INSIDE NEPAL: A vote for change, a vote for peace

Even if the Maoists do not emerge victorious, the forthcoming Constituent Assembly elections will cement their role as both a key driver and a stakeholder of a new Nepal.













31 March 2008
The Hindu

A vote for change, a vote for peace

Siddharth Varadarajan

On April 10, the Nepal peace process which formally began in 2005 with a 12-point understanding between seven parliamentary parties and the Maoists will enter a decisive stage with the holding of elections for the Constituent Assembly (CA).

Up for grabs are 240 first-past-the-post (FPTP) and 335 proportional representation (PR) seats, with the remaining 26 members of the 601-strong CA to be nominated by the Prime Minister. Every voter will be given two ballots, one listing candidates contesting the FPTP election from their particular constituency and one listing parties in the fray for PR seats. The major parties are all committed to abolishing the monarchy in the CA’s first sitting. And a federal republic also figures prominently in their manifestos. This is the new mainstream the Maoists can justly take credit for creating. For a party which walked out of parliament to launch a “People’s War” in 1996 when its list of 40 demands — including the establishment of an inclusive, federal republic — was rejected by the other parties and the monarchy, this is a spectacular achievement by any yardstick.

Across the country today, campaigning is in full swing. This reporter spent eight days travelling through 15 constituencies across Sunsari, Morang, Jhapa, Kaski, Palpa, Kapilbastu, Dang and Banke districts. While it is impossible to predict the outcome, it is clear that the three major national formations contesting all the FPTP and PR seats — the Nepali Congress (NC), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (UML) — will poll strongly. In the Tarai region bordering India, parties claiming to represent the Madhesi people will attract a sizeable number of votes, though not necessarily FPTP seats.

While voters are unwilling to speak explicitly about their own preferences, a common refrain I heard in Kathmandu and all the districts I visited was that “people are saying the Maoists should also be given a chance.” Indeed, the former rebels’ official slogan of “You’ve seen everyone else before, now see the Maoists” has struck a chord with ordinary people. “I don’t know how the voting will go,” Shankar Kharel, the owner of a small clothing store in the western Tarai town of Nepalganj, told me, “but the Maoists have an appeal because they are the only new force.” In Tansen, a town in Palpa district where a Maoist attack on the security forces in 2006 destroyed the historic Durbar building, Meghnath Thapa, a cobbler, said, “the Maoists should be given a chance. I am 90 per cent sure they will win.”

Uphill battle

But the former rebels face an uphill battle. The FPTP system favours established parties with existing political networks and familiar candidates. And though the CA election involves a “mixed” system, the parties are campaigning in pure FPTP mode, which is bound to hurt newer players like the Maoists. “I am now going around introducing myself to the voters,” said Rajkaji Gurung, the 30-year-old Maoist candidate from Kaski-2 constituency. Asked how the switch from armed struggle to open politics had been, Mr. Gurung said, “we were not only for the gun. We were also fighting for political issues. So after the peace process, going to the people on a purely political basis is not difficult.” Though he did not say so, it was clear that old ties of ethnicity and kinship — so much a part of South Asian electoral politics — were also being drawn on by his party: Shortly after I interviewed him, he went on to speak at a well-attended meeting of the Gurung community.

Gurung, who still uses his nom-de-guerre ‘Karan’, was underground for more than 10 years. And critics of the Maoists say old habits die hard. “The Maoists have traditionally had an armed mentality and they have not yet freed themselves fully from this,” K.P. Sitaula, Nepal’s Home Minister, told this reporter in an interview at his constituency in the far-eastern Jhapa district. This is the reason their activists were resorting to intimidation of other parties, he said, a charge Maoist leaders strenuously deny.

In the 1999 elections, the NC and UML (including the erstwhile breakaway Bam Dev Gautam faction) each polled 37 per cent of the votes, up from 33 and 31 per cent respectively in 1994. Past performance, however, is of little help in predicting the election outcome this time around. Not only have the Maoists emerged as a formidable electoral contender but the rise of Madhesi political formations will eat into the sizeable share the NC has traditionally enjoyed in the Tarai. A plausible scenario, therefore, is for the Big Three to poll between 20 and 30 per cent each with a likely distribution being 20-25-30. But who will come first is important, because the largest party would have the right to lead the multi-party coalition which will govern Nepal until its new constitution is finalised.

In Kathmandu, the received wisdom in both diplomatic and elite circles is that the Maoists are going to poll poorly and will be able to win at best 10 or 12 per cent of the seats that too only by resorting to large-scale violence. But this may be wishful thinking. Random evidence of working class support for the Maoists — many taxi drivers in the capital, for example, openly proclaim their support for them — is explained away as the product of intimidation. One theory I heard was that taxi drivers display Maoist stickers in their cars to protect themselves from the YCL. Another theory is that taxi drivers do not fear the YCL but have put up Maoist stickers to protect themselves from the traffic police, who presumably fear the YCL. (For the record, I did not meet a single taxi driver who agreed with these theories).

Despite the fact that the former insurgents are waging an energetic campaign everywhere and their activists and leaders exude the same confidence as those of other parties, the Nepali media’s stock analysis is that the Maoists are running scared. ‘The Maoists either want the elections cancelled or will do anything to disrupt them’ is a frequent comment one hears. One diplomat told me his biggest fear was that the Maoists would do poorly and may launch some kind of “urban insurrection.” So secure are the foreign legations in this assessment of theirs that little thought is being given to the possibility of the Maoists coming first, second or even a creditable third. And even less attention is being paid to the one place from where the threat of disruption is the greatest: the Palace, with its subterranean links and shady connections.

To a certain extent, this attitude is a reflection of both the Maoists’ earlier track record of violence as well as of a discernible bias in current local and international media coverage. Allegations of poll-related violence involving the Young Communist League (YCL) or Maoists are printed prominently, while incidents in which Maoists are attacked are downplayed. On March 18, for example, when a candidate of a smaller left party, the Janamorcha, was shot dead in Banke district in the Tarai, a prominent human rights organisation, the National Election Observation Committee, declared that the assassins were Maoists. This allegation received banner coverage. Three days later, when the Banke police arrested the killers who were affiliated to the Jwala Singh faction of the Jantantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha, the news was relegated to the inside pages.

Expressing his frustration at what he said was the bias of the media, Maoist leader Prachanda pointed out last week that 55 unarmed Maoist cadres had been killed since the peace process began, including several during the election campaign itself. In an interview to The Hindu, he expressed the fear that an exaggerated picture of Maoist violence was being painted by circles influenced by the Palace in order to justify delaying, cancelling or otherwise disrupting the elections. "Please look at the statistics. In Rolpa, Kapilbastu and elsewhere, it is our cadres who have been targeted and killed. If voting is free and fair, we think we will come first. If we do not, obviously we will respect the verdict.”

Though media accounts of clashes involving the YCL might well be blown out of proportion and reported in a one-sided manner, the fact remains that the Maoists have a serious perception problem.

Certainly, the remark Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai made recently about his party’s defeat leading to a fresh revolt was seen as evidence that the former rebels were still not ready to accept multi-party democracy. Asked what it is he meant to say, Bhattarai told The Hindu that his intention was not to threaten an insurrection or a new phase of “Peoples’ War”. “The Constituent Assembly, federalism, restructuring of the Army, a republic which guarantees the rights of all peoples including the Madhesis, janajatis and Dalits — all of this is our agenda — and if we are not in the CA to lead it, this agenda simply won’t be implemented,” he said. “If the CA is unable to deliver on all these fronts, then clearly the conflict in Nepal will resume one way or another.” Bhattarai said “class struggle” would continue if the agenda was not implemented but this did not mean an armed struggle or insurrection.

Others echo the same fear about the consequences of the CA failing to live up to popular expectations. “If we do not manage the issues of the ethnic groups, it is not possible to manage stability,” Vinda Magar, the NC candidate from Kaski-3 told me. “The CA will have to address the voices of the Dalits, janajatis, women. If not, it will not be possible to have peace.”

Another candidate, Rabindra Adhikari of the UML, echoed the same sentiment. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that the three big parties will have to stick together after the elections, he said. “We have worked as partners till the elections and will do so again after. Our party does not want two parties to gang up against the third. Neither should the UML and Maoists try and weaken the NC, nor should we and the NC try and weaken the Maoists. I think we all have an equal stake in the future of Nepal.”

The glimmer of that elusive dawn

Allah may finally be on the side of democracy in Pakistan but are America and the Army ready to make a clean break with the past?










11 March 2008
The Hindu

The glimmer of that elusive dawn

Siddharth Varadarajan

The real significance of the compact between the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) is not that former rivals have joined hands but that the two parties are thinking politically about the next steps Pakistan must take in order to complete its tryst with destiny. Emotion and sentiment have been relegated to second place. The longer they remain there, the lighter will be the burden on the men and women upon whom history has entrusted a great and difficult task.

At stake is not just the restoration of democracy but the survival of Pakistan as a nation-state. Though Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif acted like statesmen on Sunday, the Murree Declaration which they issued will mark a decisive step in Pakistan’s march towards a new political order only if all actors on the political stage play their roles responsibly.

First and foremost, the coalition government being established must receive the unalloyed support of the international community, and especially the United States and its military.

It is necessary to reiterate this because Washington’s role in effecting the transition from military rule in Pakistan has been mixed, to say the least. The U.S. helped broker an understanding between President Pervez Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto but it is now obvious that important sections of the American establishment never intended the pendulum of power to swing too far from the military.

A puff piece on U.S. Central Command chief, Admiral William Fallon, in the latest issue of Esquire reveals the extent to which the American military is backing Musharraf. “The admiral,” writes Thomas R. Barnett, “seems neither alarmed by the move nor resigned to its more negative implications.” Describing his meeting with Musharraf just before the imposition of emergency last autumn, the U.S. military commander says, “He’s made his calculations. He feels very strongly that he’s responsible for his country. His alternative is to step down. That would not be the most helpful thing for his country.” Asked why not, Fallon’s reply is instructive: “[Pakistan’s] a very immature democracy. Look at the history of the place. It’s rough. Musharraf knows his country. He knows what he’s got. Their factions, their tribes. There’s that group of folks that wants nothing more than to start a war with India… He’s got a tough road...”

“As for Washington’s notion that Benazir Bhutto’s return to the country would fix all that,” notes Barnett, “Fallon is pessimistic. He slowly shakes his head. ‘Better forget that’.”

Admiral Fallon’s views are significant because he is America’s pointsman for all military dealings with Islamabad. Amazingly, he simply doesn’t realise that if Pakistan is a “rough place” and “a very immature democracy” and if there are forces “which would like nothing more than to start a war with India” this is precisely because the Army has run the country for so long. If this was the contempt the U.S. military brass had for democracy in Pakistan while Benazir was alive, one can imagine its tolerance level for the lesser leaders who will now rule.

In sum, the Pentagon will likely be unwilling to see an elected government exercise control over the country’s defence and security policies. Even if Musharraf proves expendable down the road, the U.S. will find other horses to back. But such a policy is fraught with danger and will eventually put America and Pakistan on a collision path, especially if the Pakistani military does not go in for a fundamental course correction.

Ending the cult of ‘jihad’

Simply put, democracy in Pakistan requires that the military not only keep its nose out of politics but turn its back once and for all on the strategy of using extremists as foot soldiers against Afghanistan and India.

This issue is as much about constitutionalism as about the very survival of the Pakistani military as a coherent institution. The cult of jihad nurtured by the Pakistani army for decades as a tool of military policy has rebounded so badly that it is not safe for senior officers to appear in public without the heaviest bandobast. Even then, as the recent assassination of Pakistan’s surgeon-general showed, immunity from terrorist attack is not guaranteed. While it is unlikely that one arm of the Pakistani military is actively involved in attacks on another, such incidents are the inevitable product of the institutional permissiveness which exists at different levels and in different branches of the army towards extremism.

In the wake of 9/11, Musharraf abandoned the Taliban but thought he could safely firewall the extremists executing Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. When it emerged that several of those organisations had formed links with the al-Qaeda, half-hearted attempts were made to erect another firewall. Eventually, most of these groups were told to curb their activities but their physical and financial infrastructure remained intact for future use.

Making a clean break means practising zero tolerance towards any organisation which challenges the Pakistani State’s monopoly over the right to bear arms and use force. This means shutting down the activities of the neo-Taliban, the Kashmir extremists, and the assorted terrorist and sectarian groups that have flourished under the army’s benevolent gaze all these years. The ‘war on terror’, in other words, has to be one the Pakistani army undertakes as its own agenda for its own survival. And this would also mean putting its full institutional weight behind the peace process with India and the stabilisation of Afghanistan, so that the instability caused by outside troops with their indiscriminate rules of engagement can also be ended sooner rather than later.

If America and the Army have major roles to play in allowing Pakistan’s transition towards constitutional rule, the political parties and the President also cannot evade their responsibility.

Even as they hold Pervez Musharraf responsible for the subversion of democracy and the assassination of Benazir, the PPP-PML(N) coalition must not allow the agenda of reconfiguring the structure of power between Parliament and President to be converted into a personalised vendetta against the current incumbent. Like the departure of the British from the subcontinent in 1947, what we are witnessing is not a revolution but a transfer of power. Revolutions and confrontations have much to commend themselves but only if the balance of forces is such as to enable them to be successful. The Murree Declaration commits the PPP and PML(N) to the restoration of the superior judges whose peremptory dismissal by President Musharraf last year precipitated the chain of events culminating in February’s landmark electoral verdict. This is an important matter of principle but in pushing this agenda, the coalition needs to think carefully of how this is to be done. Sunday’s announcement speaks of the National Assembly taking up the issue but there is no use pretending a simple resolution is going to sort out what is essentially a political matter.

President Musharraf is bound to fear the consequences of a restored judiciary since the judges were dismissed precisely for refusing to endorse his illegal methods. Even as they implement their pledge, however, the PPP and PML need to realise the simple sacking of Mr. Musharraf through a new judicial order is less urgent a task than the rebalancing of constitutional powers through a constitutional amendment. Indeed, now that the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam faction of Fazlur Rahman has announced its decision to join the PPP-led coalition at the Centre, the strength of the new dispensation in the National Assembly has risen to the two-thirds needed to rid of the Constitution of Article 58(2b) granting the President the power to dissolve parliament. It would be a pity if this task were to be sacrificed in some way at the altar of the judges question.

As for President Musharraf, the time has come for him to accept the reality of the transition that is underway. As long as he does not undermine the proposed constitutional amendment and restoration of judges, his eviction from the President’s office is not a foregone conclusion. But if he provokes a confrontation, it is unlikely that he will survive its eventual denouement with as much in his hands as he has now.

The U.N. is escalating the Iran nuclear crisis

If the Security Council were truly concerned about Iran’s nuclear programme, it would have lifted sanctions in the light of the IAEA’s latest report and thereby secured Iranian adherence to the Additional Protocol.







5 March 2008
The Hindu

The U.N. is escalating the Iran nuclear crisis

Siddharth Varadarajan

On Monday evening, the United Nations Security Council voted 14-0 with one abstention to impose a fresh set of sanctions against Iran for failing to suspend its civilian nuclear fuel cycle programme. The resolution had the backing of not just the United States, Britain and France but also Russia and China. The latter two, who have made much of their official commitment to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue, justified their support for the latest resolution by adver tising the absence of any reference to the “use of force” in its language. But this reading of the text is wilfully naïve: Resolution 1803 authorises the U.S. military to inspect all air and sea cargo into and out of Iran on board Iranian vessels if “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the aircraft or vessel is transporting goods prohibited under this resolution.” It doesn’t require much imagination to see how this enabling provision can serve as the trigger for a showdown between the U.S. — with its overwhelming naval presence around the Persian Gulf — and Iran.

Leaving aside the possibility of military confrontation, Resolution 1803 is a dishonest and provocative document that undermines not just the credibility of the Security Council but also the International Atomic Energy Agency. Just how irrelevant the IAEA and its work have been rendered is proved by the fact that the resolution’s text was prepared before the IAEA’s latest report on Iran, a point mentioned by the South African ambassador to the U.N., who made it clear his government was deeply unhappy with the draft despite agreeing to go along with it in the interest of “consensus.”

Astonishingly, the UNSC resolution takes virtually no notice of the fact that all outstanding issues which led to the Iran file being sent to New York in the first place have now been resolved. The demand, first made in 2006, that Iran suspend enrichment and reprocessing activity, was a derivative demand aimed at instilling confidence pending resolution of those outstanding issues. Now that those original issues have been resolved — and this is what the IAEA has pointed out in its last two reports — there is no basis for the suspension demand to be pressed, let alone made the basis for fresh sanctions.

When Iran was censured by the IAEA Board of Governors in September 2005 and January 2006 and declared in breach of its safeguards obligations, it was for failing to declare in a timely and complete manner a number of nuclear-related activities and procurements. Even though the IAEA has certified that no nuclear material inside Iran has been diverted for prohibited purposes, it said it was unable to certify the absence of “undeclared nuclear activities” pending investigation into those Iranian failures. Over the past six months, however, each and every one of those documented failures has been exhaustively probed. These include questions over the extent of Iranian research into the P-1 and P-2 centrifuge designs, the purpose of its experiments with Polonium-210, the source of uranium contamination at a number of research sites, the possession of a document on the casting of uranium into hemispherical shapes provided unsolicited by the A.Q. Khan network in 1987, and the reasons behind its attempt to procure certain equipment with nuclear applications. Under each of these heads, the IAEA now says the explanations Iran provided are either “consistent with” or “not inconsistent with” information the Agency has. “Therefore, the Agency considers those questions no longer outstanding at this stage,” IAEA DG Mohammed el-Baradei’s February 22, 2008 report categorically states.

As far as the uranium metal document is concerned — at one point the Bush administration regarded this as the smoking gun of an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons programme — the IAEA says any further assessment of its significance must await “a response from Pakistan on the circumstances of the delivery of this document.” Thus, the only peg the U.S. and its allies now have to hang their charge of Iranian non-compliance on is the alleged research Tehran is said to have conducted on a nuclear warhead. And thereby hangs a tale.

It was in 2004 that U.S. officials first began speaking of this issue based on information they said they had obtained from an Iranian laptop. This laptop was provided to the U.S. by the German intelligence agency, BND. On November 22, 2004, the Wall Street Journal ran a story quoting a senior German diplomat by name as acknowledging that the source of the computer was “an Iranian dissident group.” Gareth Porter of Inter-Press Service reconfirmed this information in a report last week, quoting a German diplomatic source as identifying the group as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The NCRI is the political wing of the Mojaheddin-e-Khalq, a group designated as terrorist by the U.S. State Department. On the basis of the NCRI and MeK’s links with Tel Aviv, Porter speculates that the “incriminating” laptop might well have Israeli fingerprints.

Indeed, so sceptical were both the U.S. and the IAEA of its authenticity that this so-called “laptop of death” never formed the primary, secondary or even tertiary focus of concern about Iran’s nuclear programme. The U.S. briefed the IAEA about its contents in the summer of 2005 and news reports at the time spoke of the agency’s experts being sceptical. This scepticism was official. The crucial September 2, 2005 report by Dr el-Baradei — which was to form the basis later that month for the IAEA Board declaring Iran in non-compliance with its obligations — makes no mention of the alleged studies contained in the shady laptop though its contents had been shared with Agency experts a few months earlier. Even now, the IAEA’s latest report refers to the documents as “alleged studies,” notes it has seen no evidence of the use of nuclear material in connection with the “alleged studies” and that it does not have “credible information” in this regard.

Despite this, we are now supposed to believe that these “alleged studies” — about which there is no “credible information” tying them to the use of nuclear material — is the proverbial smoking gun!

In a sense, this dishonest spin was inevitable. For as the U.S. found the IAEA knocking off the other (equally irrelevant but slightly more credible) “outstanding issues” one by one, it was forced to wheel out the laptop’s contents once again, but this time as Exhibit No. 1. Even now, the Agency’s experts are divided. Dr. el-Baradei’s report treats the laptop’s contents with justified circumspection. However, his deputy, Olli Heinonen, briefed IAEA Board members about its contents, buttressing them with more information provided by unnamed intelligence agencies. In his telling, the same documents which looked suspect two years ago now seem to paint an alarming picture. His briefing took place in Vienna on February 25, three days after the official IAEA report was released.

One week later, unnamed diplomats helpfully provided the notes they took at that briefing so that virtually identical stories on Iran’s “nuclear warhead” appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times and Reuters on the eve of the crucial March 3 Security Council vote. Conveniently, dubious information that America (or perhaps the MeK or Israel) first put out thus found its way into the American press as an “IAEA briefing.” After Iraq, the American press has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. And neither, it seems, has the international community, with the honourable exception of Jakarta.

An opportunity lost

The irony is that in upping the ante, the Security Council has allowed a golden opportunity slip out of its hands. What the IAEA needs more than anything else is for Iran to resume its adherence to the Additional Protocol. If there is an iota of truth in the “alleged studies” — which Iran says are based on fabricated documents — the best way for the IAEA to find out is by invoking the wider powers to inspect unlisted sites that the AP confers. Iran had declared that if the UNSC lifts its sanctions now that all concrete outstanding issues have been resolved, it is willing once again to adhere to the AP. As for the enrichment issue, the Iranian offer of running its national facilities as a multinational venture (with multinational oversight) very much remains on the table. These two elements would go a long way towards assuring the international community that Iran’s nuclear programme was entirely peaceful. But it seems there are more powerful interests at work, with aims that go well beyond what is stated.

Later this week, India, which blindly voted against Iran at the IAEA Board in 2005, will get another chance to redeem its place as a responsible member of the international community. Britain is likely to introduce a resolution echoing Monday’s UNSC resolution and ignoring the progress Iran and the IAEA have made in resolving all outstanding issues. With their permanent seats and vetoes on the Security Council — and their delusions about “not allowing the use of force” — Russia and China can afford the luxury of censuring Iran once again. And other non-aligned countries like South Africa may well lack the political and economic heft to resist the kind of pressure that will no doubt be brought to bear. But India is a different story. It is big. It is powerful. And unlike Russia and China, geography has placed us in the same region as Iran. Under no circumstances should India allow itself to once again become party to the irrational and disastrous confrontation that Washington is foisting on our neighbourhood.