I agree.
This article I read today talks about the effect the Maoist movement in Nepal has on it's neighbors. Worth reading and full of good links...
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Meddling in Nepal
The people are striking for power, but others have eyes on the crossroads of Asia
Straddling the border between China and India, Nepal has an intrinsic strategic importance which drags the two fastest growing economies in the world into its internal politics. Recent events have seen huge public protests against the autocratic monarchy headed by King Gyanendra, thousands have been arrested and an ever growing number of Nepalese have died in their quest for democratic rights.
To see their struggle as purely internal to Nepal is therefore misleading. The future prospects for Nepali social reforms, popular democracy, human rights and economic health, will be influenced by New Delhi and Beijing along with the politicians in Kathmandu and their supporters on the street. Oh yes, and the United States are not disengaged either, although the role of the Bush administration in supporting Gyanendra has not been thoroughly discussed in relation to the current wave of pro-democracy activity. Nor has the potential of Nepal as a hydrocarbon province.
Indian interests
Nepali peasant radicalism (primarily the Maoists under Prachanda) is closely related to Naxalite movements in the Indian states of Bihar,
Jharkand,
Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and
Andhra Pradesh. If Maoists gain power in Nepal, so the reasoning goes in New Delhi, then social movements in those Indian states will be emboldened to press on with their programs. Like a smaller version of the ‘domino theory’ a victory for what is perceived as radicalism in Nepal would undermine the government of India.
On April 11,
IndiaDaily reported that an anonymous Indian official had said that Naxalites were effectively running a parallel government in Bihar, blowing up train stations at will. Naxalites are similar to the Maoists in Nepal in that they are peasant based, use communist rhetoric and seek a social, anti-capitalist revolution of the poor. A victory in Kathmandu would be a victory for Naxalites in Bihar as well.
India, with its growing population, has massive water needs. Nepal, in its mountainous location, also sources many of the rivers that India uses to provide that water. An
xcellent article by Jo Johnson from the Financial Times, dated January 2006 makes the point well, “As the lower riparian country, India has a strategic interest in ensuring the stability of the Himalayan sources of some of the subcontinent’s most vital rivers, among them the Ganges. Chronically short of energy, India also has a keen interest in developing Nepal’s underexploited potential to generate and export hydro-power.”
Then there is the strategic/military issue of maintaining Nepal as a buffer state against China. Nepal is about 90 percent Hindu, the only officially Hindu state in the world. It therefore shares ethnic affinity with its southern neighbour, an affinity which New Delhi is more than happy to exploit when necessary in order to provide some protection against the encroaching influence of the power to the north, China.
Some Nepali writers have charged India with systematically abetting Maoists guerillas by providing them with sanctuary in northern India. For example,
this article from Gorkhapatra.org accuses India of both encouraging Nepali democracy and aiding the Maoist forces in order to destabilize the country and expand Indian hegemony across the region. However, as India cannot seem to control Naxalites within its borders, and shares a common interest Gyanendra in stamping them out, this seems unlikely.
Chinese designs
The same F.T. article describes Chinese interests as well. “Just as a Maoist victory would encourage Naxalism in India, China fears that Nepal could become the base for anti-Chinese radicalism in Tibet and boost pro-democracy forces in Lhasa,” it states. “Such activity, it worries, could be fomented by India or the U.S., whose Central Intelligence Agency is believed to have
played an important part in backing a Tibetan resistance movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s that operated out of Mustang, a remote area of Nepal that juts into Tibet. ”
However, there are other issues at stake.
China also sees Nepal as a buffer state, against India. This has allowed King Gyanendra to play off India against China, taking aid from both and surviving when India cut off assistance after his coup in February 2005 by applying to Beijing for help. China has become particularly interested in Nepali security since the explosion of an Indian nuclear bomb in 1998 and the weakening of Pakistan by the secession of Bangladesh in 1971. As Indian power has increased, so Chinese interests in Nepal have too.
After the coup last year, the Chinese government became the major guarantor of the Nepali monarchy, supplying not just arms, but also funds for development mainly transportation projects which would stimulate Nepal-China trade as well as smoothing the deployment of Chinese military forces to the southern border of Tibet.)
here is also the trade issue. Should stability be restored under the Monarchy, Indo-Chinese trade might be developed via Nepal, as had been the case in the past. There is also scope for Chinese cooperation with India to protect the status quo in Nepal. In January 2006, the Indian foreign minister, Shri Sayam Saran, went to Kathmandu and restored ties between Gyanendra and New Delhi.
According to an analysis by Satish Kumar for the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, this visit was prompted directly by Chinese influence in Nepal. “One, India is alarmed by China supplying the Royal Nepalese Army (R.N.A.) with arms and ammunition.” he suggests, “Two, the debate is already growing whether India should have helped the R.N.A. ‘to ward off China from meddling in its backyard.”
Saran’s concern might also have been related to Kashmir. Nepal has been flagged as a potential refuge for Pakistani-funded Kashmiri guerillas.
American influence?
This one’s tricky. At first glance it would seem that the U.S. has very little use for Nepal. It would be a mistake to think this.
Nepal has potential to be a hydrocarbon province. Exploration rights were granted in 1998 to an obscure oil company called Texana Resources Company, operating out of Houston. In 2003, Texana withdrew from Nepal citing security concerns. It is possible that they found nothing and simply cut their losses, but it is just as likely that they really were forced out by Maoist expansion (they are now reckoned to control 75 percent of the Nepalese countryside and aren’t great admirers of American oil companies).
In 2002, as part of a little advertised tour of South Asia, James Baker (a close friend of the President), visited New Delhi as Buzzflash reported. After criticizing the Indian government for dealing with Iraq, he apparently also mentioned other strategic imperatives. An anonymous Indian government official was quoted as saying “Mr. Baker also exhorted Indian companies to join hands with American oil majors for explorations in Nepal.”
An
article from the Revolutionary Worker about Nepalese oil potential makes the observation that “Texana and the O.N.G.C. [a state owned Indian oil interest] were not even sure the hunt for oil in Nepal would be successful and highly profitable. But they wanted to deny other countries even the possibility of controlling any oil resources found in Nepal.” This logic could be applied to Iraq. It makes sense in a resource constrained world.
The Maoist group, the C.P.N.M., has been designated an official terrorist group by the State Department. It may be that they have not come to the attention of the U.S. government due to oil but due to the momentum that they are generating behind peasant-based social revolution. ‘Domino-theory’ thinking pervaded U.S. policy for so long that it will hardly have gone away. U.S. arms exports to the Nepali Monarchy have probably been directed against this threat. In 2002, Colin Powell visited Kathmandu and the Nepalese PM visited Washington, before flying home with $20 million worth of arms exports guaranteed. These arms have been used against the Maoists, but are now also probably appearing in newscasts of Nepali soldiers fighting Nepalese demonstrators.
What does this mean?
Amidst all of these strategic interests, a popular movement has arisen in Nepal against the corrupt and vicious Monarchy. Seven political parties have formed an alliance with the Maoists, in favor of a democratic revolution. As the most recent bulletin from Prachanda (the Nepali Maoist leader) and co. states, it is a movement that has been “shattering the medieval repression, prohibition order
and curfew of the feudal autocratic royal power, [and that] has been historically successful with outstanding participation of the masses of all ranks and sects all across the country including capital.”
Ordinarily, the Bush administration would latch onto this development, assign it an arbitrary color and channel N.E.D. funds towards its proponents. Not this time.
King Gyanendra made a statement on Friday promising some concessions to the democracy movement in exchange for maintaining his position. His move was immediately supported by ambassadors from the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Sweden and France. Isabel Hilton reports in the Guardian that this platoon of hapless diplomats “went to the home of Girija Prasad Koirala, president of the Nepali Congress party, to try to persuade the leaders of the seven-party alliance to accept. As the ambassadors cajoled the politicians inside, thousands of protesters outside chanted their opposition.” Their respective governments had simply placed them on the wrong side of Nepalese history, for now.
The latest news from Nepal is that a compromise deal has been extracted from the King, reinstating the Nepali lower house and offering ‘solace’ to the relatives of those killed. Mainstream outlets are hailing this as a breakthrough, even a triumph
for the people. However, Maoist leaders have adamantly rejected the deal. For them, and for thousands on the streets, the goal has become a Nepali republic not a constitutional monarchy. Outside interests remain in favour of a deal involving Gyanendra.
Two weeks of demonstrations, murders, curfews and expressions of popular defiance have not convinced the backers of Gyanendra to ditch their hopeless man. The reason why is that – from the strategic perspectives mentioned above – to allow true Nepali self-determination would be to effectively hand over the Nepalese countryside to the Maoists. None of the nations involved desire that. None of them even believe in self-determination, but the Nepalese people are forcing them to make concessions to the idea.
