AI
Monday, August 23, 2004 12:52:31 AM
Nepal's Maoist revolt may be spilling into India
If there are rebel Maoists in Nepal China is not far behind. Bad situation for Nepal and India.
-Am
Reuters ^ / 12 Aug 2004 / Sanjeev Miglani
PATNA, India, Aug 12 (Reuters) - A raid on an Indian police post by Nepal's Maoist rebels and arrests of their comrades on Indian soil could be indications that a bloody revolt in that country could be spilling over.
A group of armed men, including some Nepalis, overran the post and took away weapons last month in thick forests in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, which shares a long border with Nepal, the head of a special Indian police unit said.
The attack on the police post came shortly after 12 Maoists, including some middle-level operatives, were arrested from a house in Patna, Bihar's capital, along with a huge haul of explosives, ammunition and Marxist literature.
"This is the first organised attack of its kind near the border and the most serious threat ever," said Deputy Inspector General Vinay Kumar Singh, the head of a special unit whose task is to put down left-wing extremism in Bihar.
"We are simply not prepared to face the Maoists of Nepal," he told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.
More than 10,000 people have died in Nepal since the rebels began a campaign in 1996 to replace the constitutional monarchy with communist rule.
Bihar, one of India's poorest and most lawless states, has its own clutch of outlawed radical-left guerrilla groups who have helped the Nepali rebels with training, shelter, medical facilities and arms.
But the Nepali Marxists are not known to have carried out strikes on Indian soil before. "The day they start full scale operations into Indian territory, we will find ourselves very inadequate," said Singh.
"We don't have enough police stations, we don't have enough weapons to tackle them."
Analysts have long warned that an unstable Nepal, sandwiched between India and China, would turn into a security nightmare for both Asian giants.
With the Maoists controlling a vast swathe of mountainous Nepal, there is also concern that the desperately poor nation could become a haven for international militant groups.
Nepal and India share a long and open border which thousands of people cross each day. Kathmandu has repeatedly urged New Delhi to use its greater resources to increase surveillance along the border and to crack down on rebel hideouts.
Singh said the Maoists caught in Patna told their landlord they were students. The landlord later said he had little reason to doubt them because Nepalis are represented in almost every walk of life in India, including the military and the police.
Since 2001, police in Bihar have arrested 42 Nepali Maoists including some who had come for treatment of wounds sustained in the fighting in the mountain kingdom. Others made the trip to deepen ties with Indian left-wing groups, including in far-off southern India.
Singh said guerrilla leaders in Nepal and India had often spoken of a "red corridor", stretching from the Himalayan kingdom to large swathes of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, which are all battling leftist extremists.
"We all laughed 10 years ago at the red corridor. Nobody is laughing anymore," he said.
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:r5u4VGb6zsEJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1190179/posts+ne....
Background:
China and India Face Off in Nepal
Thursday, July 21, 2001
JAKARTA -- Only a present day William Shakespeare could imagine the real life tragedy in Nepal when the Crown Prince eliminated an entire line of a royal dynasty that had ruled that land for more than 200 years.
In killing his father, the King, his mother, the Queen, his brother and sisters, an uncle - and then himself - the Crown Prince did more than recreate the most dramatic themes of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. He also plunged Nepal into its most serious crisis ever - one that can affect the rest of this volatile region.
Before last month, Nepal was known in the West primarily for its small size and remoteness. But in geostrategic terms it is neither small nor remote. The Himalayan kingdom is sandwiched between the world's two most populous countries - China and India. Nepal's 25 million people are divided among more than a dozen ethnic groups that speak 48 languages and dialects. And although the King relinquished most of his powers in 1990 in favor of becoming a constitutional monarch with a parliamentary democracy, the monarchy has been the glue that held the country together. Indeed, in the 11 years of constant political party infighting, there have been eleven governments and six prime ministers.
All of this turmoil has been an open invitation for China - and its surrogate, Pakistan, to try and extend their influence both in Nepal and into India's turbulent northeastern states.
The hijacking of an Indian passenger plane taking off from Katmandu by Islamabad-backed Kashmiri rebels two years ago, the arrest of a Pakistan diplomat allegedly planning to sell explosives to Nepalese insurgents, and the emergence of Nepal as the passage to India for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence furnishes more than enough of a security reason for New Delhi not to take its ties with the kingdom for granted.
India is by far Nepal's most important economic, military and political ally. But Delhi expects complete loyalty in this unequal partnership, especially vis-à-vis China. When Nepal talked of procuring Chinese anti-aircraft guns in 1988, for instance, India responded by closing its markets to Nepal, increasing the landlocked kingdom's economic isolation.
Compounding its recent problems, and virtually unnoticed by the outside world, Nepal has been subjected for the past five years to a Maoist guerrilla insurgency spreading to most rural districts. The insurgency's intellectual godfather boasts that like Mao Zedong's guerrillas, once they control the countryside, the capital, Katmandu, will fall and, "We will hoist the hammer-and-sickle red flag atop Mount Everest." Sadly, with the death of most of the royal family, and the accession of a new king who may use the army to restore law and order, the nation may find itself in a full-scale civil war.
The oxygen feeding Nepal's instability is its abject poverty. Fully half of the population is unemployed and living below the poverty line. That is Nepal's real tragedy. The country could be rich. It has a crucial natural resource, water. Hundreds of rivers gushing south between the Himalayas have massive hydroelectricity potential to serve all of its domestic needs and the growing demand from India and Bangladesh.
So why hasn't Nepal exploited this limitless, renewable source of energy? A fear of increasing dependence on India, its principal consumer, has been the prime concern.
But with Nepal and nearby Bhutan endowed with enormous water resources, India with its coal and Bangladesh with its natural gas, these four neighboring countries could develop a mixed energy system for all to benefit. And massive investment capital from the West, the World Bank and the IMF to build the dams and the hydroelectric plants would surely be forthcoming.
Whether concerned about economics or security, there is too much at stake not to bring peace and prosperity to the kingdom and transform a Shakespearean tragedy into a happy ending.
Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security and former chairman of American Premier, a mining and chemicals company. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
http://www.bens.org/sw_ar072101.html
If there are rebel Maoists in Nepal China is not far behind. Bad situation for Nepal and India.
-Am
Reuters ^ / 12 Aug 2004 / Sanjeev Miglani
PATNA, India, Aug 12 (Reuters) - A raid on an Indian police post by Nepal's Maoist rebels and arrests of their comrades on Indian soil could be indications that a bloody revolt in that country could be spilling over.
A group of armed men, including some Nepalis, overran the post and took away weapons last month in thick forests in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, which shares a long border with Nepal, the head of a special Indian police unit said.
The attack on the police post came shortly after 12 Maoists, including some middle-level operatives, were arrested from a house in Patna, Bihar's capital, along with a huge haul of explosives, ammunition and Marxist literature.
"This is the first organised attack of its kind near the border and the most serious threat ever," said Deputy Inspector General Vinay Kumar Singh, the head of a special unit whose task is to put down left-wing extremism in Bihar.
"We are simply not prepared to face the Maoists of Nepal," he told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.
More than 10,000 people have died in Nepal since the rebels began a campaign in 1996 to replace the constitutional monarchy with communist rule.
Bihar, one of India's poorest and most lawless states, has its own clutch of outlawed radical-left guerrilla groups who have helped the Nepali rebels with training, shelter, medical facilities and arms.
But the Nepali Marxists are not known to have carried out strikes on Indian soil before. "The day they start full scale operations into Indian territory, we will find ourselves very inadequate," said Singh.
"We don't have enough police stations, we don't have enough weapons to tackle them."
Analysts have long warned that an unstable Nepal, sandwiched between India and China, would turn into a security nightmare for both Asian giants.
With the Maoists controlling a vast swathe of mountainous Nepal, there is also concern that the desperately poor nation could become a haven for international militant groups.
Nepal and India share a long and open border which thousands of people cross each day. Kathmandu has repeatedly urged New Delhi to use its greater resources to increase surveillance along the border and to crack down on rebel hideouts.
Singh said the Maoists caught in Patna told their landlord they were students. The landlord later said he had little reason to doubt them because Nepalis are represented in almost every walk of life in India, including the military and the police.
Since 2001, police in Bihar have arrested 42 Nepali Maoists including some who had come for treatment of wounds sustained in the fighting in the mountain kingdom. Others made the trip to deepen ties with Indian left-wing groups, including in far-off southern India.
Singh said guerrilla leaders in Nepal and India had often spoken of a "red corridor", stretching from the Himalayan kingdom to large swathes of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, which are all battling leftist extremists.
"We all laughed 10 years ago at the red corridor. Nobody is laughing anymore," he said.
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:r5u4VGb6zsEJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1190179/posts+ne....
Background:
China and India Face Off in Nepal
Thursday, July 21, 2001
JAKARTA -- Only a present day William Shakespeare could imagine the real life tragedy in Nepal when the Crown Prince eliminated an entire line of a royal dynasty that had ruled that land for more than 200 years.
In killing his father, the King, his mother, the Queen, his brother and sisters, an uncle - and then himself - the Crown Prince did more than recreate the most dramatic themes of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. He also plunged Nepal into its most serious crisis ever - one that can affect the rest of this volatile region.
Before last month, Nepal was known in the West primarily for its small size and remoteness. But in geostrategic terms it is neither small nor remote. The Himalayan kingdom is sandwiched between the world's two most populous countries - China and India. Nepal's 25 million people are divided among more than a dozen ethnic groups that speak 48 languages and dialects. And although the King relinquished most of his powers in 1990 in favor of becoming a constitutional monarch with a parliamentary democracy, the monarchy has been the glue that held the country together. Indeed, in the 11 years of constant political party infighting, there have been eleven governments and six prime ministers.
All of this turmoil has been an open invitation for China - and its surrogate, Pakistan, to try and extend their influence both in Nepal and into India's turbulent northeastern states.
The hijacking of an Indian passenger plane taking off from Katmandu by Islamabad-backed Kashmiri rebels two years ago, the arrest of a Pakistan diplomat allegedly planning to sell explosives to Nepalese insurgents, and the emergence of Nepal as the passage to India for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence furnishes more than enough of a security reason for New Delhi not to take its ties with the kingdom for granted.
India is by far Nepal's most important economic, military and political ally. But Delhi expects complete loyalty in this unequal partnership, especially vis-à-vis China. When Nepal talked of procuring Chinese anti-aircraft guns in 1988, for instance, India responded by closing its markets to Nepal, increasing the landlocked kingdom's economic isolation.
Compounding its recent problems, and virtually unnoticed by the outside world, Nepal has been subjected for the past five years to a Maoist guerrilla insurgency spreading to most rural districts. The insurgency's intellectual godfather boasts that like Mao Zedong's guerrillas, once they control the countryside, the capital, Katmandu, will fall and, "We will hoist the hammer-and-sickle red flag atop Mount Everest." Sadly, with the death of most of the royal family, and the accession of a new king who may use the army to restore law and order, the nation may find itself in a full-scale civil war.
The oxygen feeding Nepal's instability is its abject poverty. Fully half of the population is unemployed and living below the poverty line. That is Nepal's real tragedy. The country could be rich. It has a crucial natural resource, water. Hundreds of rivers gushing south between the Himalayas have massive hydroelectricity potential to serve all of its domestic needs and the growing demand from India and Bangladesh.
So why hasn't Nepal exploited this limitless, renewable source of energy? A fear of increasing dependence on India, its principal consumer, has been the prime concern.
But with Nepal and nearby Bhutan endowed with enormous water resources, India with its coal and Bangladesh with its natural gas, these four neighboring countries could develop a mixed energy system for all to benefit. And massive investment capital from the West, the World Bank and the IMF to build the dams and the hydroelectric plants would surely be forthcoming.
Whether concerned about economics or security, there is too much at stake not to bring peace and prosperity to the kingdom and transform a Shakespearean tragedy into a happy ending.
Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security and former chairman of American Premier, a mining and chemicals company. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
http://www.bens.org/sw_ar072101.html
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