Revolution at the top of the world

Pop quiz: Find a globe and put your finger on Kathmandu. Nope, it’s not in Africa (nice guess though). Try a little further east, up there sandwiched between India and China. Kathmandu lies in the shadow of the Himalayas, and is the capital of Nepal. Known primarily as the gateway to Everest and a favorite destination for mountain climbers, jet setters and adventure trekkers, Nepal can now lay claim to another honor--highest elevation for an active communist insurgency.

Since 1996, Nepal has been wracked by a guerrilla war pitting rebels from the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) against the police and the army supporting King Gyanendra. In August, the guerrillas called off a cease-fire that had been in force for 7 months. Since then, they have reemerged from the rugged western districts of Nepal to challenge the government right in the streets of the capital. Just yesterday, security troops reportedly killed several guerrillas during gunfights in Kathmandu.

Although the communist forces are unlikely to seize the capital anytime soon, their numbers and effectiveness are high. With around 8,000 hard core fighters, and another 20,000 to 40,000 supporters in the militia, the rebels have taken control of approximately 40 percent of the country--mostly in the isolated mountain valleys. With 68,000 soldiers in the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) and 57,000 policeman, the government has a numerical edge but they are stretched thin. The guerrillas are also surprisingly well armed--having smuggled in weapons from India--and adept at military tactics.

No wonder. The radicals in Nepal aren’t just your ordinary post-Cold War communists, moping around in Che Guevarra T-shirts complaining about McDonalds and corporate exploitation. The CPN makes a point of adding an “M” to its name, to stand for “Maoist”. They also make a point of being particularly ruthless and regularly routing government forces. There’s a good chance they could overthrow Nepal’s constitutional monarchy and democratic multiparty system.

Dedicated to the people’s war theories of Mao Tse-Tung in the 1930s, Maoists in the 21st century think of themselves as the only true Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries and see other communists (including China’s brand of boardroom communists) as sellouts and wimps. They believe stopping or reversing “capitalist/imperialist dominated” modernization and are prepared to take radical measures against it.

It was the Maoist Khmer-Rouge that turned Cambodia into a killing field, and Peru’s bloody Sendero Luminoso guerrillas are avowed Maoists. In Nepal, forces of the CPN(M) have engaged in kidnapping, torture, mutilations, assassinations and other terror tactics. They routinely intimidate villagers into supporting them and force government officials and supporters to flee. Led by the shadowy “Comrade Pachanda”, their rhetoric comes from an era we hardly understand anymore. "We want to turn this beautiful Himalayan country into an invincible red fort and a shining trench of world proletariat revolution. We are sure we will hoist the hammer and sickle atop Mount Everest one day."

Besides just putting a damper on the international mountain-climbing industry, a Maoist takeover of Nepal could have serious ramifications for the strategic relationship between India and China. China has a long-standing problem of its own dealing with the restive population of Tibet, and sees Nepal as the backdoor into or out of that troubled province. About 30,000 Tibetans live in Nepal, and can take advantage of its porous borders. For its part, India also has radical Maoist groups that sympathize and support Nepal’s rebels, and fears that revolution could spill into India’s northern areas. If either China or India intervened in Nepal in force, the other would likely to take some kind of military action in response. Such a confrontation between nuclear armed, regional superpowers--which fought a border war against each other in 1962--would be a scary thing.

Note to self: Better reconsider that trip to Everest.

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