Exit to the Maoist crisis

By Bishnu Hari Nepal

During an interview, a journalist asked this author to comment in short on the country’s six year-old People’s War. The reply was, "If somebody asks me to kill a particular human being, so that I had the honour to be the Chakrawarti Samraat - the World Emperor, I rather would reject the Empire!..." The journalist laughed at me and immediately reacted, "Isn’t it timid...? Veeryaa Bhojyaa Vasundharaa... The brave rule the earth..."

Might be, but not always. It depends upon the thinker’s choice. It is as well crystal clear that the definition of bravery is also a variable factor, depending upon the observatory angle. Whatever, but the theme discussed touched deeply the zeal of a student of diplomacy.

As a result, many questions were pondered. Does political power really come from the barrel of the gun always? Is there no room for diplomatic effort in the peaceful settlement of disputes? Is the People’s War a class struggle or a power struggle? Is the path of bloodshed to achieve power, the best way for mankind? Considering the severity of the crisis today, it strikes the mind why the government first took such a grave issue as the People’s War so lightly?

The first question deserves the answer partially ‘yes’, for political power is sustained by the military, eg today’s PRC or Pakistan or the defence force of any nation. More precisely, the strongest factor for creating the present international scenario of unipolar vs multipolar world, is doubtlessly weapons. Contrary to this, if one looks back to the 20th century, Vietnam, Cambodia and also many colonies proved that might is ‘not always right’.

If we patiently review the Sept 11 tragic incident in the USA, it compels one to think of what oriental philosophy reiterates: buddhir yasya balam tasya - knowledge is power.

Perhaps, the Nepalese Maoists will have to consider this fact and learn from this bitter truth. The Taliban, former Yugoslavia and Iraqi had better equipped, well trained and bigger armies than the Nepalese Maoist guerrilla force.

Due to RIM, MCC, India’s People’s War group and South Asian and other radical groups’ nexus with the CPN (M), it may not take a longer time for the USA to declare the CPN (M) also a terrorist organisation.

The CPN (M) should consider in a mature way that it has been declared a terrorist party officially by New Delhi before Kathmandu, and the emergency was immediately supported by Washington, the European Union and New Delhi followed by Japan, PRC and Russian Federation. The Maoists also should not forget that the C-In-C rushed back from a European and New Delhi visit. This visit, at a time of crisis, cannot be taken for granted, neither can it be regarded as a simple regular trip. In international relations, dramatic twists and turns take over night. Take the 1987, July 27 Rajiv-Jayawardane Pact to strike against the Tamil Tigers, whereas, India, weeks earlier, had dropped food for the Tamils against the will of the then Sri Lankan government.

The support of some choppers from the US was already rumoured before the emergency. There is no guarantee the US will not pour in further technical and material support for their interests in Nepal, hazardous to the Maoists. Similarly, India has already announced strong vigilance by the BSF on the Indo-Nepal border. Therefore, the CPN (M) should not underestimate the RNA at its present numbers alone. It is able to damage the total Maoist guerrilla force, if it gets more aircraft and financial support from outside. This danger has been invited by the present nationwide sudden Maoist attacks. Therefore, during armed conflict, truce is never too late.

Still, both ways can be applied: truce for dialogue or dialogue for truce to stop the bloodshed. Understandably negating the prevailing option of peaceful settlement of disputes, the unilateral breaking of the four-month-old-truce, between the government and the Maoist has already taken place.

The breaking of the truce not only brought havoc and turmoil in the country, but also on the other hand equally given the opportunity to the Maoists to build confidence in their superior capability in guerrilla warfare and weaponry until the attacks in Syangia, Dang and Solukhumbu. The state of terror in more than 24 districts compelled HMG to declare an emergency in the country, for the third time in Nepal’s political history. The first was implied by late King Tribhuvan in 1950, for one year, and the second, by the late King Mahendra in 1960, also for one year, after in 1960, also for one year, after dissolving the first ever democratically elected government, and had to be extended further for the second consecutive year too, to run the newly established Panchayat system.

To the student of Political Science, it was a deviation on the Maoist side to accept the politics of competition. In other words, the revolution had departed from class struggle to power struggle. This most important departure, the pro-multi-party leaders took lightly, and here misfortune began.

Infowar - IT fiasco or hiatus ?

By Sarita Bahety

Is this IT boom or doom? Will the IT bubble disappear as soon as it has appeared? A few questions like these come up following the tragedy that has been inflicted on the United States. The recent, unprecedented terrorist attacks on the US have stunned the world. It is puzzling how such a well-orchestrated plan, involving the hijacking of four domestic aircraft, went undetected. With advanced technology and information detection systems, it is often possible to intercept enemy communications, as in fact, the US government is reported too have done recently in the case of two earlier attacks planned by Osama bin Laden. Ironically, it was not third time lucky. The intelligence failure, in the case of the east coast attacks, further highlights the importance of using IT in information warfare and interception. The question then arises: ‘How important is technology in acquiring strategic information?’ The increasing use of information technology and the Internet in public life today brings with it enormous benefits. However, like everything else in life, the benefits come with their challenges. The biggest threat is being exposed to "information warfare". The weapons in this war are simple—now indispensable parts of your desktop- a personal computer, a mouse, a keyboard, and an Internet connection. With these weapons, an adversary can play havoc with a country’s economy, business and state secrets, including defence related.

Many nations have complex IT infrastructure for managing electricity, telecommunications, money supply, air traffic, oil and gas supply, and other information-based civic amenities. And computer networks- particularly the Internet – bring such systems within the reach of even hostile persons or organisations, anywhere in the world. Thus infowar threatens not only traditional military targets but also all the IT-enabled economic lifelines that were till now out of the range of a conventional enemy attack.

Now what exactly is information warfare? Strategically speaking, it is a conflict in which electronic information is a vital asset and a target of conquest or destruction. Information warfare is defined as the offensive and defensive use of information technology and information systems to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy, an adversary’s information, information-based processes and, computer- based networks while protecting one’s own.

It generally involves illegal copying, distortion, manipulation and scare-mongering using information. There are three basic elements in infowar
attacks: low cost to attacker, war being redefined and, highly evolved propaganda.

There are various limitations to such infowar. Broadly, infowar can be targeted at three levels: a nation, a corporate entity and an individual. With IT systems taking centre space across business, the security risk to business becomes manifold. Infowar goes much beyond corporate espionage. It involves thefts of secrets from a company and releasing secrets/falsified secrets that can damage the survival of the company. It can also be directed towards an individual.

In the past, spies had to tap phone lines and use mini cameras and micro phones to get the desired information about a person. Today, s/he still has the capability to use these devices but most of the information about a person will be available in existing data bases.

An individual’s electronic privacy can be attacked, revealing digital records and database industries. In Nepal right now, the government has not digitised individual data. And most corporate entities are not in a position to profile all their customers individually. But what happens when more individual-level data gets digitised and someone starts integrating all the information is anybody’s guess.

Infowar extends much beyond a virus attack. The sole objective of a virus attack is to spread rapidly and destroy the information of random victims. Infowar goes beyond that and is aimed at a particular adversary. Infowar is targeted hacking combined with virus attacks and usage of other stratagems to subjugate an enemy or competitor or victim.

Ironically, the more technologically advanced a country is, the more vulnerable it becomes to infowar. Yet, there is no reason for countries that are less technologically advanced to be smug. More developing countries have some elements of their infrastructure like telecom, digitised. Risk perception is low on the wrong assumption that with most of the infrastructure not being IT-enabled, there is a low threat of any infowar attack.

Developing countries like ours need to understand and recognise infowar. Nepal has yet to IT-enable the vital installations and needs to integrate infowar planning in the process. Country-of-origin of software and encryption technologies are serious issues to be addressed. It’s high time that lessons from countries that have already integrated infowar capabilities were internationalised.

Pro-poor governance as good governance

By Dr Hiramani Ghimire

Good governance has become a favourite subject for everyone of us. The government itself is promoting it, at least as a concept. It remains high on the political agenda. But despite the continued emphasis on good governance, this concept has found it difficult to materialise. Good governance may be viewed from different angles - socio-political, managerial, and ethical. Experience of the past five years or so in Nepal shows that policymakers tend to emphasise one aspect of good governance over others. This is not fair. There is also a tendency to associate good governance with the performance of administrative agencies. In fact, governance is a concept which goes beyond government and civil service. It is an idea which takes into account the growing participation of society in managing "public goods." The practical meaning of good governance needs, therefore, to be studied in a given context. What then, is, good governance for Nepal?

Poverty is the main policy issue in Nepal. Given the extent and intensity of poverty, no policy instruments other than the ones that are meant for poverty alleviation should be attracting the attention of our policymakers. On the other hand, policy processes and institutions need to be more accessible and responsive to the interests of the poor and socially excluded. In fact, poverty means powerlessness. We must recognize poor people’s social entitlements. In order to achieve this, the poor must be involved in policymaking. This has at least three advantages. First, it meets the requirements of transparency, a major component of good governance. Second, it brings new inputs into the policy processes and contributes to enhancing the quality of a policy instrument. Third, it improves policy compliance.

In practice, however, opportunities for participation are missing, especially from the poor people’s point of view. The exclusion of a large part of the population from policy management is probably the biggest challenge in this regard. Such a policy regime forecloses the participation of weaker sections of the population in governance. This is not to suggest that the government is unaware of the need to bring the poor into the mainstream of development. The Ninth Plan document devotes, for example, four separate chapters to the development of these groups.

The government is, of course, not bad in everything. But, it is suffering from a bad image among the public. A recent survey carried out by an NGO for Transparency International reveals, for example, that people see corruption thriving under political protection. As high as 84 percent of the survey respondents were pessimistic about the possibility of corruption control. They do not even file a complaint against corrupt behaviour as no remedy would be available.

As corruption hits the poor most, a pro-poor government would be a clean government. Provision of basic social services is another area of interest for the poor. The government is ignoring some basic facts in this context. For example, it is providing price concessions in services (eg health) where the poor are demanding access. Similarly, a number of subsidies meant for the poor never benefit them.

The government is looking for sound policies for national development in general and poverty alleviation in particular. The "soundness" of policies needs to be judged by their efficacy in meeting socio-economic objectives as mandated by the prevailing socio-political consensus. In Nepal, such a consensus has been achieved in the recognition of the need for poverty alleviation. Policy management efforts should, therefore, concentrate on designing an appropriate policy framework for an attack on poverty. There are, however, some fundamental problems that stand in the way of attaining this goal. There is a socio-political consensus in this regard, too. A combined effort of all actors is needed and that is still missing. It is important, then, to enhance the government’s capability to respond to publicly identified problems appropriately and in time in order to win back people’s confidence in government.

There are, in fact, a large number of recent initiatives on improving governance. They provide a sop to those who resent poor performance by the government. On careful examination, however, one gets the impression that the central issues of governance have been overlooked, and that many past errors have been repeating themselves. Our policymakers now need new approaches and methods for interacting with and learning from others, including "outsiders". The poor will receive greater recognition only when past mistakes and myths are analysed properly. Contemporary studies on poverty put great emphasis on involving the poor in designing and implementing pro-poor policies. These ‘participatory poverty assessments’ were developed during the early 1990s with the aim of increasing the participation of poor people in the processes of formulating and implementing policy for poverty alleviation. In the mean time, we have also reached a point in time where one would be interested in looking back at performance from a macro perspective.

Pro-poor governance has also been occupying a prominent place in the international development agenda. To take but one example, the OECD Development Assistance Committee has adopted international development targets (to be achieved by 2015), including (a) a 50 per cent reduction in extreme poverty, (b) universal access to primary education, (c) reduction of infant mortality rates by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-fourths, and (d) universal access to reproductive health services for all women. These targets are in line with various other international initiatives ranging from the Copenhagen summit and Beijing conference to the Dakar declaration (with its central theme ‘education for all’ by 2015). All our development partners - multilateral or bilateral - are devising their ‘country strategies’ accordingly. This provides us with a proper perspective to revisit the concept of good governance.

The government should look afresh at its notion of good governance. Such a notion should be related to finding an answer to the problem of poverty. Attacking poverty means in our context launching a package of programmes targeted on the poor. Good governance should be decidedly pro-poor, at least in Nepal. This would consist of provisions for universal primary education, gender equity and women’s empowerment, primary health care services, especially for children and other weaker sections of the population, and reproductive health. These services demand effective policies, institutions, and processes. Besides, emphasis on pro-poor policies may also involve intrasectoral restructuring of budgets allocated in the social sector. Are we prepared to rise to this challenge?