians.
Neither has their culture prevented Nepalis from assuming leadership positions and roles, both at home and abroad. This is not to attempt to deny the very real drag hierarchy appears to play on decision-making in the Nepali context, rather to point out that the same arguments have been used in all of the cases above to explain inaction, most saliently for Thailand. A more convincing case, then, will have to be made to support a notion that Nepali culture and its structure negate human agency.
There is a delicate matter that surfaces at this point: the role of the donor community. Their central position makes it inevitable that just as they are part of the solution, so they are part of the problem. Nepal, although never legally a colony, is as thoroughly colonized as any aid-dependent state can be in the new age of donor imperialism. Donor priorities, uncoordinated and at best theoretically linked to a national plan, take precedence, in a view widely held, over state concerns, even its own survival. This plays itself out in a weak state such as Nepal in a particularly pernicious way, by introducing confusion as to the proper course of action, lack of unity in approach and planning, and dispirited implementation of plans once conceived.
War is always controversial, both in its essence and parameters. In the US, the North could not even agree among itself whether it really wanted to fight to preserve the Union when the South seceded to initiate the American Civil War in 1861. War in Nepal was no different. The natural lack of unity concerning a proper course of action, to be expected in a democratic state, even one facing a ruthless foe, was exacerbated by the welter of contradictory foreign advice heaped on Kathmandu, much of it designed to serve donor not Nepali interests and often based on little save ideological inclination that saw counter-insurgency or even counter-terrorism as illegitimate or certainly beyond the world of donor concern.[i]
What a Saiyud Kerdphol (Thailand), or a Victor Corpuz (the Philippines), or a Lalith Athulathmudalai (Sri Lanka), or an Alberto Fujimori (Peru), therefore, would have recommended be done seems rather straightforward, when considered against the backdrop of people’s war history in Asia (and elsewhere):
(1) A coordinated national effort was necessary, as appropriate for grappling with the most serious crisis to confront Nepal since its transition to democracy in 1990-91. No matter how challenging that earlier upheaval, it paled in scope and casualties to what occurred post-13 February 1996. Yet the counter-insurgency remained essentially a matter delegated to the security forces. There were, for instance, no local forces of any sort. Neither, at the other end of the spectrum, was there a clear articulation of “why we fight.” The security forces were not given the minimum adequate resources necessary to proceed.
(2) A key component in a national response should have been a strategic plan, with operational components delimited and responsibilities assigned. This would necessarily have involved all elements of national power and driven a multi-faceted, coordinated response to the insurgency. Jointness should have been central, but even the police were marginalized. Civilian components of the state, which should have taken the lead, were conspicuous only by their absence. The heart of the plan should have been domination of human terrain rather than focus on insurgent combatants. Local security remains the key to restoration of normalcy. This can take a variety of forms but above all must give to the people an organizational capacity to secure lives and property.
(3) Socio-economic-political reform should have assumed pride of place in any such plan. Although the operational driving force behind insurgent expansion was provided by terror, the strategic environment of the failed state that is Nepal was thrown up the historic moment the Maoists sought to exploit. Democracy has been corrupt and ineffective, the political class distracted and self-absorbed. Consequences in the economic and social spheres have consequently been exacerbated. Leadership should have set in place solutions that could have provided inspiration for mobilization. The role of the security forces was to provide the shield behind which restoration of government writ and reform could have occurred. Nepal even had a legal basis for such a campaign in its 1999 act implementing the VDC structure. Local political control, with access to resources (through micro-development), always is what inspires a willingness to engage in local security, with the result a growth of democratic capacity.
If we seek to examine the future, one if left to emphasize a central logic: “Hope is not a method.” One can not look at the present situation and be sanguine as to where “peace” will lead Nepal. It is often forgotten that negotiated political solutions to recent insurgencies have involved one of two options: either one side has dominated the other, so that the loser was willing to talk; or both sides have beaten each other senseless, so that both were willing to talk. The case of Thailand illustrates the former, El Salvador (not discussed here), the latter. Nicaragua and Northern Ireland (also not among our case studies) perhaps fall somewhere in between. In the former, the role of the contras in bringing the communist government in Managua to its knees is often conveniently forgotten.[ii] The Sandinistas did not simply decide to hold an election. The same may be said for the PIRA, which had been placed in something of a strait-jacket by the British security apparatus to the extent that non-violent means appeared a more reasonable alternative to continued armed struggle. Thus did it decide to opt for the ballot box, even while reserving for itself the right to resort to armed action.[iii]
As concerns people’s war groups specifically, there has not been a case of genuine negotiations being engaged in during hostilities. All internal documents point to the contrary, to the use of non-violent means to achieve violent ends. What they are willing to do, historically speaking, is to negotiate the terms on which their demands will be accepted. This is not the same as normally meant by “negotiations,” and no “confidence building steps” can overcome the sort of duplicity that historically has been at the heart of all such Maoist efforts to date, to include that of the Nepali Maoists. Advocating “talks” as a solution sidesteps the crucial issue of insincerity.
Counter-insurgency, in contrast, seeks to change the temperature of the water, to engender democratic capacity to the citizenry such that can take place. It is not a menu of violent techniques for human engineering but rather an approach that uses necessary violence to secure a campaign that empowers citizens at the local level so that they are both more capable of controlling their own destinies and securing them. Counter-insurgency is subversive of existing order if that old-regime is not based on democratic access. Democracy, then, is both end and means. All violent action must serve as a shield for restoration of the government writ and fostering local democratic capacity. Micro-development is a key component for economic development, while the social consequences of generating a local security capacity are increased democratic capacity and greater sense of citizenship. Such action takes place in both rural and urban spaces and is tied together in a systematic reclaiming of those areas lost to insurgents. For Nepal, what might have been has given way to contingency, a roll of the dice in a game played with those whose terror has forced their inclusion at the table.
Unresolved conflict: Author in Rolpa. Insurgency in Nepal has switched emphasis from its violent line of operation to its four “other” lines. Though allegedly “peaceful,” the Maoist campaign functions as would any gang in a Western urban setting, relying upon menace and criminal activity, overt violence as necessary, to maintain control.
Notes:
[i] The role of donor security officers has unintentionally contributed to the Maoist campaign of terror by validating Nepali fears. Concerned to stay one step ahead of threats, they disseminated (prior to 1 February 2005) schedules of CPN(M) armed strikes (bandhas) and issued warnings to their people. These, in turn, were picked up by Nepalis, especially the press, who used them as proof that such strikes indeed had been declared or that threats were real. In fact, declared or not, the Maoist armed strikes were invariably so weak in an objective sense that they could have been easily brushed aside had it not been for the pervasive atmosphere of fear created with foreign assistance.
[ii] For details, see Timothy C. Brown, The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2001).
[iii] Refer again to English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA.
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