www.nepalitimes.com #176 26 December 2003 - 1 January 2004 16 pages Rs 25 This year was bloodier than last year. What will next year be like? JANUARY: After months of secret negotiations, a hit by the effect of SARS, China seals JUNE: Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand to the ceasefire, government restores terrorist NOVEMBER: The government sets up a 2003ceasefire is declared. The government withdraws border. A Himalmedia poll on Nepali new year resigns, setting off a scramble to replace him. 2004tag. Maoists begin urban assassination killing ‘unified command’ under the army and says it the terrorist label and bounty on capture of shows 70% of Nepalis think Maoist demands King Gyanendra asks parties to recommend senior army colonel in Kathmandu. will arm villagers to resist Maoists. Both Maoists. can be met by peaceful means and 20 candidate, but opts for Surya Bahadur Thapa SEPTEMBER: Nepal joins the WTO in Cancun. moves condemned by rights groups and FEBRUARY: Maoists organise mass meetings in percent would vote for them if they lay instead of Madhab Nepal. Parties close down Conflict escalates with heavy Maoist donors. Maoists use landmines to target various cities, including Kathmandu. Baburam down arms. 8,000 schools all over the country for a week. casualties. Maoists take attacks down to the security patrols with devastating effect. Bhattarai and Ram Bahadur Thapa make public MAY: Five parties launch first phase of JULY: In response to a Maoist demand, the tarai. Kathmandu-based ambassadors lean on Interpol once again issues red corner notice appearances for the first time. Government agitation to force the king to reverse his 4 government frees three rebel leaders to resume parties to patch up with king, they tone down against 11 Maoist leaders. Despite insurgency, forms negotiating team headed by Minister October move. Their demand: either restore peace talks. Agitating parties come up with an agitation. tourism rebounds. Narayan Singh Pun. parliament or form an all-party government. 18-point program aimed at curtailing royal OCTOBER: Under pressure from civil society DECEMBER: Five parties resume agitation, MARCH: First formal peace talks between the The United States lists Maoists as a terrorist powers. There are no signs of reconstruction Maoists declare a 9-day unilateral Dasai arrest of three student leaders angers government and Maoists begin in Kathmandu. organisation, prompting the rebels to harden and rehabilitation as the period of no war no ceasefire. Security forces continue operations. protestors. Government announces amnesty Despite the ceasefire, Maoist extortion and their anti-American stance. Nepal benefits peace drags on. The CIAA arrests former Nepali Congress and and rehabilitation for Maoists who surrender. threats continue throughout the country although from worldwide publicity at the Everest AUGUST: Children are declared a zone of peace. RPP ministers for corruption. Global Nepali National Human Rights Commission issues there aren’t any major clashes. Golden Jubilee celebrations. New records and Army kills 17 Maoists in Doramaba just as talks diaspora holds its first ever conference in list of more than 808 people disappeared APRIL: Tourism in the peak trekking season is traffic jams on the world’s highest mountain. are being held in Dang. Maoists declare an end Kathmandu. by both sides. As 2003 drawsBest to a close, and neither theworst palace and thecase parties, nor scenarios the army and the Maoists show signs of negotiating. What is in store for 2004? Best case scenario: Palace and the parties agree on a national government that will rise above vested interest to agree on a ceasefire, while working towards local elections. The Maoists could be persuaded to join the political mainstream and contest parliamentary elections in two years. Worst case scenario: The king and parties carry on as sworn enemies, pushing the parties to join the Maoists in a republican cause. The parties’ agitation merges with the insurgency and the country sinks further into anarchy, the insurgency takes on an ethnic edge, there is greater militarisation, more human rights violations and at least another decade of worthless conflict. Weekly Internet Poll # 116 Q. Is a military solution the only way to resolve Nepals insurgency? Total votes:1,494 Weekly Internet Poll # 117. To vote go to: www.nepalitimes.com Q. Now that their leaders have been released, should the students call off their agitation? 26 DECEMBER 2003 - 1 JANUARY 2004 2 EDITORIAL NEPALI TIMES #176 Nepali Times is published by Himalmedia Pvt Ltd, Chief Editor: Kunda Dixit STATE OF THE STATE by CK LAL Desk Editor: Trishna Gurung, Design: Kiran Maharjan Webmaster: Bhushan Shilpakar [email protected], www.nepalitimes.com Advertising: Sunaina Shah [email protected] Subscription: Anil Karki [email protected] Sales: Sudan Bista [email protected] Sanchaya Kosh Building, Block A-4th Floor, Lalitpur GPO Box 7251, Kathmandu, Nepal Tel: 01-5543333/ 5523845 Fax: 01-5521013 Printed at Jagadamba Press, Hattiban: 01-5547018/17 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Boom,○○○○○○○○○We live in the present gloom with the memories ofand our past, and doom undermine our future. T’S NEVER TOO LATE fter storming into the history of two into the single ruling family of Nepal. 1990 that made them what they are. I here are times these days when the sense of déjà vu is so acute it Nepal with the Kot Massacre, Jang Rai, Magar and Gurung youngsters The Maobadis draw their inspiration gets unbearable. The appearance on state television news of Prime Bahadur did three things. First, he paid with their lives in Flanders Field, from the China of 1960s, a period in Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa at the airport on Tuesday flanked by pre- acquired social legitimacy by forcing Mesopotamia and the Burma Front so their history that Chinese themselves are 1990 faces to warn protesters on the streets that he would tolerate all criticism intermarriages between the Shah clans that Nepals rulers would continue to trying hard to forget. except condemnation of the monarchy was straight out of another era. Awith their Kunwar soldiers. Second, he profit from their ties to the British. Had A society lives in the present, with TIt is when once self-evident truths have to be restated and enforced by reinforced it by either butchering or successive Rana cousins been less the memories of its past, without policemen dressed like ninjas that you know the polity has entered another age. The more things change in Nepal, the more they remain the same. exiling the competition. Third, he tyrannical, perhaps the bravery of Gorkha realising that it is undermining its own To be fair to the prime minister, this erstwhile warrior against ‘underground acquired political legitimacy from the East soldiers would have been much less future in the process. After successive extra-constitutional forces’ during the Panchayat period is still a bulwark India Company by offering the services of desperate. Nepali rulers got used to a years of stagnation, the government against the rise of the hardline right. Having been consistently centrist the Gorkha Army for activities like permanent war economy: living as if predicts that the economy will grow by throughout his career, he apparently sees familiar ghosts from 20 years ago crushing the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny for there was no tomorrow. over 4.3 percent, exceeding the lurking again in the corridors of power. which Karl Marx gave Jang the Lord Krishna says in the Gita that budgetary target set for this year. The The day after returning from his second SAARC tour, Thapa reversed the appellation British dog. people emulate what their superior World Bank reports that Kathmandus potentially disastrous decision to put three student union leaders behind bars. These shrewd moves served Jangs beings do, so the present generation of air is the dirtiest of all 17 Asian cities that That short-sighted move had carried all the hallmarks of a bygone era, and was proof to many of the ascendance of Panchayat-era throwbacks in extended clan for well over 150 years, Nepalis has also learnt to live for the day. it surveyed, perhaps proving the link Kathmandu. We get vertigo just watching them struggle to grab the steering even though his sons had to enjoy their Kathmandus rulers live their sepia colour between economic growth and wheel as the bus with all of us in it careens to the edge. prosperity in exile when his brothers did life reminiscing about the good old pre- ecological suicide. There are now too many signs of democratic reversal for this trend to be a to each other what he had done to his 1990 days when the downtrodden knew Such a rosy forecast from the Finance fluke: the belief that nominating a new prime minister is some kind of a solution, illustrious uncles. The cross-marriages their place and stayed there. The neo-elite Minister makes one wonder if he has the announcement of yet another royal civic reception in Nepalganj next month, between the Shahs and Ranas fused the lived off the glory of the Jan Andolan of taken note of the poverty reduction a familiar sycophantic ambience in the air. equation that says it takes 6.8 percent There is a reckless disregard for growth in the GDP to create 2.5 percent public will and national sentiment. When you see power as a zero sum game, there more employment. It is unlikely that 4.3 is a 50-50 chance you will lose. To win at percent economic growth will lead to all cost, it is tempting then, to use any poverty reductionespecially given militarisation, religious fundamentalism, or our present exponential growth in revert to authoritarianism. But it is no military spending. victory if you haven’t addressed the The boom in Kathmandu amidst a grievances that set all this off in the first climate of doom and gloom enveloping place: we don’t want this to escalate from the rest of the kingdom is reminiscent of a class war to an ethnic or separatist th conflagration.