NEW
DELHI - As the chaos caused by Maoist insurgency in
rural Nepal and demand for the restoration of democracy
in urban areas continues to plague the county, and as
attacks on Indian properties and interests continue,
political and diplomatic observers in Delhi have begun
debating earnestly whether India should assert itself
more forcefully and even consider military intervention
as it did in what was then East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) in 1971 and Sri Lanka in 1987. This is an
alarmist scenario for some, but many think it should not
be ruled out in the eventuality of the situation further
deteriorating and particularly if refugees start
streaming across Nepal's borders into Indian territory.
Although Sher Bahadur Deuba, fired by King
Gyanendra nearly two years ago, was reappointed on
Wednesday as Nepal's 14th prime minister in as many
years and is already attempting to defuse the political
crisis and end a bloody Maoist revolt, replacing
royalist Surya Bahadur Thapa who quit last month after
weeks of street protests, the situation remains unstable
and provides India with legitimate security concerns.
Nepalese Maoists have developed close ties with Maoists
and other extreme communist groups called Naxalites in
India. Their ties with People's War Group of Andhra
Pradesh, Maoist Communist Center of Bihar and Jharkhand,
and the Communist Party of India [Marxist-Leninist] are
said to be particularly strong. These extremists have
been running virtually parallel administrations in the
rural hinterland in Indian states such as Bihar,
Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra
Pradesh, Maharashtra, etc in the same way as their
Nepalese counterparts are practically ruling almost half
of Nepal. The Indo-Nepalese Maoist insurgent nexus
provides these groups in both countries with important
sanctuaries and support in a variety of ways.
According to a recent intelligence report,
Nepalese Maoists plan to take hostage Indian
bureaucrats, particularly from the northern state of
Uttar Pradesh (UP) that shares a large border with
Nepal, to exert pressure on the Indian government.
Alarmed, the state government has issued confidential
orders advising its bureaucrats not to venture into the
Himalayan kingdom. Confirming the report to a newspaper,
a senior police officer of a zone bordering Nepal said,
"As it is, bureaucrats are not expected to go for
holidays to Nepal without prior permission of designated
authorities."
Intelligence reports have
identified the latest epicenter of Maoist activities to
be in Nepalese localities adjoining Pilibhit, Kheri,
Behraich, Balrampur and Maharajganj districts of UP.
Well-equipped training camps are believed to have come
up in Banke, Bardia, Dang and Kailali districts of
Nepal. Some of the specific leads, which now have
developed into a comprehensive Maoist threat, were
extracted from one of the top Maoist leaders, Ashok
Comrade, who was arrested in India recently.
Ashok Comrade, who heads the Maoist Jan Morcha
suicide wing, is said to have confessed to a fresh
strategy to "exert pressure on the Nepal government
through activities directed against India". The leads
provided by Ashok enabled the Indian intelligence
agencies to give a definite direction to their
operations. This further led to the revelation of
threats looming over bureaucrats going on a short visit
to Nepal. The recent attack on 22 Indian oil tankers in
Nepal is also being seen in the light of the new Maoist
strategy. Intelligence agencies now believe that the
arson attack was sort of a "dry run" to gauge the
reaction of the Indian government in case of future
attacks.
Keeping these new threats in mind, a
high-level meeting of forest officials, central and
state intelligence agencies, UP-Nepal border police,
civil police and officials of the Revenue Department
convened to chalk out a strategy for a multi-pronged
consolidated drive against Maoists threatening to
disrupt peace in India in general and UP in particular.
Several insurgency-affected areas of Nepal,
particularly Kanchanpur, Kailali and Bardia, are very
close to Delhi, making Nepalese Maoists a greater threat
for the Indian state than even Indian Maoists, who would
find it more difficult to reach Delhi on their own. The
possibility of a spillover inside Indian territory,
particularly close to the capital city Delhi, is thus
quite real.
Even more worrisome for India is the
possibility of Nepalese insurgents helping India's
northeastern secessionists cut off what is called
India's "chicken neck" near Siliguri in West Bengal. A
narrow strip of land at this point links the northeast
with the Indian mainland. This fear has heightened since
Nepalese Maoists developed ties with separatists such as
the "Khumbuwan Liberation Front" in the far eastern
hills of Nepal, quite close to the Indian border in that
extremely sensitive area. This merely underlines
comments from Indian Ambassador to Nepal Shyam Saran:
"The Maoist insurgency is a threat not only to the
security of Nepal but also to the security of India."
India has often been accused of not doing enough
to control the cross-border Maoist linkage. Several
leaders, including former prime minister and Nepali
Congress leader Girja Prasad Koirala, have complained
that Maoists are finding sanctuary in India. Former
leader of opposition and Communist Party of Nepal
(United Marxist-Leninist) leader Madhav Kumar Nepal is
also on record as having complained of a linkage between
India and Nepalese Maoists. Even President General
Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, under pressure to stop
cross-border terrorism on the India-Pakistan line of
control in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, has tried to
make political capital out of the situation taunting
India to stop the "cross-border terrorism" on the
India-Nepal border. Former Indian ambassador to Nepal K
V Rajan has also chastised India for being a passive
spectator for too long when Maoist leaders were roaming
freely across the open border.
India has also
been accused of promoting dictatorship in Nepal to
encourage the monarch to root out militancy in the
country. Only last month (May 8) Saran denied
allegations that India supports autocracy in Nepal for
its own selfish interests. According to Kanak Mani
Dixit, editor of Kathmandu-based Himal South-Asian
magazine, in the past three years New Delhi has supplied
more than Rs3 billion (US$66 million) worth of rifles,
trucks, uniforms, helmets, helicopters, ammunition,
ordnance and mine-protected vehicles. Plus there's been
counter-insurgency training.
A state of
near-anarchy seems to prevail in Nepal now, which is
particularly detrimental to Indian interests. Even
though the Maoists have not been able to take any of the
75 district headquarters, according to Dixit, they have
the run of much of the countryside. They have now
extended themselves over the Terai plains bordering
India, killing political opponents, extorting from the
rich and poor alike, abducting students and teachers for
indoctrination and training, torching vehicles and
blasting infrastructure. Development and government
activity have ground to a halt, constitutional functions
have been suspended and whole swaths of territory are
now blockaded and inaccessible. "Those who laughed
earlier at Maoist bombast," said Dixit, "are silent now
as the rebels subdue civilian police with extreme
brutality and make spectacular hit-and-run attacks on
army garrisons."
That the Indian government is
greatly concerned with the crisis in Nepal became
apparent when Saran became the first among all Indian
ambassadors to South Asian countries to be called back
to Delhi for consultations with the new dispensation
that has just started the process of policy formulation.
As the new foreign-policy and security establishment
discusses its options, so do the media try to fathom the
alternatives before the country.
Arguing the
case for military intervention, India's
largest-circulated newspaper The Times of India wrote
last Friday: "Increasingly, Nepal seems to be spinning
out of control. In many parts of the country, the
Maoists' writ runs freely and in fact it is these
insurgents who run local governance. Even Kathmandu city
is not safe from the Maoists as many bomb blasts and
other attacks have testified. Sooner, rather than later,
someone will have to intervene in Nepal. The question
is, who and when? ... India can ill afford to let this
state of dangerous drift continue. Apart from its
strategic concerns, New Delhi also has to take into
account the interests of the large Indian community
living and doing business in Nepal."
In its
original view, however, the newspaper editorial had
advised the government to walk the tightrope between
persuasion and intervention. It said: "Is Nepal a
'failed state'? At first shy it would seem so ...
Nevertheless it would be a mistake to brand Nepal as a
failed state, a tag that big powers use for small
nations, often as a prelude to direct intervention.
India must resist that temptation. The history of
intervention is a sorry sight, from France's adventures
in Indochina, America's Vietnam quagmire, Russia's
botched Afghan campaign, India's own blunder in Sri
Lanka and now, the fix that the US finds itself in in
Iraq. It's a roll-call of failure that should cool down
the most impulsive hotheads in New Delhi."
What
is giving strength to this debate is the fact that
Indian foreign-policy strategists who occupied important
positions at the time of previous interventions are back
in power in even more important positions. India's
ambassador to Sri Lanka in 1987, who retired as foreign
secretary, J N Dixit, is back in the government as Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's national security adviser. So
is his former boss and retired foreign secretary Kunwar
(Prince) Natwar Singh, now in the all-powerful position
of external affairs minister. Their colleague and
retired chief of the Intelligence Bureau M K Narayanan
is the internal security adviser with the rank of a
minister of state.
It is usually difficult to
gauge the mind of Indian mandarins but both Dixit and
Narayanan were writing newspapers columns until last
week. One can get an idea of how they would view the
situation and how they would like to cope with it in
some of their recent columns. Just a couple of days
before the results of recent general elections came out,
Dixit wrote in the Indian Express: "In Nepal, terrorist
violence by the Maoist groups continues unabated. The
political leadership is becoming progressively
irrelevant. King Gyanendra has failed to establish a
meaningful understanding with political parties to move
back to democracy through elections. It is interesting
that he emphasizes stability rather than achieving
stability through democratic processes. The Maoists are
gunning for him as well as the political parties. The
army is getting incrementally involved in giving
security to the king, moving away from its institutional
role of ensuring national defense. The police forces are
no match for the Maoists."
How would this impact
India? Dixit continues: "The political situation in
Nepal could have a fallout in [such India regions as]
north Bengal, Bihar and northeastern UP. It could also
have ramifications in Bhutan, which still has a large
Nepalese population. Bhutan itself is subject to
domestic political pressures. The problem of Nepalese
exiled from Bhutan still remains unresolved and is a
cause for tension with Nepal. Separatist terrorist
elements from the northeast had established bases in
Bhutan. While the king took decisive action last winter,
the Bhutanese government has to remain alert to possible
trouble from these groups ... Whatever the results of
the general elections, whichever government comes to
power in New Delhi will have to cope with a very complex
and tense neighborhood."
M K Narayanan wrote a
column on "How to contain the extreme left" in the
prestigious newspaper Asian Age recently. Commenting on
a Maoist strike in Andhra Pradesh, he wrote:
"Unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity of this event
is incomprehensible. Somewhat similar tactics - of
simultaneously attacking several targets - had
previously been adopted by the Maoists in Nepal and
these became the precursors for the bloody pogroms that
followed, which earned Nepal the sobriquet of 'killing
fields'. By 2003, the Maoists had come to have sway over
almost half of the state."
Political
factors Apart from the foreign-policy and
security establishment, the Singh government has to also
take into account the view of its communist supporters
on whom it is critically dependent. The Left Front
comprises various mainstream communist formations such
as the Communist Party of India (CPI) and CPI-Marxist or
CPIM that have old fraternal ties with Maoist forces.
But it has itself tackled them in bloody encounters and
virtually rooted them out of West Bengal state, which it
has ruled for 27 years. It should not therefore have any
problem with the Indian state taking a hardline stance
dealing with Maoist violence either within India or in
Nepal. Indeed, tackling Nepalese Maoists is also related
to tackling communist extremism in India too.
The Left Front, however, believes that the state
that is dealing with Maoist violence should be doing so
from a position of moral strength as it has done in West
Bengal. While putting down Maoist insurgency with a
strong hand, it has also tried to tackle the roots of
social discontent. Having provided for land reforms and
rural employment, etc, it was able to deal with the
situation with a moral strength that would have
otherwise been lacking. After all, nothing happens
without a reason. If both of India's main political
formations, the Indian National Congress and the
Bharatiya Janata Party, have failed to tackle the
situation in any of the states, it is not for want of
trying hardline methods.
What is true of India
is also true of Nepal. The United Nations Development
Program's resident representative in Nepal, Henning
Karcher, analyzed the situation last year and said:
"While the conflict in Nepal has no doubt a political,
ideological and even geopolitical dimension, its main
root causes are social and economic, related to
frustrated expectation that came with the advent of
democracy, related to abject poverty that persists for a
large percentage of the population, related to poor and
inefficient delivery of social services in areas such as
education and health and related to inequality,
exclusion and discrimination. A large percentage of the
population of Nepal, in particular Dalits [disadvantaged
lower castes considered untouchable] and members of
ethnic groups, feel that they are politically and
economically excluded, unable to contribute to decisions
that affect their lives and unable to benefit from the
economic advancement of the nation."
The left is
therefore going to demand that the government first try
to induce Kathmandu to show some inclination to tackle
the roots of the Maoist problem in Nepal. Also, the left
believes it was able to tackle the Maoist problem in its
own state because of its firm commitment to democratic
politics. It would therefore demand that India insist
that the Nepalese king first restore democracy and let
the democratic forces deal with the situation. Even if
the politicians proved inefficient and corrupt, it is
for the democratic system itself to correct that
anomaly. The failure of the political parties to live up
to their promise does not give the king the license to
abolish democracy itself.
It is thus difficult
to see India intervening in the Nepalese crisis,
particularly with a military force, in the immediate
future. But neither will the present establishment show
the kind of benign indifference that was the hallmark of
the previous administration. As the insurgency was
gathering pace in 2001-02, India had failed even to
appoint an ambassador for Nepal for nine months.
It is clear that in the past three years
insurgents have taken advantage of the disarray caused
by the lack of political processes. They have merely
tried to fill the political vacuum that was created by
King Gyanendra's suspension of the democratic process,
no matter how inefficient. While parliament and local
government units had been disbanded earlier, the king's
attempt to rule through appointed prime ministers over
the past 19 months has brought political parties and
other sundry groups and concerned individuals to the
streets in a wave of continuous protest. A rapprochement
between the king and the political parties and the start
of the democratic process is thus the immediate need of
the hour. It may render the present perilous debate in
India redundant.
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