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Nepalese authorities are seeking talks with Maoist rebels
in order to end the rebels' siege of the capital, Kathmandu.
The Maoist rebels have not physically stopped the movement
of vehicles in and out of Kathmandu since the blockade began
yesterday, but the fear of attack has kept most vehicles off
the roads leading to the capital.
The blockade has disrupted the supply of food and goods to
Kathmandu.
It's estimated that the capital has enough food and fuel
for a month, but prices are already rising.
The rebels, who have been fighting for eight years to replace
the Nepalese monarchy with a communist republic, are seeking
the release of detained guerillas, a probe into the alleged
killings of activists and information about thousands of their
missing comrades.
Peace talks last year collapsed after the government rejected
a rebel demand to draft a new constitution to decide the future
of the monarchy.
So far,10 of the country's biggest businesses, including
the bottlers of Coca-Cola, have closed down following threats
from the Maoists.
For more on the current blockade, Bharati Jagdish (BJ) spoke
to Dr Ajai Sahni (AS), Executive Director of the South Asia
Terrorism Portal.
AS: "This blockade is, technically, not by the Maoist
rebels themselves. It is by two Maoist front organisations
- the trade union affiliated to the Maoists which is the All
Nepal Trade Union Federation and a students' organisation,
the All Nepal National Independent Students Union Revolutionary.
They're using their front organisations to raise political
demands. The fact of the matter is that we see this blockade
as a culmination of a continuous strategy of isolation of
the urban centres of Nepal particularly of the Kathmandu Valley.
You must understand that they regard all the districts around
Kathmandu as what they call the "ring" area. Every
district which borders Kathmandu is part of a strategic "ring"
that they have constructed to obstruct movement to and from
Kathmandu in order to completely isolate the capital. This
is a classic Maoist tactic - first of all, disrupt all possibilities
of governance in the village areas, then increasingly isolate
the towns and cities and eventually, launch the last phase
of the revolution and decimate the towns and cities. A secondary
goal is to secure international intervention. One of the rising
demands of the Maoists is to secure United Nations intervention
in future peace talks with the government."
BJ: Do you see them as being on their way to succeeding in
achieving these aims?
AS: "I am a qualified pessimist when it comes to this
situation. The difficulty at the moment is that the government
and the political parties have not shown any kind of will
to confront and neutralise the Maoist threat apart from conducting
sporadic military action. The predominance of political opinion
in Nepal today including of the regime is that some sort of
a negotiated settlement can be reached with the Maoists and
consequently, while a hardline approach may prevail for a
few months, always, the softline approach reasserts itself
and each period of negotiations has allowed the Maoists to
consolidate their hold over wider areas. During negotiations,
which the army stops its operations, the Maoists continue
their processes of recruitment, training, consolidation, etc.
So each phase of the peace process sees a widening of the
sphere of Maoists activities. This has not been understood
by the government. What has also not been understood by the
government is the whole Maoist strategy and the fact that
the Maoist are employing a clearly-articulated, systematic,
cynical strategy of consolidation and that they are deeply
committed to the ideologies that they represent."
BJ: So you're saying that even if the government suggests
peace talks again, which it has already suggested by the way,
it is of no use, because the Maoists clearly have their own
agenda in mind. So what would you suggest as a possible solution
at the moment?
AS: "You have to reclaim the country if you wish to
govern it. Unless the government reclaims the countryside
and begins to re-establish the institutions and processes
of governance in those areas, it will lose the country. Now
what is happening with the government in Kathmandu is that
it has been in a continuous retreat. It has shut down its
police stations in all rural areas. It has withdrawn all its
forces back into military camps or into district headquarters.
There is no sign of governance or of the regime in vast areas
of the country today. If you give up the country because of
the fear of the terrorists, then the terrorists will prevail."
BJ: What's preventing the government from taking more concrete
steps?
AS: "I think it is the lack of clarity in perceptions
and the lack of will. I think the Maoists have been very,
very successful in sowing confusion among the ranks of the
political parties by making statements that suggest that they
are in fact, open to conciliation, open to accommodation.
The fact is the Maoists have no reason to negotiate right
now. They're winning!"
BJ: Now, what are the more immediate steps the government
can take now to at least end the current blockade?
AS: "They'll have to open the roads. They'll have to
go out with the forces, sanitise the roads. You cannot just
shut down the roads. You have to go in and make sure that
they are free of insurgents, free of landmines and free of
the possibility of ambush and then have escorted convoys of
goods and passenger traffic. If you abandon every road and
every area the moment it comes under a focussed terrorist
threat, then effectively, you've abandoned the country."
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