FYI.
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"Military Victory over Maoists Not Possible"
Nepalipost Report
March 28, 2005
Nepal's former ambassador to the United Nations was among the panelists Friday, who criticized the decision by King Gyanendra to jail hundreds of political leaders and human rights activists, suspend freedom of the press, and take over direct rule under a state of emergency.
Former ambassador Murari Raj Sharma, human rights activist Sushil Pyakurel, political analyst Chitra Tiwari, and T. Kumar of Amnesty International spoke at American University on "Crisis in the Himalayas: Nepal and Human Rights After the Feb. 1 Coup."
One of the rationales given by the king for the power grab, and the one he has stressed the most in the international community, has been the need for a military victory over the Maoists. "From my perspective, I'll be the happiest man if the Maoists were brought under control through military means for the crimes they have committed," said Sharma, who represented Nepal in the U.N. from 2000 to 2004.
"But from a practical standpoint, that's not possible. Nepal is, in terms of its mountainous terrain and forests, not less difficult than Afghanistan, where the better-equipped and better-trained American and Pakistani forces are trying to smoke terrorists out and get them either dead or alive. It hasn't happened. Therefore, military victory over the Maoists will be unthinkable."
If the war is protracted over the course of decades, "either the king will prevail and Nepal will have an authoritarian system, or the Maoists will prevail and we'll have a totalitarian system. None of these choices is worth accepting," Sharma said. "What we want are democratic values and institutions, human rights and freedoms."
The only outcome that will not only resolve the Maoist problem, but also ensure democratic rights and civil liberties, is for the king and political parties to form a unified front and bring the contending parties together through dialogue and negotiations, he added.
Sushil Pyakurel of the Nepal Human Rights Commission expressed concern about the "peace committees" being formed in districts such as Kapilvastu where mobs have burned homes, torched an entire village, and killed and raped an unknown number of citizens accused of being Maoists. "In these committees, most people are either ex-Maoists or criminals," Pyakurel charged, adding that members of the committees have tarred human rights activists as Maoists and threatened them on state-run television.
Pyakurel was in Washington to speak with U.S. Senators Edward Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Lugar and others about the current conditions in Nepal. He had initially been barred from leaving the Kathmandu Valley, and was detained at the airport on his way to the U.S.
Amnesty International is concerned about the extent of abuses that are occurring, said T. Kumar, Asia Advocacy Director for the human rights group. "As we heard just now, the local monitoring agencies are shut down, and it's very difficult to get correct information because of the news crackdown," Kumar said.
He urged U.S. citizens and residents to write their Senators and Representatives and urge suspension of military aid to Nepal. "U.S. policy will have an enormous impact in terms of what can be done," Kumar said. The U.S. failure to join India and Britain in announcing the suspension of military aid "weakened international resolve. Otherwise, the king would have got the message ... The U.S. is going the wrong way."
Political analyst Chitra Tiwari said that weaknesses inherent in Nepal's constitution, such as its characterization of Nepal as a Hindu state, set the stage for the royal takeover. The king's move is polarizing the country between the extreme left and right, Tiwari said.
Anup Pahari, speaking from the audience, questioned Tiwari's analysis and contended that the most reliable data shows that a majority of Nepalis support a constitutional monarchy. Tiwari responded that if even the military cannot go into the Maoist-affected areas, pollsters cannot have accurate data on views in those areas.
An estimated 100 people attended the event, many of them graduate students and faculty members from American and George Washington universities and friends of Nepal. The panel was moderated by Hom Raj Acharya and sponsored by American University's Free Nepal and International Development Program Students Association.
