HIMALAYAN PRECIPICE

Article from The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16064258

May 6th 2010


Time is running out for attempts to settle the country's confrontation

NEPAL'S Maoists can put on an impressive display. For the past week
they have endured torrential rain and outbreaks of diarrhoea to bring
the capital, Kathmandu, and the rest of the country, to a halt. Then,
on May 4th, tens of thousands formed a human chain around both sides of
the 27km (17-mile) ring road, surrounding and cutting off the capital.
In a country where politics is marked by incompetence and cynicism, no
other force can match the former rebels for commitment or
organisation--which is only one reason why everyone else finds them so
frightening.

After ten years of insurgency the Maoists laid down their arms and
signed a peace deal in 2006. That deal is now on the verge of collapse.
The heart of the process is the writing of a new constitution, a
long-standing Maoist demand. When a Constituent Assembly was elected in
2008 to write it, the Maoists emerged with an effective veto and twice
as many seats as their nearest rival.

Then things started falling apart. A Maoist-led government resigned
after less than a year when the prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal,
better known as Prachanda ("fierce one"), sacked the army chief as part
of a dispute over integrating former guerrillas into the army--only to
see him controversially reinstated by the president. With some prodding
from India, 22 parties cobbled together an anti-Maoist coalition, but
the constitution-writing process stalled. May 28th marks the expiry of
the interim charter under which the country has been operating. If
there is no agreement to amend it, Nepal will plunge into legal limbo.
No one knows what law--if any--will then apply.

Agreement seems remote. The aim is to sign a "package deal" in
which--in theory--all sides will have something to show for the
concessions that will inevitably be needed. The trouble is this
requires tackling the issues that have proved most intractable over the
three years of the peace process, notably the integration of Maoist
fighters. There is no sign that these problems are getting any easier.

The timing is tricky, too: which steps should be taken before today's
government resigns and which after? The Maoists insist that nothing is
possible until the departure of the prime minister, Madav Kumar Nepal.
Forming the next government is another headache: the Maoist candidate
for prime minister is Prachanda himself, but he is unacceptable to many
others, including (it is thought) India.

Then there are deeper problems of trust. Baburam Bhattarai, the
Maoists' deputy leader, calls the government a coalition of elites bent
on preserving their power and privileges. "The elites", he says, do not
want to finish writing a constitution, because they know they will lose
the election which must then take place.

But to their many opponents, the Maoists have not kept their promises
to abandon violence and have not truly embraced democracy. It is
certainly true that stick-wielding members of the Young Communist
League on the streets of Kathmandu look scary and trade unions allied
to the Maoists are often high-handed. On the other hand, killings by
the Maoists have become rare even though at least half a dozen of their
own members have been murdered since the beginning of the year.

Nor do the ruling parties have strong democratic credentials
themselves. The prime minister and one of his deputies lost elections
in their constituencies and got into parliament only because there are
special seats which the parties fill through nomination. Rumour links
ministers from several coalition parties to criminal groups that
perpetrate most of Nepal's violence, as well as to the opium-poppy
farming which has recently spread in the increasingly lawless south.

So far the protests have remained mostly peaceful but clashes are
occurring, tempers are fraying and hardliners on all sides are itching
for a fight. The Maoists draw much support from the young and
underemployed--the country's biggest single group. Having fought for so
long, they are not about to fade away now.



See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16064258