How the Maoist threat extends beyond Nepal
>By Jo Johnson
>Published: April 25 2006 19:54 | Last updated: April 25 2006 19:54
>>
A spectre is haunting South Asia - the spectre of Maoism.
An ideology of peasant-led revolution that swept the villages of rural China in the 1920s has made an unexpected reappearance on the Indian subcontinent. At just the moment that India is emerging as an economic powerhouse on the world stage, landless revolutionaries committed to the class struggle and the destruction of the state are gaining control of vast swathes of territory at home.
Prompted by the political crisis in Nepal, where the world's only Hindu king is battling to save his throne from a Maoist-led campaign, India is belatedly waking up to the gravity of the threat from leftwing extremists.
Motivated by resentment at generations of social injustice made all the more intolerable by the inequitable distribution of the country's new wealth, the Maoists are identified by Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, as the single greatest threat to Indian national security.
"We need to give the problem a very high priority," Mr Singh told chief ministers of India's states at a meeting to discuss the Maoist crisis in New Delhi. The movement may have lost much of its intellectual attraction, Mr Singh conceded, but it was gaining in strength as deprived and alienated sections of the population found a sense of empowerment in taking up arms. "The phenomenon is directly related to underdevelopment," he said.
Beijing, too, is concerned that Maoist peasant-led revolution should not be re-imported through China's vulnerable Tibetan underbelly. The government had seen Nepal's King Gyanendra as a valuable bulwark against "instability".
>
Yet it is in India's backyard of Nepal that the Maoists are closest to their goal. Just before midnight on Monday, the king capitulated to the fast-growing pro-democracy movement forged by last November's loose alliance between the Maoist insurgents who control two-thirds of rural Nepal and the seven political parties that have been seeking to wrest back executive powers grabbed by the palace in a coup in February 2005.
By promising to restore the parliament he dissolved in 2002, King Gyanendra hopes to head off calls for the abolition of a feudal monarchy that has ruled over Nepal since 1743. The king's second capitulation in the space of four days marked a spectacular victory for people power in a Himalayan nation that until recently revered the Shah kings, supposedly descendants of the Hindu deity Vishnu, as living gods.
It will soon become clear whether Nepal's political parties, which have a well-earned reputation for corruption, incompetence and inability to agree among themselves, can keep control of the popular insurrection that the Maoist cadres helped them foment. The king, who is set to hand back power to the elected representatives of the Nepali people, believes that the Maoists will seek to channel the popular movement for democracy into a push for a revolutionary socialist state.
The first test of Maoist sincerity will be whether they declare a ceasefire, decommission weapons and rejoin mainstream politics, putting an end to the bloody insurgency that has claimed the lives of more than 13,000 people. The movement is refusing to do so until Nepalis have been given the chance to design a radical new political architecture for the country - potentially, although not inevitably, turning Nepal into a republic - in a newly elected constituent assembly.
King Gyanendra has so far pointedly neglected to concede this key demand in his latest attempt to drive a wedge between the Maoists and the parties. The latter are still euphoric at the humbling of an unpopular king, whose government used "grossly excessive force" against his own people, according to the United Nations.
What is clear is that Nepal's political parties must now come to terms with the reality of the pact they made with the Maoists back in November, when the prospect of power was distant. Only the full implementation of the joint 12-point agreement, a maximalist manifesto for constitutional change and radical land reform, is likely to be sufficient to entice the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) back into mainstream politics.
The root causes of Maoism in Nepal are not hard to find. Discriminatory practices rooted in the ethno-caste system have prevented balanced economic development, notably in the west of the country. According to the World Bank, one-third of the population subsist below the poverty line, while more than two-thirds survive on less than $2 a day. Traditional indicators of a humanitarian crisis have been at emergency levels for generations, according to the UN, while the conflict has only made things worse.
"Economic growth is slowing down to 2 per cent, inflation is approaching double digits and public services are not effectively functioning," says Sarah Ireland, Oxfam's programme manager for South Asia. "Overcoming poverty in Nepal is dependent on peace, and peace is dependent on an inclusive process through which Nepalis determine their own future and where everyone' s social, economic and human rights are respected."
The rebels launched their uprising against a "feudal" monarchy in the name of oppressed castes, women, indigenous tribes and other disadvantaged groups in 1996. They now roam freely over much of the countryside, running parallel justice systems that leave the royal writ to run only in Kathmandu and some large towns. The November pact marked the point at which the Maoists prepared to trade territory won through violence for a hand, possibly a controlling one, in designing a new Nepal.
The Maoists had recognised that classical insurgency theory of "surrounding the cities with liberated villages" was unlikely to defeat the Royal Nepalese Army. Moreover, their methods - they extorted money in "revolutionary taxes" and had a policy of forcefully recruiting one family member per household - were triggering a backlash in some areas. Bogged down in a military stalemate with the RNA, the Maoists decided to forge a tactical alliance with the "bourgeois" political parties.
What happens next in this mountainous Hindu kingdom once known as Shangri-La has a geostrategic importance that extends far beyond the Kathmandu valley.
India and China, the two giants that lie on its southern and northern borders, both have significant interests in Nepal, which has served as a vital buffer state between the two rivals since 1950, when Beijing annexed Tibet. A security treaty dating to that year ties Nepal to India's security system.
King Gyanendra tried to play one off against the other, a favourite cold war tactic of his father's, but with limited success. While few expect a repeat of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, the unresolved boundary dispute still makes India nervous. "Nepal is in danger of becoming a failed state," argues Brahma Chellaney of the Centre of Policy Research. "If India were to lose this inner buffer, its security would be gravely imperilled."
A more immediate fear is the impact of a possible Maoist takeover on radical movements in China and India. Pro-democracy rallies in Mustang and Manang, districts bordering Tibet, have stirred fears that Nepal could stir democrats in Lhasa.
While the far more powerful Maoist insurgency in neighbouring Nepal has received greater attention internationally, the conflict in India, waged by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and various offshoots, is gaining a worrying momentum. By Mr Singh's estimates, Maoist groups are running parallel administrations, including legal systems, in as many as one in four of India's 600-odd districts. Thirteen out of India's 28 states have been affected, extending from the border with Nepal to the south.
In the last year, India's numerous battles with Maoist militias have started to resemble a civil war. Home ministry figures show the year-on-year death toll rising 38 per cent to 157 in the first three months of 2006. In the latest attack, suspected Maoists on Sunday killed 10 policemen and stole weapons and ammunition in a raid on a police station in eastern India.
Maoism is also imposing high costs on the country's ability to attract investment in mineral-rich states such as Orissa and Jharkand, left behind by the economic boom.
Addressing investors in Shanghai recently, Lord Desai, a professor at the London School of Economics, said that while there was "no immediate danger to the Indian state", the country's path to rapid economic growth would be "bumpy" if it failed to tackle the militant anti-state movement.
India is in many ways as fertile a ground for the Maoists as Nepal: 26 per cent of India's population live below the poverty line, the vast majority in rural areas that have yet to experience the trickling down of wealth from the country's services-driven boom.
Government officials estimate there may be as many as 20,000 Maoist fighters in India but add that there is also no way of knowing for certain without better penetration of forest-dwelling tribal communities by intelligence agencies. Maoist numbers are small set against the country's backlog of 38m unemployed. India is struggling to find jobs for a working-age population set to expand by 71m to reach 762m within the next five years.
India's demographics - half the population is under 25 - are a double-edged sword, as Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata, India's leading business group, pointed out in a stark warning in the US last week.
"In addition to creating value for shareholders, industry has a
responsibility to the 60 per cent of [India's] population that is not
industrialised and is living in rural areas," Mr Tata said while delivering
a lecture at Cornell University. "These young Indians want a place in the
sun, education, a job, the kind of life they know exists from television.
Will there be jobs for them?" he asked. If not, the country may see "the
makings of a revolution", he said.
>
The deteriorating situation in Nepal is undoubtedly serving as a belated wake-up call to New Delhi and to Indian state governments that have been repeatedly wrong-footed by the daring tactics and sophisticated weaponry of Maoist groups. Also known as Naxalites after the town of Naxalbari, north of Calcutta, where the movement began in 1967, they mount spectacular operations. These have included hijacking a train in Jharkand and storming a jail in Bihar.
India's response, as outlined by the prime minister this month, will be to combine zero tolerance of terrorism with social upliftment programmes, such as the costly National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which offers one member of each household a number of days of paid work a year. Expressing his determination to "wipe out" the Maoist threat to India's "civilised and democratic way of life", Mr Singh intends to be equally tough on the causes of Maoism, which will be much harder.
Companies that fail to compensate communities displaced by their industrial activities are a main cause of militancy - particularly in the tribal areas that are hunting-grounds for extremism - but far from the only one. Exploitation, artificially depressed wages, inadequate employment opportunities, lack of access to resources, underdeveloped agriculture, geographical isolation and lack of land reforms all contribute significantly to the growth of the Maoist movement, in Mr Singh's opinion.
The prime minister has also made it clear to the business community that it must do more to create opportunities for social groups most likely to be recruited by Maoists. The government is considering whether it should require private sector companies to reserve jobs for disadvantaged groups, a move industry lobbyists are trying to head off with pledges of voluntary "affirmative action".
Whoever wins that particular battle, Mr Singh will need all the help he can get in exorcising the spectre of Maoism. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20060426/742ae237/attachment.gif> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 13124 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20060426/742ae237/attachment-0001.gif>
