RIGHTS-NEPAL: Bush 2 Code Applicable to King Gyanendra?

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Analysis - By Sonny Inbaraj

BANGKOK, Feb 10 2005 (IPS) - Barely a month after U.S. President George W Bush’s second inaugural address, his government faces its first real test – how to live and lead by the Bush code. And that test ironically is not in the Middle East but in faraway Nepal, the world’s only Hindu kingdom.

On Jan. 20, Bush declared, after he was sworn in for a second term, that the purpose of U.S. policy must be the expansion of liberty. ‘’The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world,” said the president.

On Feb. 1, Nepal’s King Gyanendra dismissed the government and took over the reins of political power in the South Asian country.

He went on state-run television and said that democracy in his country was in peril and that the ‘’Nepali people’s right to live peacefully” was being threatened by a long-running Maoist insurgency that has seen over 10,500 people killed.

He then accused the government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba of failing to conduct parliamentary elections and being unable to restore peace in the country.

Soon after the king’s address, a state of emergency was declared. Indian news agencies reported that all telephone lines and mobile phone networks were shut down – effectively cutting the country off from the rest of the world.

According to reports from the Nepali capital Kathmandu, some 1,000 activists from political parties, student groups and trade unions have been rounded up nationwide. Royal Nepal Army spokesman Brig Gen Dipak Gurung said that a security committee under the Home Ministry would determine how long activists remain locked up. ”They can be detained for three months,” the general said.

One of the first to urge the Bush administration to intervene was Senator Patrick Leahy of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Operations Subcommittee.

‘’Democracy is never easy, and no one should minimise the threat the Maoists pose. But the answer is not to undermine democracy,” said Leahy on Feb. 2.

‘’The answer, as President Bush expressed in his Inaugural Address, is to work, with help from the international community, to strengthen democracy. I believe the United States Congress would welcome that opportunity,” urged the U.S. senator.

But there was no indication that U.S. policy, including military assistance to the king’s government, was about to change. This is despite the State Department arguing that ‘’ the dismissal today of its (Nepal’s) multi-party government, the declaration of a state of emergency and the suspension of fundamental constitutional rights is a step back from democracy.”

Washington considers the communist rebels as terrorists. It has been a key backer of the Nepali government’s battle against the insurgents, providing badly needed weapons and training to the country’s army.

‘’The bombing of the American Centre in Kathmandu on Sep. 10, 2004 – although not claimed by the Maoists – drew the U.S. deeper into the situation,” said the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) in a report released Wednesday.

‘’While reiterating its commitment to a peaceful solution to the insurgency, the United States gave an additional one million U.S. dollars in security assistance; announced its intention to seek additional funding for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2004 and suspended the Peace Corps programme,” the ICG report said.

”It subsequently approved 2.2 million dollars in military aid and 40 million dollars in economic aid,” the ICG indicated.

The U.S. government has given more than more than 20 million dollars in significant military aid to Nepal since 2002, including weapons and training, with some anticipation that a much larger budget request of around 24 million dollars will be made for fiscal year 2006.

‘’Given this history of growing support for the government’s counter-insurgency activities and the relatively low-key manner in which the U.S. reacted to the coup, there is speculation in Kathmandu that the king may have given its embassy advance word of his intentions,” said ICG president Gareth Evans, a former foreign affairs minister of Australia.

‘’Washington’s actions in the coming weeks will be watched carefully for clues,” he said in a statement.

One issue that could be a sore thumb for Washington is King Gyanendra’s frequent citing of Pakistan under Gen Pervez Musharraf, as a model. The question of hypocrisy plays out well here, with the United States fully backing the military government in Islamabad while it continues to shun democracy.

Many hold the view that a concerted effort to bring the constitutional forces together and develop a package of constitutional, social and economic reforms is the only way to regain some of the state’s losses to the Maoists in recent years.

As Senator Leahy put it: ‘’There is no military solution to this conflict.”

‘’Nepal is a place where, not unlike Afghanistan, a handful of extremists with rifles and explosives can wreak havoc and easily disappear into the rugged countryside. By terrorising rural villagers and exploiting the government’s neglect of them, the Maoists have steadily extended their reach to large areas of the country,” he added.

Frightening it might seem, but the Maoists may be the only ones to gain from King Gyanendra’s dismissal of the government. They can now make the case that they are not fighting a democratically elected regime, but an anachronistic and repressive monarchy.

‘’The Maoists have little incentive to negotiate at a time when the state is unravelling, and the constitutional forces are divided. They are also aware that the military can put little pressure on them and that they can cause considerable economic disruption by declaring blockades and strikes,” said ICG’s Evans.

The question now is whether the United States will want to get more involved with Nepal, considering its greater priorities as part of its global ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. The writing is still not on the wall, yet.