The Seduction Of Process

There is a deep, indeed desperate, reluctance among governments and interlocutors – including international mediators – to acknowledge certain persistent and pervasive patterns of deception that have marked the engagement of terrorist and insurgent organisations in ‘peace processes’. The obsession with daily details and the interpretation by ‘experts’ of every possible nuance of each new statement, agreement or act consumes all attention, even as the fundamentals – the essential equation of power between the conflicting parties – shifts subtly and steadily in favour of violent non-state actors. This is the seduction of process that is being played out in Nepal, where a new and substantive agreement between the ruling Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoists, arrived at on November 8, 2006, is now been celebrated by all, even as reports of the continuous, systematic and gross violation of the preceding three agreements (the twelve point and eight point agreements and the 25 point code of conduct continue to pour in from across the country.

The new agreement establishes a breathless timetable thatcreates the illusion of great and irreversible advances, with the objective ofholding elections, monitored by the UN, to the Constituent Assembly by mid-June2007. A unicameral Interim Legislature (Parliament) is to replace the existingHouse of Representatives and National Assembly by November 26, 2006, by whichdate an Interim Constitution would be promulgated. A ‘comprehensive peaceagreement’ between the SPA and the Maoists is to precede this, on November 16,2006. By November 21, all ‘Maoist combatants’ are to ‘gather into’designated camps, even as the Nepali Army is to be confined to barracks.According to the agreement, bar a small quantum of arms needed for ‘providingsecurity of the camp’, all Maoist weapons are to be put under a ‘single locksystem’ with the ‘concerned side’ keeping the key of the lock. The UNwould, however, monitor these stocks, and would install ‘a device with sirenas well as recording facility’ to ensure that these weapons are not accessed.The Nepali Army would also be permitted to retain a ‘similar quantity ofarms’ while its remaining arsenal would be similarly stored and sealed under asingle lock system, similarly monitored by the UN. The main camps of the Maoistsare to be established at Kailali, Surkhet, Rolpa, Palpa, Kavre, Sindhuli andIlam, with three smaller camps located on the periphery of each of these ‘maincamps’.

Under this benign dispensation, the remaining arrangement forthe installation of a 330 member Interim Legislature and for holding of thesubsequent elections to the Constituent Assembly are to be quickly completed.The Interim Legislature would have 209 members of the SPA and other parties thatare members of the present Legislature – but, in an audacious and undemocraticexception, explicitly excluding ‘those who opposed the people’s movement’;73 members ‘from the side of the Maoists’; and another 48 members from‘sister organisations, professional bodies, oppressed ethnic communities andregions and political personalities to be nominated ‘based onunderstanding’. The 73 Maoist seats alone will make them the second largestpresence in the Interim Legislature, just two short of the largest politicalformation – the Nepali Congress – at present. If they are able to secure asignificant majority of the 48 seats for ‘sister organisations’, etc., theywould directly control over a third of the Legislature.

In the interim, Pushpa Kamal Dahal @ Prachanda is poised tomake the momentous transition from terrorist to world statesman. Interestingly,a media sponsored event at Delhi on November 17-18, 2006, will bring him as aspeaker on the same platform as India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh,Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, and a galaxy of eminent others,including Jack Straw and Sonia Gandhi. In this, he appears to be following inthe footsteps of Yasser Arafat who strutted onto the world stage at the UN andeventually won himself a Nobel Prize for Peace, even as he continued to head aterrorist organisation – the al Fatah. Prachanda has, however, assured allconcerned that, "Once the peace accord is signed, we will honour every word ofit."

As with other powerful terrorist and insurgent groups in the South Asia region, who have engaged in ‘peace processes’ or ‘agreements’ withgovernments, prominently including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and the Taliban ‘elders’ in the Waziristan region of the Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), there is little evidence that the Maoists will honour the letter and spirit of their covenant with the SPA. Indeed, there is enormous and augmenting evidence that the Maoists will continue with their campaigns of extortion and intimidation, on the one hand, and the continuous project of social and political engineering to secure the outcome they seek, on the other, even as they capture increasing space and – crucially – legitimacy, through the ‘peace process’.

It is crucial to assess current Maoist postures – and indeed the ‘peace process’ itself – not only in terms of the daily violations of prior agreements and the ‘code of conduct’, their continuous campaigns of intimidation, extortion, coercion, even torture and selective murders, as well as recruitment and training of armed cadres, but also in terms of manifest intent and the prevailing equation of power in Nepal. There have, for instance, been at least 675 abductions by the Maoists since the peace agreement of April 24, 2006 (till October 8, 2006), and as many as 21 killings by their cadres. The Industrial Security Group, comprising representatives of the Embassies of France, Germany, India, UK, USA and the Delegation of the European Commission, on September 7, 2006, stated: "The ISG noted with concern the many reports of increased Maoist extortion and threats made to employees, employers and entrepreneurs engaged in commercial, industrial and tourism activities since the Government and Maoist cease-firs were announced" (Emphasis added).

First, it is necessary to note that this is not a group thathas been forced to the negotiating table; it is a group that has forced the government,concerned external powers, and international organisations to the negotiatingtable. The current peace process is a decision imposed by, not on, the Maoists.It is, moreover, a decision imposed through a continuous, decade-long campaignof extreme violence, and they retain, in full, the capacity for this violence.Indeed, this capacity underlies all aspects of their engagement with the stateand with external interlocutors.

It is significant that the power of the establishment inNepal has steadily been shrinking; by contrast, the Maoist power is just asconsistently augmenting, and there is much in the present agreement that willreinforce these trends. Crucially, the clauses relating to the confinement of‘combatants’ to camps, and of weapons under the ‘single lock system’,reinforces the asymmetry between the insurgent and state forces. It would demandthe most extraordinary naïveté to believe that the Maoists would, in fact,surrender the main body of their weaponry and declare the entire strength oftheir armed cadres. Indeed, in an organisation such as the Maoists, thedistinction between the ‘armed’ and the ‘political’ cadres is, at best,inchoate. Though a token quantum of arms and cadres will certainly be put underthe restraints of the camps and the ‘single lock system’, the bulk of theirforces will almost certainly be kept out of the camps, and much of their arsenalwill be salted away into caches across the country. In the meanwhile, theArmy’s forces and weaponry, far more easily verifiable, will certainly andeffectively be locked away.

More troubling is the fact that there is no evidence of theabandonment or dilution of the Maoist mass line. These, one must recall, are notideologies that are easily relinquished, and they unleash dynamics that are noteasily disrupted. Once released, they secure and sustain a momentum of theirown. Engagement in the ‘peace process’ is not an act of accommodation orabnegation on the part of the Maoist; it is integral to their strategy for theseizure of power, which remains the uncompromised objective of their complexmanoeuvres.

In this context, it is useful to note that Maoist forces havenow established a defining presence in Kathmandu itself, and even as Prachandawas negotiating ‘peace’, his armed cadres were circulating around Kathmandu,demanding that each home lodge and feed at least 10 Maoist cadres, as thousandsconverged to attend a scheduled public rally that was to be attended byPrachanda. There is, moreover, an enormous hiatus between what the Maoists aresaying in public and what they are projecting within the organisation. Sourcessuggest that the top leadership has told members of the Maoist ‘core group’that their engagement in the ‘peace process’ was tactical, and represented achange essentially of strategy, not of intent. It is against this backdrop thatPrachanda, Baburam Bhattarai and Ram Bahadur Thapa alias Badal, the outfit’shighest ranking leaders, have publicly stated that they would not join theInterim Government, and would continue to look for alternatives to form their‘own government’ that would allow them to implement their ‘progressive andrevolutionary’ agenda. There is a slew of statements by other Maoists leadersthat confirm the persistence of their ideological orientation and theircommitment to the idea of protracted war, and it is significant that theNepalese Maoists were represented in a meeting of Maoists from across South Asia(the Fourth Conference of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties andOrganization of South Asia, CCOMPOSA) held in August 2006, which reaffirmed thecommitment to "advance revolutions for the seizure of power by armed force".

Crucially, the UN ‘monitors’ have no capacity or force toensure compliance with the terms of the various agreements reached with theMaoists. As is the case with the Norwegian interlocutors, the most they would beable to do is to maintain continuously inflating lists of violations, and todeliver homilies on the necessity of peace. The US Ambassador to Nepal, JamesMoriarty has, of course, been among the few voices to speak sharply of continuedMaoist transgressions and the US Embassy at Kathmandu has strongly condemned theMaoist intimidation of American citizens and Embassy employees, warning therebel outfit of the ‘consequences of such acts of extortion and violence’.But there would be little that Moriarty – already under sustained criticismfrom all quarters for his ‘interference’ in Nepal’s ‘internal affairs’– can do, beyond huffing and puffing, in the face of continued Maoistviolations.

The Maoists have manoeuvred themselves to the centre of thedemocratic and political processes in Nepal, paralysed the Army, neutralized theKing; and they have done this without the slightest dilution in their owncapacities for violence, and with a significant expansion – including adominant presence in the Kathmandu Valley – in their capacities for massmobilization. A former Nepali civil servant, Ram Shanker Lal, articulates thedread that now envelops the country: "Even when out of government, they havebeen able to instil so much fear in us. I shudder to think what the Maoists willdo once they join the government."

The Maoist objective in Nepal is not the sharing of power. Itis the seizure of power. This is the reality that will crystallize over thecoming months and years.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for ConflictManagement. Courtesy, South Asia Intelligence Review of the South AsiaTerrorism Portal.