The King's Folly

Nepal's slide into chaos will be enormously accelerated by king Gyanendra'sdismissal of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's government on February 1, 2005.The move was justified on the tenuous grounds of Deuba's failure to secure adialogue with the Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist rebels in the country, aswell as the Prime Minister's apparent inability to organize elections -conditionalities that would have been impossible for any regime to secure underpresent circumstances.

The fact is, the king simply lost patience and grasped absolute power in thecountry on impulse, with little evidence of a plan.

There has, of course, been a crescendo of international protests on the'stifling of democracy' in Nepal, but the morality or otherwise of the king'smove is not the primary consideration here. For one thing, democracy in Nepalhad been 'stifled' quite some time ago, and the puppet regimes that have beencharged with running the country since the May 2002 dissolution of Parliamenthave had very feeble links with representative government. 

For another, even among the king's most voluble critics most would concedethat, eventually, in the realpolitik of the international order, purelypragmatic considerations will prevail in dealings with the new dispensation atKathmandu. It is, however, on the power and capacities of the new order that theking has established that the efficacy of his moves must finally be judged, andit is on this account that the most significant reservations arise.

Regrettably, far from enhancing the capacities of the state at this criticaljuncture, the 'palace coup' will, in fact, severely circumscribe the range ofpolicy options available to the king and will undermine the state'scapabilities. This is despite the temporary illusion of strength created by theconcentration of all executive power in the palace, the declaration of anEmergency, the detention - in prison or under house arrest - of almost theentire top political leadership of the various constitutional parties in thecountry, total Press censorship and the arrest of some prominent Press personswho protested the king's move, as well as some crude intimidatory tacticsagainst the people of Kathmandu by the Army.

By his precipitate action, the king has lost all constituencies of supportwithin Nepal, except the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA), a small band of conservativeloyalists and a handful of opportunists. He has, moreover, at least momentarilyalienated the various countries - most prominently India, USA and UK - as wellas the many international agencies who had committed extraordinary resources andsupport to Nepal over the past traumatic years, and whose continued support willremain critical, not only in the war against the Maoists, but to the verysurvival of the regime at Kathmandu. At least some of these entities will notfind it possible to reconcile their proclaimed positions and postures with aresumption of aid to the new regime - and the regime's conduct may make itparticularly difficult for others to sustain support.

Essentially, it would appear, that the king's strategy over the coming monthswill lean inordinately on heavy-handed repression to 'restore order' in thecountry. In this, the risks of failure are extraordinary. For one thing, thearmed forces available to Kathmandu are far from sufficient to manage the scaleand spread of the insurgency in Nepal, and these forces have, in fact, beenoperationally diminished as a result of the withdrawal of significant numbers toKathmandu for the protection and management of the capital.  

The 4,000 troops and 5,100 police personnel permanently stationed atKathmandu would certainly be inadequate to retain a semblance of order in thiscity of three million in the present circumstances, and, while specific numbersare not available, reports suggest that this Force has been substantiallyaugmented by a withdrawal of troops from other parts of the country. As troopsmass in Kathmandu, the rest of the country would become the more unstable, themore vulnerable to Maoist consolidation, and Kathmandu itself will become themore susceptible to 'encirclement' by the rebels.

Indeed, Kathmandu's vulnerabilities have been demonstrated again and again byrepeated boycotts and blockades which have effectively choked its transportlifelines for days at end. And while the saturation of forces and the shock ofthe Royalist takeover may have resulted in a measure of immediatedisorientation, Kathmandu's susceptibility to direct militant action is alsosignificant. 

Indeed, after the collapse of the ceasefire on August 27, 2003, and tillDecember 31, 2004, the 'fortified' Kathmandu Valley has topped the list forincidents of bomb blasts, with at least 68 explosions registered, including 55in Kathmandu, nine in Bhaktapur and four in the Lalitpur area. Though totalfatalities in these incidents have been low - the insurgents have killed 11Security Force personnel and 8 civilians - their disruptive and demoralizingimpact has been significant. The Maoists have also established a 'Special TaskForce' with six to seven 'waves' or groups, each comprising 12 to 24sharpshooters, to operate in and around the Valley. The potential for asustained campaign of harassment and terror in Kathmandu, consequently, issignificant.

With an estimated strength of just 80,000 soldiers in the RNA, 17,000 personnelin the newly raised Armed Police Force (APF) and a poorly equipped Police Forcecomprising 47,000 men, Nepal simply does not have the numbers to contain aninsurgency of the magnitude of the Maoist movement, in a population of nearly 27million people, with every one of its 75 districts currently afflicted. 

The Maoists have a current estimated strength of between 8,000 to 10,000well-armed and trained 'regulars' and an additional 25,000 (on conservativeestimates) 'militia' armed with relatively primitive weapons, such as pipe gunsand crude bombs. These are backed up by a substantial number of 'sympathisers'who can, under certain circumstances, be mobilised - voluntarily or coercively -for violent action. The current strength of 144,000 men in all state forcescannot even provide a fraction of a minimally acceptable counter-insurgencyForce ratio, which would have to exceed at least 1:10, and arrives at desirable(though far from optimal) levels at 1:20. Indeed, even such ratios may not allowthe state forces to dominate the entire countryside, given the nature of theterrain - which overwhelmingly favours guerrilla and irregular forces - inNepal.

The very inadequacy of forces implies, essentially, that a strategy ofrepression would have to depend overwhelmingly on relatively indiscriminateviolence in 'target areas' deemed to be 'Maoist infested'. Irrespective of thebrutality of such operations, however, the state's forces would not be able toestablish a permanent presence or control over the country's sprawlinghinterland - there simply are not enough 'boots on the ground'. Indeed, theMaoists themselves would not be particularly averse to such 'statebrutality'. 

It is useful to recall that it was precisely at the time of the most brutalphase of its military campaign against the rebels - after the collapse of theceasefire in August 2003 - that Kathmandu lost control of its territories at themost rapid rate. Given this record, the possibility that the Maoists may, infact, actively seek to provoke indiscriminate state violence, cannot be ruledout. This would feed their ranks and may, eventually, so sicken the RNA'ssoldiery that they would begin to ask themselves whether such a king and such aregime, which commands them to fight and slaughter their own countrymen, isworth fighting for. 

It is this outcome, and not some dramatic military confrontation at the gatesof Kathmandu, that the Maoists will seek to engineer with a combination ofdemonstrations, disruptive activities, blockades and targeted violence. It isuseful to note that the RNA and the APF recruit from the same villages andcommunities that have been, and will continue to be, targeted in thecounter-insurgency campaign and, though no numbers are currently available,there has been a steady trickle of desertions from these forces since the Armywas drawn into operations after the Dang attack (in November 2001).

Worse, Gyanendra is a far from popular king, and whatever the truth may be, thetaint of suspicion of his involvement in the palace massacre of June 2001 hasnever been entirely removed from the collective mind of the people of Nepal. Hehas, moreover, a particularly unpopular son in Paras, and the Prince's misdeedshave filled the capital with sordid rumours. 

While Kathmandu is currently being held down with sheer force, and while thememory of the incompetence of the fractious democratic parties is presentlyfresh in the public mind, it will not take much before people begin speaking ofthe 'better times' under the democratic leadership. Indeed, this is the criticalflaw in the king's strategy - he has removed the buffer between the palace andthe people. Henceforth, while all credit for improbable successes would no doubtflow directly to him, so, indeed, would all blame for failure and governmentalincapacity in every sphere.

This process has already begun. The Deuba government was dismissed for failureto open negotiations with the Maoists, and the new dispensation immediatelydeclared that, with the king wielding executive authority "it would beeasier for the rebels to come for peace talks. It is what they have beenwanting." But the rebels have rejected these overtures outright, statingthat "The king has closed the door to any possibility of talks." TheMaoist 'chief', Pushpa Kamal Dahal @ 'Prachanda', has also called on "allpro-people forces" to unite against the king's dismissal of the Deuba governmentand the imposition of the Emergency.

There are also indications that the most of the fractious Constitutional partieshave now been, in some measure, united against the king. Most of the leadershipthat is not already under detention has gone underground, and some are believedto have crossed over into India. The actual strength and capacities of thismovement will only be discovered over time, but any such moves can only make theking's situation more untenable.

External players - particularly India, the US and UK - cannot be indifferent tothese various considerations or to objective calculations of the probablesuccess or failure of the king's current enterprise. In this, of course, the kinghas also sought to force their hand by playing up traditional geopoliticalrivalries - and there have been rather obvious overtures in the past few days toboth China and (particularly for India's benefit) Pakistan. But here, the kingmay well have overplayed his hand. 

The delusions of the 'absolute power' of the monarch notwithstanding, thetruth is, Kathmandu has always been, and remains, a weak and immensely dependentcentre of power. Those who are acquainted with the history of Nepal's monarchyover the past half century, particularly in the early 1960s and the late 1980s,will be aware of how susceptible the king would be to external, especiallyIndian, pressure.

There may still be some scope for the international community, particularly thecountries aiding Kathmandu, to try to convince king Gyanendra that he has made agross miscalculation, and that the possibilities of the long-term survival ofNepal's beleaguered monarchy are greatest under a stable Constitutional order,which can still be restored through immediate correctives that would address theconsequences of his present and acute lapse of judgement.

It is, nevertheless, also time, now, for India and the international community,to begin imagining and assessing the possibilities and character of thesuccessor state at Kathmandu, and containing the possibility of Nepal's spiralinto chaos in case the king is led to his own downfall by continued lapses ofjudgement. Such a process would require envisaging radical options, includingthe reactivation of effective backchannel processes to work out a stable andcomparatively democratic solution with the Maoists and the Constitutionalpolitical parties. A number of alternative scenarios need to be projected, andat least some of these may be 'unorthodox' and may involve support to radicalalternative structures of power in the country.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for ConflictManagement. P.G. Rajamohan is Research Associate, Institute for ConflictManagementCourtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South AsiaTerrorism Portal