My Articles
Conflict Study Center Edits:
Situation update 88: Terai-Medhesh – Searching for Identity Based Security
Situation update 86: Federalism: Risk Assessment
Situation update 85: Federalism: Lessons from India
Situation update 84: Nepal-India Relations: Open Secret Diplomacy
Situation update 83: Nepal’s Peace Process at the Crossroads
Situation update 82: The Army in Politics and Politics in the Army
Situation Update 81: The Culture of Militarization in South Asia Situation Update 80: Modeling the integration of the Maoist Combatants: DDR or SSR
Situation Update 79: The United Nations: Challenges for Peace
Situation Update 78: Maoist’s New Nepal: Industrial Capitalism in the Name of Socialism
Situation Update 77: The Koshi Deluge: A History of Disaster for Nepal
Situation Update 76: Is New Nepal Heading Toward People’s Republic?
Situation Update 75: Nepal’s Presidential Election: Victory of Anti-Maoist Forces
Situation Update 73: Work toward Federalism in Nepal
Situation Update 72: Kingdom to Democratic Federal Republic of Nepal
Situation Update 71: Aftermath of Nepal’s CA: By Hook or Crook
Note: Most of these articles were posted on UWB, and It’s been recently hacked. I’ve been assured it will be back up soon.
Maoists and Main Stream Politics of Nepal (Two Years After)
A follow up opinion piece, written after the Maoists won the CA elections.
A chance encounter with a Maoist commissar
I ran into the same commissar that I had interviewed the previous year while trekking in Mustang. He was the district in-charge.
Nepali Congress Mass Meeting in Pokhara
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala spoke in Pokhara on April 9th 2007. A crowd of ten to twenty thousand people, slightly larger than the previous Maoist Newa Mukti Morcha rally in Kathmandu, gathered in Amorsingchowk to witness the event.
Young Communist League Rally Against Gaur Killing
Photo’s and a brief summary of the Rally the YCL held against the Gaur violence in Pokhara on April 4th.
Maoist Leader Suresh Ale Magar On Woodland Incident
This is a brief phone interview with Suresh Ale Magar, a Maoist Member of Parliament. He was a founding member of the Federation of Indigenous Nationalities and a lecture of English in Tribhuwan University for 17 years. About 3 years ago he was captured by Indian police and extradited to Nepal where he was imprisoned until his release after the April Movement.
Attending A Maoist Mass Meeting in Pokhara
A write up of the rally Prachanda spoke at on March 8th 2007. UWB whittled down the number of photos, which is probably an improvement. However, If you want to see the full version it is on this site.
Nepal Talks: An Interview With A Local Maoist Leader
An interview with the district secretary of Kaski, in Pokhara.
Or at least that’s what the title would have been if it wasn’t combined in to a much larger article about a much different subject.
This is a translation of written responses given to me from the Commissar of the Basanta Memorial Brigade in the 4th division of the PLA.
Maoists and Mainsteam Politics in Nepal
An opinion piece written just after the April Movement.
Comparing Notes: Nepal one year later
This is a write up of my first interview with the Maoists. It took place in Myagdi district a year and a half ago, but I didn’t post it until the next year.
The Nepalese Conflict: A Brief Theoretical Perspective
This article was originally submitted to Samudaya.org on April 4th, 2006. It predicts the success of the Janaandolan II, and the subsequent power sharing between the SPA and the Maoists. The external version is here.
————————————————————-
While much has been written on the civil war in
Nepal, rarely are events put into a theoretical context. The following narrative will apply events in Nepalese society to a comprehensive theory of revolution found in Revolutionary Change by Chalmers Johnson. Johnson’s theory incorporates many different factors to show both the causes of revolution and indicators of its success. The following chart by Johnson encapsulates his theory
Theoretical Explanation
While the chart provides a good visual, an explanation is needed before it is applied to
Nepal. Those familiar with events in
Nepal will find themselves making their own comparisons as they read. Sections of the chart will be explained under their appropriate heading.
Sources of Change:
According to Chalmers Johnson, Where things have not changed at all, there is the least likelihood of revolution. In order for there to be the possibility of revolution, there must be sources of change. Change can occur in the system of values society posses, or in the physical environment. Also, change can come from either inside or outside of a country. These divisions create four categories of change; exogenous value-changing, endogenous value changing, exogenous environment changing, and endogenous environment changing.
The Disequilibrated social system:
Change itself is not enough to cause revolution. So long as a societys values and the realities with which it must deal in order to exist are in harmony with each other, the society is immune from revolution. When a society is in homeostatic equilibrium, it is continuously receiving stimuli from its members and from the outside that cause it to make adjustments in its division of labor and its structure of values. It may go on receiving these stimuli (e.g. innovations, new tastes, cultural borrowings, etc.) and making the necessary changes indefinitely, without experiencing revolution, so long as it keeps its values and its environment in synchronization. If change happens at a faster rate then the society can deal with, then the result is the disequilibrated social system. A society will be out of equilibrium when its structure of values becomes out of sync with its division of labor, or pattern of environmental adaptation. Such a society will fail to fulfill functional requisites (perform poorly). Social groups could fail to get along well (incoherent socialization). Traditional roles used in maintaining society, such as caste, may become inappropriate for the task (inappropriate ensemble of roles). There may be large disagreements between social groups on where society should be headed (dissensus on the goals). Or, people could simply find it more difficult to resolve conflicts peacefully.
Power deflation:
When a society is in disequilibrium, it is possible that routine homeostasis will create a new synchronization between the value structure and the pattern of environmental adaptation. In essence this means that society could fix its self. Failing this, status protesters will appear. These are people who are unhappy with their position in society, These protesters will push to either restore the society (or status hierarchy) to some sort of shining example of what it once was, or they will have an interest in remaking the society into something entirely new (recast the status hierarchy).
These status protesters may be brought together by an on ideology. In Johnsons words Once persons whose latent interests have become manifest have an ideology, however, the society will tend to polarize into two groups: one group with an interest in maintaining the status quo and another with an interest in and an ideology for altering the status quo. At the same time the elite, who are controlling society, will experience power deflation depending on the courses of action they take to resynchronize it. Thus, if they take the wrong actions, their grip on society will grow weaker. The actions available to them are conservative change, co-option of status protesters into the mainstream, business as usual, and intransigence.
Loss of Authority:
If the elite do not take the correct courses of action when experiencing power deflation, they will experience loss of authority. That is, society at large will decreasingly view the elite as legitimate. At this point the system is increasingly held together by the use of force. Johnson says, So long as the leaders can still use the army successfully to coerce social interaction, the system will continue to persist. However, the power deflation will approach maximum proportions, producing a police state. This loss of authority can be drastically pushed along by the presence of an accelerator.
Accelerators:
Accelerators are occurrences that make revolution possible by exposing the inability of the elite to maintain its monopoly on force. Johnson describes three different types of accelerators. The first is a break in the effectiveness of the armed force representing the elite. This accelerator could allow a revolution in and of its self. The second is an ideological belief held by a protesting group that it can succeed in overcoming the armed forces of the elite. For example, during the boxer rebellion in China, the rebels believed they could not be harmed by bullets (it didnt work). The third, and most important accelerator for the purpose of analyzing the revolution in Nepal, consists of special operations launched against an elites armed forces by pursuing a revolutionary strategy, such as guerrilla warfare. Once an accelerator has nudged the loss of authority past a certain point, there will be a revolutionary insurrection. The outcome of that insurrection will be based on the ability of the revolutionary ideology to resynchronize the social system.
Nepalese Application
While it is clear that the situation in Nepal is far more complex then can be briefly described, a few examples of each stage will be more then enough to demonstrate its applicability. Again, the comparisons will be made under the appropriate headings.
Sources of Change:
Source: CIA FactBook:
Nepal.
Nepal is experiencing extreme forms of both indigenous and exogenous sources of change. A quick look and the comparative demographics of Nepal versus its immediate neighbors will demonstrate how far it is lagging behind in life expectancy and literacy. Where 20.4 percent of women in china cant read, and 52.7 percent of women in India are illiterate, Nepal has a dismal 73.6 percent female illiteracy as of 2004. These poor quality of life indicators are further reflected in the comparative wealth of Nepalese people to the rest of the world.
Source: World Resources Institute. Economic Indicators
Nepal
GDP per capita reflects the total amount of income earned in a country divided by its population. As indicated in the chart above, most of the Worlds population is not only wealthier than the average Nepali, but more importantly their income is increasing while the Nepalis is stagnant. These factors contribute to a crisis of rising expectations within Nepal. At least 9 million people are forced to seek work abroad in Nepal each year. What they see must be causing them to wonder why their own country is so far behind.
From the inside, Nepal is experiencing rapid population growth, this is both reflected in the inability of a stagnant and agriculturally based economy to supply so many people with jobs, but it is also reflected in the inability of the countries infrastructure to cope with population growth.
Source: World Resources Institute: Energy and Resources.
While Nepal has the Second Highest Hydropower potential in the world, the above chart of energy consumption shows very little domestic exploitation of this important resource. While fossil fuel consumption is increasing, the vast majority of Nepals energy is increasingly coming from other renewables like firewood. In turn, the renewable consumption is causing massive deforestation. When roughly 80 percent of the country doesnt have access to roads, much less water or electricity, it is impossible for common people to avoid environmental destruction.
All of these indicators reflect a traditional society that is being forced to deal with the realities of a modern world, and is adapting to this environment poorly. Practices that sustained the society in the past are no longer working. Using firewood to heat homes worked well in traditional society, but is no longer working with many more times the population. In much the same way, the cast system once maintained the social system, but is now destabilizing it.
The Disequilibrated social system:
While the expectations of the majority of Nepals population are rising, the division of labor in Nepal remains unchanged. It is still a vastly agricultural based economy with a rigid cast hierarchy. While the industry, agriculture and services sector of the economy share a nearly equivalent percentage of the wealth generated in the country, the percentage of the population employed in the highly lucrative industrial sector is only 3 percent of the population.
Source: CIA World Factbook 2002
Only 18 percent of the counties population is generating 60 percent of the wealth. This serves to highlight the sharp disparity between the upper and lower casts, due to the upper casts having more access to lucrative tourism and industry based jobs. It also demonstrates the disparity between the city and the country-side, where the latter has less access to both the industrial and service sectors of the economy. This disparity, combined with a crises of rising expectations, form a disjunct between the division of labor and the structure of values. Also contributing to the disjunct are imported ideologies such as Marxism. These ideologies provide both new values and a theoretical context for those experiencing disequilibrium. The Maoist leader, Dr. Bhattarai, demonstrated he was well aware of the causes of disequilibrium the 60-page document Politico-economic Rationale of Peoples War in Nepal. His command of the subject matter has no doubt aided the Maoists efforts to increase the gap between the values of common people and the structure of society.
Nepal has slided [sic] to the status of the second poorest country in the world in terms of physical and cultural developments; 71 percent of its population fall below absolute poverty level; 46.5 percent of national income is in the hands of 10 percent of the richest people; more than 60 percent of it’s total population is illiterate, more than 90 percent of it’s total population live in rural areas and 81 percent of the labour (sic) force is engaged in the backward agricultural occupation; 10 percent are fully unemployed and 60 percent are under-employed or in disguised employment. Similarly the growth rate of food grain production, the most important national production, has shown decline in the last 30 years; foreign debt constitutes more than 60 percent of the gross domestic product and its intensity is increasing as years pass.[1]
In order to confirm that a society is disequilibrated, Chalmers Johnson outlines a few different possible statistical indicators. The first and most easily accessible indicator is suicide rate. Johnson says, Some amount of suicide exists in all functional societies, and it is, therefore, only marked increases in the rate of suicide that could indicate a rising degree of disequilibrium. Nepal is experiencing such a marked increase. In fact the rate of suicide has shown close to a fivefold increase over the previous decade, starting with 290 suicides a year in 1993, and peaking with 1,480 suicides a year in 2001.
Source: Himalayan News Service
Power deflation:
If the society is disequilibrated, it follows that it is experiencing power deflation. While it is difficult to quantify something as obfuscated from public view as the ability of social elite to exercise power, a quick glance at some of the events of the last 15 years may serve to demonstrate such.
-Constitutional monarchy with parliamentary democracy instituted in 1990
-Maoist Peoples War initiated in 1996
-Parliament has changed hands 11 times between 1990 and 2001
-2001: State of emergency declared, civil liberties suspended.
- 2001 June 1st- King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and more then 10 close relatives are killed in shooting spree by drunken Crown Prince Dipendra, who then shoots himself.
-2002 May – Parliament dissolved, fresh elections called amid political confrontation over extending the state of emergency. Deuba expelled by his Nepali Congress party, heads interim government, renews emergency.
-2002 October – Deuba asks king to put off elections by a year owing to mounting Maoist violence. King Gyanendra dismisses Deuba and indefinitely puts off elections set for November.
-2003 May/June – Lokendra Bahadur Chand resigns as prime minister. King appoints his own nominee Surya Bahadur Thapa as new premier.[3]
-2004 Feb – King Gyanendra takes official executive and absolute authority.
-2005 Nov Maoists and the Seven Party Alliance release their 12 point understanding on joint struggle against autocratic monarchy.
While the government experiences power deflation, it is relying decreasingly on legitimacy and increasingly on restrictive laws and the use of force to maintain integration of the system. At the same time, Maoists taking the role of status protestors have increasingly been able to challenge the status hierarchy. As Routine homeostasis has obviously failed, the courses of action in the realm of power deflation the elite have been attempting amount to intransigence and co-opting the Maoist leaders into the mainstream. The king has had no success at all in co-opting the Maoists, and seems recently to be settling on intransigence. On the part of the parties, while it is clear that the Maoists have been able to get them to accept the minimum demand of a constituent assembly, it is doubtful weather the parties will be able to get the Maoists to renounce violence. From the perspective of the Maoists renouncing violence is a form of revisionism. Revisionism is to be avoided at all costs, as it is blamed for the failures of the communist movement inRussia andChina. In his interview with a reporter in 1999, Prachanda was very adamant about this point:
My main thrust is that I hate revisionism. I seriously hate revisionism. And I never compromise with revisionism. I fought and fought again with revisionism. And the party’s correct line is based on the process of fighting revisionism. I hate revisionism. I seriously hate revisionism.[4]
With this in mind, the idea that the Maoists will join mainstream politics without an absolute assurance that their goals will be achieved seems hopeful at best.
Loss of Authority:
After taking executive power, King Gyanendra has experienced a decreasing amount of legitimacy acknowledged by both his own population and the international community. His Arms shipments from all three major democracies have been halted. He has faced repeated condemnation of the royal move, and admonishments from the U.S. administration. A great deal of the population believe he achieved the throne through the assassination of his brother, whos portrait still trumps his in most non-official residences. The Seven Party Alliance has decided recently to choose the Maoists as a negotiation partner rather then legitimize the Kings rule by participating in elections. The protest programs against these elections were disrupted by the government with the most unusual method of calling a daytime curfew. There is no better example of integration of the system by use of force then stopping a peaceful protest by forcing an entire population to stay indoors. It is the mark of a regime the holds little to no sway with the population, and must use the army in order to maintain control.
Accelerators- Strategy:
At the time of this writing Military force is being used to hold Nepal politically together. The accelerator that the Maoists have chosen to use is poised to break the logic of deterrence based on force. That accelerator is the strategy of guerrilla warfare. The similarities between what is happening in Nepal, and what Chalmers describes as typical to Guerrilla warfare are pertinent.
The partys political workers will organize the aroused populace into groups such as workers unions, soviets, peasants cooperatives, militia, and ascriptive associations of women, youths, and ethnic minorities. These groups will provide military support for the full-time guerrillas and give the masses a sense of participation in the revolutionary effort, thereby initiating the habits of loyalty and obedience to the legitimate authority of the rebel leaders. The final stage of organization is the establishment of revolutionary territorial bases. The government of these bases will not yet be of the form prescribed in the revolutionaries goal culture; instead, it will be one designed to promote maximum unity and participation in the movement by all groups. As these bases are expanded and consolidated, they become a regular guerrilla infrastructure, or and alternative government, supplying the rebel forces with food, sanctuary, training centers, and manpower. [5]
The Maoists have, of course, done all of the things described above. They have organized unions of both workers and students, organizations of women, youth, and ethnic minorities. It was Bejay, an organizer of the All Nepal National Independent student Union (Revolutionary) who agreed to an interview with me in June of 2005, along with his district commander. I conducted this interview in a trekking lodge in Myagdi district, a territory controlled by the rebels for the last two years. While giving a speech to the villagers the next day, He told me he was explaining why the Maoists couldnt help with the development of the village at the moment, but could in the future. Bejay told me his job was to talk to students about what the Maoists were doing and why. He was careful to explain that he wasnt permitted to bring his gun into class as it would frighten the children.
Similarities to Nepal aside, Chalmers assessment of this strategy is rather foreboding.
Guerrilla warfare, as a strategy of revolution, is extremely difficult to defeat once it has gone so far that the defending regime must take it seriously. By the time guerrilla activities appear threatening, counterrevolutionary measures are likely to produce warfare of such savagery that the contested social system will disintegrate instead of being ‘won’ by either the rebel or the conservative side. By fare the most effective defenses against guerrilla revolution are preventative and processual social change and efficient police protection against terrorists. True guerrilla revolutions are the mark of the most hopelessly intransigent opposition to change; they ought never to occur. Any form of revolution testifies to the failure of politics, but guerrilla revolutions signify the perversion of politics, the need to resort to warfare in order to oust a social group blocking change[6]
A running total of deaths per month over the course of the conflict shows that the amount of deaths caused by the Maoists remaining relatively consistent from the 2001 mobilization of the RNA onward. Meanwhile, the amount of casualties the RNA has managed to inflict has gradually decreased to match those it is receiving.
Source: INSEC
These trends reflect the inability of the state forces to significantly dislodge the guerrilla military strategy. Chalmers mentions that Guerrilla fighting has one specific purpose: to weaken the enemy through a protracted war of attrition. The guerrilla phase of the revolution serves to offset the original weakness of the rebel armies. The certain sign that the revolution is nearing its end is the abandonment of guerrilla tactics be the rebels in favor of massed infantry and artillery.[7] The district commander of Myagdi pointed out that the Maoists were moving from guerrilla warfare to positional warfare. When asked to explain the difference, he said that with guerrilla warfare they would attack and then run, but in positional, they would find a spot next to the enemy and keep fighting him from there. He described the attack he led on Beni, in 2004 as the first attempt at positional warfare.
Transfer Culture:
Given the striking resemblance between reality in Nepal and the flow chart in Revolutionary Change, and provided that the process described by Johnson is an accurate representation, it follows that Nepal has arrived at the final stage. Soon, there will more than likely be an attempt at a final revolutionary insurrection. Whether this insurrection happens on April 6 remains to be seen. However the Monarchy is intimating it expects as much. According to a report from Nepaleyes.com:
The government has urged people from outside Katmandu Valley to avoid visiting the capital for a few days, saying it has credible information that armed Maoists are planning to infiltrate the four-day general strike called by the seven agitating parties (SPA) in Kathmandu from Thursday. The government Maintains that Maoists Special Task Force (STF) has entered the capital to instigate an urban uprising on the pretext of the SPAs demonstrations. Five Maoist STF members have already been detained. [8]
Regardless of what happens in the coming months, any elite group that governs Nepal will have to create a new synchronization between its system of values and pattern of environmental adaptation. Sources of from both inside and outside Nepal have changed it to the degree that absolute monarchy could not synchronize with the value system of the society. This originally resulted in the uprising of 1990. Parliamentary Democracy alone failed to create a new synchronization. It is my opinion that the caste system, Hindu chauvinism, and patriarchal nature of Nepali society did not interface well with parliamentary democracy. In any case, the new system could not achieve stability, and the result was the increasing success of the Maoists. Any new system put in place must both satisfy the aspirations of the general populace, and be able to manage itself internationally, in order to avoid the same fate. This balance has obviously not been achieved by King Gyanendra.
It is possible that the 12-point agreement between The Maoists and the SPA will provide a roadmap to a successful transfer. The 12-point agreement outlines the creation of a transitional government, the election of a constituent assembly, and the creation of a new constitution. The Maoists have made a commitment to multiparty democracy, but their inclusion in the constituent assembly will likely create a system more adapted to addressing the aspirations of ethnic minorities, women, and the lower casts. Inclusion of the mainstream parties in the constituent assembly and a future government that incorporates them into a functioning democracy will be likely to earn international acceptability. Much needed development aid will flow along with it. If Nepal is able to show a marked improvement in its overall development, as well as create new and appropriate roles for the marginalized, then a new equilibrium can be achieved. Is this rosy outcome to much for a war weary country to hope for? Time will tell.
[1] Bhattarai, Com. (Dr.) Baburam Politico-economic Rationale of Peoples War in
Nepal. The Maoist Documentation Project: The Worker. May 1998
[2] Gender bias blamed for rising suicides, Himalayan News Service Kathmandu, 15 November. http://www.thehimalayantimes.com
[3] BBC NEWS, 25 September, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1166516.stm
[4] Onesto, Li Red Flag Flying on the Roof of the World. Revolutionary Worker Online. 20 Feb. 2000
[5] Chalmers Johnson. 1966. Revolutionary Change.
Boston and
Toronto: Little, Brown And Company
[6] Chalmers Johnson. 1966. Revolutionary Change.
Boston and
Toronto: Little, Brown And Company
[7] Chalmers Johnson. 1966. Revolutionary Change.
Boston and
Toronto: Little, Brown And Company
[8] Avoid visit to capital for few days: Govt http://www.nepaleyes.com/ (april 2, 2006)