(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)
When a victorious general was granted a “Triumph” in ancient Rome – a parade through the streets – the sources claim a man rode behind him in his chariot with the specific job of whispering, “All this is fleeting.”
So it must seem with Prachanda and his Maoists.
Indeed, “Fierce One” seemed so spooked by ongoing events in Sri Lanka that he scored an own-goal by bringing up the subject in the recent Kathmandu rally. There will be no such end for the Maoists, he railed, lest any be tempted to think that his band of not-so-merry men would go the way of the declawed Tigers.
Poor Prachanda – the photos of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) supremo Prabhakaran's body are widely available on the net. Thus it seems he had been reminded that "all are mortal," which is the other phrase the man in the chariot is supposed to have been directed to say.
Antiquity aside, it is useful to draw some lessons for Nepal from the Sri Lankan case. I have spent considerable time in both and cover them in separate chapters of my recent book. In one sense, they are very different, in another much the same.
Dynamics of Sri Lankan Conflict
Democracies struggle in South Asia, where the holding of elections conceals a great deal that is profoundly undemocratic. In particular, parliamentary mechanisms often lead to lack of safeguards for minority positions and marginalization of entire communities.
In Sri Lanka, such a dynamic took the post-independence form of marginalization of the Tamil minority (17%) by the very large Sinhalese majority (80%). Though both communities in reality had further divisions, especially the Tamils (notably, between Sri Lanka and Indian Tamils), it was the need to define the identity of Sri Lanka as a state that set the two nations against each other.
Significantly, both before and during the Tamil upheaval, Sri Lanka faced Maoist upheavals. Both were led by the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna, JVP (People’s Liberation Front), 1971 and 1987-90, and had more of a class character (i.e., poor versus “them”). Even such a general description does not do justice to the complexity of Sri Lankan society that saw the same effort to harness local divisions, whatever they were, by the JVP.
In particular, in a characteristic shared with Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, the first JVP bid for power was driven by upheaval within the young. An agriculturally-based economy; limited alternative sectors unable to provide employment for a rapidly expanding population; an age-pyramid dominated by youth; an educational system teaching the wrong things (and generally in the wrong languages for the jobs available); strong caste influences that further narrowed opportunities; and a democracy which was neither transparent nor efficient; all served to make “liberation” or “revolution” an attractive prospect. The result was death and destruction.
Crushed, the JVP plotted its comeback, which was provided by Indian intervention. “Peacekeeping” to New Delhi, “invasion” to most Sri Lankans, the social explosion that shook the island led to a level of upheaval that would be familiar to Nepalese. With the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) locked in its own battle against the Tamil insurgents in the North and East, the Sri Lankans were able to focus on the Southern, terror-driven violence and finish it. The entire JVP leadership was eliminated, and the survivors joined legal politics – where their bizarre positions today make India’s Marxists appear almost rational.
Significantly, by the time the chastised Indians departed (after a thousand-plus dead and twice that wounded), LTTE had become a full-spectrum insurgency, complete with armor and artillery. Ultimately, it would field everything from aircraft to underwater demolitions teams to suicide squads in three dimensions (land, air, and sea). Large battles included an entire brigade camp (1,200-men) wiped out on the government side.
A post-9/11 ceasefire left LTTE as the de facto rulers of the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern Provinces. Yet LTTE leader Prabhakaran was simply unable to leave well enough alone. Just as the Nepali Maoists had their assassination and bombing command in the Kathmandu Valley during the 1996-2006 war), so LTTE had its equivalent. And just as the Maoist-directed YCL is encouraged to continue its depredations, so LTTE executed a campaign of terror in government-controlled areas. The main target was moderate Tamils, hundreds (literally) of whom were assassinated.
Enabling the LTTE effort were the same external actors one finds so dominant in Nepal – even some of the same countries – any number of which have now been told, in so many ways (some directly), that they are no longer welcome in Colombo.
How Did the Sri Lankans Win?
Colombo’s position on foreign intervention in its affairs highlights the key element which led to successful resolution of the present stage of conflict: a mobilization of national will. In this, one could argue that Sri Lanka engaged in a state version of the successful Nepali Maoist mass mobilization in the latter’s surge to power. Taking the analogy a step further, it could be argued that the “lost” decades for Colombo were occasioned by adopting a “Nepali government approach” – unfocused, under-resourced, and lacking mobilization and will.
Early on, 1983-87, the Sri Lankan approach was completely military, even as the 1987-90 counter-JVP effort utilized all elements of national power (with, to be sure, a very “big boy rules” mentality guiding the whole). Thereafter, a gradual but steady shift occurred in which Colombo, while understanding the root causes of the struggle, realized it would have to adopt a philosophy of total mobilization for the ultimate clash.
Why had it not done this previously? States invariably seek to fight limited wars until forced by circumstances to do otherwise. For insurgents, wars are always total. Similarly, internal wars have phases. What is an appropriate course of action at one point in time, say, 1983-87, is not necessarily the path to take in, say, 2006-2009.
In 2006, faced with an LTTE which had wiped out all rival insurgent groups (there were once at least three dozen) – as well as all moderate Tamil politicians it could liquidate – Colombo saw no recourse but renewed violence. The increasingly shrill efforts of external actors to push “peace” foundered on the reality that LTTE was already at war. It had used the latest “ceasefire” in exactly the manner it had done in the past, as a weapon to refit, regroup, and reposition its forces.
In this, LTTE was no different than the Nepali Maoists, who used ceasefires for similar purposes. As I have pointed out in recent articles, the only surprising element in “Prachandagate” is how many seem to have forgotten the earlier evidence of the same behavior. This can not surprise: The Maoists share with LTTE a worldview that sees “struggle” as the normal condition of mankind. Violence and nonviolence are but sides of the same coin. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
To their credit, the Sri Lankan leadership saw through this strategy and turned the coin on its edge. Indeed, the superb effort at the top, of planning and motivation, was in many respects a family affair, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa relying upon his brothers – Gotabaya, Secretary of Defense, and Basil, special advisor. The three responded with their own “coin,” skillfully constructing a multifaceted effort.
The cutting edge was military, led by the increased professionalism of a very large, battle-hardened military led on the ground by General Sarath Fonseka. But it was built upon political and popular mobilization, combined with astute cultivation of foreign support beyond Sri Lanka’s normal, pro-Western allies.
For the Sri Lankans recognized that, when all was said and done, their Western supporters, whether states or INGOs, would see to their own designs and leave Colombo in the lurch. When this indeed turned out to be the case, Sri Lanka had constructed a position, built upon a network of alternative sources of arms and supplies (notably from China and Pakistan), which allowed it to finish the business.
The elimination of the LTTE counter-state was carried out systematically, despite an active, increasingly shrill campaign that sought outright invasion of the country – under the guise, to be sure, of “humanitarian intervention” a la the former Yugoslavia, with, apparently, a “Tamil Kosovo” to follow.
That the same approach was used by external actors to neutralize the Nepali state in the 1996-2006 period needs no highlighting. That the result looks rather more like the Balkans and rather less like a nation-state also needs no highlighting.
For the neo-colonialists, the very fact that Nepal experienced upheaval meant its old-order lacked legitimacy. Hence, went their logic, it had no right to defend itself.
Sri Lanka provides the same evidence of imperfection, as Sri Lankan politicians, pundits, and intellectuals are quick to point out. Still, they note further, they are Sri Lankan imperfections and will now have a Sri Lankan solution. Nepal remains yet a neo-colony, and there is no leadership in sight of the quality one sees in Colombo.
Road Ahead
Nevertheless, a great deal of effort is now being put into discussing what could go wrong in Sri Lanka. It seems something of a parlor game for the Western media, with the more liberal outlets outraged (the only word for it) that any small Asian country would have the gall to ignore the commands of the “usual suspects,” so used to issuing orders backed by threats of aid cut-offs and “war crimes trials.”
As Colombo continues to steer its own course, the threats have again begun to escalate. They are fruitless. Sri Lanka has committed to reconciliation, but it is unwilling to have the terms of its internal arrangements dictated to it.
What will matter, then, is sincerity. Whether the state can deliver upon its promises to its marginalized minority will become clear soon enough.
This is the state of play in Nepal, as well, with little sincerity in evidence on the part of the prime culprits in the current mess, the Maoists. Indeed, recent Maoist pronouncements do not bode well for timely or acceptable resolution.
Once again, having created a disaster, the Maoists have resorted to threats as their “solution.” They have stated that they will allow the processes of governance and constitution-writing to go forward – but only if they are given what they have demanded all along – the right to run roughshod over NA, as the last stumbling block in their ability to stage a slow-motion coup.
That threatening violence, if one does not get his way, is but violence camouflaged does not enter into Maoist calculations (or those of their external backers). Yet, in the shadow of Sri Lanka, with its carnage enroute to peace, the Maoists have been offered a chance to establish their bonafides.
They can either commit to peaceful politics, or they can choose to continue their sub-rosa violence (much of which is not particularly “sub”). They had eight months to place their cards on the table and proved themselves utterly incompetent at all save 3M: menace, mugging, and murder.
If the Maoists are sincere, it is time to disband the goon squads and engage in politics as per the plain definition of the word, the process whereby society decides and implements who gets what – rights, resources, privileges, and obligations. Politics pursued by “other means” is, as per Clausewitz, no longer politics but war.
History and geography have left Nepal a very imperfect state in search of a nation. As Sri Lanka has been given a second chance, so is this the case for Nepal. It has been given an opportunity to become a nation-state.
In this, the Maoists have a voice, but they must respect that of others. As for the Nepalese chattering classes, on the verge of trying their hand at the ultimate balancing act, coalition politics, they can draw another lesson from the ancients: Carpe Diem – seize the day.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 07, 2009
MAOIST INSURGENCY: RETURN OF THE NIGHTMARE
(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)
(Originally published in "India and Global Affairs [New Delhi], Apr-Jun 09," re-posted here with the Author's consent).
Dr. Thomas A. Marks is a political risk consultant based in Honolulu, Hawaii, who has authored a number of benchmark works on Maoist insurgency, to include his recent Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia.
Maoist insurgency is back. People’s war, once thought to have ended with the Cold War, is alive and well in South Asia. Large parts of India are effectively “no-go” areas. Bangladeshi officers cite Maoism as a greater threat than violent radical Islamists. Sri Lanka, having twice decimated the Maoist JVP at considerable human cost, now has them in the ruling coalition, where their often-bizarre positions are a faithful replication of India’s own legal Maoist spectrum. And to the north, what was the world’s only official Hindu kingdom finds itself now ruled by a party which yet begins its meetings before pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (Nepalis all, cynics note).
Ironically, New Delhi can look to its own intervention for the Maoist victory in Nepal. It was South Bloc which gave heed to the legal left and, in return for the swing votes which allowed Congress to cling to power, effectively ceded control of Nepali policy to the Indian Marxists. The shift brought on by Marxist opposition to the nuclear pact with the US came too late to save Kathmandu, and the country is now a failed state, posing a far greater security threat than ever it did when it was convulsed by war.
Ironically, too, Maoist growth in the Subcontinent continues even as the last real threat elsewhere, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has been decimated and driven into a survival posture. Marxist but not Maoist, FARC nevertheless used a potent version of people’s war as its revolutionary doctrine. Copied from a combination of FMLN (El Salvador) and Vietnamese manuals, it was only national mobilization under President Alvaro Uribe (2002-present) which reversed the tide.
Why this stunning reality in South Asia? Why now?
Brave New World
The answer to the first query is that South Asia has long had the perfect conditions for Maoist upheaval. To the second, that the age of globalism has exacerbated many of these conditions.
Indeed, it can be argued that the present global situation is “the perfect storm,” combining as it does elements of two past eras of carnage. The first was the profound, irrevocable upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe the so-called “Age of Revolution” and the first age of terrorism. The second was the economic, social, and political despair of the interim between the world wars, which produced the twin nightmares of Stalinism and Fascism and their stupefying cost to humanity.
That terrorism has returned to lash out against the Brave New World of globalism hardly needs mention. It only needs emphasis how sterile is the approach that seeks to gather individual characteristics of those who, say, blow themselves up and then generalizes to the whole. Quite the contrary, it is the context, married to organizational acumen and finesse, that taps individual particulars. Nowhere is this more evident than in the violent radical Islamist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is the violent radical Islamists who are the modern manifestation of fascism (termed by some, Islamofascists), complete with an anti-Semitism that would make the early Hitler of Mein Kampf appear somehow inadequate in his virulence. It is the Maoists who are heirs to Stalinism. Indeed, South Asian communism is distinguished by its continued domination by the thought of one of history’s most loathsome figures, Stalin.
In “globalism,” what was often local is now all but invariably international. Eras of profound change produce winners and losers. Mao emerged from the death of the Chinese imperial system and the clash between two alternative views of its successor, the Republic of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the “People’s Republic” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By exploiting everything from economic-social-political dislocation to Japanese invasion, he was able to build a challenge capable in the end of seizing the world’s most populous country.
Inspired, self-proclaimed Maoist insurgencies emerged in the likes of Malaya, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Peru, and ultimately Nepal. Even communist but non-Maoist insurgencies recognized the efficacy of people’s war as strategy, and potent versions were seen in Vietnam, Laos, El Salvador, and Colombia. More often than not, linkages were established between the theaters of conflict, with China often directly involved in assisting its ideological partners.
For a time after the end of the Cold War, Maoism seemed a past nightmare. Globalism and the spectacular growth of challenges to the nation-state ensured that the heyday of people’s war was recreated in South Asia. Pronounced economic-social-political imperfections ensured that the 21st Century would see a new age of Maoist bloodshed, with ideologically inspired leaders mobilizing the alienated masses.
Nature of the Challenge
Maoism as a goal seeks to reorder society in a quest for social justice. There is no template as to how this reordering is to take place, except that it is to be Marxist-Leninist (communist). Theoretically a transitional dictatorship guiding socialism to achieve communal ownership of the means of production, in reality it has led only to would-be totalitarianism and attendant human carnage. Even China, where Mao Tse-tung invented the particular politico-military approach that is people’s war, has turned its back on “Maoist” ideology, which produced a tragedy conservatively estimated to have cost 80 million lives.
This is irrelevant to Maoists elsewhere. Arising in terribly flawed states such as Peru or Cambodia, Maoist insurgents seek a way out of the structural abyss by championing a triumph of the will.
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) saw the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of 1967-76 as a model for its future Peru. China saw it as a self-inflicted disaster that cost the lives of millions. The Khmer Rouge saw in their own “Year Zero” approach the Cambodian version of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” which latest research convincingly demonstrates to have cost between 30 and 50 million lives. In Cambodia, between one-fifth and one-third of the population perished.
Whatever the lack of a realistic goal, the means to achieve the end is manpower, mobilizing the masses in order to overwhelm the foe. The way, linking means to goal, is the strategy of people’s war. The mobilized masses are organized into a new state, a “counter-state,” to challenge the existing state.
In this mobilization, “all politics is local.” Leaders, normally drawn from marginalized elites – divorced either objectively or subjectively (in the mind) – look at the imperfections of the state and advance Maoism as the solution. Specifics need not be spelled out, since utopia is sufficient inspiration for followers, who seek redress of immediate grievances (as well as reinforcement of hopes and aspirations).
Any people’s war, then, is in reality myriad local wars, with “Maoism” serving only as the driver for leadership and committed cadres. Indoctrination of the so-called “grievance guerrillas” gives the effort greater cohesion.
Role of Violence
People’s war is a strategy for armed politics. The mistake is to think it is merely “war,” by which we normally mean action between armed forces. To the contrary, people’s war is very much like any electoral campaign – except violence ensures “the cards favor.”
Significantly, rebels such as the Maoists claim they are merely doing what the state itself has been doing all along. They assert there never has been “non-violent politics.” Rather, echoing Lenin, they label democratic politics practiced by the “old-order” but a façade for oppression. This oppression is carried out using the violence of the state through its armed component, the security forces, as well as the “structural violence” of poverty and injustice.
Thus the Maoists see themselves as engaged in a struggle for liberation, of self-defense even. Such a struggle will proceed along different but orchestrated lines of effort. Use of violence is but one line of effort. Within that line of effort, there are varied forms of violence, from assassinations to main force attacks – the large actions that seek to battle units of the armed forces on even terms.
Each type of violence – terror, guerrilla warfare, main force warfare, war of position (i.e., liberated areas) – may be thought of as a campaign, comprised of numerous discrete acts separate in time and space yet connected in a unity of action designed to achieve a goal. We can speak, for instance, of the campaign of terror that the Maoists use to eliminate all who oppose them in local areas, whether individuals or police. Who can forget those famous photos of the mutilated individuals in Nepal, especially teachers, their limbs hacked, their bodies hanging from poles?
Yet such terror occurs for a reason: to clear the space for political action, to eliminate competitors. This is why legal political activists are normally particular targets. They compete to mobilize the same target audience as the Maoists. Such rivals must be driven out so that the Maoist cadres have uncontested access to the masses. This clears the way for insurgent political mobilization.
Of course, such methods are anathema, even as certain portions of the party platform are attractive. It is for this reason that the Maoists sponsor a multitude of front organizations, the wide variety, for instance, of ethnic and community rights organizations one sees from the Philippines to Nepal to India. On the surface, they are not Maoist, but in reality fronts are controlled by the Maoists. Student, labor, and human rights organizations are normally prominent in this respect.
Such control need not be direct. Fronts can present themselves as independent, even as they are being used to enhance Maoist strength. Lenin called those who unwittingly join such fronts, thinking they are acting on their own, “useful idiots.”
Even as this goes on inside the country, the Maoists work outside. States tend to focus upon the tangible links. Much more important is the information campaign of the insurgents, designed to present their movement as almost benign. As states make mistakes, such as seen in instances of indiscipline when military units are deployed, these are exploited to claim the state itself is the problem, terror as but a natural, defensive component of the solution.
For a Maoist movement, the goal is always power. They must have power, because their goal is to refashion society. They are not seeking reintegration. That would be to accept the structure that exists and to play by that structure’s rules.
Quite vocally, they reject the legitimacy of that structure and its rules. That is why they are adamant that there must be a remaking of society.
Have they worked out the details of what this new society will look like? Of course not. That is the beauty of being the political challenger. Today’s realities can be opposed with tomorrow’s promises.
This is what politicians always do, even those who run “on my record.” The danger of left-wing ideologues, such as the Maoists, is that their worldview dramatically constrains their view of possibilities.
They tend to think of fantasies, such as “self-reliance” and “independence,” as ends that can be achieved if only “will” is harnessed. It was just such fantasies, implemented through violence, that gave us the astonishing crimes of the past century – crimes, it must be noted, the Maoists deny occurred.
India’s Need for Enhanced Approach
India’s approach to the Maoists in South Asia, whether internal or elsewhere, has been consistently misguided, improperly inspired and organized, and wholly tactical.
Internally, there has been a failure to take the threat seriously. The conceptualization of the Maoists as having a military and a political wing quite misses the reality of an armed political party advancing on five lines of effort – political (mass mobilization), allies (creating fronts), violence (of various types, not all present but interlocking when such is the case), political warfare (using nonviolent actions, such as subversion, to make violence more effective), and international (which can be decisive).
The inability or unwillingness of the center to coordinate an inter-state response allows the unified Maoist challenge to play the seams between state forces. Such assistance as New Delhi has provided has been tactical. Calling an individual and small unit tactical center for police “counterinsurgency training” highlights the point. Counterinsurgency is a strategic category. There are no “counterinsurgency tactics,” only tactics applied appropriately in support of correct strategy and operational art.
Externally, India has erred in thinking the Maoists are but a version of the Northeast ethnic insurgents and thus can be “bought.” Nepal offers the best example to the contrary.
There, the Maoists first used the monarchy as their foil, as a surrogate for what they claimed was its role in the old-order. If the “feudal monarchy” is swept away, they endlessly repeated, all would be right with Nepal. In this, they certainly were assisted by the tragic circumstances which placed the then-incumbent, Gyanendra, on the throne. Similarly, they were assisted by his mistakes in maneuvering through the maze of Nepali politics.
A number of elements figured into their calculations. First, as the hegemonic power in an unstable subcontinent, India wanted restoration of order. This was necessary for precisely the reasons stability is desired in Sri Lanka. Disorder produces refugees, unleashes intra-Indian passions, transfers elements of the conflict to Indian soil, and sucks New Delhi into foreign policy nastiness. Second, having opted for order, India played a hand well known to its smaller neighbors: intervention. The only question was how to intervene.
Here, there are several schools of thought. My past work in Sri Lanka has led to my being less than charitable as to Indian motives. In the Sri Lankan case, New Delhi was into everything from supporting terrorism to running covert ops in a friendly, neighboring democracy. Only when the Frankenstein it helped to create, LTTE, turned on its former benefactor did logic and morality reassert themselves in New Delhi’s policy.
In this case, in Nepal, it is perhaps too early to speak in such terms. What we know at the moment is that is that the weak position of the coalition government in New Delhi, combined with its normal “Great Game” psychology and the eagerness of certain Indian personalities, especially on the left, to expand their own role and spheres of involvement, led to a policy shift that supported SPAM (the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists).
It was disappointing and tragic that the SPA and the Palace could not have a meeting of minds. Parliamentary democracy should have been the ultimate bulwark against the Maoist challenge, but the very nature of Nepali parliamentary democracy, with its corruption and ineptitude, led to its marginalization. The increasingly bitter split between SPA and the king became all but inevitable in such circumstances, but personalities also played a central role, as they do in all that occurs in Nepal.
It seems equally clear that India, as it did previously in Sri Lanka, went into the present endeavor quite misinformed by its alleged experts, not to mention its intelligence organs, and that it was ignorant as to the actual nature of the Maoists – no matter the efforts of those same personalities just mentioned to claim how wise, thoughtful, and caring Prachanda and other members of the Maoists leadership were.
In once again misreading the situation in a neighboring state, India now seeks a “soft landing.” To get one, New Delhi’s strategy has been to facilitate in Nepal creation of a “West Bengal” or a “Kerala” – states where the tamed Indian left challenges and even rules (sometimes, in the case of the latter), where it continues with its nasty verbiage and bizarre worldview, but where it must respond to the realities of power and hence stay within the lanes on the national political highway.
What New Delhi has overlooked is that such realities occur in India only because of the capacity of the national state to force compliance. Subtract the Indian military, paramilitary, and police forces from the equation, and India would be anarchy. Not surprisingly, that is the very term being used by many to describe the situation in Nepal.
This has its own implications for India’s security and for its struggle against the growing strength of the Indian Maoists. What Nepal itself is facing is the “state within a state” as seen in Palestine with Hamas and Lebanon with Hezbollah. Whether events play themselves out as we are seeing even now in the Middle East depends quite upon what the Maoists are actually up to.
Hamas and Hezbollah have behaved as the Nepali Maoists seem determined to behave, to participate in “the system” only to use it for their own ends. Those “ends,” obviously, have now made life even worse for the population.
The Way Ahead
What Nepal as a state never understood was that it faced an armed political campaign. This means – a lesson for India -- that democracy, no matter how messy, accompanied by good governance and transparency, should be at the heart of any response to the Maoists, with the security forces providing the shield.
Nepali parliamentary democracy proved incapable of using mobilization of democratic capacity to defend itself. It did not do what the Thai, the Filipinos, the Peruvians, and the Sri Lankans (against the JVP, twice) did to defeat their Maoists. They brought reform to imperfect systems and made them better. They remain imperfect, but so are all systems. And they are not the vicious, man-eating systems as desired by the left-wing, of which the Maoists are the premier representatives.
It should be obvious that the claim that there is “no military solution” to insurgency is simply a canard. Armed capacity enables the campaign of reform, because armed capacity is what enables the challenge to the old-order.
In circumstances such as India (or Nepal earlier), security forces are not committed simply to defend the status quo. They must be committed to defend transformation. That transformation, though, must look rather more like what can be seen in India as it advances toward economic, social, and political modernity – and a lot less like Mao’s China.
(Originally published in "India and Global Affairs [New Delhi], Apr-Jun 09," re-posted here with the Author's consent).
Dr. Thomas A. Marks is a political risk consultant based in Honolulu, Hawaii, who has authored a number of benchmark works on Maoist insurgency, to include his recent Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia.
Maoist insurgency is back. People’s war, once thought to have ended with the Cold War, is alive and well in South Asia. Large parts of India are effectively “no-go” areas. Bangladeshi officers cite Maoism as a greater threat than violent radical Islamists. Sri Lanka, having twice decimated the Maoist JVP at considerable human cost, now has them in the ruling coalition, where their often-bizarre positions are a faithful replication of India’s own legal Maoist spectrum. And to the north, what was the world’s only official Hindu kingdom finds itself now ruled by a party which yet begins its meetings before pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (Nepalis all, cynics note).
Ironically, New Delhi can look to its own intervention for the Maoist victory in Nepal. It was South Bloc which gave heed to the legal left and, in return for the swing votes which allowed Congress to cling to power, effectively ceded control of Nepali policy to the Indian Marxists. The shift brought on by Marxist opposition to the nuclear pact with the US came too late to save Kathmandu, and the country is now a failed state, posing a far greater security threat than ever it did when it was convulsed by war.
Ironically, too, Maoist growth in the Subcontinent continues even as the last real threat elsewhere, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has been decimated and driven into a survival posture. Marxist but not Maoist, FARC nevertheless used a potent version of people’s war as its revolutionary doctrine. Copied from a combination of FMLN (El Salvador) and Vietnamese manuals, it was only national mobilization under President Alvaro Uribe (2002-present) which reversed the tide.
Why this stunning reality in South Asia? Why now?
Brave New World
The answer to the first query is that South Asia has long had the perfect conditions for Maoist upheaval. To the second, that the age of globalism has exacerbated many of these conditions.
Indeed, it can be argued that the present global situation is “the perfect storm,” combining as it does elements of two past eras of carnage. The first was the profound, irrevocable upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe the so-called “Age of Revolution” and the first age of terrorism. The second was the economic, social, and political despair of the interim between the world wars, which produced the twin nightmares of Stalinism and Fascism and their stupefying cost to humanity.
That terrorism has returned to lash out against the Brave New World of globalism hardly needs mention. It only needs emphasis how sterile is the approach that seeks to gather individual characteristics of those who, say, blow themselves up and then generalizes to the whole. Quite the contrary, it is the context, married to organizational acumen and finesse, that taps individual particulars. Nowhere is this more evident than in the violent radical Islamist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is the violent radical Islamists who are the modern manifestation of fascism (termed by some, Islamofascists), complete with an anti-Semitism that would make the early Hitler of Mein Kampf appear somehow inadequate in his virulence. It is the Maoists who are heirs to Stalinism. Indeed, South Asian communism is distinguished by its continued domination by the thought of one of history’s most loathsome figures, Stalin.
In “globalism,” what was often local is now all but invariably international. Eras of profound change produce winners and losers. Mao emerged from the death of the Chinese imperial system and the clash between two alternative views of its successor, the Republic of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the “People’s Republic” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By exploiting everything from economic-social-political dislocation to Japanese invasion, he was able to build a challenge capable in the end of seizing the world’s most populous country.
Inspired, self-proclaimed Maoist insurgencies emerged in the likes of Malaya, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Peru, and ultimately Nepal. Even communist but non-Maoist insurgencies recognized the efficacy of people’s war as strategy, and potent versions were seen in Vietnam, Laos, El Salvador, and Colombia. More often than not, linkages were established between the theaters of conflict, with China often directly involved in assisting its ideological partners.
For a time after the end of the Cold War, Maoism seemed a past nightmare. Globalism and the spectacular growth of challenges to the nation-state ensured that the heyday of people’s war was recreated in South Asia. Pronounced economic-social-political imperfections ensured that the 21st Century would see a new age of Maoist bloodshed, with ideologically inspired leaders mobilizing the alienated masses.
Nature of the Challenge
Maoism as a goal seeks to reorder society in a quest for social justice. There is no template as to how this reordering is to take place, except that it is to be Marxist-Leninist (communist). Theoretically a transitional dictatorship guiding socialism to achieve communal ownership of the means of production, in reality it has led only to would-be totalitarianism and attendant human carnage. Even China, where Mao Tse-tung invented the particular politico-military approach that is people’s war, has turned its back on “Maoist” ideology, which produced a tragedy conservatively estimated to have cost 80 million lives.
This is irrelevant to Maoists elsewhere. Arising in terribly flawed states such as Peru or Cambodia, Maoist insurgents seek a way out of the structural abyss by championing a triumph of the will.
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) saw the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of 1967-76 as a model for its future Peru. China saw it as a self-inflicted disaster that cost the lives of millions. The Khmer Rouge saw in their own “Year Zero” approach the Cambodian version of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” which latest research convincingly demonstrates to have cost between 30 and 50 million lives. In Cambodia, between one-fifth and one-third of the population perished.
Whatever the lack of a realistic goal, the means to achieve the end is manpower, mobilizing the masses in order to overwhelm the foe. The way, linking means to goal, is the strategy of people’s war. The mobilized masses are organized into a new state, a “counter-state,” to challenge the existing state.
In this mobilization, “all politics is local.” Leaders, normally drawn from marginalized elites – divorced either objectively or subjectively (in the mind) – look at the imperfections of the state and advance Maoism as the solution. Specifics need not be spelled out, since utopia is sufficient inspiration for followers, who seek redress of immediate grievances (as well as reinforcement of hopes and aspirations).
Any people’s war, then, is in reality myriad local wars, with “Maoism” serving only as the driver for leadership and committed cadres. Indoctrination of the so-called “grievance guerrillas” gives the effort greater cohesion.
Role of Violence
People’s war is a strategy for armed politics. The mistake is to think it is merely “war,” by which we normally mean action between armed forces. To the contrary, people’s war is very much like any electoral campaign – except violence ensures “the cards favor.”
Significantly, rebels such as the Maoists claim they are merely doing what the state itself has been doing all along. They assert there never has been “non-violent politics.” Rather, echoing Lenin, they label democratic politics practiced by the “old-order” but a façade for oppression. This oppression is carried out using the violence of the state through its armed component, the security forces, as well as the “structural violence” of poverty and injustice.
Thus the Maoists see themselves as engaged in a struggle for liberation, of self-defense even. Such a struggle will proceed along different but orchestrated lines of effort. Use of violence is but one line of effort. Within that line of effort, there are varied forms of violence, from assassinations to main force attacks – the large actions that seek to battle units of the armed forces on even terms.
Each type of violence – terror, guerrilla warfare, main force warfare, war of position (i.e., liberated areas) – may be thought of as a campaign, comprised of numerous discrete acts separate in time and space yet connected in a unity of action designed to achieve a goal. We can speak, for instance, of the campaign of terror that the Maoists use to eliminate all who oppose them in local areas, whether individuals or police. Who can forget those famous photos of the mutilated individuals in Nepal, especially teachers, their limbs hacked, their bodies hanging from poles?
Yet such terror occurs for a reason: to clear the space for political action, to eliminate competitors. This is why legal political activists are normally particular targets. They compete to mobilize the same target audience as the Maoists. Such rivals must be driven out so that the Maoist cadres have uncontested access to the masses. This clears the way for insurgent political mobilization.
Of course, such methods are anathema, even as certain portions of the party platform are attractive. It is for this reason that the Maoists sponsor a multitude of front organizations, the wide variety, for instance, of ethnic and community rights organizations one sees from the Philippines to Nepal to India. On the surface, they are not Maoist, but in reality fronts are controlled by the Maoists. Student, labor, and human rights organizations are normally prominent in this respect.
Such control need not be direct. Fronts can present themselves as independent, even as they are being used to enhance Maoist strength. Lenin called those who unwittingly join such fronts, thinking they are acting on their own, “useful idiots.”
Even as this goes on inside the country, the Maoists work outside. States tend to focus upon the tangible links. Much more important is the information campaign of the insurgents, designed to present their movement as almost benign. As states make mistakes, such as seen in instances of indiscipline when military units are deployed, these are exploited to claim the state itself is the problem, terror as but a natural, defensive component of the solution.
For a Maoist movement, the goal is always power. They must have power, because their goal is to refashion society. They are not seeking reintegration. That would be to accept the structure that exists and to play by that structure’s rules.
Quite vocally, they reject the legitimacy of that structure and its rules. That is why they are adamant that there must be a remaking of society.
Have they worked out the details of what this new society will look like? Of course not. That is the beauty of being the political challenger. Today’s realities can be opposed with tomorrow’s promises.
This is what politicians always do, even those who run “on my record.” The danger of left-wing ideologues, such as the Maoists, is that their worldview dramatically constrains their view of possibilities.
They tend to think of fantasies, such as “self-reliance” and “independence,” as ends that can be achieved if only “will” is harnessed. It was just such fantasies, implemented through violence, that gave us the astonishing crimes of the past century – crimes, it must be noted, the Maoists deny occurred.
India’s Need for Enhanced Approach
India’s approach to the Maoists in South Asia, whether internal or elsewhere, has been consistently misguided, improperly inspired and organized, and wholly tactical.
Internally, there has been a failure to take the threat seriously. The conceptualization of the Maoists as having a military and a political wing quite misses the reality of an armed political party advancing on five lines of effort – political (mass mobilization), allies (creating fronts), violence (of various types, not all present but interlocking when such is the case), political warfare (using nonviolent actions, such as subversion, to make violence more effective), and international (which can be decisive).
The inability or unwillingness of the center to coordinate an inter-state response allows the unified Maoist challenge to play the seams between state forces. Such assistance as New Delhi has provided has been tactical. Calling an individual and small unit tactical center for police “counterinsurgency training” highlights the point. Counterinsurgency is a strategic category. There are no “counterinsurgency tactics,” only tactics applied appropriately in support of correct strategy and operational art.
Externally, India has erred in thinking the Maoists are but a version of the Northeast ethnic insurgents and thus can be “bought.” Nepal offers the best example to the contrary.
There, the Maoists first used the monarchy as their foil, as a surrogate for what they claimed was its role in the old-order. If the “feudal monarchy” is swept away, they endlessly repeated, all would be right with Nepal. In this, they certainly were assisted by the tragic circumstances which placed the then-incumbent, Gyanendra, on the throne. Similarly, they were assisted by his mistakes in maneuvering through the maze of Nepali politics.
A number of elements figured into their calculations. First, as the hegemonic power in an unstable subcontinent, India wanted restoration of order. This was necessary for precisely the reasons stability is desired in Sri Lanka. Disorder produces refugees, unleashes intra-Indian passions, transfers elements of the conflict to Indian soil, and sucks New Delhi into foreign policy nastiness. Second, having opted for order, India played a hand well known to its smaller neighbors: intervention. The only question was how to intervene.
Here, there are several schools of thought. My past work in Sri Lanka has led to my being less than charitable as to Indian motives. In the Sri Lankan case, New Delhi was into everything from supporting terrorism to running covert ops in a friendly, neighboring democracy. Only when the Frankenstein it helped to create, LTTE, turned on its former benefactor did logic and morality reassert themselves in New Delhi’s policy.
In this case, in Nepal, it is perhaps too early to speak in such terms. What we know at the moment is that is that the weak position of the coalition government in New Delhi, combined with its normal “Great Game” psychology and the eagerness of certain Indian personalities, especially on the left, to expand their own role and spheres of involvement, led to a policy shift that supported SPAM (the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists).
It was disappointing and tragic that the SPA and the Palace could not have a meeting of minds. Parliamentary democracy should have been the ultimate bulwark against the Maoist challenge, but the very nature of Nepali parliamentary democracy, with its corruption and ineptitude, led to its marginalization. The increasingly bitter split between SPA and the king became all but inevitable in such circumstances, but personalities also played a central role, as they do in all that occurs in Nepal.
It seems equally clear that India, as it did previously in Sri Lanka, went into the present endeavor quite misinformed by its alleged experts, not to mention its intelligence organs, and that it was ignorant as to the actual nature of the Maoists – no matter the efforts of those same personalities just mentioned to claim how wise, thoughtful, and caring Prachanda and other members of the Maoists leadership were.
In once again misreading the situation in a neighboring state, India now seeks a “soft landing.” To get one, New Delhi’s strategy has been to facilitate in Nepal creation of a “West Bengal” or a “Kerala” – states where the tamed Indian left challenges and even rules (sometimes, in the case of the latter), where it continues with its nasty verbiage and bizarre worldview, but where it must respond to the realities of power and hence stay within the lanes on the national political highway.
What New Delhi has overlooked is that such realities occur in India only because of the capacity of the national state to force compliance. Subtract the Indian military, paramilitary, and police forces from the equation, and India would be anarchy. Not surprisingly, that is the very term being used by many to describe the situation in Nepal.
This has its own implications for India’s security and for its struggle against the growing strength of the Indian Maoists. What Nepal itself is facing is the “state within a state” as seen in Palestine with Hamas and Lebanon with Hezbollah. Whether events play themselves out as we are seeing even now in the Middle East depends quite upon what the Maoists are actually up to.
Hamas and Hezbollah have behaved as the Nepali Maoists seem determined to behave, to participate in “the system” only to use it for their own ends. Those “ends,” obviously, have now made life even worse for the population.
The Way Ahead
What Nepal as a state never understood was that it faced an armed political campaign. This means – a lesson for India -- that democracy, no matter how messy, accompanied by good governance and transparency, should be at the heart of any response to the Maoists, with the security forces providing the shield.
Nepali parliamentary democracy proved incapable of using mobilization of democratic capacity to defend itself. It did not do what the Thai, the Filipinos, the Peruvians, and the Sri Lankans (against the JVP, twice) did to defeat their Maoists. They brought reform to imperfect systems and made them better. They remain imperfect, but so are all systems. And they are not the vicious, man-eating systems as desired by the left-wing, of which the Maoists are the premier representatives.
It should be obvious that the claim that there is “no military solution” to insurgency is simply a canard. Armed capacity enables the campaign of reform, because armed capacity is what enables the challenge to the old-order.
In circumstances such as India (or Nepal earlier), security forces are not committed simply to defend the status quo. They must be committed to defend transformation. That transformation, though, must look rather more like what can be seen in India as it advances toward economic, social, and political modernity – and a lot less like Mao’s China.
The Washington Times Editorial - Nepal's Maoists Double Cross
The video clip referred to in the Washington Times editorial may located at the following URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-OuByKFJQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyrepublica%2Ecom%2Fportal%2F&feature=player_embedded
Video of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) telling his Maoists how they plan to install a one party communist republic in Nepal (and how they've used the international community as "useful idiots").
EDITORIAL: Nepal's Maoist double-cross
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/07/nepals-maoist-double-cross/
So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travelers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.
Revealingly, he instructs his fellow communists not to be fooled by the compromises struck with Nepal's democratic government. Seizing total power, he makes clear, remains the communist goal.
The latest crisis in Nepal is a useful case study in communist duplicity and instructive for those who believe that the path to peace with guerillas is cutting deals with them. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) joined Nepal's government after a decade-long insurgency that left more than 12,000 dead. Under terms of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Maoists agreed, among other things, to cut the size of their force in half, place their weapons under U.N. supervision and participate peacefully in the political process. In the 2008 elections, the Maoists emerged as the largest party in parliament with 30 percent of the vote, and Prachanda was named prime minister.
But the communists didn't consider the war really ended. The Maoists steadily maneuvered to increase their power with a view toward implementing their revolutionary agenda.
The latest step was an attempt to remove Nepal Army Chief Gen. Rookmangud Katawal, who had resisted Maoist demands to integrate their guerrilla army into the national force. He maintained that the "former" guerrillas are brainwashed fanatics seeking to seize control of the army. He's got a point.
Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav blocked Prachanda's move to sack Gen. Katawal. Prachandra resigned in protest. Nepal's Supreme Court now has the case.
Prachanda says it is a question of civilian control of the military. That's rich. Meanwhile communist thugs are taking to the streets in coordinated demonstrations calling for further intervention from the U.N.
The video of a relaxed Prachanda addressing his party faithful exposed the Maoists' cynical manipulation of the political system. In true communist spirit, Prachanda said that the compromises struck with the government were only tactical expediencies, and that the "bidroha," or rebellion, was still on. He joked about how they duped the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) into thinking they had 35,000 fighters when in fact they only had 7,000 to 8,000, which allowed them to swell their ranks to 20,000 while claiming to be demilitarizing. And he confirmed Gen. Katawal's suspicions by saying it would take only a small number of his guerrillas to establish "complete Maoist control" of the Nepal Army.
He added that they had not turned over their weapons as required and that relief money earmarked for the victims of the civil war would be diverted to party coffers. "You and I know the truth," he slyly told his comrades, "but why should we tell it to others?"
In an unguarded moment, Prachanda revealed he is still a terrorist at heart and those who make deals with him are dupes. "Why would we abide by [the peace deal] after we win?" he said on the tape. "Why would we follow it when we have the upper hand?"
The situation in Nepal and Pakistan's Swat Valley illustrate the risks in bargaining with extremists, who do not change their goals, only their methods. The lesson is important when contrasted to Sri Lanka and Colombia, where we have seen the value of taking the fight to insurgents. U.S. deal makers should understand that there is more than one way to lose a guerrilla war. Sometimes it happens with the stroke of a pen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-OuByKFJQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyrepublica%2Ecom%2Fportal%2F&feature=player_embedded
Video of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) telling his Maoists how they plan to install a one party communist republic in Nepal (and how they've used the international community as "useful idiots").
EDITORIAL: Nepal's Maoist double-cross
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/07/nepals-maoist-double-cross/
So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travelers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.
Revealingly, he instructs his fellow communists not to be fooled by the compromises struck with Nepal's democratic government. Seizing total power, he makes clear, remains the communist goal.
The latest crisis in Nepal is a useful case study in communist duplicity and instructive for those who believe that the path to peace with guerillas is cutting deals with them. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) joined Nepal's government after a decade-long insurgency that left more than 12,000 dead. Under terms of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Maoists agreed, among other things, to cut the size of their force in half, place their weapons under U.N. supervision and participate peacefully in the political process. In the 2008 elections, the Maoists emerged as the largest party in parliament with 30 percent of the vote, and Prachanda was named prime minister.
But the communists didn't consider the war really ended. The Maoists steadily maneuvered to increase their power with a view toward implementing their revolutionary agenda.
The latest step was an attempt to remove Nepal Army Chief Gen. Rookmangud Katawal, who had resisted Maoist demands to integrate their guerrilla army into the national force. He maintained that the "former" guerrillas are brainwashed fanatics seeking to seize control of the army. He's got a point.
Nepal's President Ram Baran Yadav blocked Prachanda's move to sack Gen. Katawal. Prachandra resigned in protest. Nepal's Supreme Court now has the case.
Prachanda says it is a question of civilian control of the military. That's rich. Meanwhile communist thugs are taking to the streets in coordinated demonstrations calling for further intervention from the U.N.
The video of a relaxed Prachanda addressing his party faithful exposed the Maoists' cynical manipulation of the political system. In true communist spirit, Prachanda said that the compromises struck with the government were only tactical expediencies, and that the "bidroha," or rebellion, was still on. He joked about how they duped the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) into thinking they had 35,000 fighters when in fact they only had 7,000 to 8,000, which allowed them to swell their ranks to 20,000 while claiming to be demilitarizing. And he confirmed Gen. Katawal's suspicions by saying it would take only a small number of his guerrillas to establish "complete Maoist control" of the Nepal Army.
He added that they had not turned over their weapons as required and that relief money earmarked for the victims of the civil war would be diverted to party coffers. "You and I know the truth," he slyly told his comrades, "but why should we tell it to others?"
In an unguarded moment, Prachanda revealed he is still a terrorist at heart and those who make deals with him are dupes. "Why would we abide by [the peace deal] after we win?" he said on the tape. "Why would we follow it when we have the upper hand?"
The situation in Nepal and Pakistan's Swat Valley illustrate the risks in bargaining with extremists, who do not change their goals, only their methods. The lesson is important when contrasted to Sri Lanka and Colombia, where we have seen the value of taking the fight to insurgents. U.S. deal makers should understand that there is more than one way to lose a guerrilla war. Sometimes it happens with the stroke of a pen.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Holding the Preachers of Accountability, Accountable for their Actions - The UN's Failure in Nepal
In light of the evidence caught on video, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below.
The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the callous manner in which the UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal) handled the arms (and armies) verification process?
As was the case in East Timor, Ian Martin parachuted in and out of Nepal. But those who will bear the consequences of Martin’s (and the UN’s) willingness to play the role of a (most) “useful idiot,” remain in-country.
If the United Nations as an institution fails to hold its personnel accountable, then Nepalis need to hold Ban Ki Moon and the UN hierarchy accountable for the UN’s complete failure in executing its mandate in Nepal.
February 25, 2007
Summary of Declared (by State) vs. Inventoried (by UNMIN), Weapon Counts
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/symmary-of-declared-by-state-vs.html
February 25, 2007
Discrepancies in Maoist Weapons Inventoried by UNMIN – Do the Math
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/discrepancies-in-maoist-weapons.html
March 01, 2007
The UN and Maoist Arms Controversy: Overkill or Negligence?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/un-and-maoist-arms-controversy-overkill.html
March 01, 2007
UN Fast Losing Credibility in Nepal
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/03/un-fast-losing-credibility-in-nepal.html
June 18, 2007
UNMIN Clarifies its Role but Just in Time to be Humiliated by the Maoists
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/06/unmin-clarifies-its-role-but-just-in.html
July 04, 2007
UNMIN's Arms Verification Process in Nepal - More Timely Information and Transparency Needed
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmin-in-over-its-head-in-nepal-arms.html
July 15, 2007
The UN's (UNMIN) Involvement in Nepal's Peace Process: A turning point or another fiasco in the making?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/uns-unmin-involvement-in-nepals-peace.html
July 17, 2007
UNMIN's July 16 Press Release and Subsequent Q&A Disaster
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-july-16-press-release-and.html
July 19, 2007
UNMIN's "Consulting" Mentality Not Conducive to Nepal's "Stakeholder" Needs
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-consulting-mentality-not.html
September 21, 2007
What has UNMIN Accomplished in Nepal?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-has-unmin-accomplished-in-nepal.html
November 01, 2007
What UNMIN Should Do to Manage Nepal's Peace Process
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/courtesy-krishna-hari-pushkar-un-is.html
November 26, 2007
UNMIN in Need of Immediate Reform
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/unmin-in-need-of-immediate-reform.html
December, 2007
Constructive Feedback for Ian Martin - Time for a change in UNMIN's Leadership
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/12/constructive-feedback-for-ian-martin.html
February 04, 2008
Deficient UNMIN
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/deficient-unmin.html
February 07, 2008
UNMIN's (Matthew Kahane's) Observations Completely Legitimate; India's Guilt-Ridden Reaction, Nonsense
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/unmins-matthew-kahanes-observations.html
The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the callous manner in which the UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal) handled the arms (and armies) verification process?
As was the case in East Timor, Ian Martin parachuted in and out of Nepal. But those who will bear the consequences of Martin’s (and the UN’s) willingness to play the role of a (most) “useful idiot,” remain in-country.
If the United Nations as an institution fails to hold its personnel accountable, then Nepalis need to hold Ban Ki Moon and the UN hierarchy accountable for the UN’s complete failure in executing its mandate in Nepal.
February 25, 2007
Summary of Declared (by State) vs. Inventoried (by UNMIN), Weapon Counts
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/symmary-of-declared-by-state-vs.html
February 25, 2007
Discrepancies in Maoist Weapons Inventoried by UNMIN – Do the Math
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/discrepancies-in-maoist-weapons.html
March 01, 2007
The UN and Maoist Arms Controversy: Overkill or Negligence?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/02/un-and-maoist-arms-controversy-overkill.html
March 01, 2007
UN Fast Losing Credibility in Nepal
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/03/un-fast-losing-credibility-in-nepal.html
June 18, 2007
UNMIN Clarifies its Role but Just in Time to be Humiliated by the Maoists
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/06/unmin-clarifies-its-role-but-just-in.html
July 04, 2007
UNMIN's Arms Verification Process in Nepal - More Timely Information and Transparency Needed
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmin-in-over-its-head-in-nepal-arms.html
July 15, 2007
The UN's (UNMIN) Involvement in Nepal's Peace Process: A turning point or another fiasco in the making?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/uns-unmin-involvement-in-nepals-peace.html
July 17, 2007
UNMIN's July 16 Press Release and Subsequent Q&A Disaster
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-july-16-press-release-and.html
July 19, 2007
UNMIN's "Consulting" Mentality Not Conducive to Nepal's "Stakeholder" Needs
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/07/unmins-consulting-mentality-not.html
September 21, 2007
What has UNMIN Accomplished in Nepal?
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-has-unmin-accomplished-in-nepal.html
November 01, 2007
What UNMIN Should Do to Manage Nepal's Peace Process
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/courtesy-krishna-hari-pushkar-un-is.html
November 26, 2007
UNMIN in Need of Immediate Reform
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/11/unmin-in-need-of-immediate-reform.html
December, 2007
Constructive Feedback for Ian Martin - Time for a change in UNMIN's Leadership
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/12/constructive-feedback-for-ian-martin.html
February 04, 2008
Deficient UNMIN
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/deficient-unmin.html
February 07, 2008
UNMIN's (Matthew Kahane's) Observations Completely Legitimate; India's Guilt-Ridden Reaction, Nonsense
http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/02/unmins-matthew-kahanes-observations.html
Prachanda's Admission Caught on Tape...
For all the Maoist apologists, "civil society" politicians and those who commended the United Nations on a job well done in Nepal, the following video is a MUST SEE.
Maoist Leader Admits Making an Ass out of UNMIN and the International Community.
In light of the evidence caught on tape, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below. The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the eggregious
Maoist Leader Admits Making an Ass out of UNMIN and the International Community.
In light of the evidence caught on tape, readers are encouraged to review the chronology of events captured in the postings below. The question that every Nepali must ask themselves is who we should hold accountable for the eggregious
Friday, May 01, 2009
Federalism Will Hinder Optimal Exploitation of Water Resources
(Courtesy: Ratna Sansar Shrestha)
For this scribe “People’s Movement II” is “Rhododendron Revolution” of 2006 which not only paved path for the abolition of much maligned monarchy, subsequent to Royal Palace massacre – reportedly committed by the then Crown Prince who is alleged to have committed suicide after committing heinous crime of regicide (also patricide), matricide, fratricide (both bother and sister) and also killing off an uncle and couple of aunts (however, most of the people still do not believe this “yarn” – which denigrated royalties (mainly the last “monarch” of Nepal and his son) in the eyes of the “loyal subjects” of Nepal, in 2001 June, but also afforded an opportunity for the people of Nepal to write a constitution of their own – through the elected Constituent Assembly. The assembly is supposed to decide the form and content of the constitution and also the structure of the state as to whether federal or unitary. However, the overzealous people in the commission writing Interim Constitution went out of way to declare that Nepal will be a federal state; preempting the people’s representatives in the assembly from deliberating about it and arriving at a well thought through decision. Now it has become a contentious issue as to whether spinning off of Nepal into an indeterminate number of provinces under federal structure is really a good idea. Here an attempt is being made to analyze how will federalism affect optimal exploitation of water resources.
Water Resource – Unique Natural Resource
Optimal exploitation of most of the natural resources can be done locally. They can benefit by cultivating land, harvesting it, collecting herbs, living off forest or extracting minerals. But water resource is a different kind of natural resource and things are not that simple with its exploitation. Local inhabitants can benefit, for example, by building micro hydropower project (less than 100 kW) or from water based tourism like rafting. But exploitation at a larger scale to benefit from scale economy results in different set of additionalities and externalities.
Construction of a run-of-the-river (RoR) hydropower at a specific site deprives upper riparian populace from using the river water for consumptive uses (i.e. irrigation) as any reduction in the quantum of water will result in decrease in electricity generation and in turn downsizing the revenue stream. Similarly, a patch of the river will become dewatered as water will be diverted from the river into powerhouse through a network of canal/tunnel and eventually penstock pipe by building intake. The people dependent on this patch of river will face severe water scarcity – amply demonstrated by the dewatered area in Marshyangdi River by the highway to Pokahra. If the users of electricity come from a different province, the people adversely impacted as such will never agree to construction of implementation of hydropower plant in their province resulting in failure to generate electricity at optimum level.
Reservoir Project
Contrasted with RoR project, a storage project will entail building a reservoir resulting in inundation/submergence of large tracts of fertile agricultural land, forest and even extant infrastructure and will also displace the inhabitants. Daily pondage project also causes similar adverse impact, by a lesser magnitude, though. In this scenario, people of the province set to lose their land and to get displaced will not be too eager to build a project if the electricity is to be used in another province. Moreover, storage project also generates downstream benefit in terms of augmented flow which benefits the lower riparian people by making water available for water supply, irrigation, industrial use, improvement of watershed and they can also use the same for water sports based tourism and navigation. In this backdrop people in upper riparian province will have no reason to agree to build such a project, thus scuttling the prospect of implementation of a multipurpose project, but for federal structure.
Resettlement of people displaced by a multipurpose project will also become problematic as there is scarcity of good land in the hills where such projects could be sited while the resettlement in the area where necessary land is available will not be allowed for reasons of disturbing ethnic balance. Tharus in western Terai are already objecting to the resettlement plan for people to be displaced by West Seti project. After formation of separate provinces, the ensuing tussle will take the form of agitation as to why should upper riparian province lose land and its people to electricity for some far off city.
Irrigation and Flood Control
Nepal has 3.97 million hectares of cultivated land (mostly in Terai) and only 0.5 million hectares (only 12.6%) has some irrigation (mostly during rainy season). Cultivation of multiple crops in a year – imperative to ensure food security in the country (including high value cash crop that will make the farmers there prosperous) – requires massive irrigation during dry season which is possible only by building a reservoir in the hills that will store water during the rainy season (about 4 months in year) for irrigation during other 8 months. Building reservoirs as such will also control flood in the river’s flood plain in the Terai. But such a scheme will be precluded after splitting the country into federal structure for reasons explained above, especially if Terai is to become a separate province.
Electricity
Suppose it is decided to have 5 provinces in the lines of current development regions, then western development region will be generating most of hydropower (over 329 MW), using only about half of its generation capacity, while eastern region will be consuming a lot more than what it generates (under 14 MW). Central development region will consume a little more than it generates (275 MW). Under federal structure this type of happy sharing will not be possible. Simple issue like pricing can spin out of control and provinces with more generation capacity can shut off power if the price is not right.
Dispute over water resource
What is happening in India should be an eye opener for us in Nepal about to cross the threshold into federalism. There is dispute between Punjab and Haryana over Yamuna Sutlej Link canal. A clutch of states are fighting over Narmada and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka do not see eye to eye on Cauvery. All this is impeding optimal exploitation of water resource in India, although she has adopted federal structure due to her huge land mass.
Negotiating power
From Koshi through Gandaki, Tanakpur and Mahakali treaties Nepal has ended up getting raw deals. These things took place before Nepal went federal. After implementing federalism, each province will be squabbling with other province/s and Nepal’s negotiation capacity will be further weakened vis-à-vis India and the nightmare of a “monkey” from abroad settling dispute between two “cats” over sharing of a bread of loaf (water resource) and monkey ending up eating the bread bite by bite will become a reality. Merely this should persuade patriotic Nepali people from breaking up Nepal into several provinces real.
Conclusion
Implementing water resource projects in a federal structure will become difficult/daunting task due to competing demands over water and clashing aspirations of each province and several provinces. The complications will get compounded due to the convention of demarcating provinces by using rivers as the boundary. This will result in diametrically opposite aspiration of one province with that of the province on the other side of the river.
In view of this, and also due to the fact that Nepal is as small or smaller than a reasonable sized province of India and most federal nations, we need to tread cautiously before going for federal structure. As far as water resource is concerned, splitting the country in haste will provide us ample opportunity to repent at leisure.
(A shorter version of this writing was published in the Nepali Times # 449 (1-7 May 2009).
For this scribe “People’s Movement II” is “Rhododendron Revolution” of 2006 which not only paved path for the abolition of much maligned monarchy, subsequent to Royal Palace massacre – reportedly committed by the then Crown Prince who is alleged to have committed suicide after committing heinous crime of regicide (also patricide), matricide, fratricide (both bother and sister) and also killing off an uncle and couple of aunts (however, most of the people still do not believe this “yarn” – which denigrated royalties (mainly the last “monarch” of Nepal and his son) in the eyes of the “loyal subjects” of Nepal, in 2001 June, but also afforded an opportunity for the people of Nepal to write a constitution of their own – through the elected Constituent Assembly. The assembly is supposed to decide the form and content of the constitution and also the structure of the state as to whether federal or unitary. However, the overzealous people in the commission writing Interim Constitution went out of way to declare that Nepal will be a federal state; preempting the people’s representatives in the assembly from deliberating about it and arriving at a well thought through decision. Now it has become a contentious issue as to whether spinning off of Nepal into an indeterminate number of provinces under federal structure is really a good idea. Here an attempt is being made to analyze how will federalism affect optimal exploitation of water resources.
Water Resource – Unique Natural Resource
Optimal exploitation of most of the natural resources can be done locally. They can benefit by cultivating land, harvesting it, collecting herbs, living off forest or extracting minerals. But water resource is a different kind of natural resource and things are not that simple with its exploitation. Local inhabitants can benefit, for example, by building micro hydropower project (less than 100 kW) or from water based tourism like rafting. But exploitation at a larger scale to benefit from scale economy results in different set of additionalities and externalities.
Construction of a run-of-the-river (RoR) hydropower at a specific site deprives upper riparian populace from using the river water for consumptive uses (i.e. irrigation) as any reduction in the quantum of water will result in decrease in electricity generation and in turn downsizing the revenue stream. Similarly, a patch of the river will become dewatered as water will be diverted from the river into powerhouse through a network of canal/tunnel and eventually penstock pipe by building intake. The people dependent on this patch of river will face severe water scarcity – amply demonstrated by the dewatered area in Marshyangdi River by the highway to Pokahra. If the users of electricity come from a different province, the people adversely impacted as such will never agree to construction of implementation of hydropower plant in their province resulting in failure to generate electricity at optimum level.
Reservoir Project
Contrasted with RoR project, a storage project will entail building a reservoir resulting in inundation/submergence of large tracts of fertile agricultural land, forest and even extant infrastructure and will also displace the inhabitants. Daily pondage project also causes similar adverse impact, by a lesser magnitude, though. In this scenario, people of the province set to lose their land and to get displaced will not be too eager to build a project if the electricity is to be used in another province. Moreover, storage project also generates downstream benefit in terms of augmented flow which benefits the lower riparian people by making water available for water supply, irrigation, industrial use, improvement of watershed and they can also use the same for water sports based tourism and navigation. In this backdrop people in upper riparian province will have no reason to agree to build such a project, thus scuttling the prospect of implementation of a multipurpose project, but for federal structure.
Resettlement of people displaced by a multipurpose project will also become problematic as there is scarcity of good land in the hills where such projects could be sited while the resettlement in the area where necessary land is available will not be allowed for reasons of disturbing ethnic balance. Tharus in western Terai are already objecting to the resettlement plan for people to be displaced by West Seti project. After formation of separate provinces, the ensuing tussle will take the form of agitation as to why should upper riparian province lose land and its people to electricity for some far off city.
Irrigation and Flood Control
Nepal has 3.97 million hectares of cultivated land (mostly in Terai) and only 0.5 million hectares (only 12.6%) has some irrigation (mostly during rainy season). Cultivation of multiple crops in a year – imperative to ensure food security in the country (including high value cash crop that will make the farmers there prosperous) – requires massive irrigation during dry season which is possible only by building a reservoir in the hills that will store water during the rainy season (about 4 months in year) for irrigation during other 8 months. Building reservoirs as such will also control flood in the river’s flood plain in the Terai. But such a scheme will be precluded after splitting the country into federal structure for reasons explained above, especially if Terai is to become a separate province.
Electricity
Suppose it is decided to have 5 provinces in the lines of current development regions, then western development region will be generating most of hydropower (over 329 MW), using only about half of its generation capacity, while eastern region will be consuming a lot more than what it generates (under 14 MW). Central development region will consume a little more than it generates (275 MW). Under federal structure this type of happy sharing will not be possible. Simple issue like pricing can spin out of control and provinces with more generation capacity can shut off power if the price is not right.
Dispute over water resource
What is happening in India should be an eye opener for us in Nepal about to cross the threshold into federalism. There is dispute between Punjab and Haryana over Yamuna Sutlej Link canal. A clutch of states are fighting over Narmada and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka do not see eye to eye on Cauvery. All this is impeding optimal exploitation of water resource in India, although she has adopted federal structure due to her huge land mass.
Negotiating power
From Koshi through Gandaki, Tanakpur and Mahakali treaties Nepal has ended up getting raw deals. These things took place before Nepal went federal. After implementing federalism, each province will be squabbling with other province/s and Nepal’s negotiation capacity will be further weakened vis-à-vis India and the nightmare of a “monkey” from abroad settling dispute between two “cats” over sharing of a bread of loaf (water resource) and monkey ending up eating the bread bite by bite will become a reality. Merely this should persuade patriotic Nepali people from breaking up Nepal into several provinces real.
Conclusion
Implementing water resource projects in a federal structure will become difficult/daunting task due to competing demands over water and clashing aspirations of each province and several provinces. The complications will get compounded due to the convention of demarcating provinces by using rivers as the boundary. This will result in diametrically opposite aspiration of one province with that of the province on the other side of the river.
In view of this, and also due to the fact that Nepal is as small or smaller than a reasonable sized province of India and most federal nations, we need to tread cautiously before going for federal structure. As far as water resource is concerned, splitting the country in haste will provide us ample opportunity to repent at leisure.
(A shorter version of this writing was published in the Nepali Times # 449 (1-7 May 2009).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)