Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 25 2002 @ 03:01 PM CDT

Oooooh, boy. Don\'t like the looks of this. I am all for supporting peoples in revolt, but read these choice nuggets:

\"Citing the crucial role of PLA Red Guards during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) period, it pledged to follow the spirit of GPCR in fighting against counter-revolutionary forces within the Party. Hence the need to politicalise the army was emphasised again and again.\"

\"Also considerable discussion took place on ways to make the army a truly people\'s army so as to apply correct mass line in military field. In order to militarise the masses a campaign to enrol large-scale militia has been emphasized so that the people\'s army becomes truly an army of oppressed class, nationality, caste, sex and region.\"

\"It also dwelt upon the development of military line within the history of the CPN (Maoist) and its culmination into a set of military ideas based on MLM and Prachanda Path.\"

\"A central General Staff was formed under the leadership of Chairman Prachanda. The Chairman of CPN (Maoist), is to be the supreme commander of the newly formed People\'s Liberation Army.\"

I imagine the RCP cadres must be wetting themselve with glee.....

Still, thanks for the post, interesting to hear what\'s going on, considering this story is all but blacked out from the press.....

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 26 2002 @ 03:10 AM CDT

I\'d agree that \"fighting against counter-revolutionary forces within the Party\" has typically turned out bad. Hopefully it wasn\'t meant in the way that Leninists of days gone by meant it.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 26 2002 @ 03:12 PM CDT

I just wrote this to the \"NepalWatch\" email list and wanted to post it here, and mention the website http://nepalsolidarity.net which forwards a position not favoring either the Maoists or His Majesty\'s Government. I am putting this in this forum because I think it\'s basically an anarchist position...

I am grieving for the present situation in Nepal, and for specific people I have known, who have been killed on each \"side\" in the conflict. I support neither \"side\" in the conflict, but see it as very complex.

I have been thinking very hard lately on what can be done, because I have been feeling extremely powerless, as have members of the Nepali community, from what I have been reading on Sajha.com and other Nepali diaspora dialogues.

What I have been thinking is that the only way out of this morass is to deconstruct the \"sides\" in the conflict and show them for what they are. By \"deconstruct\" I don\'t mean something academic. I mean real actions and analysis.

Basically my position is that the government hasn\'t been working for the people, but the Maoists are not the only alternative. I think the recent U.N. statement and action has embodied this position, as much as the UN is able to, being a congress of nation-states:

UN office ready to assist in resolving Maoist problem

UN resident representative to Nepal Dr. Henning Karcher said Thursday that the UN office here is willing to extend cooperation through dialogue to resolve the problems created because of Maoist activities.

\"The right of any individual to live a dignified life should not be infringed,\" Dr. Karcher told a press conference organized at the UNDP office.

He said the UN has been providing US $ 52 million annually for sectors such as education and health and also for poverty alleviation, good governance and decentralization. nepalnews.com am Oct 25

The quote by Dr Karcher hits the nail on the head, and it\'s what I have been trying to promote with the Nepal Solidarity Network website. And notice that the UN chose to assist in resolving the \"Maoist problem\" (nepalnews\' choice of words -- I would call it both a Maoist and government problem) by aiding social services, not for more guns to kill more Maoists. I don\'t fully agree with the UN, and I know that they of course must channel this money through the Nepali government, but I think this is a strong indication of the right direction.

The bottom line, I think, is to always affirm the power of actual people -- not \"the People\" as heard in the Maoist rhetoric, for this is the same \"the People\" that the government pretends to represent. What I mean is the power of actual people to solve their own problems in reasonable and constructive ways.

There is a long history of repression of these constructive channels of *actual* people\'s power, and the government has also tried to co-opt this power, to control it, through its emphasis on \"decentralization\" which (as Stephen Mikesell and others have pointed out) is really a form of centralization of power, with VDCs and district offices mainly rubberstamping central government decisions. There\'s also the long history of Nepalization and Hinduization and destruction of traditional cultural practices and imposition of styles of land ownership that is conducive to landlordism, and repression of land-reform movements. All of these led to the emergence and current \"success\" of the Maoist movement.

I would like to share a paper of Krishna Bhattachan\'s which was just published on the internet. It is located here: http://www.fesnepal.org/topics/2002/topic_june02.htm ... I think this paper is extremely important, for it outlines forms of local governance which existed in Nepal, and which could be a key (in new forms perhaps) to resolving the current situation. Bhattachan is a Nepali sociologist who really gets the flows of power in Nepal, I think, and has a truly people-centered grassroots vision.

I, for one, think that supporting local development efforts, and groups like Aama Samuha, can be effective in fighting the conflict. When people see an alternative to total powerlessness or joining the Maobadi, then they may choose that third way. My goal is to make both the Maoists, and the current government materially and conceptually irrelevant, and help being about a peace built on true people\'s power.

I just wanted to share these thoughts and get any reactions to them.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 26 2002 @ 03:18 PM CDT

Another relevant article:

[From \"The Times\" (London) 23 October 2002]

Nepalese caught between King and the Maoists
By Catherine Philp in Nepal

KRISHNA SAPKOTE was sitting down to dinner when a knock came at the door. As village chairman, he guessed it was a constituent coming to report another incident of extortion from the Maoist rebels beginning to visit his village. When he opened the door, he found himself facing the guerrillas themselves.

\"They dragged him from his house and hacked him to pieces and cut his head off,\" his neighbour, Hari, said. \"They left it on the path for everyone to see and threw his body in a field.\"

The next day the Maoists returned to Kushadevi to explain their actions. As long as the villagers obeyed the Maoists and did not try to stop them building a power base here, they would not be harmed. That meant no political activity, no resistance, no elections and a free hand for their new masters.

Kushadevi lies on the eastern slopes of the lush Kathmandu Valley, only an hour\'s drive from the Nepalese capital. That the Maoists could usurp elected power here is a sign of their increasing power and daring as they tighten their grip around the shrinking islands of territory still under government control.

Just a fortnight ago they proved their power to strike right at the heart of the nation\'s democracy. When the Government declared
itself unable to hold general elections because of the Maoist threat, King Gyanendra dismissed the entire administration and seized power for
himself and a royalist puppet Cabinet.

Lokendra Bahadur Chand, the King\'s new Prime Minister, said that with the bickering political parties out of the way, the new Government
could get on with the task of restoring law and order and holding elections.

But far from helping to tackle the Maoist problem, many believe that the King\'s actions have played into the hands of the rebels, who are
tightening the noose around the divided capital. Their real enemies, after all, are not so much the politicians as the monarchy, which they have vowed to overthrow ever since their rebellion began six
years ago.

\"They have been trying for a long time to drive a wedge between the political parties and the palace. Now they have got what they wanted,\" Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times said. Sources
close to the Maoists confirm that the \"royal coup\" has only strengthened their resolve for a showdown. There are signs that preparations are
on for a new offensive in the countryside, despite the royalist Government\'s call for peace talks.

Last month saw the end of a lull in Maoist activity with a string of attacks on rural police and army posts. In most of the countryside only the district headquarters remain under government control. With every sign that the army is losing this war, the rebels appear determined to keep up the pressure to put themselves in the strongest
possible position.

All this could harm the justification for the royal takeover

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