Nepal: A Political Crisis and Indo-Chinese Tensions
May 7, 2009 by SAF Desk
Summary
Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda resigned on May 4 in protest of the president’s decision to block the Maoist leadership from sacking Nepal’s army chief. While the political disarray in Nepal threatens to break the government apart, it also has stirred a long-standing rivalry between India and China over the Himalayan country.
Analysis
Nepal’s Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda resigned May 4 in protest of the Nepalese president’s decision to block the elected Maoist government from firing the country’s army chief. The Nepalese government is now in danger of collapsing as India scrambles to form a coherent policy toward Kathmandu to counter China’s growing influence in the Himalayan country. The Maoist leadership, meanwhile, will draw on Indo-Chinese competition over Kathmandu in an attempt secure its political demands.
After waging a decade-long insurgency, Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas came to power under the leadership of Prachanda in April 2008 elections. The Maoist political party used their majority in parliament to transform the Nepalese kingdom into a full-fledged republic, much to the discontent of royalist-backed army and opposition parties that harbor deep fears that the Maoists will use their political prowess to form a Maoist dictatorship.
Eager to put out a fire in its backyard, India facilitated political reconciliation among the Maoists, rival political parties of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the monarchists to end the insurgency and bring stability to Nepal. As STRATFOR noted, however, the Maoist demand to integrate its cadres into the armed forces would pose a critical threat to the newly-formed republic.
Some 19,000 Maoist fighters have been confined to barracks under U.N. supervision as part of a standing peace accord, but the army has resisted taking in Maoist-indoctrinated guerrillas. The army claims that the Maoists have not fulfilled their end of the peace bargain in returning land that was appropriated during the civil war and in dismantling their militant youth wing. The Maoist guerrillas in the youth wing are mostly uneducated and are most familiar with the ways of the insurgency, causing a split between those Maoist cadres who want to pursue a political future and those who wish to maintain a militant arm. The Maoist leadership, wary of the intentions of its political rivals and of the army, has used these young militants as a political lever in Kathmandu by threatening a resurgence of violence unless their demands are met. To this end, Maoist cadres have resorted to extortion, armed robberies, kidnappings and beatings to both remain financially afloat and intimidate their political rivals.
The power struggle came to a head May 3 when Prachanda (a former schoolteacher who still uses his nom de guerre, which translates into “fierce oneâ€) tried to sack the army chief, Rukmangad Katuwal, without consulting other members of the Nepalese parliament. The Maoist leadership accused Katuwal — who was expected to retire in just three months — of continuing military recruitment in spite of the government’s halt order and of reinstating eight brigadier generals who had been dismissed by the Maoist-controlled Defense Ministry.
When Katuwal was sacked, The Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) — the Maoists’ main ally in the five-party coalition with the second-most seats in the Constituent Assembly and the smaller Sadbhavana Party have pulled out of the ruling coalition in protest of the Maoists’ unilateral move. The Nepalese president (who also officially heads the army), Ram Baran Yadav of the centrist Nepali Congress, then reversed Prachanda’s decision May 3 when he reinstated the army chief, causing Maoist and counter-Maoist protests to erupt in Kathmandu. Prachanda then resigned in protest, and the president has now accepted Prachanda’s resignation, leaving the government in disarray over how to form a new Council of Ministers, since Maoist political rivals lack enough seats in the interim assembly to form a Cabinet on their own. The situation is complicated further by the fact that the writing of the constitution of the new Nepalese republic has been left incomplete.
The Maoists understand their political strength in the government and are unlikely — at least in the near term — to sacrifice the immense political gains they have made thus far by returning to the insurgency. After all, the Maoists still have a political parliamentary majority to block any moves by the newly-formed Cabinet. The Maoists are likely to use violent intimidation tactics and disruptive rallies to try and force the hand of the army and Maoist political rivals in meeting Maoist demands to fire the army chief, reinstate Prachanda and work out a compromise over Maoist demands on integrating its cadres into the armed forces.
India, meanwhile, is watching nervously as its Nepal strategy is unraveling at the seams. New Delhi has took a calculated risk in supporting the Maoists’ entry into the political sphere since India itself is already dealing with its own vibrant Maoist insurgency that runs along the eastern belt of the country. By supporting the Nepalese Maoists’ political ambitions, India risked sending a message to the array of militant insurgents in its own country that insurgencies could succeed in paying political dividends. Nonetheless, India sought a means to end the insurgency on its northern border and attempted to manage the Maoist rise in Kathmandu by supporting the army’s position and maintaining close relations with the monarchists. The Nepalese Maoists — fearful that India may backstab them and support a coup favoring the royalists and Maoist political rivals down the line — are now sending the Indians a message that their balancing act will cost them influence in Kathmandu.
It is of little surprise that Prachanda made the decision to sack the army chief just ahead of a scheduled trip to China. Although Nepal, particularly when under the control of the royalists, has historically sat firmly in India’s sphere of influence, the Chinese have been working on enlarging their footprint in the Himalayan country by building up a relationship with Nepal’s new Maoist-dominated government.
It is quite interesting, then, that Prachanda had chosen Katuwal’s deputy, Gen. Kul Bahadur Khadka, to assume the position of army chief, as Khadkha is known to have a pro-China stance. Prachanda has also reportedly threatened to scrap the India-Nepal Treaty and replace it with a China-Nepal treaty during the Maoist leader’s scheduled visit to China, revealing his intent to play on Indo-Chinese competition in Nepal to strengthen the Maoists’ political clout.
Prachanda’s trip to China has now been put on hold given the political fallout over his attempt to sack the army chief. Though Prachanda will now be unable to make that trip to Beijing in an official capacity, the current situation in Nepal has brought to light a long-standing competition between India and China over the Himalayan nation.
Chinese interests in Nepal center on countering India and containing Tibetan autonomy. If Beijing maintains a healthy relationship with Kathmandu, it can develop security guarantees that Nepal will refrain from supporting — or more importantly, prevent India from expanding support — for exiled Tibetan followers of the Dalai Lama. The Chinese have no real ideological affinity with the Nepalese Maoists. In fact, the Communist Party of China views the Nepalese Maoist guerrillas as an embarrassment to the Mao legacy and never quite approved of their move to intimate a relationship with China and the Chinese revolution when the rebels launched their insurgency in Nepal in 1996 in the name of a “People’s War.†Chinese involvement in Nepal, regardless of who is in charge of Kathmandu, serves Beijing’s interest in balancing against India and preventing the Tibetans and other separatists from gaining a strategic foothold to threaten China. The Chinese therefore maintained links with the royal family that ruled Kathmandu while the country was still a monarchy, and then began enhancing political and economic ties with the Maoists once they came to power.
Beijing also appears to be benefiting from the number of preoccupations afflicting India as it expands Chinese influence into Nepal. As this crisis in Nepal is unfolding, India is already extremely consumed with many other issues, which include but are not limited to: general elections at home currently in progress, the implications of Pakistan potentially breaking under pressure from its jihadist insurgency and issues in managing Tamil opposition over the Sri Lankan army’s final push against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The Nepalese Maoist leadership will use the Indo-Chinese rivalry over Kathmandu for its own strategic gain, but neither China nor India is interested in a showdown over Nepal. China is more interested in preventing India from monopolizing foreign influence in Kathmandu, while New Delhi would rather have Beijing stay out of India’s perceived sphere of influence. This is a long, simmering dispute that has spilled into the open with the current power struggle in Kathmandu, but not one that is likely to develop into a major confrontation between Beijing and New Delhi. How this current Nepalese political crisis will play out is still unclear, but the tussle between the Maoists and their rivals in Nepal is yet another foreign policy conundrum to add to India’s list.
Source: stratfor.com
Last 5 posts by SAF Desk
- Shahzad linked to Yemeni cleric: Report – May 7th, 2010
- US mulling to troop expansion in Pakistan: NYT – May 7th, 2010
- Declining security, terrorism affect Pakistani economy: UN – May 7th, 2010
- China to provide $180 mln aid to Pakistan: Malik – May 7th, 2010
- Foil plot against democracy: Sheikh Hasina – May 7th, 2010