Nepal is now effectively paralyzed by terror. The Maoists control some 40 percent of the country, where they mete out their brand of justice in “people’s courts” and conscript one child from every household. Bombings, kidnappings and murders in the night are routine. National elections, scheduled to be held this past fall, were indefinitely postponed after the communist guerrillas threatened attacks. When rebels ordered the schools closed in December, a string of bombings kept 5.2 million children at home for weeks. Nearly half the Royal Nepalese Army’s 60,000 troops are kept busy guarding the country’s infrastructure. Which leaves the Maoists–whose People’s Army is believed to consist of 5,000 regulars and 15,000 militiamen–a relatively free hand in “taxing” the dwindling number of tourists who still come to trek these mountains. Nepalese officials recently reported that tourist arrivals have dropped 46 percent in the last two years.
Not that the people see the government as another innocent bystander. Nepalese almost universally condemn a leadership that has brought them 12 governments in the 13 years since a People’s Movement ended the country’s absolute monarchy. But the government’s worst sin has been its inability to rein in its own military. Says Subodh Raj Pyakurel, a Nepalese human-rights activist, “The Army has complete de facto impunity no matter what the law of the land may say.” Last year Amnesty International documented dozens of cases of rape, murder and torture at the hands of the Nepalese Army. (The Army denies these charges.)
Sudip Gyawali, whose father was brutally hacked to death by Maoists last March, has every reason to seek revenge. But he believes the $17 million in military aid the United States will soon deliver is not the answer. “If the Army gets better weapons, they are going to kill more innocent people.” And Nepal’s people will remain prisoners to the violence.
