Introduction:
During the final years of the Cold War, the democratisation breezed throughout the globe. The Iron Curtain was raised, the Berlin wall came down, Namibia gained independence from South Africa, and the Tiananmen Square demonstration became a new hope for democratic movements. Nepal, on the contrary, witnessed the rise of left-wing radical parties in the wake of democratic processes during and after the 1990s. Within a decade, the Maoists primarily caused behind the replacement of 240-year old Hindu autocratic monarchy with secular republic system (ICG 2005).
On 13 February 1996, the political front of CPN (Maoist) United People’s Front declared the Maoist conflict or the People’s War with three primary objectives; ousting the monarchy, establishing the republic system and having the people’s constitution through the constituent assembly. Before declaring the war, the Maoist had submitted a 40-point memorandum to the government. A decade-long armed conflict in Nepal caused over 13,000 deaths, besides other destructions and casualties, and a complex social, economic and political transformation would require to normalise and rebuild the wounds and damages.
The government officially implemented over 6 counter-insurgent operations; declared the Maoists as terrorist group; was successful in getting the Red Corner Notice against the Maoist leaderships; got the US put them in Terrorist Exclusion List; and acquired the neighbours’ strategic support to ‘manage’ the insurgents including the Chinese administration condemning the act of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) activities. The government was also able to secure overwhelming international support to deal with the insurgency. Why could Nepal, not succeed in multiple counterinsurgency efforts despites all those resources, good will, internal/external support and legitimacy?
Arguments:
The article attempts to review the Maoist’s Insurgency in Nepal, famously known as the People’s War, from an empirical perspective. The article is divided into three parts; introduction, arguments and the conclusion. The arguments section consists of four sections. The first section, The People’s War, will appraise the key developments that led to the insurgency. In the following section, Causes of War, I’ll focus on different scholars’, and experts’ view on what caused the bloody conflict. The third section, Insurgents’ Strategies, highlights the key tactics, interventions and effects of armed conflict that helped the Maoists achieve their goal. The fourth and the last section, Counterinsurgency Measures, will scrutinise the government’s law, polices, strategies and actions to deal with the insurgency. Finally, I’ll conclude by synthesising the elements that crucially affected the quality of counterinsurgency measures and led the unforeseen victory of the People’s War.
1. The People’s War
In Nepal, in January 1990, seven outlawed communist party factions, including its largest, the CPN (Marxist-Leninist), formed the United Left Front (ULF) with an objective of launching a movement against the Panchayat system. Nonetheless, neither CPN (Mashal) nor the CPN (Maoist) joined the ULF and they, as an alternative, established United National People’s Movement (UNPM) containing more radical leftist groups. The Nepali Congress, together with the ULF, initiated a popular uprising against the king demanding the multi-party democracy, in February 1990. In April 1990, the king agreed to restore the multiparty democracy under the constitutional monarchy. Despite the two groups, Nepali Congress and ULF, welcoming the reinstatement of the multi-party democracy, the UNPM disregarded the move. They, instead, demanded the election of the constituent assembly. The king, NC and ULF dismissed the claim.
The CPN (Fourth Convention), CPN (Mashal) and a faction of CPN (Mashal) formed an alliance named CPN (Unity Center). While the CPN (Unity Centre) remained pledged to its armed revolutionary agenda, the UPFN, the political wing of CPN (U), participated in the general election and secured the third position in the House of Representatives. Between Chinese model or Russian insurrection, the leaders of the UNPM and CPN (U) remained divided. This led to the emergence of CPN (Maoist) party which adopted the Chinese-style protracted war (Ogura 2008). Mao in his renowned publication, On the Protracted War (1938), have three major strategies for the people’s movement, encircling urban areas from the countryside, guerrilla warfare and operationalizing the war in three strategic stages; defence, stalemate and counter-offence (Ogura 2008; Katzenbach & Hanrahan 1995; Tse-Tung 1960). This strategy became the guiding principles of the People’s Movement in Nepal.
The Maoist conflict in Nepal spread over two third of the geography in the country. The battle began from the 18 lowest ranking districts in the human development index (HDI) including the Rolpa, Rukum, Salyan, Dailekh, Jajarkot and Dailekh of the western part of the country. Over 13,000 people were killed (OHCHR 2012), and 1,335 were involuntarily disappeared (ICRC 2010) during the insurgency. The OHCHR accused many of such killings as ‘unlawful killings’, and claimed that both parties of the conflict violated the international human rights and humanitarian laws. Human Rights Watch alleged that two-third of the killed ones during the armed conflict ‘were the victims of targeted or indiscriminate attacks and summary executions by the Royal Nepali Army’ (Zarifi 2006).
2. Causes of War
Was this an opportunity to the left-wing political groups to gain the power when they could not get their leadership established through the electoral process? Or were the grievances noticeably enough, as Collier & Hoeffler (2004) claim, that people wanted to go into violent war? A common perception is that poorer countries face more risk of falling into conflict trap. Collier and Hoeffler (1998) suggest a concept of ‘opportunity cost’ in the conflict claiming that conflict is inevitable where the economic gain is higher than the opportunity cost. On the contrary, Fearon and Laitin (2003) oppose this idea of opportunity cost and claim that the link between poverty and conflict seem more evident in countries with weak and fragile institutions who cannot efficiently manage the issues such as poverty and exclusion of the minority groups. They allude that geographic location plays a more central role in the conflict.
There are not a confined number of explanations behind the armed conflict in Nepal. Some claims that armed conflict had rich support base among the lower caste groups (Bray et al., 2003) whereas some dismiss the notion of caste and ethnicity as the only factor for such intensive conflict (Gersony 2003). Many consider that poverty and underdevelopment of the Far and Mid-West development regions in Nepal as the primary driving features behind the armed uprising. The democratically-elected government mobilised the police under Operation Romeo, in 1994, to suppress the CPN (Maoist) activities in Rolpa and Rukum districts which turned out very belligerent due to the police brutality and added this as an additional reason for the insurgency.
Do and Iyer (2010) found that geographic conditions explained a quarter of the cross-districts variations of the conflict intensity. Caste and ethnic polarisation, land inequality and political participation could affect the violence through their relationship with poverty. They also found that conflict-related casualties were higher in the poorer districts where insurgents had more support base among the civilians; 10 percentage increase in poverty had 25-30 deaths. Hatlebakk (2009), on the contrary, found that income poverty and land inequality served as the main determinants.
Nepal Press Digest, in 1991, featured the representation of caste ethnicity in government jobs and found that hill Brahmins, Chhetris and Newars held 93% positions comparing to the 98% in 1854. The excluded groups got only 5% in 137 years. Strategically, the Maoist divided the country into ethnic provinces as autonomous territories. Loud voice, followed by action, in favour of the excluded groups became very popular, and Maoists enjoyed this popular support base throughout the conflict period.
Concisely, the advent of multi-party democracy in 1990 did insufficient to address the socio-economic disparities between the people and state; Kathmandu and rural areas; and dominant social groups and excluded caste and ethnic communities. Restoration of democracy failed in accommodating the fundamental aspirations of Nepalese population regarding basic needs, services and infrastructures whereas a handful number of groups emerged as elites and ruling class. The people in rural and remote areas were hard hit by the centralised and market-centric democracy, which eventually provided the breeding ground and hiding shelter to the Maoists. Although political in principle, the People’s War served as an umbrella where people’s socio-economic agenda; poverty and social discrimination or exploitation based on identity; retaliation against the feudal masters; protection from security forces; and other reasons became the stretchers.
3. The Insurgents’ Strategies
Although the sizable number of communists in Nepal are vastly inspired by Mao’s philosophies, the leaders of CPN (Maoists) did not restraint their revelation to the theories of Marxism or Leninism or even Maoism. They learned from the real world revolutions. They had regular interactions with the leaders of RIM, Revolutionary Internationalists Movement, founded in 1984 by 17 various Maoists organisations in the world. They visited Peru, China, India, Sri Lanka and Russia besides other countries and had strategic alliances that incapacitated them to apply various tactics during the insurgency.
The CPN (Maoist) defined their ideological principle which they labelled as Prachanda Path (PP), claimed to be an enriched and localised form of Marxism- Leninism-Maoism. The PP was presented as, “Synthesis of Nepalese experience… based on…international essence and national experience… serves the world proletarian revolution and …internationalism’ (AWTW 2001). Nayak (2007), however, claimed that the PP was an ‘unmistakable resonance of Shining Path’ from Peru. According to Nayak, the PP was a fusion of Chinese model of protracted war and Russian model of the urban uprising.
In March 1995, the CPN (Maoist) adopted the Strategy and Tactics of Armed Struggle in Nepal (CPN (Maoist) 1995). The plans divided the People’s War into three phases. The first one was defensive and primarily included exposing the government’s corruption, hit and run attacks on government offices and police posts, targeted killings, closing down government offices from rural areas, expansion of base areas, preparing for guerrilla warfare, creating an environment of statelessness, and establishing people’s government.
The second was the stage of stalemate where they primarily attacked the security units including the army. Their tactics were more political such as urban-centric uprising, halting the public movement by imposing general strikes, mass demonstration, and even two ceasefires, in 2001 and 2003. They used the ceasefires to rearrange the logistics, broaden the recruitment, deploy the combatants in the strategic locations and prepare for the next phase of the attack. They were strategically successful in terms of expanding the combatants into six combat units, each with 400-600 PLAs, assassinating senior security personnel, and causing the highest number of casualties since the inception of war as over 5,000 people were killed during this phase comparing to the 2,400 during the early years of the conflict (ICG 2005; Nayak 2007; OHCHR 2012).
Maoists were also successful in getting the Royal Nepal Army fully engaged in the war. The army did not have the experience in handling such ideological insurgencies in the past and so performed poorly. In 23 ‘operations’ between November 2001 and December 2002, the Maoists overwhelmingly defeated the army with three to four exceptions (Muni 2010).
The third stage of the war was counter-offensive that intensified the attacks on the army and other security camps, political leaders and paralysing the state functioning. This stage was centred around political and economic gains. The target was major urban centres including Kathmandu, the capital. After the royal massacre in June 2001, the political scenario in Nepal was drastically compromised with the aspirations of the new king and inability of the mainstream political parties which drew wider public criticism. It was, strategically, a promising environment to the Maoists. To further maneuver the external political climate, the Maoists amplified the engagement with the political actors in Kathmandu, and in New Delhi as well, to curtail the king’s growing aspirations.
While the covert dialogue between the political parties and the Maoists continued, the king seized the absolute executive power in his hands further irking the political parties. In return, a 12-point Agreement was signed between the alliance of political parties, known as Seven Party Alliance or SPA, and the CPN (Maoist) in November 2005, in New Delhi, India. Maoists were successful in onboarding the political parties in their agenda of constituent assembly and abolishment of the monarchy (SPA&M 2005). That pact paved the way for a joint agitation, between the SPA and Maoists, against the king, known as People’s Movement-II. In April 2006, the king reinstated the dissolved parliament and Maoists announced a unilateral cease-fire. In May 2006, the parliament unanimously abolished the monarchy and declared Nepal as a secular country. In April 2006, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed between the SPA-led government and the Maoists formally concluding a decade-long bloody conflict. In April 2008, the election for Constituent Assembly was held, and the CPN (Maoists) secured 220 out of 575 seats and became the largest party in the Assembly.
4. Counterinsurgency Measures
The government was successful in obtaining international ‘legitimacy’ and support to label the Maoists as a terrorist organisation and aligned, the efforts to counter People’s War, with the global fight against terrorism. The US had the (then) Secretary of State visited Nepal in 2002; and the (then) Nepalese Prime Minister Deuba met with President Bush in the same year were considered as growing interests of the US administration in supporting Nepalese government’s battle against the home-grown terrorists. The US provided light weaponry, training and other tactical supports to strengthen the capacity of Nepalese security forces in dealing with the Maoists (Vaughn 2006). Similarly, the United Kingdom supported Nepalese government through funds, equipment and training to the security forces. In September 2002, for example, the UK parliament approved $10 million military assistance package to Nepal (HRW 2004). India provided a considerable amount of military aid and at the same time, stepped up the security measures to halt the Nepalese Maoists movement in the Nepal-India open border (Gobyn 2009). Citing the People’s War in Nepal as an ‘internal’ matter, India, however, played an active role throughout the conflict period. Interestingly, the Chinese classified the Nepalese Maoists as ‘anti-government outfits’ (Cottle & Keys 2007) and denounced that there was any resemblance with Mao’s principles or China providing any kind of support to the CPN (M).
In response to the CPN (M) declaring the People’s War, the government launched Operation Romeo and Kilo Shera-2. Unfortunately, the counterinsurgency operations were poorly designed, fragmented in approaches and the implementation resulted into excessive atrocities by the police and local administration. The negative outputs, eventually, favoured the Maoists to have new recruits and expand the territorial bases. The government continued with various activities under the operations such as patrolling, house searching, intelligence, civil affair, detaining, eliminating and neutralising. The key focus, however, remained excessively on eliminating the enemy. In the beginning, the government deployed Nepal Police, the civil police force. King Gyanendra, recently enthroned after the royal massacre, allowed the deployment of Royal Nepal Army (RNA) to eliminate the rebellions (Muni 2010) after declaring the state of emergency.
Operation Romeo, Kilo Shera-2 and Jungle Search were the initial operations the government launched in early 1998 until 1999. In 2001, the government began another round of operations, Silent Kilo Shera-3, Delta and Chakrabyuha. These operations, again, ended up with more controversies due to unlawful searching, apprehension, detention and even murder and forced disappearance of the combatants, their family, supporters and the suspects. Upreti (2010) claimed that these and other two operations, the Integrated Development Program and Integrated Security and Development Program, after 2000 in some of the Maoist’s hardcore districts remained ineffective and became counterproductive to the government.
In August 2001, the government established another police wing, Armed Police Force, as a paramilitary warfare and counter-insurgency force, to deal with Maoist insurgents. The government enforced the Terrorist and Disruptive Ordinance in 2001 and the Act in 2002 (HMG 2002). The TADO/A, had multiple provisions that, seriously jeopardised the civil liberty, freedom of speech, movement and even allowed the security forces to label anyone as a terrorist if they suspect. The International Bar Association, after the field assessment, issued the concerns that the act had led to unlawful actions such as arrest without warrants, alleged physical abuse and lengthy detention before the applications were heard and all those actions were a violation of Nepal’s commitment to international human rights treaties (IBA 2002).
At times, it seemed that the security forces were mobilised under civil authorities. Nevertheless, the security forces were manoeuvring the political and public administrations in meeting their long-awaited ambitions. The security officials, backed by the self-centered ruling party leaders during the early years of the conflict, and the king, after the mid-2001, used the mounting tensions between the royal palace and the political parties, to have a new counter-insurgency force established; the number of security personnel (from the combined 46,000 of the Armed Police and Royal Nepal Army in 2001 to over 100,000 in 2005) increased (Adhikary, 2002); defense budget significantly increased; and the warfare capacities advanced. Despite the enormous attention, support and sanction, the state security forces could not stop the Maoists in expanding their military base, breeding the combatants, strengthening their offensive capacity or even disrupting the free and frequent movement of people and supplies.
Despite the Maoists causing infrastructure damages; halting the public movement; extorting, abducting and even killing the civilians after tagging them of being the spy to the security forces or a threat to the People’s War; and looting the private and public properties, the mainstreaming political parties failed in reaching to the rural areas. The state offered lucrative options such as amnesty and support to start a promising life in return for voluntary surrender, handing over arms and providing information about the Maoists. The ruling parties could not get enough support at the local level in the reform agenda simply because Maoists’ propaganda and mass awareness strategies were far more efficient backed by various self-run and locally-financed integrated rural development projects in the affected areas.
Conclusions:
Throughout the conflict period, between 1996-2006, the government never had any clear, well-thought and well-structured counter-insurgency policy framework to deal with the uprising. It also lacked consensus among the mainstream political parties in addressing the insurgents. The tensions between the royal palace and the mainstream political parties also remained crucial for the inability of the state in coping with Maoist rebels.
Use of security units for immediate political gains, ever-growing conflict between the security groups in terms of facilities and roles in the counterinsurgency operations, policy gap regarding the objective, role, mobilization, motivation, incentive, and accountability measures were some of the critical challenges that degraded the will and capacity of the state security apparatuses. The more state security forces sought to damage the Maoists; more Maoists gained from their unsuccessful attempts to outshine their mission.
The state was also unable to stop the attacks on government buildings, security posts and even the army camps. The Maoists used these attacks as a symbol to show their increasing strength. On the first hand, the presence, number and services of the state institutions, be it security or even civil, was deteriorating whereas, on the other hand, the Maoists were forming and enforcing the People’s Court, People’s Liberation Army, security and other units to run a parallel government. The Maoists used these short-term achievements in either suppressing the opponent voices or to win the peoples’ ‘hearts and minds’ that only People’s War could overthrow the corrupt, capitalist and feudal system and establish a just and new Nepal free of caste, class and exploitation. Maoists were largely successful in their tactics.
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Rakesh Karna 