- Joined
- Mar 5, 1999
- Messages
- 34,096
This is what I've been talking about in regard to the Maoist movement in Nepal and here is a most recent report. It is as I said it the title, alarming and sad. All of us old timers have seen this sort of thing before and I hope they can get it stopped before it is too late. God help the Nepalis!
===========================================
GUERILLA's killed 14 policemen and injured 40 others in a night attack on the
Police Station in the Himalayan Village of Dunai.
At 2am, after an hour of gunfire and exploding bombs, a sopkesman for the
rebels said: "We are the Lal Sena [Red Army]. Our enemies are the police and
the government. All civilians should stay in their homes."
One villager, Rama Sahai, whose home faces the police station, remembers
being pinned to her floor in terror with her three children as bullets flew
through their upper storey shutters and over their heads. She said: "The
children couldn't speak they were so frightened. When the firing began again
I went unconscious." She had never heard a gun fired before.
The police were hopelessly outnumbered, 125 men armed only with antiquated
.303 rifles of British origin facing more than 700 insurgents equipped with
automatic weapons, petrol bombs and home-made pipe bombs. Women and children
supplied the front with ammunition and a band of female rebels was assigned
the risk-free task of looting the Nepal Bank of £600,000.
The guerrillas, some in combat fatigues with red stars on their caps, others
in woollen rags and flip-flops, ringed the police compound's perimeter dry
stone wall shoulder to shoulder.
Their victims defended themselves desperately from wooden window frames and
doorways, sending bullets pinging around the grey stone houses and narrow
alleys.
Earlier this week, hired hands sifted through the collapsed and scorched
remains of the prison, district government headquarters and half a dozen
buildings in the police compound, throwing mangled typewriters and
bullet-riddled filing cabinets on to a scrapheap. Most of the shops were
shuttered and the hospital had closed after doctors and all government
personnel were moved out.
The assault 10 days ago was the most audacious and deadly in a four-year-old
insurgency by the Maoist People's Army that has largely escaped international
attention but has claimed more than 2,000 lives and is shattering Nepal's
tranquil, spiritual image. Maoists have now started robbing travellers,
menacing the vital tourist industry as well as the multi-party democracy
conceded by King Birendra after a popular uprising 10 years ago.
The Old Etonian monarch, confronted by a ruthless enemy that wants to place a
red flag on the roof of the world, is likely soon to have to decide whether
or not to send in the army, thereby declaring a virtual civil war.
The two most prominent Maoist leaders are well educated veterans of the
democracy movement. Sympathisers say they broke away from a non-violent
far-Left party to initiate the armed struggle in disgust with the bickering
and venal political elite that has brought a change of prime minister every
year since 1990. On the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) website, the
general secretary and military commander Kamal Dahal Prachanda, a former
teacher, parades anachronistic revolutionary ideals and idioms.
But on the ground, the People's Army cadres preach primitive nationalism and
employ often brutal, very un-Nepalese methods. A diplomat in Kathmandu said:
"It is a very peaceful and tolerant society and, despite their reputation as
good warriors, the Nepalese have very rarely taken those characteristics
outside conventional warfare."
Among 34 violent incidents reported in August, Maoists murdered a teacher on
his way to school, chopped off the leg of a suspected police informer and for
the first time took their terror to the capital, hurling three petrol bombs
on one afternoon at police and government targets.
Head teachers have reported receiving death threats if their schools continue
to sing the royalist national anthem or teach Sanskrit, which is seen as a
reactionary influence of the imposing nuclear neighbour, India. With advice
and training from Peru's Shining Path and Indian militant communist groups,
the rebels' armed force has grown to between 2,000 and 5,000. About half of
their fighters are teenagers, drawn from the same Magar and Tamang ethnic
groups recruited for the Gurkhas in various regions.
They are tough, obedient and durable, and operate in dizzying terrain ideal
for guerrilla combat against a police force trained to deal with unarmed
street demonstrators and thieves. Dunai, the headquarters of Dolpa district,
bordering Tibet, lies on an ancient caravan route at the end of an arduous
three-hour walk from the 6,000ft-high gravel runway of Juphal airport. The
dead and wounded had to be flown out by helicopter.
The government has estimated that the Maoist menace has to some degree
affected more than half of the country's 75 districts. In the mid-western
hills, traditionally deprived and hostile to Kathmandu, six districts are
under virtual rebel control apart from the administrative centres. The
Maoists are reported to have set up a "people's court" and begun projects to
build footpaths and provide farming advice to local people but, for all their
Robin Hood tactics, rule in part by terror. Human rights groups have
documented ample cases of village girls kidnapped and used as sex slaves.
The rebels are funded and armed principally by theft and extortion from
businessmen, teachers and police. The police have damaged their own cause by
retaliating brutally in places, killing, beating and illegally detaining
suspected Maoists.
Kapil Shrestha, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, said: "The
police have committed more human rights offences than the Maoists. The
government doesn't know how to handle it. Either they over-react or they
don't react. They are scared and they lack moral courage."
Despite pledges by Prachanda to the contrary, tourists have become targets,
though none has been physically hurt. At Easter, 20 armed men purporting to
be Maoists burst into a dining room of the Tiger Mountain Resort in Pokhara
and demanded the staff's wages, which had been delivered earlier that day.
British and other tourists were given a political lecture and asked to
contribute.
One rafting and one trekking group from Britain have been robbed since, and
the British embassy now advises travellers to check if their route is safe
and to avoid trekking alone. An embassy spokesman said: "It is sometimes hard
to tell if robbers are Maoists or not. The rebels may have just given other
people ideas. It is, after all, a very poor country."
About 70 per cent of Nepal's 24 million people live below the poverty line.
Life expectancy, despite two decades of foreign aid, struggles to rise above
the mid-50s. Politicians, at least once they are out of power, admit that
democracy has raised expectations but failed to deliver jobs, roads outside
the Kathmandu valley or wealth.
Sher Bahadur Deuba, a former prime minister said: "These people have been
neglected for 30 years. They have never been brought into the mainstream and
now we are paying the price. The army is the last resort. We have to address
poverty, unemployment and start a dialogue."
------------------
Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.
Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
Khukuri FAQ
Himalayan Imports Archives (18,000+ posts)
===========================================
GUERILLA's killed 14 policemen and injured 40 others in a night attack on the
Police Station in the Himalayan Village of Dunai.
At 2am, after an hour of gunfire and exploding bombs, a sopkesman for the
rebels said: "We are the Lal Sena [Red Army]. Our enemies are the police and
the government. All civilians should stay in their homes."
One villager, Rama Sahai, whose home faces the police station, remembers
being pinned to her floor in terror with her three children as bullets flew
through their upper storey shutters and over their heads. She said: "The
children couldn't speak they were so frightened. When the firing began again
I went unconscious." She had never heard a gun fired before.
The police were hopelessly outnumbered, 125 men armed only with antiquated
.303 rifles of British origin facing more than 700 insurgents equipped with
automatic weapons, petrol bombs and home-made pipe bombs. Women and children
supplied the front with ammunition and a band of female rebels was assigned
the risk-free task of looting the Nepal Bank of £600,000.
The guerrillas, some in combat fatigues with red stars on their caps, others
in woollen rags and flip-flops, ringed the police compound's perimeter dry
stone wall shoulder to shoulder.
Their victims defended themselves desperately from wooden window frames and
doorways, sending bullets pinging around the grey stone houses and narrow
alleys.
Earlier this week, hired hands sifted through the collapsed and scorched
remains of the prison, district government headquarters and half a dozen
buildings in the police compound, throwing mangled typewriters and
bullet-riddled filing cabinets on to a scrapheap. Most of the shops were
shuttered and the hospital had closed after doctors and all government
personnel were moved out.
The assault 10 days ago was the most audacious and deadly in a four-year-old
insurgency by the Maoist People's Army that has largely escaped international
attention but has claimed more than 2,000 lives and is shattering Nepal's
tranquil, spiritual image. Maoists have now started robbing travellers,
menacing the vital tourist industry as well as the multi-party democracy
conceded by King Birendra after a popular uprising 10 years ago.
The Old Etonian monarch, confronted by a ruthless enemy that wants to place a
red flag on the roof of the world, is likely soon to have to decide whether
or not to send in the army, thereby declaring a virtual civil war.
The two most prominent Maoist leaders are well educated veterans of the
democracy movement. Sympathisers say they broke away from a non-violent
far-Left party to initiate the armed struggle in disgust with the bickering
and venal political elite that has brought a change of prime minister every
year since 1990. On the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) website, the
general secretary and military commander Kamal Dahal Prachanda, a former
teacher, parades anachronistic revolutionary ideals and idioms.
But on the ground, the People's Army cadres preach primitive nationalism and
employ often brutal, very un-Nepalese methods. A diplomat in Kathmandu said:
"It is a very peaceful and tolerant society and, despite their reputation as
good warriors, the Nepalese have very rarely taken those characteristics
outside conventional warfare."
Among 34 violent incidents reported in August, Maoists murdered a teacher on
his way to school, chopped off the leg of a suspected police informer and for
the first time took their terror to the capital, hurling three petrol bombs
on one afternoon at police and government targets.
Head teachers have reported receiving death threats if their schools continue
to sing the royalist national anthem or teach Sanskrit, which is seen as a
reactionary influence of the imposing nuclear neighbour, India. With advice
and training from Peru's Shining Path and Indian militant communist groups,
the rebels' armed force has grown to between 2,000 and 5,000. About half of
their fighters are teenagers, drawn from the same Magar and Tamang ethnic
groups recruited for the Gurkhas in various regions.
They are tough, obedient and durable, and operate in dizzying terrain ideal
for guerrilla combat against a police force trained to deal with unarmed
street demonstrators and thieves. Dunai, the headquarters of Dolpa district,
bordering Tibet, lies on an ancient caravan route at the end of an arduous
three-hour walk from the 6,000ft-high gravel runway of Juphal airport. The
dead and wounded had to be flown out by helicopter.
The government has estimated that the Maoist menace has to some degree
affected more than half of the country's 75 districts. In the mid-western
hills, traditionally deprived and hostile to Kathmandu, six districts are
under virtual rebel control apart from the administrative centres. The
Maoists are reported to have set up a "people's court" and begun projects to
build footpaths and provide farming advice to local people but, for all their
Robin Hood tactics, rule in part by terror. Human rights groups have
documented ample cases of village girls kidnapped and used as sex slaves.
The rebels are funded and armed principally by theft and extortion from
businessmen, teachers and police. The police have damaged their own cause by
retaliating brutally in places, killing, beating and illegally detaining
suspected Maoists.
Kapil Shrestha, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, said: "The
police have committed more human rights offences than the Maoists. The
government doesn't know how to handle it. Either they over-react or they
don't react. They are scared and they lack moral courage."
Despite pledges by Prachanda to the contrary, tourists have become targets,
though none has been physically hurt. At Easter, 20 armed men purporting to
be Maoists burst into a dining room of the Tiger Mountain Resort in Pokhara
and demanded the staff's wages, which had been delivered earlier that day.
British and other tourists were given a political lecture and asked to
contribute.
One rafting and one trekking group from Britain have been robbed since, and
the British embassy now advises travellers to check if their route is safe
and to avoid trekking alone. An embassy spokesman said: "It is sometimes hard
to tell if robbers are Maoists or not. The rebels may have just given other
people ideas. It is, after all, a very poor country."
About 70 per cent of Nepal's 24 million people live below the poverty line.
Life expectancy, despite two decades of foreign aid, struggles to rise above
the mid-50s. Politicians, at least once they are out of power, admit that
democracy has raised expectations but failed to deliver jobs, roads outside
the Kathmandu valley or wealth.
Sher Bahadur Deuba, a former prime minister said: "These people have been
neglected for 30 years. They have never been brought into the mainstream and
now we are paying the price. The army is the last resort. We have to address
poverty, unemployment and start a dialogue."
------------------
Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.
Uncle Bill
Himalayan Imports Website
Khukuri FAQ
Himalayan Imports Archives (18,000+ posts)
