September 11, 2002	Wednesday	Rajab 3, 1423

POKHARA (Nepal): The lights go out early in Nepal’s second biggest city and the streets are deserted by early evening.

Nearly 10 months after the army was ordered to crush the kingdom’s deadly Maoist insurgency, the tourists have gone, political instability has increased and there is no sign of the war ending.

Stepping off the plane in Pokhara, a bustling centre shrouded in mist drifting down from the surrounding Himalayan mountains, the frisking by armed policemen begins.

Outside the airport and at other government installations, policemen stand guard behind sandbagged posts.

Barely 50 kms away, hundreds of Maoists overran police posts in Syangja last November, sending shock waves through Pokhara, the second most visited tourist destination after the capital, Kathmandu.

Since then, the Royal Nepalese Army has played out a deadly cat and mouse game with the guerrillas in the thick pine forests covering the mountains west of Pokhara, 150 kms northwest of the capital.

A state of emergency imposed in November ended last month, but officials say that it could be revived after a new wave of Maoist attacks which has killed more than 100 policemen and soldiers in the east and west of the country.

The army estimates nearly 2,300 rebels have died since the offensive began last November against the Maoists, who are battling to topple the constitutional monarchy. But few bodies have ever been found.

Neither has been there any word from the rebels, and human rights activists and experts say that a large swathe of the country remains under their control.

RAIDS: Desperate but also deadly.

On Saturday, the rebels killed 49 policemen in an attack on a police post in east Nepal.

At the other end of the country, in their western Nepal stronghold, the Maoists overran the remote town of Sandhikharka, 300 kms west of Kathmandu, on Sunday night.

Scores of policemen and soldiers died in that attack.

About 50,000 soldiers, armed with mortars and heavy machine-guns, and on helicopters and jeeps, are scouring jungle and mountain valleys to hunt down the rebels who want to establish a one-party communist republic.

According to a former Nepalese army chief, there are still about 2,500 hardcore Maoist fighters, down from last year’s peak strength of 4,000 when troops went into the mountains.

“The rest are militia who support the Maoists who numbered about 12,000 to 14,000 last year,” said retired general Sachit Shamsher Rana.

Rich people in the mid-western region where the Maoist revolt began in 1996 are asked to come up with cash and goods, says Rana. The poor are forced to give up either a son or daughter to the Maoist cause. “You see many young girls getting killed.”

9/11, HUMAN RIGHTS: Human rights activists — some of whom have had links with the Maoists — say there is no alternative to talks to end the insurgency that threatens to tear apart Nepal, which is wedged between giants India and China.

But they say the government, which has won support from the United States, India and Britain to suppress the rebellion, has taken advantage of international opinion triggered by the September 11 attacks on the United States to harden its stand.—Reuters