For Your Information
Background
on the Situation in Nepal
Nepal is a small country of about 28 million people situated in the Himalaya Mountains between India and China. It is one of the poorest countries in the world with a semi-feudal, semi-colonial economy. Over 80 percent of its population lives in rural areas. It has very little industrial production and a very small industrial working class. It has been a dependency of India for much of its history. Today it is used by India as a source of resources and cheap labour. The country has considerable potential for hydro-electric generation, but this potential remains largely untapped.
Officially, Nepal has been ruled by a constitutional monarch since India achieved independence from Britain in 1948. However the king has always treated the legislative institutions as advisory bodies rather than as independent governing bodies. Furthermore, the Nepali king and royal family own or control most of the main corporations in the country.
A popular movement forced King Birendra to accept constitutional reforms in 1989 and, in 1991, general elections were held for the first time. The Nepali Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) received the most votes and the NCP formed the first government. During the early 1990s most of Nepal’s nine communist parties united to form the Communist Party of Nepal -United Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) and this party formed a minority government for a short time.
However, the obvious contempt for parliament displayed by King Birendra and the slow pace of the promised reforms led to a split in the CPN-UML in 1995. A section, mainly from the former CPN, left to create the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN(M)), which initiated an armed insurrection, or People’s War, in the countryside in 1996. Within a few years, the CPN(M) had taken control of the vast majority of the rural areas of Nepal.
The People’s War led by the CPN(M) threw the monarchy and parliamentary parties into crisis. Both the NCP and CPN-UML supported the use of the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) to suppress the insurgency. However, despite military assistance from India and the U.S., the RNA was completely unsuccessful in doing this. This led to a coup in 2001, widely suspected to have CIA involvement, in which King Birendra and most of the royal family was killed. Birendra’s brother, Gayanendra, was proclaimed king on June 4, 2001.
King Gayanendra installed and dismissed several governments over the course of several years, all of which failed to end the CPN(M) insurgency. Peace talks broke down in 2004 when the king refused to accept the CPN(M) demand for an elected constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. In February 2005 Gayanendra dissolved parliament and arrested many of the leading parliamentarians from both the NCP and the CPN-UML. This led to increasing pressure on the parliamentary parties to accept the offer of the CPN(M) to join forces with it to overthrow the monarchy.
In April 2006 mass protests erupted throughout Nepal demanding that the king reinstate parliament and release imprisoned political leaders. King Gayenendra was forced to accept the demands of the people and the restored parliament moved quickly to curb his powers and strip him of control over the armed forces. The new parliament also ordered the election of a constituent assembly to determine whether Nepal would remain a monarchy (constituent or otherwise) or would abolish the monarchy and become a republic. The constituent assembly elections were postponed twice during 2007, but were finally held on April 10, 2008, resulting in a decisive victory for the CPN(M) and for the abolition of the monarchy.
Although Nepal has very little economic importance, it has a certain amount of strategic importance because of its geographic location between India and China. The U.S. sees Nepal as a potential client state to use in its strategy of encircling China and containing China’s influence in southwestern Asia. India, while exploring closer economic ties with China, would like to keep Nepal’s potential energy resources for its own use, while preventing Nepal from becoming a gateway for a flood of Chinese goods into India. For its part, China would like to prevent Nepal from becoming a client state of the U.S. and gain access for itself to Nepal’s energy resources. Both India and China also have an interest in defusing the revolutionary movement in Nepal because Nepal borders on regions in both countries where revolutionary and/or separatist groups are active. They fear that a successful revolution in Nepal could further destabilize the situation in their own countries. Japan also has an interest in Nepal as part of its strategy to contain China’s expanding influence in the region.