Between Development and Dissonance: The Conflict in Nepal through the Eyes of an American Volunteer

by Jeff Achen

Colorfully decorated with orange and blue, the rusty old bus hugged the turns of the narrow hillside road as we wound our way through the eastern hills of Nepal. The bus jerked as it frequently changed from a boisterous run to a dawdling crawl, just slow enough for old women and men to run, leap, and stumble onto the bus without killing themselves.

Nepali government soldiers on patrol in the far eastern district of Ilam.

I sat crouched near the back of the bus in a seat two sizes too small for my larger frame, but I was quickly distracted from my own discomfort. I looked around at the curious details of my surroundings. A little boy, probably about six or seven years old, was cheerfully staring out the window while his father lay drunk and passed out in the seat next to him. Women in brightly decorated saris, a Nepali dress, crowded the seats and young men with misspelled imitation brand name backpacks gripped the overhead bars as they stood packed in the aisles. The bus seemed almost out of control at times as it descended through the jungle. It, I imagined, served as a strangely appropriate metaphor for the troubled political and social state that is Nepal.

Instead of the scenic mountain views, it is the problems in Nepal this past year that have seemed "Himalayan." As Nepal’s 13-year-old democratic government struggles with corruption, factionalism, and the threat of a Maoist insurgency, the Nepali people remain caught in the middle, hanging onto the handlebars and weathering the bumps and jolts of a rickety old bus that barely slows down enough for them to get onboard.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, one of many living and working in Nepal, I spent the past year trying to make sense of the violence and bloodshed. It has been difficult to watch as the insurgency has intensified. Many Nepali people have been suffering quietly through it all and the many different aid organizations working in Nepal push on while trying to stay out of harm's way.

Entering Nepal's story

I first arrived in Nepal in February 2002. Just three months earlier Maoists had walked away from the negotiating table and began attacks on police and army posts, pulling the country’s military into the conflict for the first time. The Nepali government called an official state of emergency, which granted powers to the Royal Nepalese Army to fight the insurgents. During my first few months I heard and felt the effects of many nationwide strikes, as well as violent attacks on buses, government offices, and army and police posts by the Maoists. Though the Maoists have extended a welcome to tourists and aid workers, most visitors found it hard to feel safe amidst growing violence.

In May of 2002, as I arrived at my assigned post in the far eastern hills to begin teaching English at a public school, the state of emergency was due to expire. A disagreement among Nepali's political leaders over the need for an extension of the state of emergency lead to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's recommendation to Nepal's King Gyanendra to dissolve the parliament and set a date for new elections in November. Deuba and others believed that the state of emergency extension was necessary for the army to officially tackle the Maoist problem. Leaders of his political party, the Nepali Congress, did not see eye to eye. The disagreement did more than bring about a surprise decision to dissolve parliament; it has also cost Deuba his membership in the party.

For a volunteer this whirlwind of political turmoil seemed too crazy to believe, yet I was quick to remind myself that I wasn’t in the United States anymore. On the whole, the outcome of the crisis was certainly unclear, but it appeared to me that the needs of the Nepali people were being shifted to the back burner for the meantime. Basic health care, education, nutrition, and agricultural extension were in dire need of being addressed.

The strikes

Despite my anxieties, aid work in Nepal continued, though it was being affected. Curfews and strikes kept me confined to my apartment and neighborhood much more often than I liked. Most of the aid workers in Nepal have now been consolidated in the district centers instead of the villages where they had worked in past years. One U.S. aid organization, for example, operated in 58 districts ten years ago. Today that number has been reduced to 28, mainly due to the fact that many of the districts where volunteers used to serve are remote and require a greater amount of support than the conflict now allows.

One of the more disruptive tactics of the Maoists has been a series of "bundhs," or general strikes. The strikes have lasted from one to five days. Either out of fear of Maoist wrath or out of sympathetic consent, citizens across the nation closed their shops, stopped operating their vehicles, and waited out the strikes.

In May and June the state of emergency was extended while attacks took an even more frustrating and curious turn. Nepali newspapers had been reporting daily the death toll of Maoists as well as police and army personnel, but then came more upsetting news. The destruction of water supply offices, horticulture farms, irrigation offices, forestry projects, and a $20 million hydroelectric plant began, adding development to the casualty list. In many places there was a political vacuum. There was no parliament and many of the local politicians’ terms had expired. Elections were not an option at that point, so many districts were without elected leadership. Everything was put on hold.

Outside Aid

As a result of the turmoil, Nepal's government asked for weapons and monetary aid from neighboring India and from the United States. The United States has since approved monetary aid for the purchase of light arms and non-lethal military hardware. Meanwhile human rights violations were on the increase for both sides. Reports in the media accused Maoists of forcibly recruiting school children to fight in their “People’s War.” Amnesty International reported that more than half of the “Maoists” killed by security forces were actually innocent civilians. A record number of journalists were detained or imprisoned. Security forces had restricted the food supply in some of the areas where Maoists were concentrated in an effort to starve off the rebels, yet it was the innocents that went hungry. Famine now plagues the mid-western hill regions of Nepal.

The Nepali people suffered even more losses during the hot, rainy monsoon season in June through September in which more than 450 people died due to flooding and landslides. Like the threatening monsoon waters, reports also began to flow in of young people leaving their villages for fear of being recruited by the Maoists. Many local politicians fled for fear that Maoists wanted them dead. In my district alone nearly 3,000 people reportedly left for neighboring India. I watched as my little town swelled with new faces, people who left homes that they had known all of their lives. In other areas it was worse. Around 60,000 people were reported to have left their villages in the mid and far western hills of Nepal.

Corruption

In October 2002, Nepali politicians continued to lose face with the people after several ministers were taken into police custody on charges of corruption. Nepal’s government was suffering from inefficiency, greed, mismanagement, and exclusion. King Gyanendra fired Prime Minister Deuba on grounds that he was incompetent after he failed to secure the scheduled November elections. The King temporarily assumed executive powers, postponed elections indefinitely, then appointed a new Council of Ministers and a new Prime Minister, Mr. Lokendra Bahadur Chand. Nepali politics continued to baffle me. General strikes called by the Maoist were keeping me out of school every other week. My students were clearly being affected.

Terrorism as tactic

Things continued to spiral out of control. In January 2003 Maoists killed the Inspector General of the Armed Police, Mr. Krishna Mohan Shrestha. Officials everywhere realized that no one was safe from terror. The conflict was destroying the country. Then something happened. A cease-fire was declared at the end of January. In March the Maoists signed a 22 point contract with the government stipulating that they would not use the armed forces against each other, that they would release all captives, that there would be fair media coverage for all sides, that restrictions on food and medicine would be lifted, and that there would be no general strikes. I had come to the end of my volunteer service and said farewell to my Nepali friends, co-workers and students. As they watched me head home to a place they only imagined to be paradise on Earth they crossed their fingers for me. At that same time, Nepalis everywhere crossed their fingers and held their breath in hopes of a lasting peace in their country.

It didn’t last.

The fighting has resumed and the Maoist have stepped up activity in many areas of Nepal, including the peaceful village where I lived and worked. Since I had arrived in Nepal, approximately 2,500 people have died due to the fighting between the Maoists and the government. Over 5,000 have died since November 2001, which is more than had died in the previous five years of the conflict. In all, more than 8,000 have died since the conflict started in 1996.

A perspective for hope

As an aid worker this understandably made me much more uncomfortable than that cramped little Nepali bus seat. Though it may have seemed risky to be staying in Nepal through such troubled times, I found it was actually the aid organizations that had the good fortune of still being able to accomplish their original developmental goals in Nepal. Due to the apolitical nature and the grassroots character with which we work, it's not surprising to see aid work continuing with less difficulty than other work. It was these dynamics that have contributed to aid organizations’ own flexibility, feasibility and safety while operating during the conflict in Nepal. Since volunteers are not paid a wage, instead receiving only a small living allowance, they provide skilled labor that requires little more than the native people require. These traits, unfortunately, put us in the same cramped bus seat as the average Nepali, somewhere between development and a hard place.