Nepal - India - research - journalism

Some hardtalk with Nicola Notaro, European Commission, DG Environmental

2008-12-18T04:44:00.001-08:00

During a lecture on “The EU and the future of International Climate Protection” organised by the Institute for European Studies at the VUB I took my chance to go into a hot debate with Nicola Notaro. Notaro is an important architect of the recently approved EU climate and energypackage and came here to talk on it's implications for the EU leaderships' role in international climate negotiations.

Q: “I have first a remark and then a question. You mentionned the positive signal the EU package has given to the negotiations in Poznan but I was also there and I only heared disappointment with IPCC scientists, with developping countries and even outrage among environmental NGOs. It did not give the long hoped boost everybody was waiting for, resulting in a lack of progress in Poznan.

But my question is this. With the current EU package the door stands open for 66% external emission reductions, which means the EU will only have to reduce with another 4% it's domestic emissions from here to 2020. In your presentation you mentionned an interesting principle from the EU. According to the EU treaty article 174 the EU subscribes to the principle of “rectification at source”. Is this principle compatible with 66% outsourcing of rectification?”

A: “The 66% is only an option, it is the maximum possible and of course we hope that countries will try to reduce domestically as much as possible. You have to understand that these outsourced reductions are also real reductions. What the rectification at source concerns: you have a point but maybe decreasing polution at the source of polution, even outside the EU, is still compatible with that principle?”

Q: “It is interesting that you mention that these outsourced reductions are real because in fact they are not. Many studies show that 30 to 50% are non additional reductions. On the 1st of October 2008, 76% of the projects were already build at the time it was decided that they will receive a CDM credit. Recent research in India has shown that not one single banker who lends money to a project developper considers possible CDM income in the future. Now, the EU knows all these problems and they tried hard in Poznan to change the verification by bringing it under UN supervision, because now the verificators are paid by the project developpers. But China refused and the system stayed as it is: defunctional.

But my second question is related to the adaptation fund, considered as the only breakthrough in Poznan. You also highlighted that finaly developping countries have received access to this fund but in fact it is an empty box. Only 1% of the needed money is in there and the EU blocked efforts to increase the amount of money inside. You said yourself that they did so because they think an extra tax on the reduction of emissions would give the wrong incentive and it would be better to tax emissions and use that money for the fund. I totally agree with that but then please explain me why did the EU not adopt the proposal from ENVI to earmark 50% of the auctionning of emissions for mitigation and adaptation in developping countries? That would have been a tax on polution no? Why doesn't the EU practice what it preaches?”

A: On the CDM: we are fighting on 2 fronts at the same time and I don't see a problem with that. The EU package will start in 2012 and we hope that by then the problems with the CDM will be solved. Concerning your question on the earmarking of revenues from the auctioning of emissions: I agree it is not enough yet, it should be 50% but I think that option is still there and it is up to member states to decide how they will use this money. I think that now at least 20% will be used for mitigation and adaptation in Developing Countries, that is at least something.

Q: “A final question, since you are from Italy. Which exceptions did Italy get, on what objective grounds did they get them and why Italy and not other countries?”

A: As I'm not a representative from Italy you will have to ask that question to the Italian Embassy.

What I learned from his presentation is that the EU wants to sell it's package as the world's most progressive, accomplished with remarkable speed and despite the economic crisis. That is all true and we should be happy for these reasons, but does that also mean that the package is able to realise it's goals, is just and sufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change, (NO)taro?

The aid industry in Nepal

2008-06-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

The aid industry in Nepal
BIG BUGDETS, BIG PROBLEMS

“Foreign aid has not made any significant contribution to reducing poverty in Nepal”, according to a prominent Nepalese politician. Two months later, Maoists win the elections and immediately announce that from now on foreign aid will have to be approved by the people first. Is Nepal being screwed by the aid industry? Has it helped to bring Maoists to power?

Nepal is the poorest country in Asia with an income of less then a dollar a day. According to the United Nations Development Program, poverty in Nepal increased in the last three decades, mostly in rural areas. People in Kathmandu now earn five times more then those in rural areas. The poorest 40% of the population have become worse off, while the richest 10% have become richer. Only a third of the students leave school with a qualification, most of them studied in private schools.

Since 1991, Nepal has been the largest receiver of foreign aid in the whole of South Asia. Over 80% percent of the education budget comes from foreign donors. The share of foreign aid in the national development budget has increased from 50% in the nineties to 70% today. Loans have increased faster then grants.

As a condition for getting loans, Nepal has fulfilled the wishes of financial institutions such as the World Bank to open markets, privatize crucial public institutes and limit domestic borrowing. However, several studies have shown that privatization in Nepal has increased the gap between poor and rich. It didn’t help the economy either.

The aid sector is not geared for introspection. They usually blame corruption and the civil war (1996-2006) for obstructing their plans to develop Nepal. Certainly Maoist insurgents destroyed infrastructures and projects, but foreign aid seems to have done a lot of damage as well, including increasing corruption in the country. According to the anti-corruption agency, nearly one billion US dollar donated for nearly 5000 projects donated by various organisations are not open for accounting by the government.

Flashy health camps with western doctors are actually killing uneducated villagers from a remote district. An illegal and dangerous dam has huge profits for foreigners while causing massive floods and social upheaval. The water mafia gets loans for projects that destroy previous projects, whose own loans are not even paid back. The list is endless, but the tolerance of Nepalese people is not. In every single project discussed in this article the Maoists won by a landslide, often on the promise to end the dictates of foreign donors. In remote West Nepal, a Maoist who threatened to kill anyone coming near to the planned construction site of a dam got his democratic mandate.

A sick system
Despite massive foreign aid, most Nepalese still never see a doctor in their life. The health care system is totally inadequate to meet the people’s needs. In remote rural Myagdi district, we interviewed a hundred people on the standards of health care in their area. There is only one doctor in the area but most of them never visited him. Asked why they said he only came once a week, from his private clinic in Pokhara city. He always told the free government medicines had run out, but he could sell us some better but expensive medicines from his private clinic. This story was repeated in several other rural areas of Nepal. Neglect has been replaced by a mirage of health care interventions. These include the establishment of rural health posts catered by uncaring, corrupt doctors, or no trained personnel at all.

In Humla, a remote, impoverished district in the North-West of Nepal, the Scottish NGO Nepal Trust has come up with an original solution. They fly in a team of European doctors and conduct short health camps, accompanied by a media circus of cameramen and photographers. In their rush to treat thousands of patients in a few days, the camp becomes a fiasco. While they claim to have treated 8000 people, what really happened was that, according to several reliable witnesses, 2000 people queued up on average 4 times. Uneducated patients were seen to return on the next day, complaining they didn’t feel any better after swallowing all the medicines, which were meant to last for two weeks. According to the witnesses, who prefer to stay anonymous, at least three people died shortly after one of the health camps ended. Kids were playing with used needles dumped in a nearby open pit. Local traditional doctors were neglected.

Babita Lama co-founded the Nepal Trust but stepped out in 2002, feeling disgusted about the rude way the Scottish management was treating the staff and locals. Today she feels as if her ‘baby’ is sick. “They didn’t do any research on what local people really need. There is an acute lack of awareness among the people on how to use medicines and a complete lack of follow up after the health camps. The camps resemble a medical circus”, she complained. According to insiders, health camps obscure the real political and economic origins of sickness. They’re like a band-aid on a festering wound.

Nobody gives a dam
The picture of foreign aid doesn’t get any better if you look at big projects, usually foisted upon Nepal by big financial institutions. This large majority of aid money (77%) should bring development on a big scale. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) says: “Nepal needs to harness its vast hydroelectric power potential in a socially and environmentally sustainable way.” Nepal indeed has the second biggest hydropower potential in the world and yet it faces up to eight hours of daily power cuts in the dry season. Nepali’s are now paying one of the highest electricity rates in the world: 9 times more than those in neighbouring Bhutan and 5 times more then in the US or India. Of course, this will not worry the three quarters who don’t have electricity!

The ADB figured it could help Nepal by teaming up with the Australian Snowy Mountain Engineering Company (SMEC), Chinese banks and India to build a 1.2 billion US $ dam project. Technically, the project is a dangerous mess. At a height of 195m the dam across the West-Seti river will be the highest concrete faced rock filled dam in the world. SMEC preferred this type in a bid to keep the 1.2 billion US $ budget, almost half of the total Nepalese annual government expenditure, ‘under control’. Several highly respected experts have repeatedly warned the government about the dangers of such a dam design. Surya Shresta from the National Society for Earthquake Technology claims that: “Especially in West-Nepal, pressure that has build-up suggests that a very large earthquake is long overdue”. SMEC responded on our inquiries that the dam cannot break, but Shresta confirmed that the companies who build the project also financed the only study on earthquake resistance of the dam.

Downstream, thousands of acres will get submerged with or without dam collapse. A large canal that takes water from the West-Seti for irrigation of North-Indian fields already causes widespread floods in Nepal during the monsoon season. Water expert A.B. Thapa says that once the West-Seti dam and reservoir are completed it will cause year-round flooding for villagers in south Nepal. These aid induced refugees will have to be added to the 13 000 farmers upstream who will see their whole world disappear under water once the reservoir behind the dam fills up.

According to a Japanese research centre the mega project is far from sustainable or environmentally sound and will cause massive social upheaval. It cites several violations of the ADB’s own policies on information disclosure, consultation with affected persons and possible livelihood losses, to name but a few. The only document for the uprooted farmers was an English summary of temporary employment benefits for them, which almost none of them could read.

Once completed, 90 percent of the electricity will be sold to India, while they will take all the water for free. Incredibly, Nepalese business is not involved.

Only 0.1% of the revenues will go to wages for Nepalese workers, according to Ratna Shrestha, a former board member of the Nepal Electricity Authority. After paying back debts, overheads and other costs less then 3% of total export earnings will enter the Nepali economy. While the profits flow to India, China and Australia, Nepal foots the bill for the environmental and social damage. Most of the thousands of villagers whose homes will be flooded are forcibly relocated to an area that has a totally different culture, language, climate, soil and agricultural system.

The taxpayer will have to pay back the loans and bear all unforeseen costs. Thirty years after construction, Nepal will be handed the dam as a poisoned chalice. Studies show that due to the incredibly high transport of sediments in Himalayan rivers, the dam will probably have to be dismantled soon after this period. Even according to SMECs own conservative estimations there will be a huge cost on the dam 50 years after construction, which of course is not included in the contract. By the time this comes out all greying politicians, Australian consultants and ADB bankers involved in signing this contract will be retired or dead.

Foreign aid or aid to foreigners?
To Nepalese lawyer Rabin Subedi from WAFED (Water & Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal) this is a case where “foreign aid violates human rights and works against the interest of Nepali people.” He is not surprised about the timing of signing away Nepal’s resources. He added: “Previous sharing of water resource agreements between India and Nepal have always been signed when Nepal was in a period of political transition like now.” The Nepalese constitution is about to be rewritten and management of resources will be taken over by a number of newly formed federal states. The dam on the West Seti is just one example of a big project pushed through just before the federal states get hold of them.

There’s another fishy thing about the deal, as water resources expert B. Subba wrote as early as 2002. “India actually wants the water but does not wish to pay for it, while Nepal wants to sell electricity but does not get the price it demands.” India wants to interlink dozens of rivers and desperately needs Nepalese water to make the giant scheme work, an enormous bargaining position Nepal is not playing out at all. At the same time, Nepal will now sell electricity from West-Seti to India at a little more then half the price it pays India to import electricity elsewhere

Rabin Subedi claims that by not mentioning the regulation of a shared river they have managed to circumvent Article 156 of the Constitution, which states that a two-third majority in parliament should approve the sharing of natural resources between two or more countries. All this makes things very clear for Subedi “Either they (Nepali politicians) are in the money game, they just don’t understand or they don’t care.”

In their response SMEC gives us detailed figures of the future change in water flow, while admitting literally that they will regulate the West-Seti river.

Shockingly, the construction and operational costs of locally financed projects are much lower than large donor-funded schemes, as research shows. Dipak Gyawali, the former minister of water resources, is only one researcher to come to such conclusions in the book ‘Aid under Stress’. All argue that this is because it is much easier to cover up corruption in the dense thicket of procedures and rules of big projects.

Large aid projects usually have a complete disrespect towards local structures. Gyawali quotes the notorious example of a Finnish forestry project, which destroyed local sawmills and wood industry. He writes: “Both the private foreign actors and the state domestic actors shared a fundamental distrust of the capacity of the local community to take care of the commercially valuable forests”.

And yet even the World Bank admits that including locals in the choice and design of projects increases the chances of success. People in Palpa district have known this all along. They have build a micro hydro project that produces electricity at a tenth of the price then the national electricity supplier, without daily power cuts or massive destruction. Not a dollar of foreign aid was involved.

Thirsty for real development
Unfortunately, the West-Seti is not an exception. There is a revival of large-scale projects as the mainstream development strategy all over the world. In Nepal they seem to do more harm then good.

One such project aims at quenching Kathmandu’s thirst by diverting river water through a tunnel. The 317 million US $ Melamchi Water Supply Project, which is partly financed with ADB loans, is already 13 years overdue for completion and is rife with corruption. Many politicians were convicted for fraud. A joint review mission from both government and donors in 2003 came to the conclusion that; ‘...environmental, social and occupational safety issues have not been adequately addressed in the earlier contracts, while in later contracts these issues are largely ignored by the contractors.’ Of the five-year government budget for water and sanitation 70% goes to the Melamchi project, although it will ‘benefit’ only 10% of the population.

Furthermore, thousands of people downstream of the river where the water is taken from will not only loose almost 80% of their crucial water in the dry season, but their whole way of living from irrigated fields and water mills … which were originally built with other ADB loans. Tank Gajurel, chairman of a local action group, complains; “The new access road to the construction site has already cut through the irrigation system, making our watermill useless.” Tank now uses a diesel generator for his mill in the dry season, but with diesel becoming so expensive he runs on losses. Seven years after their complaint they still have to see the first compensation, but even then, life will never be as it was before. Whole newly constructed villages will disappear again due to the lack of water. Tank; “We don’t want money, we just want our own water.”

The World Bank withdrew from the Melamchi project in 2002 concluding that ‘important options have not been explored to utilize the water resources within the Kathmandu valley’. Gyawali told us the government, in the mid 1980s, choose the most remote and expensive project out of 30 alternatives as potential water supply options for Kathmandu. "They prefer a large project that they alone could manage, furthering their empire-building wit lucrative results for themselves." The Norwegians and Swedish quit in 2005 and 2006. In May 2007 the ADB threatened to leave as well if the distribution of water was not privatised, which they believe would make the venture more efficient. Even Hisila Yemi, the Maoist minister for Physical Constructions, bowed for their condition. At least she managed to keep the UK company Severn Trent out, which got the contract for building the tunnel without any bidding. A fierce campaign against Severn Trent actually forced her to do so.

The Kathmandu Valley Drinking Water Company Limited (KVDWC) will now take over the water distribution, but will also sell the water for profit. The price will increase about threefold up to 13$ a month, which is half the average income in Nepal.

Experts claim that this project is a white elephant anyway. They have proposed alternatives that could deliver the same amount of water in a much faster and cheaper way.

Capturing 15% of rainwater in the Kathmandu Valley would completely solve the problem.
If just 1.5% of the land in the Valley were used as reservoirs the water table would be recharged.
Repairing the current leaks alone would increase supply by 70%.
Monsoon water could be stored in underground reservoirs.

All these solutions would create more labour intensive jobs for poor people and do less harm to the environment. The problem with the alternatives lies in the smaller scope for personal benefits among politicians or profits for companies. According to Gyawali, just building many small reservoirs in 1,5% of the Valley would cost around 7 million US $ to provide the same amount of water as Melamchi. Additional benefits come from the aesthetics and the more equal distribution of groundwater. He goes on to claim that; “repairing leaks does not help hydrocrats in their mission of managing scarcity. They first create scarcity which can subsequently be managed with large and expensive projects” Human rights activist Gopal Siwakoti says in his book ‘The Reality of Aid’, also the name of the International NGO who has studied the Melamchi project that: “The problem is not the lack of alternatives, but the denial of these alternatives due to the big project mind-set and the role of the water mafias.”

Foreign aid to the Maoists
Political analyst E.B. Mihaly concludes in his book ‘Foreign aid and politics in Nepal’ that “on balance the impact of foreign aid has probably harmed rather than furthered Nepal’s economic growth and political stability”.

There are of course notable exceptions. British therapists from Seeing Hands Nepal train blind people to be independent therapists who earn money by massaging tourists.

The Belgian NGO Shangri La Home not only educates street children but also provides them specific skill trainings until they find a job.

Micro credit programs financed by the Dutch organisation ICFON give poor people the chance to manage their own development according to their priorities. However, all these small projects are dwarfed by the budgets and impact of large foreign aid.
Foreign aid is actively influencing the political scene in Nepal. Nepal’s most famous writer, Manjushree Thapa, told us that the development agencies are very much part of the political system, although they will never admit it. The Nepali’s did not only vote against the establishment, but also against the aid industry. Here’s a hard question for them: Is it a coincidence that in all of the project’s area’s mentioned in this article the Maoist have won? The aid industry has certainly ‘helped’ some in Nepal, but most probably not in the way they first envisaged.

In an interview with Sri Ram Dhakal, secretary of the Maoist party headquarters, he boldly stated that “From now on any aid project will have to be approved by the people.” How he thinks to realise this is unclear, but one can only hope that the former communist rebels will bring foreign aid back to what it was all about: reducing poverty.

Nick Meynen
Kathmandu, 12 May 2008

This research was realised with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism. Info: www.fondspascaldecroos.org

On the Tamang heritage trail

2008-06-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

While snowflakes mingle with steam from the hot spring bath, babies, men and grandmothers alike are enjoying their daily dip. As the only bidesi’s we’re an attraction ourselves. The Ganesh Himal area is one of those rare places where Nepali tourists outnumber foreigners, although both are still very rare. A new trade and religion are the more powerful forces revolutionizing this ancient society of mostly Tamang people.

A few years ago, efforts were made to promote tourism in this rural backwater. Under a ‘Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Program’ (funded by UNDP), several organisations joined hands to work out a route, inform locals and attract tour operators. The latter came at the official opening, noticed no views on 8000m mountains or glaciers, no heroic stories from climbers or explorers and left Ganesh Himal largely where it was. However, in the last few years some volunteers, long time Nepal travellers and foreigners who live in Nepal are attracted to the region by the calm pre-touristic atmosphere, the beautiful views, the friendly people and the large hot spring bath at Tatopani. The latter attracts lodge owners from nearby Langtang (where a history of tourism already transformed society) for two-week winter holidays, government officials from nearby Syabrubesi and some rich Kathmanduïtis who can reach here after a day’s bus ride and halve a day of walking. Despite increasing visits, tourism has not yet transformed society in this region as it did in neighbouring Langtang.

Other foreigners have come with other intentions. Protestant evangelists from the United States are trying to teach the bible in Nepal. There are small villages like Tipling with several churches. There’s a hospital that only allows Christian people in. Local conflicts have arisen as a result, for example because Christians bury the dead. The branch of Christianity promoted here is also a very exclusive one. While Nepali’s are famous for their tolerance towards other religions, the few baptized locals don’t go to other festivals anymore. A Belgian film crew came all the way to Ganesh Himal to make a documentary called ‘Little Jesus’. Benjamin Heuschen, co-founder of the non-profit organisation ganesh-himal.be, explains the methods of the priests. “They hand out comic books featuring Jesus and bring electricity to villagers who are converted.” It reminds me of the teenagers from a private bible university in Germany which I met in Mugu, wondering around to search for opportunities to ‘help’ people. If anything they need it’s certainly not a foreign religion brought upon them.

The strong historical ties with Tibet shape recent evolutions in the area in another way as well. Since a few years a new local economy has literally mushroomed. According to several locals, the illegal trade in yartshagumba has risen sharply in the last years. The main market is China. Local claims over the use of the untraceable yartshagumba by Chinese athletes in preparation of the Olympics are supported by the Manual of Important Non-Timber Forest Products in Nepal. It states that “Once reserved only for emperors, this versatile mushroom is now the tonic of China’s elite athletes”. Of the whole range in Nepal where yartshagumba grows, from the North-West frontier till here, Rasuwa district is nearest to the Chinese market where it is mainly sold. It can be no surprise then that especially here this trade has boomed. According to Tsering, a local lodge owner, “until some years we only used to get some yartshagumba for personal use, but nowadays I know of at least three grass slopes where intensive harvesting and smuggling takes place.”

Small-scale tourism, evangelist missionaries and a lucrative, booming but illegal trade are changing the traditional lifestyles of the Tamang in Rasuwa District at an historically neck breaking speed. Another wave of change originating from outside their area are the Maoist militia, who still control some of the villages here. When they claim an inning of 180 million Rs in taxes on the yartshagumba trade in 2004 alone, one can wonder what the true motivation to occupy these villages is. The government policy to ban any trade in the product, not based on any scientific research, is an open invitation to smugglers and those who prey on them.

Dying to get better + Sick System (Nepali Times 4/1/08)

2008-01-04T02:13:00.000-08:00

Dying to get better
The government has legislated free health care to the poor by next month. As with all previous promises, this is unlikely to be kept.
The last place it may happen is in Nepal’s remote northwestern corner in the districts of Humla, Mugu and Dolpo. Every health indicator here is much worse than the rest of the country. The child mortality rate is nearly four times the national average. Many more mothers and babies die at child-birth here than anywhere else. Vaccination programs don’t get to remote areas and people can die of simple infections. Life-expectancy is 44, and many of the remote areas are even more cut off after Maoists bombed bridges during the conflict.
The health gap is being filled by well-meaning foreigners, but when they leave, the problem remains. A local Maoist leader in Dolpo, when asked why not a single health post had been built in the areas they controlled, replied: “First comes destruction, then construction."
Sick System
Medical charities in remote parts of Nepal are trying to fill the vacuum left by the government, but this has brought a host of other problems.
Because the government has neglected health for so long, providing care is like buying political support: it brings the NGOs working on health in direct confrontation with the Maoists.
There are now about 130 NGOs based in Humla working for the development of Nepal’s most remote district. Some work on health and it didn’t take long before Maoists closed the first health post. Doctors, mainly western, used to fly into health camps by helicopter to distribute free medicines, like candies to begging kids.
David Citrin, who is working on a doctorate, is not impressed: “Due to a lack of research on what people really need, not enough awareness on how to use medicines and a complete lack of follow up, the camps are more like a medical circus.”
People came on the second day, saying they didn’t feel any better after swallowing all their medicines, meant to last for two weeks. Instead of treating 8,000 people, the same 2,000 people show up four times on average to stock up on as much free medicine as they can get. Villagers are disappointed when referred to an Indian doctor.
Shanti, a woman in Simkot, told us at least three people died last year, shortly after one of the health camps ended. Citrin says he saw children playing with used needles and later learned of people dying due to infections. “The concept of a bidesi doctor flying in by helicopter to give free medicine is just so powerful in an area where the government hardly bothers to do anything,” he told Nepali Times. “Health camps obscure the real political and economic origins of sickness, they’re a band-aid on a festering wound.”
The government has promised free health services and free medicine for the poor from February. This sounds promising because 75 percent of the health care expenses of Nepalis are met by out-of-pocket payments, the highest percentage in Asia. As with everything else, the problem will be in making sure it works. When 97 villagers in rural Myagdi were asked recently what they really needed, the majority simply said: “An honest doctor who’s here with us.”
The government doctor at their health post came once a week, sometimes not at all. He sold medicines from his private clinic in Pokhara, claiming government medicines had run out. Village nurses who study in the city usually don’t come back to work in the village.
Health care still hasn’t recovered from the years of conflict. On a recent trip through Mugu, where the life-expectancy is 44, large parts of both districts are almost cut off from the world since Maoists bombed the only two bridges over the Karnali eight years ago.
There is only a fragile cable crossing in place. Medical personnel have left the area since, sick or elderly people can’t cross the river anymore. Most people here don’t beg for money, they beg for medicines, any medicines. A sick baby had only a plastic bag on his head. A dead dog lay next to the only tap in the village.
A woman asked us: “If you’re not here to distribute medicines, then why are you here?” Locals in Mugu, Dolpo and Humla now perceive foreigners as doctors by definition. In Mugu, almost two out of ten babies die at birth, more then three times the rate for Nepal. In Dolpo the situation is not much better. When the local Maoist leader, who controlled most of the area for 10 years, was asked why not a single health post had been built in the areas they controlled, he just said: “First comes destruction, then construction”.
In Nepal it is time somebody starts the construction. Not just of big hospital buildings, but of a functioning, visionary health care system. Health experts say that instead of a paternalistic top down-approach, Nepal needs to train local doctors and nurses and gear the health system towards creating wellness rather than treating illness.
Pictures from before-and-after facial surgeries on disabled Nepali children may be effective fund-raising visuals in Europe, but if the health of Nepal’s poor is going to be dependent only on foreign well-wishers or profit-minded doctors in the cities, Nepal will remain a sick nation. In the abscence of a functioning rural health care system, the people of west Nepal will have to do with foreign medicine band-aids.

Interview with Pratiksha, Maoist Commander of the 4th cantonment site in Nawalparasi

2007-12-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

On 20 December I visited the Maoist cantonment site in Nawalparasi to get a first hand idea of the atmosphere in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army). The site came in the news before when some sources claimed that many PLA soldiers had fled the site due to the bad living conditions. Below are the transcripts of my conversation with Commander Pratiksha, head of the 4th cantonment site.

Nick: "What kind of adjustment or merger of the two armies do you see? Can you imagine a future in which the PLA and NA (Nepal Army) are in the same barracks, eat in the same kitchen?”

Pratiksha: "Of course, we are not against the NA, we are against the king. We are ready to eat, play and sleep with them, as long as they obey to the political leaders and not to the king."

Nick: “Should the decision on the future of the armies be taken by the current political leaders, by the people elected through the Constitutional Assembly elections or by the military leaders?”

Pratiksha: “All decisions should be taken by the SPA (Seven Party Alliance) as per the peace agreement. We are ready to adjust according to their orders.”

Nick: "Last week 12 Nepali Congress members openly declared that without a ceremonial king the country is in great danger. If the SPA decides to keep some sort of ceremonial king, what will he PLA do?

Pratiksha: (firmly) “Not possible, the situation is out of question. We are sure our political leaders will never come to such a compromise."

Nick: "Some time ago Prachanda came to Chitwan, 3th cantonment site, and told the PLA to be ready for another 10 to 40 years of fighting. Are you ready to fight again?"

Pratiksha: "Of course we are ready, but at the moment we are in the peace process and we want to fight on the political side. We believe in the peace and election process."

Nick: "What if the elections do not take place? They have been postponed two times. What kind of political scenario do you see if by the end of April the elections still could not take place?"

Pratiksha: "We are very sure that elections will take place, so this is a hypothetical question."

Nick: "Yesterday the government has asked UNMIN (United Nations Mission to Nepal) to stay another 6 months. Will the government be able to take good care of the PLA once they are gone?"

Pratiksha: "The government is not taking good care of us right now. In the 12-point agreement they say that both armies will be treated equally, but why does a NA soldier get 100Rs a day for food and a PLA soldier only 60Rs? Why do they get 4400Rs salary and we 3000Rs? Even this salary they don't pay regularly. Only 4 months have been paid.

Nick: "When was this?"

Pratiksha: "Just before Dashain, almost three months ago. At the same time, the NA has increased its force by 20 000 since the agreement was signed. Nobody writes about this. The UNMIN should speak more on these two issues."

Nick: "As a result of this lack of funds, how is the situation in this site?"

Pratiksha: "You can see that some of us still sleep in tents. We don't have the logistics and facilities we need."

Nick: "But I can see a lot of construction is going on. Will this site become a permanent base?"

Pratiksha: "That will depend on the peace process. If the peace process goes well it will become permanent yes, but if it does not go well…(smiling)"

Nick: “Thank you for making time for us”

Afterwards I inspected the camp to find out that most of the places where the soldiers sleep are still very primitive. However, wooden barracks, a small first aid post, some training facilities and an entry gate were in construction. It seemed as if in practice the temporary camp was slowly turning into a permanent military base, although still without large constructions. None of the commanders present at the interview was wearing a military uniform. The atmosphere was rather informal. The attitude was clearly political instead of military.

United we stand strong

2007-12-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

United we stand strong
Nick Meynen Thurday November, 22, 2007
Source: THE KATHMANDU POST

After an historic but unimplemented vote in parliament, thousands gathered in Brussels on Sunday, 18 November. Constitutional crisis has reached the level where the country itself is at risk of falling apart. The king comes into view. Sounds familiar? It certainly does to Belgian nationals. The main difference is that Sunday Belgians demanded their politicians to keep the country united, while protesters in Kathmandu are likely to increase divisions. Could the crisis in Belgium give a different perspective to what is actually happening in Nepal?

Apart from the fact that they are two small countries surrounded by giant neighbors, Belgium and Nepal don't seem to have much in common. While the former enjoys economic prosperity and more than half a century of peace, the latter is a war-torn country struggling to enter a process of democracy and development.

However, in both countries separatist forces are having their heydays, most probably against the will of the majority. In Nepal the crucial question is how to build a federal republic without ending in separatism and even worse, ethnic warfare. In Belgium the question is about solidarity between the richer North and Smaller south. Both countries have politicians unable to come to a compromise, to the frustration of all.

So what is happening in Belgium, in 2006 by far the most favorite destination for Nepali's asking asylum in the whole of Europe. Ruled by a constitutional king and an elected parliament since 1830, Belgium witnessed a gradual process of democratization with women receiving the right to vote only in 1948.

Federalism politics started in 1970 and in 1993 Belgium became an official federal state. While the dispute started around language, social and economic differences between North and South, several political forces have enlarged the issues to gain popular support, including a separatist party in the North. Election after election the latter increased their support base, even after they were convicted for racism in 2004. The longest negotiations to form a national government in history (since 10 June!) have forced the king to act. Although his role should not be exaggerated, especially when compared to the king in Nepal before April 2006, his activeness is unprecedented in our recent history.

In another unprecedented event, parties from the South walked out of Parliament when an historic bill on the voting system in three counties on the border between South and North was voted. The bill came after more than a decade of North-South discussions. The fact that the North did vote on the issue while knowing that first it will not be able to change the constitution at all (a two-thirds majority is needed) and second deepening political crisis makes some believe that politicians are actually trying to end the existence of Belgium.

All this will sound quite familiar to Nepalis. Meanwhile, opinion polls suggest that the majority of Belgian citizens want to see their country united. As I write, demonstrations, events and large petitions are taking place organized by concerned citizens.

One lesson from Belgium is that even in the so-called developed countries, one can see how all elected politicians combined don't always represent the majority opinion. It also shows that democracy is not a goal that once obtained should be left to the politicians, but needs a continuous effort of people to show what they really want. If left unbothered, the will of the majority could easily be hijacked for higher political and personal gains, or just neglected.

In Nepal it was the Maoists who ignited the federal fire, which has seen a remarkable rise in just a few years time. Here also, voting in parliament turned a political crisis into a constitutional one. In Nepal the uniting factor of the king is no longer an option, due to his own mismanagement.

With every new report of murders, extortions and lack of law and order, the sticker of a failed state seems to get more attached to Nepal. Madhesis are gathering their forces to push for ever more autonomy, even after all parties committing themselves to turn Nepal into a federal state. There is nothing wrong with giving marginalized people more stakes in the higher levels of power. After centuries of feudalism and neglect, decentralized governance is truly the need of the hour.

The point is that just as in Belgium, extremist forces within the Maoists, Madhesis and other groups have come to dominate the political arena while uniting forces are getting weaker by the day. Probably it has come that far because the ruling classes gave too little too late.

The Kathmandu elite bubble has never realized the true grievances people in the countryside have. After disillusionments in the king, the parties and the Maoists, they are fed up with any Kathmandu-centered government. As it often happens in such cases, people fall back on older and deeper identities than the state has created upon them.

The current dominance of ethnic over national identity was demonstrated with the jubilations in Kathmandu over the victory of Prashant Tamang in an Indian Idol-III competition. But while ethnic identity and polarization is strongly advocated by some, the million-dollar question now is: might there be a silent majority who hope that the country stays united? Can a partition as happened with India be avoided, if ethnic polarization continues to grow like this? Could it just be that the only way of knowing what any silent majority really want is to conduct a free and fair election? The people of Nepal are betrayed time and time again by the people who promise stability, democracy or equal participation. Instead of demonstrations for an immediate republic the need of the hour is more than ever on elections. If Nepal as a state wants to survive in the next year, it will be after elections or after another military coup.

Maoists in suits

2007-12-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

Maoists in suits
Nick Meynen
Originally in Dutch: Maoïsten in Maatpak. (Gent, Vrede, maart-april 2007, nr. 384)

On the road to democracy

In the course of the past months, a peace agreement and a new interim constitution consolidated the position of the Maoists into the mainstream. By coming out of the jungle and into the parliament, the peace process took a great leap forward. By mid-June, historic elections should result in a new constitution and the first democratic elected government in 8 years. In the streets, the new constitution is already the matter of a fierce debate. During three weeks of strikes and demonstrations by Madhesi's in the south, more then 30 people have died and many more were wounded. After the PM's promises to include their demands and amend the constitution, other groups are already knocking on the gates. For a stable peace and an inclusive democracy, Nepal will need more then Maoists in suits.

A scream from Nepal's basement

Most people who think of Nepal imagine the great Himalaya, Mount Everest and other snowy peaks. In the south, however, lies a low-lying flat area called the Terai, which is part of the great North Indian Gangetic plains. In this stretch of Nepal, more people speak Hindi then the native language Nepali. The Terai is Nepal's economic motor and link with the outside world, yet the people who occupy the region or extremely neglected. It was only a matter of time before this population of almost half that of the whole of Nepal was going to ask a proportional share in politics.

In the 18th and 19th century the king rewarded friendly courtiers with land rights in the Terai. The elites who came down from the mountains to claim these lands often used the locals as bonded labourers and slaves. During the 20th century, poverty, lack of sufficient arable land and natural disasters brought new emigrants to this fertile region. A third wave of refugees settled in the Terai when the recent civil war broke out. Many Pahadi's or hill tribes managed to find key economic and political positions while the opposite movement is a rare exception. Even today the Madhesi's or people from the lowlands don't have access to the police, army or bureaucracy. The quote from a former minister of the royal regime in the eighties of the past century that “You are a conquered people and as you may know, conquered people have got no rights!” puts it very clearly how these people are viewed from the elite in Kathmandu.

Since their struggle comes from a serious and existing grievance the government couldn't stay deaf for their demands. With the governments promises to translate their demands into new amendments of the interim-constitution new questions have arisen. Extremists from the Terai want independence, but how hard will they stick to this demand? Even when it doesn't get that far, regional autonomy on an ethnic basis can cause other problems. Deepak Thapa, an important author on the conflict, doubts if ethnic autonomy is financially possible. He further warns for the mere replacement of ethnic dominance. Ethnic groups are not separated geographically in Nepal so in every region or even district several minority ethnic groups exist. A recent UNDP report describes how groups like the Chepang and Badi who live in the Terai experience serious difficulties to gain citizenship and the rights who come with them. Other groups like the Sattars and Mangta are even more marginalised because previous groups get attention from some donors. These people can't buy or sell land, participate in elections or claim their rights.

Political revenge

In revolutions, the winner takes it all. That includes revenge on the previous ministers, who where responsible for putting the current leader under house arrest or even jail. Claiming that these reactionary forces stimulated the Terai protests, several former puppet ministers from the royal regime were arrested. An investigation into crimes committed against the April revolution has resulted in a series of accusations, even against the former king. At present he has managed to escape, but for how long remains to be seen. He refused to answer the question the investigators had sent him, but he's friends are running short in numbers. With the elections coming up, round-ups like these are part of the political game. Meanwhile, the Maoists are heavily investing in their campaign by hanging Kathmandu full of posters of their hero, Prachanda. For the first time in 25 years he held a public speech in a mass rally organised by the party in the capital. The huge crowd, filled with schoolchildren and teachers brought in from far away places, listened to promises of a new democratic area. Two years earlier, on the same spot, king Gyanendra spoke to another rally filled up with schoolchildren on how democracy had improved under his direct rule, three weeks after he put most of the cabinet in jail and took the role of prime minister upon him. Nepal can only hope that words will start reflecting reality this time.

In the countryside, local leaders often resort to less democratic methods of campaigning. According to the latest UN report, threats, political violence and targeted killings continued, although on a smaller scale then during the war. Part of the problem is the lack of a full disarmament. The UN is supervising the process in which the former People's Army stores their weapons in containers, but not all weapons are collected. The Maoist police is able to keep some of them, 'for their own protection', or for killing political opponents.

Despite these incidents, dangers and problems, the Maoists should be given the credit giving the good example in terms of inclusive representation of minority groups. They included a large number of women and dalits (untouchables) into their parliamentary team. The question that remains unanswered is if these people are capable to propose and execute new policies in line with their ideology of reducing the gap between low and high castes or the poor countryside and the rich centre. According to a Maoist leader in Dolpo, West Nepal, their struggle had two phases: “first comes destruction, then construction.” It is time to see if they are also capable enough in the second part.

Nepal: A coconut in a monkey’s hand

2007-12-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

(Dutch original) Nepal: een kokosnoot in de handen van een aap. Gent, Vrede, maart – april 2005, nr. 372 (English translation) Nepal: a coconut in a monkey’s hand.

Nepal: A coconut in a monkey’s hand

If Nepali’s talk about their country and its politics they often say; “badarko hatma noriwal (a coconut in a monkey’s hand). In recent years this was mainly directed to the political leaders of the democratic parties, but it applies to all powers governing the country. It can be seriously doubted if the king, after his royal coup, will be able to open the coconut.

In a speech King Gyanendra stated that the two main reasons for his royal coup on 1 February 2005 were a lack of progress in the peace process and the inability of the government to organize elections. Even a reputable magazine like The Economist called both pretexts false. The Maoists refused to talk to the previous government just because the ministers were already little peons in the chess game the king was playing. The king, as head of the army, usually neglected agreements and his troops are considered the main responsibles for the failure of the last peace process. The idea that a free and fair election can be organized in a country where rebels control almost 80% of the territory was just ridiculous. While the outside world reacted from furious to at least disappointed on his coup, the reactions inside Nepal where more mixed. Although the king proclaimed the state of emergency, banning all demonstrations and freedom of speech, some students in Pokhara tried to rally, only to be shot away. In the capital Kathmandu it remained remarkably calm. Of course, the king had also banned all telephones, Internet and private media and censored the few remaining media channels by sending troops to the redactions. In the first place the coup means bad news for journalists, politicians and civil society in general. It didn’t take long for Dipak Bhattarai, TV journalist for Kantipur Publications, to realize something had seriously changed.

“Minutes after the king’s speech to the public I wanted to interview the leader of the biggest party in the government that just got sacked, Madhav Nepal. He was just leaving his home but even before I had a chance to ask him for a reaction the army arrived in big numbers. They send him inside, cut of his telephone lines, placed him under house arrest and ordered me to stop filming. With these prime time images I hurried to the redaction, only to find out the military had arrived before me. They screened the news, proclaimed the new rules and held the newsreaders under shot while they were on air. Three days later they left with the message that by now we should know what we can do and what not. That’s why me and my colleagues who didn’t quit, got fired or arrested are making headline news on for example the different kind of socks one can buy in Kathmandu.”

Although reliable and non-biased information was unavailable and fear was a reason to stay quite, most people in Kathmandu didn’t just keep quite. Taxi drivers, waiters, shopkeepers and many others didn’t hide their feelings and whenever asked what they thought of the new situation they happily answered, with voices full of new hope. According to them, finally something good had happened. People burned candles of hope and even the strike called for by the Maoists was completely neglected inside the Kathmandu Valley, contrary to all previous strikes.

Everybody royalist or Maoist

After more then 200 years of absolute monarchy (excluding a so called democratic intermezzo in the 1950’s) the revolution of 1990 brought some sort of democracy in Nepal. The euphoria was short however. After a few years of progress and stability political parties broke up, brought other parties in power down and chanced their ideological course with the wind. During the second half of the nineties it was as if a bunch of sea elephants were having their own little wars on some drifting icebergs with ever melting bases. Part from the huge corruption and economical problems the political parties mainly forgot to democratize themselves. Since 1994 more governments then springs followed and the average Nepali didn’t even know who was in power, let alone where the parties in power stood for. Since the first government that got sacked by the king himself, on 4 October 2002, they’ve been calling out for demonstrations, but without much popular support. For most people, the king finally brings some clarity, stability and even a feeling of security. People who used to believe in the compromises of the political parties are turning into royalists or just the opposite, Maoists. The middle way doesn’t exist any longer; from now on everybody is royalist or Maoist.

Fatalism and development on the countryside

In the villages (where more then 80% of the Nepali’s live) there’s no such thing as the safe anonymity of the city. Everyone knows everyone. Outside the cities and the connecting roads between them, most of the country is occupied or at least affected by the Maoists. Stating your opinion means choosing sides and especially in the contested areas this can be fatal. Normal farmers are trapped more then ever, even if they don’t wish to choose sides. One day one army comes for food or shelter, the next day the other army comes to punish the farmer for giving it. While the Maoists usually give a warning first, the army frequently uses the first-shoot-then-ask rule by which many innocent people already died. According to a law voted in 2001, despite strong protest from organizations like Amnesty International, the army even has the legal right to shoot any person involved in theft, aggression or “any other violent or subversive act”. Sometimes a suspicion can be enough to arrest or even shoot someone. Mayli, a woman working in a tourist lodge in a strongly contested area, tells the story of her brother.

“One day the Maoists who ask for donations to the tourists arrived in my brothers lodge. They had decided to sleep in a small building just behind his lodge and asked for food in his kitchen. Of course he didn’t like that but what could he do? When the army found them in a search operation they immediately arrested my brother too. The army also took the expensive satellite telephone, which we had just bought as an investment for tourist use, under the pretext that the Maoists could use it for their operations. But for us this all doesn’t matter anymore. All we want is a house, some clothes, food and peace. Nobody cares for the rest if only we had peace”.

These kinds of stories are not an exception and usually a fatalistic voice comes along with it. Most people still believe that the gods have their lives in their hands and it is not up to them to try to change their destiny. According to Bista, in Nepal a famous social anthropologist, this fatalistic culture is an imported culture brought over from Kathmandu and growing through the ages. He describes the masses on the countryside as people who have powerful traditions concerning productive labour, endurance and most of all efficient and cooperative methods of social organization. According to him, those people are the greatest potential of Nepal; they form the true milk inside the coconut.

Hypocrites from Delhi to DC.

It can be seriously doubted if the king, through his army, will get the milk out of ‘his’ coconut. Meanwhile, ambassadors are called home to discuss if further macro economic and or military support to this regime is still useful. The hypocrisy is that the biggest supporters of the king in the past are now suddenly making the biggest noise and threats against the same king. The countries who kept supporting the royal army throughout the years in which the king was already taking power are now disappointed and ‘surprised‘. India even cancelled a regional summit because it didn’t want to shake hands with the king in his new function as prime minister. The US gave 25 million $ worth of military equipment in 2002 and 2003 together. They supported the king in such a strong way that it destroyed the whole peace process of 2003. Now they complain about the lack of democracy in Nepal. While life in Kathmandu goes on just like before, the rest of the country is increasingly suffering from an ever-worsening conflict. With the little peons eliminated from the chess game, it seems like it will take a long time before someone will ever open the Nepalese coconut.

Sources
 The Economist, Feudal follies. 5 Feb. 2005, p.25-26
 Bista D.B., Fatalism and Development. Hyderabad, Orient Longman Limited, 1991
 Amnesty International, Nepal: Human rights and security. London, Amnesty International, 14 February 2001
 (Dutch) Maarten Post, iedereen heeft angst in Nepal. MO magazine, 2004
 Interviews
 http://nepalresearch.org/

All for the local economy

2007-12-03T19:50:00.000-08:00

All for the local Economy. (Kathmandu, Nation, 3 to 9 January 2005, Vol 1, nr.38, p.32)

The locals in Maoist-affected areas have already suffered a great deal from this bloody war, why make it even worse by scaring the tourists away?

Despite our government, like many others, warning against traveling in Maoist-affected tourist areas, we found those areas just about the best places to travel while trekking in Nepal. Although some safety and ethical concerns did come to our mind, we found the consequences of not going anywhere even more disturbing. Besides, the quietness of the trails and the lack of competition to find a lodge offered us good reason to travel. Our personal story might make our claim sound more logical.

While trekking with my girlfriend from Jiri to Namche Bazaar in October, we both had to pay Rs. 1000 to the Maoists and Rs. 1000 to the government. We also spent around Rs. 8000 each, which went to the local economy. None of our two meetings with the Maoists proved to be threatening or unpleasant. Our receipt from the first meeting in Kinja, in Solokhumbu, proved valid for a second encounter with them in Nunthala, also in Solukhumbu. We learned from other tourists that their experience was similar and no one had any problems and some were even lucky to escape the Maoists at all.

In Nunthala, two young Maoists asked us for our receipt. When we explained to them about our first encounter with other Maoists in Kinja, the conversation became more relaxed. I even proposed that we play a table tennis match. During our game they told me that most of the fighting in the area had taken place a year ago and that the area had become relatively peaceful since then. The conversation ended when I asked them where all the young people in the area had gone; they were among the very few young people we met during the several days of our trek. A lonely female lodge owner told us later that her husband, together with many others, had fled the region last year and still didn’t consider the area safe to return. We saw a bombed lodge and we were told that this happened when the owner couldn’t pay the tax demanded by the Maoists. According to other lodge owners, two owners of a resort in Phakding were kidnapped and released only after their wives paid Rs. 100.000 each.

Still, we couldn’t understand why our own government should advise against traveling to this area. Curiously, there seems to be an enormous difference between the safety of tourists and the safety of villagers, a point never mentioned in the foreign media or on government websites. The locals in the region have already suffered a great deal from this bloody war, why make it even worse by scaring tourists away? Is this based on some sham security or ethical concerns and thereby robbing the locals of their economic mainstay? Have I missed any reports of tourists killed, raped or tortured by the Maoists? Maybe I did, but targeting foreigners doesn’t seem to be their strategy, unlike the strategies of the insurgents in, for example, Colombia or Iraq.

The gap between the perceived and the real danger of trekking in a Maoist-affected tourist area has become high due to both internal and external reasons. Since the royal massacre in 2001 and the subsequent escalation of the Maoist conflict, it was hardly surprising to see the people depending on tourism struggle. However what added to Nepal’s woes was the overall post-9/11 stagnation in tourism. Since the 9/11 attacks, terrorism, very hard to define, and the “war on terrorism” has covered much of the international news coverage. More often then not, the outcomes of a very complex conflict are summarized as being violent acts perpetrated by “terrorists”. It’s old wine in a new bottle, though. Some governments in the West use the same Cold War rhetoric to justify their global politics. In Nepal, both the old and the new enemies are identified in the “Maoist terrorists”.

No wonder then that the average tourist is worried for his or her safety while trekking in a Maoist-affected tourist area. In recent months, the tourist, however, has begun to realize that it isn’t all that unsafe to travel in a tourist area where the Maoists charge fees. It just became another exciting story to tell at home. But then there is still the ethical issue. Many tourists started feeling ashamed or guilty of sponsoring a “terrorist organization”. Some even refused to pay while others stayed away from the area altogether due to “ethical reasons”. The ethical dilemma of paying a fee to the Maoists is a sham if you consider that by paying for a visa, you also contribute to the Royal Nepal Army, which has been accused of grave human right violations, by Amnesty International and many others. If you want to uphold high ethical standards, you shouldn’t come to Nepal at all.

While considering safety and ethical issues, one should also think of the economy. How does your decision affect all those people who depend on tourism? After all, it is they who suffer the most if the tourists stop coming. Our own balance makes this perfectly clear. For every Rs. 10 we spend, one was for the “terrorist government” (the Maoist fee), one for the “old regime government” (The Everest park fee) and eight for the people living in the area. And it’s not just the lodge owners and the shopkeepers who suffer. On and around the trail, whole communities depend on the tourist money. Porters, waiters and even farmers suffer when the local market for their products collapses. While one can hardly expect governments like ours to stand in favor of traveling to these areas, or the Maoists peacefully retreating from them, people from Solukhumbu can only hope that peace will return to their villages. With peace, safety and the money spending tourists will come as well.

(Meynen, a Belgian, traveled in Solokhumbu for two weeks in October. A year earlier he visited Nepal to collect research materials for his master’s thesis on the impact of the Maoist movement on education. His visit this time to Solukhumbu, however, was as a traveler)

One year after the crisis: Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

2007-12-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

(Dutch original) Wapens, democratie en oorlog in Nepal. Brussel, Magazine van het forum voor vredesactie, oktober 2003, nr. 223, p.6 (unedited English translation) Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

One year after the crisis:
Weapons, democracy and conflict in Nepal

One year after the ‘Nepal crisis’ the country faded from our minds. One minister resigned, the other kept defending his decision and the others were mainly good in remaining silent. After an election and a change in the law on weapon exports, minister Louis Michel succeeded in leaving this sensitive issue behind him. This exclusively Belgian part of the story ignores what happened with the weapons and the country in general. Nick Meynen brings us a background of the conflict and update of the current situation.

In the past year Nepal changed from a democracy with problems into the absolute monarchy it was before 1990. In this process the search for causes and reasons is long and difficult. Part from the role local actors have played, one must also consider in which degree foreign actors influenced the current take over by the king and on the escalation of the conflict. Did Belgium, together with countries like the US and India, play an active role in the fall of a democratic Nepal and the rise of conflict? To answer this question we must step back and take a look at the birth of democracy in the revolution of 1990.

Nepal in the nineties

In 1990, after a series of demonstrations called the Jana Andolan, Nepal becomes an official constitutional monarchy. The king and his family, dictating all aspects of politics during centuries, bowed for the pressure but the king kept some of his power in the compromise that followed. The king kept his control over the army and the right to dissolve parliament and take over control in crisis situations. After the 1991 elections and some years of stability, more governments then springs passed by since the elections of 1994. Part from corruption and economical problems, the parties mainly forgot to democratise themselves.

In 1996 the leaders of the forbidden party CPN-Maoist declare a war against the government, the king and the system in name of the lowest castes of society. A group of lower caste people from the rural west, who saw their hopes on improvement turn into disillusion, joined them. They found that the different gaps in society, between Kathmandu and the rest, between those who own land and those who don’t and eventually between the lower castes and the higher ones only widened further. Landless farmers, lower caste people and educated but workless students gradually joined the movement, although some of them had no choice. Both the army and the Maoists violated several human rights and Amnesty International collected many examples of innocent civilians being raped, kidnapped or executed by both parties. The consecutive governments didn’t succeed in undertaking any serious initiatives to solve he problem peacefully. Reforms or even negotiations to do something about the real and essential problems the Maoists pointed out seemed out of the question.

As if Nepal didn’t have problems enough a shockwave hit the country on the first of July 2001. The king and almost his entire family are shot dead. A crown prince who couldn’t marry his beloved one is said to be responsible for the shooting, after witch he committed suicide. The respected king Birendra was hereby replaced with the much less popular king Gyanendra. Where Birendra had proved that he accepted to take a step back after 20 years of absolute monarchy, his successor proved to have much higher ambitions.

With the army on his side, he fired the entire government on the 4th of October 2002. In this period the decision to deliver the weapons to Nepal had already been made, but the delivery itself had yet to be done. The king installs a new government under the guidance of Chand, consisting mainly out of politicians from the time when every politician was a servant of the king. Since that time the king doesn’t only face the Maoists but also most of all the elected politicians. On the 29th of January 2003 a cease-fire is denounced. The violence comes to an almost stand still and a code of conduct summarizes the first agreements that should make real talks possible. In these intensive talks the Maoists show more effort and good will then the government side. They reduce their demands from the declaration of a republic to the formation of an all-party government, a constitutional assembly and a rewriting of the constitution. There position comes very close to the opinion of the main political parties who are not involved in the talks, but the government doesn’t want to know of any of their demands. Under growing pressure to reach an agreement the Chand government falls and for a moment the people of Nepal hold their breath what the king will do now. The five main parties, representing 190 out of 205 seats in parliament in the last elections, propose a candidate for premiership to the king. Madhav Nepal, leader of the biggest central left party in the country, is not only a consensus figure of these parties, he’s also popular and the Maoists would prefer talking to him. He wants new elections and declares to be open to talk about a more democratic constitution. He even agrees with the Maoists to bring the control of the army under the authority of parliament.

This is the moment where the king can stop the violence if that is what he really wishes. If he accepted Madhav Nepal at that time, chances are big that peace talks would succeed, a broad coalition would start rebuilding the country and some true problems where discussed in a serious manner. If it‘s because his party still has a communistic name or because the US didn’t want him to become premier, fact is that the king chooses to declare the conservative veteran Thapa as the new prime minister. The 75-year old Thapa was already four times premier in the period before 1990, his family is very close with the royal family and they together control both army and police.

For most of the observers it is clear that the king has not chosen peace but power. The political parties are demonstrating ever since, elections seem impossible and the conflict resumed with unprecedented force. Since there were still no elections six months after the king sacked the government, there is even a legal reason to conclude that the present government is unconstitutional. The intentions of the king and his present government concerning the democracy became very clear when the ministry of defence proposed to relocate the money preserved to cover the cost of possible elections (22 million euro) to a reinforcement of the army. Democracy left by the back door.

The role of the US in the failure of peace talks

So far only the role of political parties, Maoists and the king where analysed but what kind of influence did the international community have? India is for centuries Nepal’s big brother and always had a profound influence on the events in Nepal. As enemy of China the Indian government mainly fears that if the Maoists or even Madhav Nepal would come to power this would increase the Chinese influence in Nepal. In sum they prefer to see a dictatorial Hindu king in a Hindu kingdom in power then a rebel force with a Maoist ideology share power with democratic parties. Where India supported the democratic movement in 1990 they do not find democracy more important now then a king with who they can do good business.

The US government already chose to support Gyanendra even before he came to power. They were the first to congratulate Gyanendra when he came to power and although it has never been proved, there are indications that the CIA had good connections with him even before the events of 1 July 2001.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the foreign policy of the US is mainly centred around the “War on terrorism”. The fact that this war is mainly a cover up to achieve other geopolitical goals is already well known throughout the world. But what this means for their geopolitical aspirations in Nepal is not yet clear. Fact is that the military expenses the US spends on Nepal are risen to a high of 12 million $ in 2002 and 13 million $ in 2003. Even 49 military advisors came to Nepal to train the Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

Part from the military expenses there are other indications that the US deliberately wants to make sure that the Maoists in no way achieve anything at all, even if it is achieved in a peace agreement. In the seven years of conflict since 1996, the US never described the Maoists as terrorists. The Nepalese government started to use this term only in 2001, the year the army was deployed for the first time. Even when the Maoists committed their biggest attacks the US didn’t put them on the terrorist list. On the 25th of April 2005, in the midst of serious peace talks, the US signed the “Antiterrorism Assistance” act with Gyanendra to legitimise further military investments in the country. It is remarkable that only five days later the Maoist for the first time ever appeared on their terrorist list. Getting to a peace agreement normally requires decoupling violence from political demands and respecting each others proposals for the latter. Therefore one of the first things Maoists and government agreed was to stop calling each other terrorists. In fact this agreement mend that the government accepted that the Maoists have a concrete political goal and violence had a meaning, without saying violence was legitimate of course. By signing the “Antiterrorism Agreement” first and then calling Maoists terrorists at that crucial moment in peace talks, the US can only had one meaning and that is to obstruct the peace process itself.

When Thapa came to power, a move also very much against peace and democracy, the US were once again one of the first to congratulate him. Sometimes it is strange how the US proclaims to export democracy and at the same time congratulates those who destroy it. The old Cold War rhetoric combined with the new terrorism rhetoric covers the true reasons why the US supports Gyanendra. It could be possible that the US is building up a series of military strong allies around China. This would be in line with the theories of Samuel Huntington who says that the ‘Chinese civilisation’ is the biggest threat to US world dominance after the ‘Muslim civilisation’. How real these theories (obligate literature for all US ambassadors) can become is very clear in the Middle East. It is a well-known public secret that Huntington and Kaplan through the neo-conservative think tank ‘ Project for a new American Century’ (PNAC) have a profound impact on the current foreign policy of the US. People in government like vice president Cheney were members of this think tank about how the US world dominance can be sustained.

Whatever the motives may have been, fact remains that the US are partly responsible for destroying the peace talks. Of course, the US (together with India and Belgium) is not the sole actor responsible for this, because the main issue is about who gets what kind of power. But what if a superpower like the US did not have this foreign policy and did not sign an agreement with the king whereby he new that as long as the conflict kept on going his personal army would get millions of dollars support. It seems that for Gyanendra it is a personal financial goldmine to keep a so-called terrorist conflict going on.

The role of the Belgian weapon delivery

Belgium also strengthened the RNA with automatic weapons called Minimi’s. The Belgian motives are different from the US motives since they where purely economical, but the result remains the same. Contrary to other European countries, who refused to deliver weapons to the RNA, Belgian violated it’s own laws and European agreements to do this. They supported an army that (since January 2001) has the right to shoot people who are involved in a theft, aggression or “any other violent or subversive act”.

Part from the fact that the transfer was illegal, one can consider if our government doesn’t use any ethical reasoning. Foreign actors like the US, India or Belgium may not be the driving forces behind the failure of democracy and the escalation of conflict but the fact remains that beside the internal forces they created very favourable circumstances to keep the conflict going on. Our weapons are used right at this moment to kill Nepali civilians who lack any democratic way of addressing their problems. Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have shown that these weapons also killed innocent people. It can’t be bad to remember some Belgian ministers, who mostly think or hope the issue is over, on the actual consequences of their decision.

Nick Meynen

Nick Meynen (1980) is graduated as a master in geography and a postgraduate in development and conflict studies. In function of his thesis on the conflict in Nepal he visited the country for five weeks to take interviews and see how the country deals with its conflict.

quaility versus quantity education

2007-11-30T19:21:00.000-08:00

Quality versus quantity education . Kathmandu, The Kathmandu Post, 11/4/2003, p.5

As a Belgian student in development co-operation, I came to Nepal a month ago to learn about the Nepali education system and the role of the conflict on this system. Sometimes people asked me to explain the differences between Nepali education and education in Belgium. It may be difficult to give an overview of all the differences, but I did find some characteristics that sometimes surprised me. Of course, the statistical differences like number of children going to school are there. But I found other problems that mainly have an impact on the quality of education. Education is much politicised in Nepal. Many teachers I met are part of a political party; and often in small villages, the teacher was also the only political figure. Their position and authority is very high in small communities since they are often the only educated people. Through teaching they can spread the ideology of their political party. After finding this, it didn’t surprise me anymore why teachers were frequently threatened, blackmailed and attacked by Maoists (at least before the recent cease-fire). Which does not mean I agree with this, but education seems to be a way to spread ideology by both Maoists and other political parties.
A long-term vision on education is also not supported when with every new government the whole educational institutions get restructured. Bureaucrats and administration should not at all be linked with any political party but should be an objective and neutral team of experts who are able to design, implement and control the long-term planning to provide a quality national education. I agree that the number of illiterate and the number of girls going to school are problems but quality education is equally important to bring development and progress.

Another complaint I heard from many Nepali people is that the curriculum is old,
theoretical and not fit to the heterogeneity of the Nepali society. Since education in
Belgium is much older (the first university is 577 years old), we have gradually came to a
very differentiated and flexible curriculum with a lot of options and choices to be made
by the students themselves. In Nepal I found that you could only really start to specify your
study when you enter grade 11 since before that you can only choose two optional subjects.
The process of adapting the curriculum to society still has a long way to go and
will be essential to bring quality education. The use of having to learn difficult
mathematics or poems of Shakespeare, which even English students don’t have to learn, in
a remote rural village where there is an urgent need to learn how to stop erosion and
improve agricultural production seems pretty low to me. Tourism, computer-education,
rural development, agricultural techniques, local languages and so on are not included in
the curriculum. Regional, religious, language, social and economical differences in the
Nepali society are completely ignored in an wrong attempt to copy the western style
education.

So my opinion is that it is wrong and narrow-minded to put all the money and energy in
providing education for all by 2015 and free education if this bad state of education prevails.
The donor community also has a responsibility in this since looking at some nice
statistics and being satisfied with it is not what development is about. Nepal needs a more
differentiated, de-politicized and decentralized education with input from grassroots level
to change the curriculum. It should be suitable for every region, religion, sex, language or
ethnicity. The government, civil society, teachers and the donor community must
make an effort to do more than only set some far away good looking goals and then feel
comfortable with statistics.

(The author is a student in development co-operation at University of Ghent, Belgium)