The Maoists have attacked the USD 20 million Jhimruk hydroelectric project as well as other mini hydro power stations, telecommunications repeater stations and sub-stations, airstrips in remote districts, school buildings, water supply schemes, and road construction, irrigation and bridge building projects, bringing virtually all developmental works in rural areas to a complete halt. The NPC puts the rehabilitation costs of damaged infrastructure alone at over USD 400 million.
In the absence of the restoration, strengthening and extension of the permanent institutions of governance, including the critical institution for the maintenance of law and order - the police station - no permanent resolution to the problem of terrorism in Nepal is even possible. Nepal's hinterland has to be recovered through governance - or will be lost, first to anarchy, and eventually to a possible Maoist consolidation.
Regrettably, there is little evidence that such a recovery is even possible. It is ironic that, while there appears to be a strong and general consensus on 'negotiating a solution' with the Maoists, the fractious democratic leadership of the country and an obtuse Palace do not find it possible to arrive at a 'negotiated solution' to their own aimless and suicidal political disputes. But, absent a stable political order in Kathmandu, and a consensus, not only on how to deal with the Maoists, but more significantly on how to restore (indeed, in many neglected areas, how to create) the institutions of effective civil governance across the expanse of the whole country, no progress is even conceivable.
The Palace-led Government has now created a Unified Command structure to coordinate the counter-terrorism activities of all state security forces - the Army, the Police and the newly created Armed Police. A dubious decision has also been taken to arm civilians to directly take on the Maoists - provoking fears, either of a leakage of such arms to the Maoists themselves, or of fratricidal civil wars and the emergence of 'warlordism' in remote areas.
It is an unfortunate truth that violence is, and will long remain, a necessary response to the depredations of terrorists and insurgents in many parts of the world, and Nepal is no exception. To the extent, however, that violence exhausts the sum of the state's responses, it will prove futile, even counterproductive. The objective of the state's use of force must be the restoration of lawful governance, not scoring a higher 'kill rate' than non-state hostiles. On both sides of the present conflict in Nepal, regrettably, a near exclusive belief in the efficacy of great slaughters as instruments of social transformation appears to persist. As long as this remains the case, Nepal can only look towards a bloody and terrifying future.