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| Kathmandu, Sunday April 27, 2003 Baishakh 14, 2060. |
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Last peace process in
retrospect
By Ameet Dhakal
KATHMANDU, April 26 : Amidst confusion and
uncertainty, the government and the Maoist negotiating teams are sitting for the first
round of formal dialogue on Sunday.
On the eve of the Peace Process II, The Sunday
Post revisit the last peace process in an attempt to assess what went wrong then leading
to an abrupt collapse of the dialogue. Here is a blow-by-blow account of how the three
rounds of dialogues ended in a deadlock, triggering a bloody-war.
August 31, 2001:
During the first round of dialogue, held at
Godavari Resort, Lalitpur, Chirinjivi Wagle, Coordinator of the five-member government
negotiating team, requested the Maoist dialogue team to immediately halt all types of
pressure tactics, including the use of force to facilitate the environment for dialogue.
Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Coordinator of the three-member Maoist negotiating team, assured
the government that the Maoists would immediately abide by the government call.
The government also asked the Maoist to put
their demand in writing in the next round of dialogue. The first round ended issuing a
joint press release that said both the sides were committed to find an amicable solution
through dialogue.
September 14, 2001:
The government and the Maoist negotiators
exchanged their demands and responses in writing during the second round of dialogue held
at Tiger Tops Jungle Resort in Bardiya district, some 700 kilometres south-west of
Kathmandu.
The 31-point Maoist demand list, poorly typed
and hand-edited at least a dozen times, outlined three categories of demands: First, the
things government should do to create a conducive environment for talks; second, the major
political issues; and finally, the issues of public concern. The document also asserted
that the dialogue should mainly concentrate on political issues.
The Maoists raised three major contentious
political issues-First, the constitution should be abrogated and people be given the right
to prepare new constitution; second, dissolution of the then parliament and the government
to form an interim government; and finally, institutionalization of the "republic
evolving in people’s heart."
The government, in its written response, flatly
rejected the demand for abrogation of the constitution and the idea of
"institutionalizing republic", but expressed flexibility in dissolving the
parliament and forming an interim government. The meeting was inconclusive, still, both
the sides agreed to carry forward with the dialogue.
November 13, 2001:
On the eve of the third round of dialogue,
Prachanda, the Maoist supreme commander, issued a public statement dropping Maoist’s
demand for the republic. Abrogation of the constitution and election for constituent
assembly, then remained the major sticking point.
The government continued to insist that there
were enough room for amendments and evolution of the constitution; therefore, the demand
for constituent assembly was irrelevant.
Within few hours into the talks, the situation
grew tense, Mahara walked off the negotiating table, talked to the Maoists leaders over
phone and left the venue. So tense and frustrated the Maoist team was, that it left the
venue even without informing the government side-no formal handshake, no goodbye.
On November 23, Maoists guerillas simultaneously
attacked army barrack in Dang and a police post in Syangja killing 14 army men and 37
policemen.
Why did the Maoists leave the dialogue so
abruptly and attack security forces?
There are two popular theories —
"betrayal theory," promoted by the state and "preemption theory,"
forwarded by the Maoists — about why the last peace process failed. The Maoists, as
the first theory goes, were never sincere about the dialogue then; they double-crossed the
state in the name of talks and bought time for a grand preparation of the D-day that came
in the form of a daring assault in Dang and Syangja.
"If they were sincere about the peace talk,
and if there wasn’t a frantic preparation for final assault under the cover of
dialogue," questions Mahesh Acharya, former Defense Minister and a member of the
government negotiating team during the Peace Process I, "How could they attack Dang
within few days after they unilaterally abandoned the talks?"
If they were sincere about their demand, argues
Acharya, they had the option, after the first cease-fire, to take their issues to the
public; win the people’s hearts and minds, and create public pressure upon the
government.
According to the "preemption theory,"
the government was pilling up arms in three major military barracks namely, Surkhet,
Ghorahi and Mangalsen in the mid- and the far-west and was planning to encircle the
Maoists rebels and quash them by force.
" We had no option," said Krishna
Bahadur Mahara, the chief Maoist negotiator during Peace Process I, "But to pick up
arms to defend our revolution." It was, added Mahara, largely a preemptive offense to
foil the impending army assault.
Maoist revolutionaries, universally, pick up
arms to overthrow the "old regime" by force and establish a new one in its ruin.
Here in Nepal, too, the Maoists dumped the ballot option in 1996 in a belief that time was
ripe for an armed revolution.
Until August 2001, the beginning of the Peace
Process I, the Maoists were moving from strength to strength - demolishing the remote
police posts, adding to their arms and ammunition stocks, recruiting more and more
enthusiastic youth rebels in their People’s Army, and rapidly expanding their control
in the country’s hinterlands.
Interviews and articles by the Maoists leaders
then, citing party’s internal assessments, claimed that they were moving closer than
ever to overthrowing the old regime. The international situation, till then, was also not
as harsh on them as it seems now - India had largely overlooked their presence and
activities in its territory; United States was too myopic to see beyond its borders before
September 11. Why then the Maoists, who abandoned ballot for bullet to overthrow the
regime, all of sudden, would genuinely sit in the negotiating table without testing their
guerilla might?
"We opted for arms in 1996 not to overthrow
the regime by force but to make our voice heard," said Mahara, adding, "No one
listened to our legitimate demands then-neither the regime nor the civil society and
media, so we took up arms out of compulsion." If the state had listened to our
demands in 2001, we would not have retreated to jungle, he said. Daman Nath Dhungana, one
of the facilitators during the last peace process, however, argued that the talks failed
because both the sides lacked sincerity then. "Both the government and the Maoists
were in a warring mood and were just engaging each other while consolidating their
military strengths."
They were just using the "premature
talks," held under the civil society’s pressure, to win popular support for the
eventual use of force that they were planning, added Dhungana. "Thus, it is wrong to
blame only one of them for the failure; both of them were equally responsible."
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