FW: 'Maoists in the mist'

[Barry Stoller <bstoller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nepali Times. 11 May 2001. Maoists in the mist.


The local Maoist commanders tell us: you are doing social mobilisation,
so are we. Let?s work together. ?NGO worker.


The death toll in five years of the Maoist ?peoples? war,? according to
official figures, is now nearing 1,700. But there is another casualty:
development.

Poverty and government neglect drive the insurgency and feed public
frustration. But, ironically, development projects aimed at addressing
those very problems are grinding to a halt because of the violence and
fear accompanying this conflict.

This is happening not just in ?Maoist-affected areas.?

Across Nepal,non-governmental organisations and community groups say
they are finding itincreasingly difficult to carry on. Caught between
suspicious security forces, and Maoist threats and extortion, grassroots
workers are lying low?affecting vital projects in education, health,
water supply, micro-credit, agricultural extension and training.

One of the few achievements of 10 years of democracy was the empowerment
that came with local self-governance, and this could be one of the most
irreparable casualties of the insurgency.

?I was working as a social mobiliser, I really believed we could change
Nepal by motivating people to be self-reliant. We had started seeing the
transformation resulting from our work,? said one dejected NGO activist.
?Today, when I walk through villages, I see people cowering in fear.
They are afraid to come out, afraid to speak, afraid to take the lead.?
Most Nepalis and expatriates interviewed for this article asked that
their names not be used, indicating just how pervasive the fear
psychosis is. Some didn?t even want the district where they worked to be
named for fear of reprisal by Maoists or police.

Paradoxically, there is another side to this. Despite the silent terror
that stalks the land, highways are still being built across
Maoist-controlled areas with donor-funding, community development
activities of NGOs are going on even in the Maoist heartland of the
mid-west. The presence of NGOs is proof that not all development work is
at a standstill. ?We have met local Maoist commanders, and they tell us:
you are doing social mobilisation, so are we. Let?s work together,? said
a Nepali staff of an international development outfit in the far-west.

Another leader of a development agency with projects all over Nepal told
us: ?We try to be neutral and offer to work with anyone willing to be
our partners, as long as their interests are to help the poor. In some
cases we have worked effectively with Maoists.? An agency that had
packed up its bags to leave one of the mid-western districts because its
workers were being picked up by police along the trails, was approached
by the local Maoist commander who asked them to stay.

Elsewhere across Nepal, there is proof that as long as the organisation
has a policy of transparency in its budget, local villagers want and
benefit from their activities, and it is carried out by Nepalis there
have been no problems. Said one NGO working in Kabhre: ?We put our
entire budget, with even the smallest details of how much a bag of
cement cost us, in charts up on the wall. When the Maoists come, we show
them what we are doing and they don?t disturb us.? Still, Maoists have
often attacked projects they don?t like. On  Tuesday night, they torched
a car belonging to an EU project in Gulmi.

So, have the Maoists have succeeded where countless workshops and
seminars on  aid strategy, donor reform and ensuring cost-efficiency in
aid have failed? It is tempting to think so. But Maoist policy on
development and foreign aid is muddled, and there are too many
contradictions in the way in which local Maoist leaders have treated
development projects.

One reason could be that the leadership structure and hierarchy is
decentralised and the goals and strategies formulated at the top don?t
reach local commissars.

International charities whose projects are tolerated in one district are
attacked in a neighbouring one. There is also a lot of misinformation
doing the rounds. We were told a private foreign group in Rasuwa had
folded up because of Maoist threats, but last we checked, they were
still there. All it took was one phone call to find out that another
voluntary organisation in Mugu, also rumoured to have left because of
Maoist threats, was in fact continuing its work in the area.

?There is a real difficulty in planning in Nepal now,? admitted one
frustrated head of an international relief group in Kathmandu. ?I have
to know whether I am wasting time here or not. Either I have to piss or
get out of the pot. If they don?t like us, let them tell us, and I?ll
take my money and go somewhere else.?

In many places from which development workers have actually been forced
to leave, the effect has been devastating. The Maoists are too busy
fighting, the government virtually doesn?t exist and development work
has come to a standstill. ?The Maoists run us out, they can?t fill the
void and they are too preoccupied to get on with  grassroots development
work that needs outside resources or expertise,? said one activist who
is now back in Kathmandu.

Aside from rhetoric and slogans, Maoists have shown they have no
coherent policy on how to deal with external development agencies,
bilateral aid, or even international charities. Maoist ideologue Babu
Ram Bhattarai writing in his 1998 pamphlet Politico-economic Rationale
of the Peoples? War in Nepal, is not much help: ?Foreign aid is the
entry of imperialist and expansionist financial capital in disguise?In
keeping with the imperialist plan of checking the mounting crisis in
oppressed nations from breaking into revolutionary upheavals, billions
of rupees have been pumped into rural areas in the name of NGOs/INGOs.?

Except for the 40-point demand announced six years ago, party literature
is mum on a vision for development. Said one leftist analyst in
Kathmandu who has closely followed the spread of Maoist influence: ?I
haven?t seen a clearly articulated plan of action.? Revolutionary land
reform tops their developmental agenda, but aside from saying that they
would ?take from the rich and give to the poor? there is little clue
about how this will be carried out. Nor is there a plan to address
unemployment.

Although there is an emphasis on self-reliance, the Maoists? present
methods of tax-collection, extortion and outright robbery of banks and
community savings schemes means it cannot resist the need to depend on
outside resources.

So far, the only consistent pattern seen in the attacks on development
activities seems to be violence, threats and intimidation directed at
village leaders with allegiance to the Nepali Congress. There have also
been instances where foreign aid workers have been asked if they are
American, and at least one international aid organisation was reportedly
attacked because local Maoists said it was supported by ?imperialist
Americans.?

Said one agricultural specialist who worked with a US-funded air
programme in Dang: ?They are somewhat allergic to Americans, but it does
not mean they target Americans. Also, they have no problems if funds are
coming from the US as long as the work in the field is effective.?
Instances where development workers have been killed are mostly due to
personal conflicts and disagreements with local Maoists. One
multilateral-funded agricultural project with field activities in 40
districts is being implemented without hindrance from Maoists, according
to project managers. Said one: ?We sit down with them and tell them what
we are doing with agro-forestry user groups, training and savings
schemes, and as long as we are transparent about what we are doing and
we are not arrogant and ostentatious they give us full cooperation.?

Said another farming expert back in the capital from a field visit: ?You
realise they are not ogres, they don?t have horns. They tell you what
they want, and you tell them why you are there and usually it is for the
same reason: to make Nepalis more self-reliant, better fed, better
educated, more healthy.?  He adds that what the Maoists say strikes a
chord in most Nepali villagers outside the district headquarters: ?They
say Kathmandu is looting us, and we poor have to pay the price. We have
to bring them in line.?

Even so, police records show Maoists have ransacked 18 field offices of
donor agencies in the last five years. But there have been many more
unreported threats and attempts to extort and intimidate staff. One
development worker from the far-west told us local Maoists used to ask
for money from time to time, but now it is very organised. ?Everyone in
the village has been asked to pay one month?s salary every year as tax
to support the Peoples? War, and there are threats if you don?t pay,? he
said. The field worker is in a dilemma because his regional office in
Nepalgunj will not reimburse him his salary, and it has to come out of
his own pocket. He says civil servants, and even police, pay the Maoist
tax.

There is a tendency among local Maoist commissars?not very different
from the general Nepali mindset?to look at infrastructure projects as
?real? development, and other processes like social mobilisation,
training and awareness building as a waste of time. Local Maoists tend
to piggy-back on local community groups set up by development agencies
to spread their doctrine. Refusal can lead to conflicts.

In a few remote pockets, Maoist commanders have warned development
workers to stay away from villages where they carry out training. They
target high-profile programmes with fancy four-wheel drive vehicles, and
projects with a large and showy presence. But is all pretty arbitrary,
depending on the local situation, the perceived need for the type of
development activity, and the whim of the local Maoist commander.
Nepal?s biggest development project to date, the Kali Gandaki-A, even
has a slogan written in chalk at the entrance to the power house in
Beltari: ?Let?s support the ongoing Kali Gandaki A Project, NCP
(Maoist).?

Three members of the Melamchi Project, including a Canadian consultant
looking at social and environmental mitigation, were briefly detained
last week near Mahankal by armed Maoists. The three were quizzed on
project goals and benefits to the local community, and later released
unharmed. Large infrastructure projects that benefit the nation, tourism
and trekking on which ordinary porters and villagers depend on for
income appear to be deliberately left alone.

In three mid-western districts where the Maoists have declared the
formation of ?people?s governments? they have built bridges, maintained
village trails and drinking water systems and erected lots of gates to
commemorate dead comrades.

But there is no clear pattern or strategy for village development. An
important gain has been in gender equality (at least among the Maoist
cadre) in areas of Nepal where the status of women has traditionally
been the lowest. Maoists have shown a puritanical streak, but it is
whimsical and quite random: threatening women who cut their hair short
in Itahari, warning women not to  wear jeans in Biratnagar, and banning
alcohol in areas where they are in firm control. There is much genuine
support for the Maoists? goals, but there is a lot of disagreement about
the violent methods and the public acquiescence is largely driven by
fear of retribution so there is no overt opposition to the Maoists.

But a more worrying aspect is the seeming lack of central policy and
control. While in the first three years of the insurgency, Maoists
carried out populist punishment of known village criminals and corrupt
officials, today incidents of extortion, ?taxation?, looting of village
savings schemes and brutal murders of popular local leaders have also
affected their image. It is now often difficult to tell the difference
between ?Maobadi? and armed criminal ?khaobadi??robbers who loot a bank
and leave shouting Maoist slogans, or those who steal from savings and
credit groups.

?There?s no way to tell if they are real Maoists,? said one village
elder whose savings and credit programme was looted recently.

With more and more police posts being pulled back to secure areas, large
parts of the country have been left in the hands of local criminals. The
Maoists have their own Peoples? Courts to address local disputes and
carry out public punishments of khaobadis. The police retreat has
actually made remotes districts more peaceful, giving the sense that
once the Maoists are in control things return to normal?as long as no
one disagrees. This is why there is apprehension about the government?s
recently announced Integrated Security and Development Programme (ISDP)
providing the security umbrella for development activities to take place
with the help of the police, paramilitary and the Royal Nepal Army. Many
development workers who had got used to the return to calm now fear a
return to fighting.

One health worker from the mid-west told us: ?We had just got used to
working with the Maoists after the police moved out, now with the ISDP
it will be uncertain again.?


...........................

Barry Stoller

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