Tense New Dawn Greets Nepal's Guerilla Warriors

The Age

Saturday December 2, 2006

CONNIE LEVETT, DAHABAN, NEPAL

After 11 years of war, at a cost of 12,500 lives, a fragile peace descends on this Himalayan nation.

SARAD Rai, the Maoist commander with a Hollywood smile and a violet scarf wrapped incongruously around his neck, has taken the high ground for his new "peace" camp.

"We have not surrendered," said the commander in Dahaban, western Nepal, looking out across five lines of ridges formerly controlled by the Maoists to the Himalayas' Daulaghiri range. "We are in a new process now: 238 years of rule by the king is nearly coming to an end because of our war."

One of his cadres, Apil, a fighter in his 20s whose nom de guerre is Red Star, is happy the war is over and looks forward to a life more ordinary after six years underground. But he will go back to war tomorrow if ordered. "We are working according to our chain of command. We will clear our minds so we know what we have to do," he said.

The People's War, waged by Maoist guerillas since 1996, officially ended on November 21, at a cost of more than 12,500 lives.

The Maoists may not have surrendered but neither was there a triumphant march into Kathmandu to tear down the gates of King Gyanendra's palace. The peace is a negotiated one and the challenge now is to find a way for the warring armies to live together.

This week, a critical deal was struck between the interim government, the Maoists and the United Nations, setting out what happens to the troops and their weapons.

Both sides go into camps, the army to barracks and the Maoists to new cantonments, or camps such as Dahaban. An equal number of weapons will be locked down, with the UN to monitor the stores.

Despite serious claims of extortion, forced labour and abduction of children for the army by the Maoists, and of torture and disappearances by the Nepal Army, "neither side has even a whisper of desire for prosecutions" said one source close to the three-way talks.

Maoist engineers are measuring out eight hectares of a small rocky flat-topped ridge, already guarded by armed cadres in sandbagged sentry posts, where 2000 cadres will live for up to a year.

As the light slips away and winter chill seeps in, the young cadres unload hundreds of blankets and parkas. There are no tents yet and many of the soldiers, who look younger than their alleged 18 years, are sleeping in mud brick village huts until they arrive.

More than 1500 cadres have already arrived in Dahaban this week to register their weapons in a disciplined display by this ragtag army that fights in thongs and still uses muzzle-loaded gunpowder pistols. According to Sarad Rai, about one in three soldiers carried a gun, modern M16s as well as muzzle-loaded guns, grenades, mortars, rocket launchers and machine-guns from India, Britain and Belgium.

For Sarad Rai, 37, commander of the People's Liberation Army's 5th division, it's been a long fight. "Going from a simple life to going underground in the beginning was amazing. Now we are entering a new life, and it is obvious it is amazing, too," Sarad Rai said. "There is drastic change from that early life."

Born in the Rolpa region, the birthplace of the struggle, he was 11 when he first took a catapult to hurl rocks at the police. He joined the armed struggle in 1995, a year before the official declaration of war. Four years ago he was in Holleri for the symbolically important police station battle, where Maoists captured 72 armed police officers and destroyed the station.

Now Sarad Rai is back in Dahaban, just seven kilometres from Holleri, to build a peace camp. The village is one of seven sites (each camp will have three smaller satellite camps) chosen across the country for Maoist cantonments, where PLA soldiers will hand in their weapons and be confined to camp.

In 11 years, what did they achieve? "We have brought awareness among the people of Nepal, the political awareness was awakened by the revolution," he said. "This war began in the villages; we created an awareness they should fight for their rights."

In a region where women still carry their water each day, where there is no grid power and little sanitation, the Maoists' drive to create a fairer society, with more equal distribution of wealth and land had traction. But their ruthless ways also drove tens of thousands from the their homes. Families ran from intimidation, extortion and fear of conscription of their children into the PLA.

"I was told to take up weapons and compelled to eat cows meat," said Laxmi Sahi, a Hindu, who was 17 when she fled from Jajakot district to a people camp in Nepalgung. "I said I will not go to the jungle and I was fearful and so I fled. There are many girls like me." Despite the peace, she does not trust the Maoists enough to return to her village.

According to Sarad Rai, it's a Kathmandu-based media conspiracy. "I have no children in my ranks. I can't speak for others," he said. One of his young cadres in Dahaban told The Age he was 16, but he looked younger. "The average age is between 20 and 30 for military cadres. Above 30 we don't use them for military service," Sarad Rai said. "I don't know about Maoist militias extorting from villagers, but they accept donations."

There is a major issue that the three sides do want to deal with: the actual strength of the People's Liberation Army. Maoist leader Prachanda claimed his army had 35,000 hardened soldiers, but outsiders say it could be as low as 12,000, and unlikely to be more than 20,000. Recent reports show the Maoists are continuing to recruit soldiers, offering salaries and educational opportunities in the cantonments, even as the peace deal is signed.

"The PLA will accept the army as long as they don't try to dominate it. We have 30,000 to 35,000 hard-core soldiers who are weapons trained," Sarad Rai said, backing up his leader. UN special envoy Ian Martin has warned that only cadres who joined the PLA before April 2006 will be registered and allowed to stay in the cantonments, and no children will be accepted in the camps

One theory is that Prachanda got it wrong and is recruiting so as not to lose face. A second, more disturbing, theory is that he wants the Nepal Army to reduce its ranks from the present bloated 90,000 to 35,000, and then bring his fighters into the ranks to balance the numbers, and the power equation.

Maoist engineer Hari Dhakel said the PLA chose the Dahaban site partly because of its symbolic importance, being close to the historic Holleri battle site, "but that's not the strongest reason. It's strategically important, it's a flat area (high up) if someone attacks."

Not far away, the Nepal Army has chosen a site at Satdobato, in Liwang district, for a new camp - on three hilltops. It seems both sides are looking ahead, one eye on peace, the other on holding the high ground, in case it all unravels.