KATHMANDU: The blockade declared by Nepal's Maoist rebels of the ancient capital, Kathmandu, echoes the tactics of Peru's shadowy Shining Path militants - the ruthless movement upon which they model themselves.

Like the Shining Path rebels, who waged an over decade-long battle to forge a peasant revolution in the South American nation, Nepal's Maoists seek to rule the countryside and now are boldly attacking big towns and even the capital.

The group launched their struggle in 1996 to overthrow the monarchy and feudal caste-ridden system, and to turn the Himalayan country of 26 million, one of the world's 10 poorest, into a communist "People's Republic."

Their leader, Prachanda or the Fierce One, has promised an agrarian takeover in Nepal, nestled among the world's most breathtaking mountains, and has said the red flag will one day fly over Kathmandu.

Analysts see the uprising as the biggest threat to the world's only Hindu kingdom, sandwiched between China and India, since it became a democracy 14 years ago. New Delhi also fears the revolt could spill over into India where security forces are battling ultra-leftists in the states of Bihar, Jharkand and Andhra Pradesh, creating a "red corridor" from Nepal.

Nepal's rebels get their inspiration from Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong's struggle against landowners that began in the countryside. But they draw their strategy from the Maoist Shining Path, largely dormant since the arrest in 1992 of their leader Abimael Guzman.

Guzman said the "taking of the cities" in Peru would mark the last chapter of the Shining Path's insurrection. Nepalese officials say the uprising has claimed at least 10,000 lives, but the toll could be much higher as the Maoists carry off their dead and wounded.

The movement took root in Nepal's remote feudal western valleys and spread as the Maoists, crying, "War, war and war! From the beginning till the end!" began raiding police posts, snatching weapons to build an arsenal.

Now the Maoists say they control 70 per cent of the country. The Maoists run parallel governments in many areas and have set up people's courts to deliver justice. Officials say they have a network of sympathizers in Kathmandu and elsewhere who stage attacks. -AFP