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| India-Pakistan | ||
| Nepal: Chaos reigns in ’Shangri-La’ | ||
| 2003-10-16 | ||
| EFL National Post via Worldwire Yesterday, an unidentified man was killed walking on the outskirts of the capital, Katmandu, and a bomb was hurled into a bus filled with government troops in eastern Nepal. Over the weekend, 67 people were killed in day-long gun battles between guerrilla forces and government troops in western Nepal. In another incident on Monday, 11 Maoist rebels and four high school students died when government soldiers stormed a village school in northeastern Nepal, where the Maoists were holding a recruitment drive. The pace of the killing has escalated since Aug. 27, when the Maoists, who model themselves on Peru’s Shinning Path and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, decided to resume their civil war after the royalist government refused to establish a special assembly to redraft the constitution. The Shining Path - sponsored by Mr Clean - is bad enough, but why would you hope to elicit popular support by patterning your organization after a group that exterminated a large portion of it’s own population.
Just like happened in Cambodia? In an era when communists of any stripe are an endangered breed, the Nepali Maoists have been steadily gaining ground. They now control much of rural Nepal and run their own mini-state in the country’s far west. Wonder what the conditions are like in their mini-state. Must be like California. They are helped by years of corruption, misgovernment and indifference, combined with a grinding poverty that has more than 42% of all Nepalese living below the poverty line. With a military wing that claims between 10,000 and 15,000 guerrillas, the Maoists have aggressively attacked Nepal’s military, which, until recently, was both ill-equipped and performed a mainly ceremonial function. Both sides used the seven-month ceasefire to regroup and rearm. Call a cease fire, we are low on ammo and the brass is causing a trip hazard. We could get somebody hurt. Britain and the United States are supplying and training Nepal’s armed forces and the Maoists are filling their coffers through an extortion campaign that targets local businessmen, aid agencies and villagers. While nearly 8,000 people have died in the civil war in the past seven years, more than 5,100 of those deaths occurred in the past 18 months. Nepal’s notoriously complicated politics were thrown into chaos two years ago when Crown Prince Dipendra shot and killed most of his family, including his father, King Birendra, in a palace massacre before committing suicide. Fed up with the constant political bickering that produced 12 governments in 12 years and determined to have his own way, King Gyanendra dissolved Parliament in October, dismissed the elected prime minister and appointed his own government. Months of constitutional turmoil have followed, with the five major political parties joining the Maoists in agitating against the King, boycotting Parliament and demanding a return to democracy. Democracy - I thought they wanted a communist state.
That’s just bad marketting. They should advertise that they are the most dangerous place on earth. I thought Gaza was. | ||
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #7 I don't think the Nepalese monarchy has interbred much beyond the four or five families which have jostled for power for centuries. It's a truly remarkable country, and well worth a visit by anyone, once things calm down and assuming the Maoists don't succeed in their efforts to wreck the place. Kathmandu itself has changed very little during the last millennium. Wander slightly off the beaten track and you can imagine you've been carried far back in time. It's a charming small city with an extraordinarily rich character. The people are tough, friendly and entertaining, Buddhists and Hindus. And as for the scenery... |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-10-16 8:37:30 PM |
| #6 I think you're thinking of Hope Whatsername, who was a socialite who became queen of Sikkim. Sikkim's the low-rent district of Bhutan. I think the Chinese ate it a few months ago. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-10-16 8:26:34 PM |
| #5 Heavens! I went to Atlanta once. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-10-16 6:33:56 PM |
| #4 Mike, Queen Komal was born in Katmandu. She seems to have survived the regicide. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-10-16 6:11:30 PM |
| #3 I was in Nepal eighteen months ago, in Kathmandu for a few days, and trekking for a week in the Himalayas around Annapurna. Things were hotting up then, and we came across some evidence of Maoist activity in the sticks (a gutted communications building a few hundred feet from a tourists' observation tower). Soldiers patrolled all over the place, on foot and on flatbeds. Nevertheless, statistically, the risk to tourists from violence is very low (there have been Maoist robbings, some robbings perpetrated by criminals posing as Maoists, and attempts to force westerners to act as weapons mules, but no killings, AFAIK), but the whole insurgency thing understandably puts many people off planning to go. As it turned out for us, avalanches were by far the most real threat, and the Maoists were merely a nuisance (I nearly missed my flight home when they called one of their national "strikes", a shutdowner which was called off at the last minute following widespread protests that it would prevent the country's students travelling to take their exams. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-10-16 2:54:19 PM |
| #2 I know the Princess Noor of Jordan is an Americanski. I forgot to highlight my favorite tidbit. In Nepal if the Moaists have a recruiting fair the army violently surpesses the activity. At Harvard if the Atrmy has a recruiting fair the Moaists violently break it up. Yin and Yan - there is a subtle balance in the world. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-10-16 2:41:16 PM |
| #1 ...Somebody refresh my memory - wasn't the Queen of Nepal (at least till recently) an American? Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2003-10-16 1:55:37 PM |