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VOL. 27, NO. 23, February 15, 2007 (Falgun 03 2064 B.S.)
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Prolonged Instability
With competing powers around, Nepal is in for a prolonged instability
By SUSHIL SHARMA
Last week, Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg made some sort of a record. He became the first head of a foreign government to visit Nepal in two years of the restored democracy.
There was another first too. The Nordic nation’s premier put environment on the top of his agenda, ahead of politics. Something unheard of during such visits in recent memory.
In a meeting with his Nepalese counterpart Girija Prasad Koirala, the lanky Norwegian did indeed express skepticism over the April polls on grounds of poor security. But the focus of the talks, as he said later, was the melting snow and its impact on the global climate.
Having participated in a climate summit in Delhi along with the host prime minister Man Mohan Singh a day earlier, the Norwegian premier was on the tour of the snowy Himalayas the next day.
He spent barely 18 hours in Nepal. That did not stop him from flying to snowy Manang district and taking an aerial tour of the Himalayas.
“The melting of the snow in the Himalayas could affect the supply of water to a billion people of the region,” he told reporters before boarding an own small jet.
The warning is not new. An international panel issued a similar warning ahead of the Bali summit late last year.
Said the inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC), “glaciers and snow cover are expected to decline, reducing the water availability in countries supplied by melt-water.”
A London-based think tank went on to warn that South Asia could even witness a big war over water.
Nepal can not remain immune to the effect of such an eventuality. The famous ‘yam between two boulders’ could even be a cause of it.
The snowy Himalayas lie to the north of Nepal on the borders with China. And the snow-fed Koshis and Karnalis flow down to the south to join the mighty Ganges and the Bramhaputras on the borders with India.
There are already signs of uneasiness in the air. A case in point is the prime minister Man Mohan Singh’s visit to China and the aftermath.
The bonhomie over Singh’s high-profile Beijing sojourn has been followed by fresh bickering over the disputed Himalayan region of Arunachal Pradesh.
Singh chose to rush to the snowy border state immediately after returning from Beijing. He was the first Indian prime minister to visit the area in 12 years. He hailed the state as “our land of the rising sun.”
China instantly lodged a protest with the Indian government. It considers the large areas of the state as its own. Last year, it refused visa to a member of an Indian delegation who hailed from the state.
Obviously, the political snow has not melted yet, notwithstanding the much-touted warmth in the business relations.
India sees threat from China. Its insurgency-infested north east is too vulnerable. Three hundred thousand troops are stationed there.
A recent report said that these troops are too preoccupied in long-running counter-insurgencies to guard the national borders. Hence the recent decision to create two well-equipped new mountain divisions of 15,000 each.
Significantly, a former army chief, J.J.Singh, has been appointed the governor of the disputed Arunachal Pradesh that borders, besides China, the Chinese-influenced Myanmar.
Indian intelligence officials see Chinese hand behind the insurgencies in the north-east the way the academics of the tightly-controlled Chinese state point fingers at India for the present trouble in Nepal’s southern terai.
Two months ago, a Chinese Nepal expert termed the disturbances in Terai “unnatural and unusual.”
The tone has hardened. Said another in an interview to international media earlier this month, “according to academics and media reports the root of the problem lies across the border.”
One can also see a growing consternation at the role of the western powers. Both Delhi and Beijing share it, as was evident at the recent UN security council debate over the extension of the UNMIN’s mandate and tenure.
A small and militarily insignificant Norway may not be a power to ring alarm bells in Delhi and Beijing. But one thing is for sure, power games in their common neighbourhood, have intensified.
Said a political commentator, “ Nepal had never before become a play-ground for such a large number of competing foreign powers.”
“It is this external competition that will decide the fate of the new Nepal including the much talked-about constituent assembly polls and the peace process.”
As war-over-water warning adds to its difficult geo-political challenges, tougher times await the water-rich Nepal with snow-capped mountains.
Signs of the times? Prolonged instability and scattered violence.
sushil2062@hotmail.com
