Nepal’s endless predicament

AS one writes this piece, the three-month old unilateral ceasefire announced by the ‘Maoist’ guerrillas of Nepal on September 3, 2005, expires. It may not, however, lead to an immediate resumption of the conflict that has already claimed 12,500 lives, displaced hundreds of thousands of Nepalese and caused major social and economic dislocations. But, ironically enough, this hope springs from a development which the monarch, King Gyanendra, may consider as yet another danger to his own plans for the country.

On November 19, the Maoists, the militant cadres of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party, a breakaway faction of Nepal’s old communist party, who began their armed insurrection on February 13, 1996, reached an agreement with the mainstream political parties to create a joint front to counter the dissolution of parliament and assumption of all executive powers by the king on February 1 this year. According to the International Crisis Group, the dialogue between the Maoists and seven political parties, including the Nepal Congress and the Nepal Communist Party (United Marxist-Leninist), has India’s ‘tacit backing’ and the deal was finalized at meetings in New Delhi.

It is a somewhat ambiguous compromise between two otherwise contending tendencies in Nepalese politics, namely a quest for multiparty democracy under a constitutional monarchy and a revolutionary drive for republicanism.

King Gyanendra ascended the throne after the tragic assassination of King Birendra and much of the royal family on June 1, 2001. The major political factions have increasingly felt that the new king did not favour constitutionalism and that the Maoist insurgency was providing him the justification for an absolute monarchy. In the short time since his accession, four prime ministers — veterans like G.P. Koirala, Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Sher Bahadur Deuba — have lost their jobs. A frequent change of prime ministers because of no-confidence motions or loss of parliamentary support is not a new phenomenon in Nepal. Between 1990 and 1999, there were three general elections. But the dominant fear in recent years has been the end of all politics even though the king had announced plans for local elections, followed by general elections in 2007.

The second tendency has been the relentless guerilla war, called the People’s War by the Maoist fighters, waged for a total revolutionary restructuring of the state and society through their ‘New Democracy’, the first in a two-stage transition to full socialism. Its principal aim has been the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of a radical republic. The agreement between the rebels and the disaffected politicians signifies some dilution of the Maoist demands but is vague about the core issue. Politicians want restoration of the last parliament while the Maoists seek a broad interim government and, probably, a constituent assembly which may still declare a republic or drastically curtail the monarch’s powers.

It is doubtful if the political parties have accepted republicanism; there is also no clear understanding on the rebels agreeing to early disarmament. During the past ceasefires and negotiations, the Maoists always told their fighters that these were only tactical moves in a struggle warranting flexibility of manoeuvre. The palace and the monarchists are obviously discomfited by this new alliance.

On the face of it, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist offshoot of Nepal’s communism seems to be an anachronism. The epithet ‘Maoist’ is itself problematic as the rebels denounce Chinese communism as revisionist. Its leader, the General Secretary Pushpa Kamal Dahal, otherwise known as Comrade Prachanda, believes in a second wave of world revolution, of which his party is a key harbinger. There is, he asserts, a dialectical relationship between the People’s War in Nepal and ‘the whole international movement and situation’.

India has been a major focus of attention. Prachanda says that in the preparatory phase, there was ‘a direct and continuous debate with the Indian communists, mainly the People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) groups’. He talks of ‘investigation of Bihar’ and a close study of the struggle in Andhra Pradesh. The leaders analyzed Maoist-Marxist movements in a number of countries and found a wealth of ideas and tactics, particularly in Peru’s Shining Path movement. Prachanda has also argued in a famous interview that “ultimately, we (the Nepalese Maoists) will have to fight the Indian army”.

The reference to India generates bizarre conspiracy theories. During visits to Nepal, one has known India being described as the eventual guarantor against a Maoist takeover as well as the instigator of an insurrection that would legitimize Indian military intervention and India’s inexorable push to the sensitive Nepalese border with China. There is always a great distrust of the projects of India’s overgrown intelligence services, but, given the vulnerability of Bihar and the tribal belt along the border with Nepal, it does not make sense that India would play with fire by encouraging the revolutionary goals of the Maoists.

Many analysts trace the beginnings of Maoist insurgency to the failure of conventional politics, especially the inability of the mainstream communist party, to implement a radical reformist agenda. The communist party of Nepal was founded in 1949 and despite subsequent splintering into factions, it has had a considerable vote bank. Nepal’s first experiment in multiparty democracy under a constitutional monarch collapsed in December 1960 when King Mahendra dissolved the parliament and introduced the Panchayat system. It took another three decades for a multiparty parliament to be revived after a mass movement which had partly been spurred by the hardship caused by India’s punitive trade embargo enforced in March, 1989.

There was considerable violence in Kathmandu on April 6, 1989. The king gave Nepal a new constitution on November 9, 1990, and fresh elections were held on May 12, 1991. The political scene was marred by interparty confrontations as well as infighting in the main parties, including the Nepal Congress. There were no less than 14 governments in the next 10 years or so. A notable event that led to radicalization within the communist movement was the fall of a communist prime minister, Manmohan Adhikari, who led a minority government for seven months beginning November 1994.

This short stint in power by the Communist Party of Nepal was the catalyst for the launching of the armed struggle by the thoroughly disillusioned breakaway Maoists. Led by upper caste communists, the movement looked to the peasantry for its foot soldiers. Party ideologues saw the peasants as historically oppressed by the caste system, religion, economic inequalities of a feudal social structure and discrimination in education.

The strategy was to create a string of revolutionary bases away from the capital and then encircle it. As the rebels established their grip on the countryside, beginning in western Nepal, they established a parallel administration in the so-called liberated zones with state authority shrinking to district headquarters.

The Maoists have a mixed track record; their pro-poor measures have alternated people with ruthless suppression of dissent. Allegations of extortion and forced conscription of young men, even children, are widespread. In recent years, the insurgency has expanded from the traditional rebel attacks on police posts and government offices to battles between them and the Royal Nepal army. A 19-page report made available to the UN General Assembly by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in October 2005 blamed the rebels, the state authorities and the vigilante groups for grave human rights violations.

With India and the UK enforcing an arms embargo, the army is reportedly turning to China for assistance, even though Beijing scrupulously steers clear of any interference in Nepal’s internal affairs.

Endemic poverty has provided the Maoists with a large catchment area for recruits. Nepal’s current population is estimated to be between 25 to 27 million. Reckoned on the basis of one dollar a day earning, 50 per cent of the population is below the poverty line. The figure rises to nearly 87 per cent for two dollars per person a day. At least 44 per cent of male adults are illiterate; the figure for women is 79 per cent. Forty-seven per cent of children below the age of five suffer from malnutrition, GNP per capita is a mere $210.Nepal’s defence expenditure rose from Nepalese Rs 937 million in 1988 to NRs.2.40 billion within 10 years.

Poverty in Nepal has also a sad geopolitical dimension. A more enlightened Indian approach would have ameliorated it to a substantial extent. Nepal has great hydro-electric potential that needs large-scale international funding. India, which has an energy crisis looming large on the horizon, would be the principal beneficiary of electricity exported by Nepal. Indian analysts speak of Nepal as a natural zone of Indian influence but have for decades interpreted influence in 19th century terms. Much time was lost as India haggled over dam sites and an agreed price for Nepal’s electricity.

Obsessed with the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962, India was until recently totally intolerant of any significant Sino-Nepalese economic cooperation. It was often unfriendly to landlocked Nepal’s efforts to reduce dependence on Kolkata by increasing trade through Chittagong. Power generation, tourism, investment in special export processing zones and rehabilitation of agriculture hit by land fragmentation and soil erosion can accelerate Nepal’s economic recovery.

The royal palace faces a dilemma now. Would it try to defeat the November agreement by intensifying military operations against the Maoists and by curbing political activities? Alternatively, would it defuse the crisis by accepting an early return to constitutional monarchy? It is a pity that Saarc cannot play a significant mediatory role in resolving such problems in the member states. Unilateral Indian efforts often get vitiated by fear of New Delhi’s hegemonistic designs. Successive kings of Nepal have symbolized the national commitment to sovereign equality while India has often been accused of trying to impose the Bhutan model on this proud Himalayan kingdom. Ironically, the Maoist opponents of the palace share this suspicion.

Years of turmoil in Nepal and Sri Lanka, lands of legendary beauty and equally attractive people, add up to a cautionary tale for South Asia where problems have an uncanny similarity. They illustrate how perfectly manageable issues get metamorphosed into crisis by inflexible attitudes and how these crises get aggravated by the tunnel vision of ambitious neighbours. There is much traditional wisdom in the shadow of Himalayas but also an inexplicable deficit in the political will to let that wisdom dictate policy.

If democracy is the only glue that would hold essentially pluralistic societies of the region together, a veritable revolution in addressing interstate differences alone can create an environment conducive to collective peace and prosperity. Both become practical and pragmatic choices the moment one realizes that a failed state in South Asia does not amount only to the implosion of a single state but a seismic shock for all of them.

The writer is a former foreign secretary

Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

US slowly confronts the truth

WATCHING the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary.

In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the American presidency and Israel’s continued settlement-building in the West Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bonner managed to chide me for attacking American journalists who — he furiously quoted my own words — “report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East — so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into ‘targeted attacks’ and illegal settlements into ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.”

It was remarkable that Bonner should be so out of touch with his readers that he did not know that “craven” is the very word so many Americans apply to their grovelling newspapers (and quite probably one reason why newspaper circulations are falling so disastrously).

But the moment that a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest that the war in Iraq was lost, that US troops should be brought home now — and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned — the old media dog sniffed the air, realized that power was moving away from the White House, and began to drool.

On live television in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of America’s folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown exuded warmth towards this pesky Brit (though he claimed on air that I was an American) who tore into his country’s policies in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry for the guy in the White House.

All this wasn’t caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of Al-Qaeda attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the east coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to American journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that US commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

When those same Iraqi gunmen this week again took control of the entire city of Ramadi (already “liberated” four times by US troops since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush’s latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces — who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in America’s back — will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces.

Even in Hollywood — and here production schedules prove that the rot must have set in more than a year ago — hitherto taboo subjects are being dredged to the surface of the political mire. ‘Jarhead’, produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatized Marine unit during the 1991 Gulf War.

George Clooney’s production of ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’, a devastating black-and-white account of Second World War correspondent Ed Murrow’s heroic battle with Senator McCarthy in the 1950s — its theme is the management and crushing of all dissent — has already paid for its production costs twice over. Murrow is played by an actor but McCarthy appears only in real archive footage. Incredibly, a test audience in New York complained that the man “playing” McCarthy was “overacting”. Will we say this about Messrs Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld in years to come? I suspect so.

And then there’s ‘Syriana’, Clooney’s epic of the oil trade which combines suicide bombers, maverick CIA agents (one of them played by Clooney himself), feuding Middle East Arab potentates — one of whom wants real democracy and wealth for his people and control of his own country’s resources — along with a slew of disreputable businessmen and east coast lawyers. The CIA eventually assassinates the Arab prince who wants to take control of his own country’s oil — this is accomplished with a pilotless aerial bomb guided by men in a room in Virginia — while a Pakistani fired from his job in the oil fields because an American conglomerate has downsized for its shareholders’ profits destroys one of the company’s tankers in a suicide attack.

“People seem less afraid now,” Clooney told an interviewer. “Lots of people are starting to ask questions. It’s becoming hard to avoid the questions.” Of course, these questions are being asked because of America’s more than 2,000 fatalities in Iraq rather than out of compassion for Iraq’s tens of thousands of fatalities. They are being pondered because the whole illegal invasion of Iraq is ending in calamity rather than success.

Yet still they avoid the “Israel” question. The Arab princes in ‘Syriana’ do not murmur a word about Israel. The Arab Al-Qaeda operative who persuades the young Pakistani to attack an oil tanker makes no reference to Israel — as every one of Bin Laden’s acolytes assuredly would..

So one key issue of the Middle East remains to be confronted. Amy Goodman, whom I used to enrage by claiming that her leftist Democracy Now programme had only three listeners, is bravely raising this unmentionable subject. Partly as a result, her “alternative” radio and television station is slowly moving into the mainstream.

Americans are ready to discuss the United States’ relationship with Israel. And America’s injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people.—The Independent

Taking liberties with English

EVERY once in a while a political columnist suffers from what is known in the fourth estate as writer’s cramp’. This is more a mental than a physiological condition and describes his sudden inability to come up with a worthwhile subject on which to offer comment or analysis.

In other words, it represents his temporary inability to fork up a political article which, had it been written, would have immensely pleased a large number of people who indulge on a regular basis in massive suspensions of disbelief and cloyingly cling to the view that the current government is up to no good. At the same time it would have disenchanted an equally large number of people in the ruling party who have been swallowing hook, line and sinker the packaged artifice of industrialized pulp fiction emanating from Islamabad.

On these occasions the writer has a temporary relapse and falls back on one or another hackneyed theme that nobody cares two hoots about and produces an article that nobody is going to read. Themes like malaria and polio eradication, the water shortage, pollution, the environment, problems at the fish harbour, cruelty to animals, women and children, and — education.

In spite of the fact that books and working papers have been written by a variety of erudite men and women who claim to know the real reason why Pakistan has such an appallingly low literacy rate, tutoring and learning has, ever since the Union Jack was lowered in Karachi in 1947, always been treated as the least important department of government.

A little research will show that the carousel of Pakistani prime ministers, when doling out portfolios, have often offered the ministry of education to one of the irredeemably marginal types in the cabinet, who had been selected solely because his support was desperately required to form a government.

The fact that the politician knew nothing whatsoever about the problems involved in improving the human mind, and whose children, like the offspring of a number of civil servants who were in a unique position to manipulate foreign scholarships, were probably studying at a university abroad, didn’t seem to worry anybody, least of all the prime minister.

Policymaking was, therefore, largely left to a clutch of officials who watched helplessly as foreign aid meant specifically for raising standards in the rural areas was cleverly siphoned off and school buildings under the control of retrogressive landlords were turned into buffalo pens. While all this was going on, the language issue became heavily politicized, and astute entrepreneurs who tried to leapfrog into the next century started to teach students how to use the English computer keyboard — in Urdu.

Last week, interest in this subject was dramatically revived and suddenly assumed fresh importance, when the president announced that the army would chip in to revamp education. He added that the government had decided to increase the allocation for this vital sector from 2.7 per cent to four per cent of the GDP and that there would be a colossal increase of funds for the higher education commission. The news is certainly welcome — as long as the financial assistance is spread exclusively in the rural hinterland and strict checks are carried out on how the money is spent.

Students in rural areas already suffer a considerable disadvantage when they compete for jobs against the products of pricy, selective, exclusive urban educational institutions that carry a whiff of elitism and snobbery. As it is, a number of students who attend schools in urban areas where English is the medium of instruction, have come to regard English as their mother tongue as it is spoken far more frequently at home than any of the vernacular languages.

But before the men in uniform start rushing around dropping bricks and cement all over the countryside, they should first decide, once and for all, that somebody should come up with a national integrated education policy. They should also take the trouble of reading, out of the morass of learned articles and notes that have gathered dust in various ministries, the observations made by Zubeida Mustafa, in the Nov 16 issue of Dawn on this very subject.

The writer asked: “Why is the question of the medium of instruction still such a hotly debated issue in Pakistan? We want to teach our primary school students in Urdu because it is the national language, or in English, because it is the international language, and not in Punjabi, Balochi, Pushto and Sindhi. That would explain why our education system is so stagnant and why the standards are falling so drastically.” Ms Mustafa’s comments certainly give one food for thought.

The argument goes something like this. Once the child’s cognitive development has been completed and he has acquired certain sophistication in his native provincial lingo, he could then be exposed to both the national and the international language. And so, like the Swiss, Dutch and pre-1939 Czech child, he would become trilingual by the time he was 10 years of age. Picking up Urdu won’t pose any problem. It would, however, be considerably harder for him to acquire a working knowledge of English. The president’s comment that in a school in Balochistan he actually saw students constructing sentences in English from right to left is sad. But then, as happens in so many cases, somebody apparently forgot to teach the teacher.

But no matter how much effort and expense is expended in the hinterland in imparting instruction in the universal language, there will always be problems of mother tongue interference, syntax, differentiation of gender, imagery, pronunciation, spelling, when to use the definite and the indefinite article, the difference between singular and plural, the temptation to translate literally from Urdu, and the biggest danger of them all — the possibility of being taught incorrectly because the teacher has been taught incorrectly and just doesn’t know better.

The late civil servant G.Ahmad was fond of narrating the story of the English teacher in a small junior school in Ferozepur in the 1940s. He would repeatedly pronounce the word ‘girl’ as ‘girril’. When a prim and proper school inspector corrected him, the teacher said in Punjabi, “Sirji, for seventy rupees a month, I’m afraid ‘girl’ will be pronounced as ‘girril’. He was making a point. Teachers are notoriously badly paid. But even if the government displayed considerable generosity, where on earth are they going to get English language teachers in places like Zhob, Mirpur Mathelo and Kohat?

Nevertheless, educationists in Islamabad should take heart. Browsing on the Internet this writer came across examples compiled by Erdoboy on the use some foreigners have made of the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer, expressed in signboards. Even if they are apocryphal they could easily have been crafted. Here is a brief selection.

A Japanese hotel: ‘It is forbidden to steal towels please. If you are not person to do such thing please not read notes. You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid’. A Moscow hotel: ‘You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday.’ A Rome doctor’s office: ‘Specialists in women and other diseases.’

A Swiss restaurant menu: ‘Our wines leave nothing to hope for.’ A Bangkok dry cleaner’s: ‘Drop your trousers here for best results.’ A Rhodes tailor shop: ‘Order your summer suits. Because of very big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.’ Inside Germany’s Black Forest: ‘It is strictly forbidden on our camping site that people of different sex, for instance men and women, live together in the tent unless they are married to each other for that purpose.’

A Hong Kong dentist: ‘Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists.’ A Czech tourist agency: ‘Take one of our horse-driven city tours, we guarantee no miscarriages.’ A Swedish furrier: ‘Fur coats made for ladies from their skins.’ A detour sign in Kyushu, Japan: ‘Stop. Drive sideways.’ A Copenhagen airline office: ‘We take your bags and send them in all directions.’

A Budapest zoo: ‘Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.’ A Japanese booklet: ‘If you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself.’ And finally a hotel in Acapulco: ‘The manager has personally passed all water served here.’