NEPAL’S MAOISTS: PURISTS OR PRAGMATISTS? Asia Report N°132 – 18 May 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................... i I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 II. THE CHANGED MAOISTS......................................................................................... 2 A. THEIR STRATEGIC WEAKNESSES...........................................................................................2 B. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR NEW LINE ................................................................................3 1. Bhattarai’s battle for change.......................................................................................4 2. A messy U-turn..........................................................................................................5 3. Teething troubles .......................................................................................................5 C. THEIR CHANGED AGENDAS ..................................................................................................6 D. RESHAPING RELATIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD...................................................................7 III. CRITICAL COMRADES .............................................................................................. 8 A. INTERNATIONAL ALLIES ........................................................................................................8 B. IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES..................................................................................................9 C. THE ALLIES’ OBJECTIONS ...................................................................................................10 1. On strategy...............................................................................................................10 2. On tactics..................................................................................................................11 3. Conflict or compromise? .........................................................................................11 IV. THE END OF PEOPLE’S WAR?............................................................................... 12 A. THE BALANCE SHEET .........................................................................................................12 1. Gains........................................................................................................................12 2. But no revolution .....................................................................................................13 B. NEW ROADMAP(S) ..............................................................................................................14 C. A PHASED REVOLUTION .....................................................................................................15 D. LEADERS OF THE RADICAL LEFT? .......................................................................................16 V. COOPERATION, CONTENTION AND CONFRONTATION .............................. 17 A. THE MAOISTS ON THE THRESHOLD OF RESPECTABILITY .....................................................17 B. A UNITED LEFT?.................................................................................................................18 C. TRANSITIONAL TENSIONS ...................................................................................................19 D. CLASHES TO COME .............................................................................................................20 E. PLAN B ...............................................................................................................................23 VI. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 24 APPENDICES A. MAP OF NEPAL ...................................................................................................................25 B. GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS ..................................................................................................26 C. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP .......................................................................27 D. CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFINGS ON ASIA...............................................................28 E. CRISIS GROUP BOARD MEMBERS........................................................................................30 Asia Report N°132 18 May 2007 NEPAL’S MAOISTS: PURISTS OR PRAGMATISTS? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Nepal’s Maoists have changed their strategy and tactics They think their Nepali comrades have betrayed but not yet their goals. In 1996 they launched a fundamental principles and thrown away the practical “people’s war” to establish a communist republic but ten advantages they had secured through their armed struggle. years later ended it by accepting multiparty democracy; their armed struggle targeted the parliamentary For Nepal’s Maoists, however, the balance sheet at the system but they are now working alongside their end of ten years of “people’s war” is more complex. former enemies, the mainstream parties, in an interim They believe they have secured some lasting legislature and coalition government. Their commitment advantages, from their own dramatic rise to influence to pluralistic politics and society is far from definitive, (with a support base and military force hardly and their future course will depend on both internal and imaginable in 1996) to their reshaping of the national external factors. While they have signed up to a political agenda (promoting formerly taboo causes such peaceful, multiparty transition, they continue to hone as republicanism and federalism). But the course of the alternative plans for more revolutionary change. war persuaded most of their leadership that they could not go it alone and would have to be more flexible if Maoist strategy is shaped by a tension between purity they were to build on these gains. and pragmatism. Although they stick to certain established principles, they have long been willing to The peace process has forced practical and theoretical shift course if they identify strategic weaknesses. Their rethinking. Leaders have tried to present a more moderate changed approach was demanded by recognition of image as they balance complex equations of domestic and three critical flaws in their original plan: (i) they international support and opposition. Maoist ministers concluded their belief in military victory had been have to cooperate with colleagues from other parties and misplaced; (ii) they acknowledged they had misread the work with the bureaucracy even as they plan a possible likelihood of determined international opposition; and insurrection and plot to isolate “regressive” opponents. (iii) they woke up to the failures that caused the collapse Ideologically, they define the peace process as a transitional of twentieth-century communist regimes. phase in which they can destroy the “old regime” and restructure the state. They justify this by saying their Despite having an authoritarian outlook, the Maoists acceptance of a bourgeois “democratic republic” is only a maintained a culture of debate within their party; key issues stepping stone on the way to a true “people’s republic”. have been widely discussed and hotly contested. From the Leaders argue that they can create a new form of “peaceful end of the 1990s, they have moved gradually toward a revolution” that is true to their communist aims but reflects more moderate stance. They changed positions in the reality of Nepal’s politics. acknowledging the 1990 democracy movement as a success (they had earlier characterised it as a “betrayal”), It is tempting to brand the Maoists as either rigid radicals in abandoning the immediate goal of a Mao-style or unprincipled opportunists but neither characterisation “new democracy” and, in November 2005, by aligning explains the whole picture. Their threats to revert to mass themselves with the mainstream parties in favour of insurrection satisfy traditionalists in their own movement multiparty democracy. and cannot be ignored. But leaders who have fought hard to forge a new approach will be loath to turn their The Maoists have cultivated formerly hostile forces, such backs on the hard-won advantages they have secured as the Indian government and the staunchly anti-Maoist through compromise. They know they face internal Communist Party of India (Marxist), to the extent of opposition but believe they can hold the line as long as alienating their foreign allies. Supporters such as the the peace process maintains momentum and allows Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and Indian them to achieve some of their headline goals. Maoists had backed their insurgency but have been vocally critical of the compromises made in the peace process. Nepals’s Maoists: Purists or Pragmatists? Crisis Group Asia Report N°132, 18 May 2007 Page ii Their likely behaviour as the process moves forward, therefore, will depend upon the role of other political actors as much as their own decisions. If the mainstream parties keep up a strong commitment to the constituent assembly process, the Maoists will find it hard to back out. If this route is blocked, the Maoists may find their effort at controlled rebellion slipping into renewed conflict beyond their leaders’ control. If this were to happen, the Maoists themselves would be big losers. But so would the democratic parties and,