TROGLODYTES STALK NEPAL - An Exclusive Interview with Dr. Thomas A. Marks

(Courtesy: NeplaiPerpsectives)

Dear Dr. Marks:

Given the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Nepal, the NepaliPerspectives Group would like to take a moment of your time to conduct an interview via e-mail. With your subject matter expertise and intimate knowledge of the Nepali Maoists, your opinion would be very valuable for the NepaliPerspectives audience.

We do realize you are a busy individual and appreciate your time.

Thank you in advance.

NepaliPerspectives Group.

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1. In all of your previous analysis, you have repeatedly warned that the Maoists would ultimately attempt “to overwhelm the system." Do you think Nepal is at the inflection point where the Maoists have in fact, overwhelmed the system?

The Maoists have not yet overwhelmed the system, but they remain committed to doing so.

Let us first be gloomy: The monarchy has been marginalized, leaving the contest a SPAM affair, with only the "M" (Maoists) understanding politics, much less armed politics. Maoist goons run rampant, yet the NA has been banished to the barracks by the simple expedient of the CPN(M) packing the regroupment camps with under-age fillers and training cadre, even as the Maoist hardcore leads the “Young” Communist League (YCL) thugs in the streets. The police, having focused upon issuing traffic citations, are the front line but deploy according to the whims of the highly controversial Home Minister. The police reaction force, APF, has demonstrated considerable fortitude but in the end must follow orders from the same Home Ministry. SPA itself is torn by factionalism, with the legal left as bereft of leadership as NC. No effort has been made to mobilize the people against their tormentors, and spontaneous reaction of the necessary scale is a populist fantasy, particularly when Nepali cultural particulars are considered. International actors, though forming a brake of sorts, are as much a part of the problem as the solution, having colluded in the negation of the state's credible capacity to coerce.

Now, the "bright" side: the Maoists are punching from a position of weakness. As has been the case all along, they appear strong only due to the ineptitude (and haplessness) of the state. In any reasonably fair and transparent contest, they stand to be thoroughly pasted. They know this, but it is important to interject that they rationalize their position as a product of nefarious schemes, not least by the United Nations. The security forces, whatever their flaws, remain intact, and the Maoists have failed in their central aim of incapacitating them – thus their demands that their people's republic be implemented by fiat. The political class, whatever the astonishingly poor leadership at the top, includes many younger elements that would be the salvation of the country were they ever to break through their cultural straitjacket and cease functioning as lapdogs. The Nepali people are now on the verge of open rebellion against their Maoist tormentors. Even the problem in the tarai originates in the forces unleashed by the Maoists and the state’s consequent inability or unwillingness to deal with issues in a constructive way.

2. What are some of the dimensions (political, cultural, economic, trade union, etc.) that the Maoists are using to undermine the state? Are you able to draw parallels between what the Maoists are doing in Nepal and what for example, what Sendero Luminoso did in Peru?

The Nepal chapter of my latest book, Maoist People's War in Post-Vietnam Asia (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2007), serialized by Nepali Perspectives, has stood up well to events since publication. The reason lies in the rigid, doctrinal approach of the Maoists to the business of using people’s war to destroy parliamentary democracy and replace it with a Maoist people’s democracy.

Mao established the lines of operation necessary for his people’s war strategy to achieve the goal of a people’s republic. He said any Maoist movement must proceed using: politics (the mass line); allies (“useful idiots” in Lenin’s phraseology – united fronts from above and below; with organizations and individuals, respectively); violence (of various forms, from terror to guerrilla war, from main-force war to war of position); non-violence (“political warfare,” techniques to make violence more effective, such as destroying enemy will); and international action.

Initially, in the first five years (1996-2001) of their self-declared people’s war, the Maoists consciously aped Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). This is evident in their documents and in their discussions. Thus they emphasized violence, with terror and guerrilla war eliminating the human and institutional rallying points of the system – stripping away the human glue that held the system together. Still pursuing violence, they went to main-force warfare after 2001, endeavouring to field battalions, brigades, and divisions, mimicking the forces of the state. By default, they were able to hold human terrain (war of position), as the state, by kowtowing to foreign voices, refused to mobilize local forces and thus ceded control of the countryside. There, a counter-state was built with new economic, social, and political forms (all embryonic and necessarily proto-fascist, to include school prayers to the martyrs of the revolution). This political activity unfolded, even as fellow travellers were mobilized into allegedly independent groups of ethnic and “student” bodies (the “united front” line of operation). Agit-prop was central to fortifying new cultural norms – hence revolutionary will – through song, dance, and vocabulary (the “political warfare” line of operation). Finally, the international line of operation saw global fellow travellers brought into the picture, right down to the leftist groupies who are in the forefront of the present struggle against “globalism.” India, of course, dusted off the failed approaches of its own Sri Lankan adventure and its Northeast campaigns and allowed the legal (but troglodyte) left to implement its revolutionary fantasies at Nepali expense.

Failure of the Nepali state to use democracy, imperfect and corrupt though it has was (yet functioning), for mass mobilization to mobilize against the Maoist assault, made royal martial law inevitable. This, in turn, provided the opening for a decisive Maoist shift to the united front line of operation. Simultaneously, the non-violent line of operation dictated creating the charade of the regroupment camps to negate state armed capacity even as the YCL street goons ensured that the Maoists’ own violence continued to ensure progress towards the Maoist goal.

It is here that we see the finesse of the Maoist approach. In Peru, in a comparable situation, Shining Path not only continued with but intensified its violence. Its ideological blinders got the better of it, and its astonishing brutality mobilized its own demise. In one of the limited cases of self-mobilization, the Peruvian populace, led by the very Quechua-speaking Indian communities that had comprised the initial Shining Path base of support rose up in the late 1980s and demanded arms. These the state provided in the 1990s, and the revolutionary endeavor was swamped in a sea of humanity. The numbers were truly staggering, with the central theatre of combat, Ayacucho, seeing government forces multiplied by a factor (literally) of 100, as some 250,000 peasants joined local self-defense groups.

3. On the topic of Sendero Luminoso, what did the government do right in Peru that successive governments in Nepal seem incapable of replicating?

First, it is ironic that you ask the question as former President Alberto Fujimori is on trial in Peru. The irony comes from a simple fact: It seems clear that if an election were held now, he would probably win! This highlights the lack of both memory and gratitude of the Peruvian political class. It is the people who have not forgotten. Those staging the trial are the very individuals who reduced Peru to the state of utter incapacity that was exploited by Shining Path. I highlight this, because the comparisons to Nepal are compelling.

Second, then, what Fujimori did was to galvanize popular mobilization, to give it capacity. The mechanics discussed previously, such as rondas campesinas, or self-defense groups, follow from this strategic reality. If Shining Path persisted in mistakenly emphasizing the violence line of operation until it was too late, Peru of the Fujimori era countered with political mobilization that gave capacity to the state’s own violence line of operation. Indeed, if you examine the cases in my book, you will find this is just what happened in other examples of Maoist defeat, notably Thailand under Prem and in the Philippines under Aquino. Not in the book is Colombia, which is worth considering. There, the insurgents are not Maoists but utilize the people’s war approach in their warfighting. And in Colombia it is the administration of Alvaro Uribe using political mobilization to give strength to its military effort. The result is an insurgency on the strategic defensive and reduced to a war of terror and guerrilla tactics lacking operational or strategic coherence.

It hardly needs mentioning that no Nepali government has implemented even the basics of the approaches integral to the campaigns of any country I have just mentioned. Perhaps most embarrassing, the Nepali security forces actually claim they secured a victory of sorts by “forcing” the Maoists to negotiate. With all respect paid to the Nepalis who held the line and to those who lost their lives in the struggle, this is inaccurate. The Maoists simply emphasized a different line of operation as appropriate to the strategic situation; to, as they would put it, the correlation of forces at that particular 2006 moment. For their part, the SPA inability to see past its struggle with the monarchy to the larger strategic peril in which it was placing itself is now quite on display.

4. Without openly admitting it, many of Nepal's "ultra liberal democrats" seem to be aligning to the mode of thought that you've consistently expressed over the past five years – that the Maoists cannot be trusted and should not be appeased. The Maoist orchestrated postponement of CA elections really drives the last nail in the coffin for Maoist apologists. Do you have any reactions to this?

The question goes to the heart of the challenge faced by Nepali democracy. The Maoists have never wavered in their goal or their strategy for achieving it. Their end, as they have openly stated repeatedly, is a people’s republic. Their strategy, they have trumpeted, is people’s war. Their means, they do not keep secret, are embodied in the mobilization of a mass base. Only the operational art of their strategy has been altered to respond to situational realities. That is, they have emphasized the lines of operation appropriate to time and place. Though too many in the Nepali political class remain ignorant of these fundamental warfighting realities – of armed politics, which is what insurgency is – many more have seen the light. Where they have continued to come up short is in turning understanding into a weapon through the mobilization of the Nepali populace for its own defense.

5. What are your thoughts on the Maoists playing the nationalist card to counter Indian influence in Nepal? Do you see an imminent change in Indian foreign policy given India's own interim polls on the horizon and also that the whole world has borne witness to the failure of India's Nepal policy? Could you please expand your response to touch on India's bid to become a permanent member of the UNSC?

The UNSC bid is not particularly relevant to the immediate issues. Neither is India concerned about what the world thinks of its retrograde “Great Game” elements of its national security strategy. Much of the Indian political class lives in a parallel reality every bit as isolated as that occupied by much of the Nepali chattering classes. Much more germane is the apparent recognition in Indian ruling circles that they have “been had” by the supposedly now more modern, more urbane, more thoughtful left. The Indian left may be many things, but these it is not! To the contrary, what it is has been put on display in its recent ideological anti-US posturing: a troubled remnant of a brutal ideology that collapsed under its own weight even as it battered itself senseless against its opponents, democracy and the market. Indeed, one simply cannot be a communist in 2007 without first having checked his brains at the cloak room. Yet, for the sake of power, Congress thought it could break bread and reason with the Indian communists, give them the lead even in Nepali matters. Both the government in New Delhi and Nepal are paying a bitter price, with the budding relationship between the world’s two largest democracies, India and the US, the hound which has flushed the fox from the chicken coop.

Sadly, India, having played its cards poorly in Nepal, is now in a pickle, because the fate of the New Delhi government, not just the internal reforms it foolishly bargained away to the left for the sake of holding onto power, is now in peril. It is more than a debating point that Indian strategy towards Nepal has repeated the mistakes of New Delhi’s Sri Lankan gambit, a cock-up from start to finish for which Indian forces paid the price in casualties. India, given its own Maoist challenge, must be keenly sensitive to the security implications of a Nepal sliding into chaos; worse, into a radical people’s republic.

For their part, the Maoists thought they had a deal with New Delhi. Perhaps they did, but their own factionalism, which was papered over as long as “the struggle” sustained organizational unity, has now burst forth. Thus the unwillingness to adhere any longer to Indian plans. India does seem to recognize the danger to itself posed by the CPN(M) trolls in the Maoist ranks, who presently are Hell-bent on a return to violence – even if with brickbats and spanners in the streets rather than long-barrel weapons. If the trolls are genuinely outraged at Indian perfidy, their apparent majority in the Maoist Politburo compels the Maoist “moderates” to be outraged as well.

This said, it bears emphasis that the terms (“trolls” and “moderates”) are relative. The argument is not over the strategy of people’s war but over which line of operation should receive emphasis. Prachanda and the so-called moderates feel it is folly to emphasize violence at this particular moment, especially when criminality and extortion (forms of violence, to be sure, but short of armed combat) are proceeding quite nicely. The trolls, however, feel pitched street battles are the route to victory.

6. What in your opinion is UNMIN doing right in Nepal? What is it doing wrong? Is it simply a case of mis-management of the peace process by the Nepali stake holders (as Ian Martin has expressed) or should UNMIN also be held accountable for the role (or lack thereof) it has played?

UNMIN activity has moved Nepal to the point that elections of sorts could be held. Actions of UN individuals have been sincere. Organizationally, though, the UN, as is often the case, has proceeded with an element of cluelessness which reflects its very European view that every movement has its price. That is, UNMIN does not take seriously Maoist revolutionary aspirations. Thus UNMIN lives in a state of false consciousness, much as did New Delhi until recently. UNMIN thinks it is negotiating with individuals who respond to other individuals. It is not. It is dealing with individuals who have committed themselves to a revolutionary enterprise and thus see the world in the hackneyed, dangerous categories of Marxist-Leninism. In particular, they are after structural upheaval which will give them power and the organizational means to build utopia. There is more than a little irony that ultimately it was the UN, through UNTAC, that oversaw the rebirth of Cambodia after the shocking atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. One would think the lesson would have been learned.

What lesson is that? The question is not, as the UN always puts it, a matter of, “What are the Maoists thinking?” This grants them the capacity to think outside their doctrinal matrix. Rather, the question should be, “How are the Maoists thinking?” In the answer one finds the classic inversion of categories that has as its essence the turning of opponents into categories, the justification of crimes as necessities of war, and the claim that immediate, brutal, personal, terroristic murder is only self-defense against systemic structural imperfection (as reflected in poverty and any other category one chooses to measure in Nepal). Thus one witnesses no disquiet in UNMIN ranks as the Nepali populace daily suffers from the thugs and as the Maoists pay homage to icons representing the greatest mass murderers of all history. One shudders to consider if the same negligence would accompany the adding of Hitler’s image to those of Mao, Stalin et al. Or Pol Pot perhaps?

It is difficult to speak of accountability when dealing with an institutional culture that invariably recognizes potential mass murderers only after they have committed their crimes. Read any work on UN performance in Rwanda or Darfur, and you see the problem.

7. What do you anticipate the Maoists will do next? It appears they are incapable of fighting and incapable of practicing democratic politics. What realistic options do the Maoists have on their hands?

As I have noted previously, the Maoists are in a debate concerning not goals or strategy but operational art; that is, the implementation of their strategy. They have exposed themselves to the world. On the one hand, it can be argued this is significant. They have been exposed for what they are. On the other hand, it could also be irrelevant. It is, after all, facts on the ground that will determine the outcome. It is precisely this point that the trolls wish to push. To the extent that Nepali democracy continues to wring its hands and expect the international cavalry to ride to the rescue (they will not; neither will New Delhi), the Maoists will have a free hand. It is important to remember that in folklore trolls are not cute dolls but man-eaters.

8. What steps would you advise Nepali policy makers to take today, to meet and counter the increasingly radical, undemocratic, Maoist line? Is confrontation between Nepal's democratic and Maoist forces inevitable?

Confrontation indeed is inevitable. If the battle previously was between the forces of autocracy and democracy, it is now between parliamentary democracy and people’s democracy. The first form of democracy is reasonably authentic; the second is a façade behind which lurks tyranny. Communism, especially of the Maoist variety, has never played itself out other than in tragedy, in any case, at any time. Consequently, what must be done is quite clear – democratic capacity must be mobilized. And this capacity must have a self-defense capability. Maoist people’s war must be neutralized by people’s war of the democratic state. This, as with its Maoist opponent, will have varying lines of operation. Gandhi had a strategy and lines of operation. Ultimately, though, my feeling is that Maoist violence will only be swamped by a wave of outraged humanity as was seen in Thailand, the Philippines, and Peru. Gandhi would have fared rather poorly against Hitler – or Lenin or Stalin or Mao. There’s a lesson there.

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