October 12, 2002	Saturday	Sha'aban 5, 1423

ROLPA (Nepal): Authorities in this landlocked mountain kingdom have found a new way to restrict the movement of Maoist insurgents: cut down on the supply of basic items like rice, medicine — and footwear in the poverty-ridden areas controlled by the rebels.

Particularly ‘lethal’ in the Nepali officials’ view is the tough, locally produced Gold Star brand of shoes which, at four dollars a pair, is unbeatable value for money when compared to footwear produced by globally known sports gear manufacturers like Nike and Reebok.

Because Maoist rebels find Gold Star shoes ideal for clambering up and down the hills of Nepal and staying out of the reach of their army and police pursuers, authorities have now limited the supply and sale of this brand in insurgent-affected districts.

Gold Star shoes have thus disappeared from the shelves of the village general store, a clampdown that reflects how basic items that were once ordinary are no longer just that. In the markets of the heavily patrolled town of Rolpa in midwestern Nepal, no one is allowed to buy more than one pair at a time.

Shopkeeper Man Shyam Pun at Maddichaur village, four hours hard walk from Libang, the fortified district headquarters of the Maoist stronghold in Rolpa, says that before the restrictions on the sale of Gold Star shoes were imposed a few months ago, an armed Maoist walked into his shop and bought off 15 pairs — and paid for them in Indian rupees, the preferred currency.

It is not just footwear that is considered dangerous in these parts. There is a virtual blockade in place in Rolpa town of rice, instant food, medicines and battery cells, adding to the hardships of ordinary people caught in the civil war between the Maoists and the army.

With local village markets disrupted, villagers walk a day and a half to buy rice and return with 10 kilograms , the upper limit of the ration.

Birendra Nath Sharma, the chief district officer, explains that rice is supplementary to the staple diet of maize and barley. “But this is a scarcity period and with the growing phenomena of internal displacement from the villages, there are serious implications for food production.”

In short, the toll on ordinary people of the Maoists’ ’Peoples War’, aimed at removing the constitutional monarchy and establishing a democratic republic, is rising as the insurgency is now on its sixth year. The rebellion now affects two-thirds of Nepal.

In an April report, the human rights group Amnesty International also expressed concern about an escalation of rights abuses committed by the Maoists and security forces, especially since the declaration of a state of emergency in November 2001.

More than 2,500 people have died since the Maoist rebellion began in 1996. Caught in the middle of this civil war are the non-combatants, victims of the targeted attacks on infrastructure, arbitrary killings carried out by both sides and restrictions on the movement of goods.

These restrictions mean that in Libang, trucks unloading supplies for the villagers are closely scrutinised — nothing moves until the permits signed by the chief district officer are presented.

For more than six weeks now, the chief district officer has not sanctioned any new supplies of medicines, so stocks are running low.

Primary health units in the villages and village pharmacies have largely shut down. In satellite towns like Sullichaur, chemists have run out of anti-diarrhoea drugs, paracetamol and penicillin, at a time when field reports are coming in about a spurt in diseases due to contamination, probably as a consequence of an increasing number of mass shallow graves and half-buried bodies.

But it is the demand for Gold Star shoes, indispensable in the rough terrain of the Nepalese countryside, that far outstrips that for any other item of merchandise. The chief district officer himself wears them and so does the police chief and several of the soldiers posted in Libang.

They are also so precious that not all Maoists in Rolpa wear Gold Star shoes, and many new recruits wear simple rubber slippers. There seems to be a hierarchy of who gets to wear the brand and in what state of wear and tear.

Comrade Dileep, for instance, seemed more proud of his pristine Gold Star shoes than the belt of small bombs strapped underneath his bulging blue T-shirt. Mala, a middle-aged woman Maoist ‘platoon’ member from Tebang village, wore well-scuffed Gold Star shoes.

Life is easier for civilians who have sought the security umbrella of the police and army set-up in Libang. Chandra Bahadur Pun, 18, has just managed to buy a brand new pair of Gold Star shoes, but then he is one of the hundreds registered as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

The shoes also helped Chandra find a job with the army as ‘volunteer’, which means acting as guides and carrying equipment often with no payment. “Without running shoes on the captain would not have recruited me,” he explained.

Chandra helped with a pre-dawn raid on the village of Dhabang where the army had intelligence about a group of 11 Maoists . Three of them, two men and a woman, were shot dead as the army opened fire on their fleeing backs.

“We ask them to surrender but they flee, so we shoot them,” one army captain explained. Chandra and the growing mass of displaced persons, ‘surrendered’ Maoists, and ‘escapees from Maoist justice’- are highly vulnerable to manipulation by the army as informers, guides, porters for arms and ammunitions and likely end up as ‘collateral’ civilian victims of crossfire.

But the real victims are ordinary people who, as the civil war rages, have no access to food and medical supplies — and Gold Star shoes.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.