One year after the crisis: Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

(Dutch original) Wapens, democratie en oorlog in Nepal. Brussel, Magazine van het forum voor vredesactie, oktober 2003, nr. 223, p.6 (unedited English translation) Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

One year after the crisis:
Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

One year after the ‘Nepal crisis’ the country faded from our minds. One minister resigned, the other kept defending his decision and the others were mainly good in remaining silent. After an election and a change in the law on weapon exports, minister Louis Michel succeeded in leaving this sensitive issue behind him. This exclusively Belgian part of the story ignores what happened with the weapons and the country in general. Nick Meynen brings us a background of the conflict and update of the current situation.

In the past year Nepal changed from a democracy with problems into the absolute monarchy it was before 1990. In this process the search for causes and reasons is long and difficult. Part from the role local actors have played, one must also consider in which degree foreign actors influenced the current take over by the king and on the escalation of the conflict. Did Belgium, together with countries like the US and India, play an active role in the fall of a democratic Nepal and the rise of conflict? To answer this question we must step back and take a look at the birth of democracy in the revolution of 1990.

Nepal in the nineties

In 1990, after a series of demonstrations called the Jana Andolan, Nepal becomes an official constitutional monarchy. The king and his family, dictating all aspects of politics during centuries, bowed for the pressure but the king kept some of his power in the compromise that followed. The king kept his control over the army and the right to dissolve parliament and take over control in crisis situations. After the 1991 elections and some years of stability, more governments then springs passed by since the elections of 1994. Part from corruption and economical problems, the parties mainly forgot to democratise themselves.

In 1996 the leaders of the forbidden party CPN-Maoist declare a war against the government, the king and the system in name of the lowest castes of society. A group of lower caste people from the rural west, who saw their hopes on improvement turn into disillusion, joined them. They found that the different gaps in society, between Kathmandu and the rest, between those who own land and those who don’t and eventually between the lower castes and the higher ones only widened further. Landless farmers, lower caste people and educated but workless students gradually joined the movement, although some of them had no choice. Both the army and the Maoists violated several human rights and Amnesty International collected many examples of innocent civilians being raped, kidnapped or executed by both parties. The consecutive governments didn’t succeed in undertaking any serious initiatives to solve he problem peacefully. Reforms or even negotiations to do something about the real and essential problems the Maoists pointed out seemed out of the question.

As if Nepal didn’t have problems enough a shockwave hit the country on the first of July 2001. The king and almost his entire family are shot dead. A crown prince who couldn’t marry his beloved one is said to be responsible for the shooting, after witch he committed suicide. The respected king Birendra was hereby replaced with the much less popular king Gyanendra. Where Birendra had proved that he accepted to take a step back after 20 years of absolute monarchy, his successor proved to have much higher ambitions.

With the army on his side, he fired the entire government on the 4th of October 2002. In this period the decision to deliver the weapons to Nepal had already been made, but the delivery itself had yet to be done. The king installs a new government under the guidance of Chand, consisting mainly out of politicians from the time when every politician was a servant of the king. Since that time the king doesn’t only face the Maoists but also most of all the elected politicians. On the 29th of January 2003 a cease-fire is denounced. The violence comes to an almost stand still and a code of conduct summarizes the first agreements that should make real talks possible. In these intensive talks the Maoists show more effort and good will then the government side. They reduce their demands from the declaration of a republic to the formation of an all-party government, a constitutional assembly and a rewriting of the constitution. There position comes very close to the opinion of the main political parties who are not involved in the talks, but the government doesn’t want to know of any of their demands. Under growing pressure to reach an agreement the Chand government falls and for a moment the people of Nepal hold their breath what the king will do now. The five main parties, representing 190 out of 205 seats in parliament in the last elections, propose a candidate for premiership to the king. Madhav Nepal, leader of the biggest central left party in the country, is not only a consensus figure of these parties, he’s also popular and the Maoists would prefer talking to him. He wants new elections and declares to be open to talk about a more democratic constitution. He even agrees with the Maoists to bring the control of the army under the authority of parliament.

This is the moment where the king can stop the violence if that is what he really wishes. If he accepted Madhav Nepal at that time, chances are big that peace talks would succeed, a broad coalition would start rebuilding the country and some true problems where discussed in a serious manner. If it‘s because his party still has a communistic name or because the US didn’t want him to become premier, fact is that the king chooses to declare the conservative veteran Thapa as the new prime minister. The 75-year old Thapa was already four times premier in the period before 1990, his family is very close with the royal family and they together control both army and police.

For most of the observers it is clear that the king has not chosen peace but power. The political parties are demonstrating ever since, elections seem impossible and the conflict resumed with unprecedented force. Since there were still no elections six months after the king sacked the government, there is even a legal reason to conclude that the present government is unconstitutional. The intentions of the king and his present government concerning the democracy became very clear when the ministry of defence proposed to relocate the money preserved to cover the cost of possible elections (22 million euro) to a reinforcement of the army. Democracy left by the back door.

The role of the US in the failure of peace talks

So far only the role of political parties, Maoists and the king where analysed but what kind of influence did the international community have? India is for centuries Nepal’s big brother and always had a profound influence on the events in Nepal. As enemy of China the Indian government mainly fears that if the Maoists or even Madhav Nepal would come to power this would increase the Chinese influence in Nepal. In sum they prefer to see a dictatorial Hindu king in a Hindu kingdom in power then a rebel force with a Maoist ideology share power with democratic parties. Where India supported the democratic movement in 1990 they do not find democracy more important now then a king with who they can do good business.

The US government already chose to support Gyanendra even before he came to power. They were the first to congratulate Gyanendra when he came to power and although it has never been proved, there are indications that the CIA had good connections with him even before the events of 1 July 2001.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the foreign policy of the US is mainly centred around the “War on terrorism”. The fact that this war is mainly a cover up to achieve other geopolitical goals is already well known throughout the world. But what this means for their geopolitical aspirations in Nepal is not yet clear. Fact is that the military expenses the US spends on Nepal are risen to a high of 12 million $ in 2002 and 13 million $ in 2003. Even 49 military advisors came to Nepal to train the Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

Part from the military expenses there are other indications that the US deliberately wants to make sure that the Maoists in no way achieve anything at all, even if it is achieved in a peace agreement. In the seven years of conflict since 1996, the US never described the Maoists as terrorists. The Nepalese government started to use this term only in 2001, the year the army was deployed for the first time. Even when the Maoists committed their biggest attacks the US didn’t put them on the terrorist list. On the 25th of April 2005, in the midst of serious peace talks, the US signed the “Antiterrorism Assistance” act with Gyanendra to legitimise further military investments in the country. It is remarkable that only five days later the Maoist for the first time ever appeared on their terrorist list. Getting to a peace agreement normally requires decoupling violence from political demands and respecting each others proposals for the latter. Therefore one of the first things Maoists and government agreed was to stop calling each other terrorists. In fact this agreement mend that the government accepted that the Maoists have a concrete political goal and violence had a meaning, without saying violence was legitimate of course. By signing the “Antiterrorism Agreement” first and then calling Maoists terrorists at that crucial moment in peace talks, the US can only had one meaning and that is to obstruct the peace process itself.

When Thapa came to power, a move also very much against peace and democracy, the US were once again one of the first to congratulate him. Sometimes it is strange how the US proclaims to export democracy and at the same time congratulates those who destroy it. The old Cold War rhetoric combined with the new terrorism rhetoric covers the true reasons why the US supports Gyanendra. It could be possible that the US is building up a series of military strong allies around China. This would be in line with the theories of Samuel Huntington who says that the ‘Chinese civilisation’ is the biggest threat to US world dominance after the ‘Muslim civilisation’. How real these theories (obligate literature for all US ambassadors) can become is very clear in the Middle East. It is a well-known public secret that Huntington and Kaplan through the neo-conservative think tank ‘ Project for a new American Century’ (PNAC) have a profound impact on the current foreign policy of the US. People in government like vice president Cheney were members of this think tank about how the US world dominance can be sustained.

Whatever the motives may have been, fact remains that the US are partly responsible for destroying the peace talks. Of course, the US (together with India and Belgium) is not the sole actor responsible for this, because the main issue is about who gets what kind of power. But what if a superpower like the US did not have this foreign policy and did not sign an agreement with the king whereby he new that as long as the conflict kept on going his personal army would get millions of dollars support. It seems that for Gyanendra it is a personal financial goldmine to keep a so-called terrorist conflict going on.

The role of the Belgian weapon delivery

Belgium also strengthened the RNA with automatic weapons called Minimi’s. The Belgian motives are different from the US motives since they where purely economical, but the result remains the same. Contrary to other European countries, who refused to deliver weapons to the RNA, Belgian violated it’s own laws and European agreements to do this. They supported an army that (since January 2001) has the right to shoot people who are involved in a theft, aggression or “any other violent or subversive act”.

Part from the fact that the transfer was illegal, one can consider if our government doesn’t use any ethical reasoning. Foreign actors like the US, India or Belgium may not be the driving forces behind the failure of democracy and the escalation of conflict but the fact remains that beside the internal forces they created very favourable circumstances to keep the conflict going on. Our weapons are used right at this moment to kill Nepali civilians who lack any democratic way of addressing their problems. Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have shown that these weapons also killed innocent people. It can’t be bad to remember some Belgian ministers, who mostly think or hope the issue is over, on the actual consequences of their decision.

Nick Meynen

Nick Meynen (1980) is graduated as a master in geography and a postgraduate in development and conflict studies. In function of his thesis on the conflict in Nepal he visited the country for five weeks to take interviews and see how the country deals with its conflict.