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Kathmandu,Friday May 05, 2000 Baishakh 23, 2057.
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Engage Maoists in dialogue
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala is sending out
confusing signals by playing hard and soft with Maoists. On the one hand, his tough talk
with regard to Maoists shows him as bent on raising a paramilitary force or even
mobilising the army to resolve the problem of insurgency. On the other hand, the extension
of the High Level Consensus Seeking Committee to enable former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur
Deuba who heads this committee to hold dialogue with Maoist leaders, shows him as trying
to soften his hardline approach.
Are we to infer from this that Koirala has not
ruled out dialogue as the preferred means for resolving the insurgency problem ? We hope
we are right because the extension of the consensus seeking committee’s term has at
least indicated that it may be possible to resolve the problem peacefully. At the same
time, it will be naive to expect an additional grace period of perhaps a few months to do
any good unless an environment conducive for holding talks is first created. And, it goes
without saying that such an environment cannot be possible with Koirala looking to
activate the National Defence Council and through it, to spend a fortune to create a
substantial paramilitary force that will first put down the insurgency and then later be
assigned to other duties. While the subject of whether the country needs a paramilitary
force to quell the insurgency is as debatable as whether the army should be mobilised for
the same purpose, even Girija Prasad Koirala, should not be averse to the idea of seeking
a peaceful resolution to the problem.
The prime minister would therefore be well advised
to assist Deuba in every way he can including in making the environment conducive so that
the talks can take place. This means he may have to put on hold his plan to either deploy
a new paramilitary force or send in the army and treat them as only last resort options.
The police versus Maoist contest has bled the affected areas and caused great suffering.
Sending in the army or the paramilitary will bleed the economy if the operations turn out
to be a protracted one, as conflicts involving guerrilla warfare usually are. While the
government must keep this in mind, the Maoists on their part must be more open to
invitations for dialogue. It has been reported that Maoist leaders are not really averse
to the idea of dialogue. But for the dialogue to take place in earnest, hostilities
between the police and Maoists must first stop. Both the government and Maoists must
realise that violence is not the way to resolve the socio-economic problems which are at
the root of the insurgency. These are the problems both the government as well as Maoists
must solve together.
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