First the army defied the orders to induct the guerillas of People’s Liberation Army (PLA).Second armed gangs have appeared styling themselves as New Maoists and attacked police stations and even targeted Prime Minister’s personal assistant in the very heart of Kathmandu. Third violent reaction to the removal of traditional priests at the centuries old Pasupatinath temple, Nepal’s holiest shrine was unnerving. Fourth judicial system has refused to embrace the Kangaroo Courts throwing an unexpected spanner in the Maoist works for ‘people’s friendly cheap justice’. The list is long and the wounds are there on public view.
‘These reverses are self-inflicted wounds’, some analysts contend but Maoists view them as a small price for testing the waters before unveiling grand designs for establishing absolute power through a tailor-made Constitution – the framing of the statute is the mandate of the present government that took office last year. The constitution is to be readied in two years. But, to their chagrin, the work is making no headway nor is there any progress in integrating some former Maoist soldiers into the army, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported to the Security Council.
Today for the Maoists in Nepal, the enemy No one is army chief Gen Kotwal. And are bidding their time to sack him with ‘no upsurge’ in the army as he enjoys the backing of the entire command structure besides the rank and file who are determined to assert the apolitical character of the armed forces. ‘How can we work together with whom we had fought and who had laid ambushes and indulged in brutal killings, they ask’, a local media report said quoting sources in the army as the stand off between Kotwal and Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa continues in full public view.
‘Only those meeting the minimum qualifying mark will be inducted’, the General maintains. The army is loath to see Maoists guerrillas enroll other than as the mot junior recruits. It means some 4000 former fighters will be left out in the cold at a time more and more renegades are returning to the woods as the New Maoists by looting arms from the police stations. In one such attack on Syaulibang police post (42 kms from Khalanga, the headquarters of Pyuthan district) on February 6, 2009, Mongol Revenge Group looted weapons and killed the officer in charge of the post. According to Avenue TV, however, the attack could be the handiwork of Pachahattar Youth Liberation Front. These groups are adding to the owes of Maoist leadership who are already at sixes and sevens on reining in Young Communist League, YCL – the Maoist Youth Wing, which according to The Kathmandu Post has become the epicentre of lawlessness that has engulfed Nepal..
The Defence Minister is also irked at the General Kotwal’s plans to fill up more than 2700 posts in the junior level. Thapa decreed that his directive to stop the recruitment was final and not open to any interpretation or defiance. Yet Kotwal remains unmoved; the open defiance of army commander has pushed the Maoists into a fit of impotent rage.
Another flash point with the army is the Maoist demand for lateral entry for their senior commanders. Kotwal and his sectoral commanders are opposed to the para-dropping at the mid-level. The proposal has stirred a wave of discontent amongst as mid-level officers apprehend that the Maoist commanders would block their own promotional prospects and that the apolitical Army would metamorphose into an ideologically indoctrinated army.
China has offered to train these ‘unqualified’ senior comrade fighters and to equip the army with latest weapons. The offer was made by a Chinese delegation which met senior Maoist leaders and PLA commanders on the Tibet-Nepal borders. And it has not gone down well with the army brass which is trained in the British and Indian army schools and is therefore steeped in a different tradition.
So the stand off continues stirring a debate – on whether the Nepalese army will take a leaf out of Gen Memon’s book in Bangladesh even as the Maoists have declared temporary truce on the shrine issue and Kangaroo Court proposal.
