October 18, 2003	Saturday	Sha'aban 21, 1424

KATHMANDU: Hit hard by a violent Maoist insurgency, Nepal is in for a long haul.

King Gyanendra, who dismissed an elected government in October last year to assume executive powers, has failed to either restore peace or hold elections, his twin pledges to the people while usurping rein from an “incompetent” government, analysts say.

The gulf between political parties and the king has deepened to such an extent that some party leaders are now themselves questioning relevance of monarchy in Nepal’s politics, much like what the Maoists have been doing for the last eight years.

In the past one week, at least a hundred people have died, most of them Maoist guerrillas trying to overrun heavily fortified police posts in nighttime raids. A nine-day truce called to mark Dashain, the most important festival in the Hindu calendar, ended on Oct 9.

In January, the government appointed by King Gyanendra pulled off what looked like a lasting ceasefire but the Maoists withdrew from the peace process in August, convinced that the royalist government, backed by an army fiercely loyal to the Royal Palace, would never discuss their core demand: relevance of 250-year old monarchy in modern-day Nepal.

The rebels have scaled down their early demand for a “people’s republic”, but have shown little sign of giving up their call for constituent assembly to draft a new constitution.

Most political parties assert that multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy, the bedrock of the current constitution, are non-negotiable, though the relationship between the parties and the king is getting increasingly strained.

The king continues to rebuff the parties’ call for an all-party government, with all executive powers restored to them. The underlying argument behind this position is that only a strong government led by the king will be able to crush the Maoist rebellion.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa told a joint meeting of the heads of security agencies that the government was in no mood to be concessional towards the Maoists, who he said had taken the state for a ride during the seven-month ceasefire.

This marks a major shift in the government policy. “There will no more be a dual policy towards Maoists,” Thapa says, in reference to his carrot-and-stick approach towards Maoists. “The government is politically clear about how it should treat the Maoists.” But that is easier said than done. Maoists already control a sizeable portion of the national territory, especially the remote hills in western Nepal.

Though the security forces and government administrators remain steadfastly anchored in most of Nepal’s 75 district headquarters, their reach is next to non-existent beyond the urban centres in many of these districts, where the Maoists openly raise tax and run their own “people’s government”.

In recent weeks, government officials have gone on a major public relations offensive, insisting that the operation against the Maoists is finally tipping decisively in their favour.

The security forces have foiled two major Maoist offensives in the past week in midwestern Nepal, the rebel stronghold.

The rebels have not only suffered heavy casualties, and for the first time there are indications that the government intelligence has penetrated the Maoist ranks.

A police post in western Nepal in Kusum, which was attacked by the Maoists on Friday, was bracing up for a major offensive for almost a week and actually had access to the blueprint of the rebel plan of action, according to the government.

At least 53 Maoists were killed in the nighttime raid, where the security forces and the rebels exchanged fire for 10 hours. The police casualties were much lighter — only three dead.

“It is time the Maoists realized that the gap between the state’s military power and its own is widening by the day,” the ‘Kathmandu Post’ wrote in its editorial this week.

“While the Maoists rely on occasional loots, forced conscription, and child soldiers to beef up their army, the Royal Nepal Army can bank on an increasingly battle-hardened army, which has received solid cash infusion in the last few years, not least the supplies of advanced military hardware from the United States and India,” the paper said.

Still, civil society and media have warned the government not to get too carried away by these military successes. They have pointed out how in the past a heady security force suffered huge reverses.

There are also fears that the Maoists will go for all-out urban guerrilla warfare and target high-cost infrastructure, if pushed to the wall.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.