By Miguel Murado

The democratic opposition transforms into a three-way conflict the fight in Nepal between absolute monarchy and Maoist guerrilla.

Miguel Murado

It is a case of two anachronisms facing each other: on the one hand Nepal’s Maoist guerrilla, and on the other the absolute monarchy recently instituted by King Gyanendra. And now, this fight at the top of the world has been joined by a third force: the political parties. They are on the streets protesting against February’s first royal decree which has disbanded Parliament and established, for the first time in 15 years, a “direct rule” by the sovereign.

Last Thursday was, precisely, the anniversary of these 15 years of what could be roughly described as democracy in Nepal, and the parties celebrated it with demonstrations which are resulting in an epidemic of arrests. Yesterday, several opposition officials asked the UN to send an envoy to investigate the state of human rights in the country. It wasn’t very good before February and the absolute monarchy is not expected to improve it.

This envoy would have worked indeed. Yesterday too, a new report was released (the Nepal Human Rights Year Book 2005): the estimations are that 11,200 Nepalese have lost their lives since the beginning of the civil war nine years ago. Only last year, the army killed 1,300 people and nothing short of an additional thousand disappeared without a trace after being taken into custody.

Surprise: All this has done nothing to stop the Maoist guerrilla, whose behaviour, in terms of human rights, is by no means better than that of the security forces (after all, their role model is Peru’s “Shining Path”). Nine years ago nobody took them seriously, but the Maoists are no longer a laughing matter: they have a formidable force of 15,000 fighters which controls between 30 and 40% of the country. It was the King’s desperation in the face of the Government’s inability to defeat the guerrillas or, at least, negotiate with them, which made him disband it in February.

The truth is that, even while boasting eleven different cabinets in eleven years, Nepal’s democracy has not been very satisfactory. Yet, by putting an end to it, King Gyanendra has taken a serious gamble. Now, for him, is neck or nothing. If he fails the monarchy will go down the drain with him. It doesn’t look like it has got off to a good start: yesterday and the day before, with the monarchy being harassed by pro-democracy demonstrators in Kathmandu, and the capital itself surrounded by Maoists, who are strong enough not to lose but not strong enough to win, all three forces were colliding at the top of the world in a seeminglyentangled knotwhose final result is unpredictable.

(Miguel Murado is a former Middle East correspondent and current political analyst for the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia)

Miguel Murado
La Voz de Galicia, 10 April 2005