SCOPE: An exclusive look inside the Maoist insurgency in Nepal

Asian Political News, August 16, 2004

SALYAN, Midwestern Nepal, Aug. 10 Kyodo

In the remote vastness between Tulsipur and Salyan in Midwestern Nepal, distances on the long climbs and tough descents in the hills and the treks along, atop and across riverside boulders are measured by the hour.

And what might be considered little more than a three-hour walk for a hill-dwelling villager is at least a seven-hour adventure into the unknown for an urban Nepalese, an even longer struggle for foreign visitors.

From Sankhamool, which is half way to the Salyan District from Tulsipur, itself 300 kilometers from Kathmandu, 12 hours of nonstop walking gets one 3,000 meters above sea level to Jhimpe village and to its pride -- the Rokcha Jaychowr Maoist Rebel Camp.

En route, the rebels repeatedly wanted to know how Kyodo News journalists had discovered the trail leading to Rokcha and where the clues originated, but after lots of explanation they were convinced ''we were just foot-loose in the district and had chanced onto the trail.''

After the ice broke, everything became friendly and the rebels became incredibly hospitable -- to the point that if any journalist hesitated to take the first step to cross fast-flowing rivers en route he was carried piggy-back, presenting the rather incongruous scene of a wiry rebel militiaman ferrying a burly Japanese across the rocks.

At Jhimpe, over a rickety bridge crossing a gurgling rivulet, is the camp, a makeshift training facility for the guerrillas of the ''revolutionary army'' of the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) who are waging an armed insurgency throughout Nepal.

Rokcha is one of five facilities scattered over the Salyan District, which, along with four other districts, form the heartland of the rebellion.

The camp is approached, cautiously, via a boulders-ridden road that the rebels, by diverting a nearby rivulet, can convert in minutes into a fast-flowing torrent to keep the enemy at bay.

A cluster of houses, mostly mud and boulder structures with slate roofs shaped like cattle sheds, dots Jhimpe.

Most of the houses have small windows to allow fresh air to circulate, but there is little else to make life comfortable.

Terraced village fields for rice and corn stand in sharp contrast to the barren, rocky hills that insulate the human settlement from the distant pine forests that form the hallmark of the landscape.

And herein is the secret to the success of Nepal's Maoist insurgency -- while the rebels effectively operate in both rural and urban areas, including inside the capital Kathmandu, the deeply forested, nearly inaccessible terrain where they have their camps makes decisive military operations against the rebels almost impossible.

With its few buildings and flat riverbed compound, Rokcha was originally built as a high school for Jhimpe students before it was overrun and occupied by the rebels a few years ago.

The buildings still bear the name of the school, but much more prominent on the walls are ''Death to U.S. Imperialism,'' ''Stop Foreign Interference,'' and ''Long Live the Prachanda Path'' -- the revolutionary road charted by Puspa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, the rebel chairman.

Once inside the camp, Comrade Ujjwal introduced himself as the man in charge of the cadres of No. 11 unit, who are being trained in the rebel stronghold.

Some suspicion arose when our photographer repeatedly shot pictures of a woman fighter with a striking, chubby face.

One of the militia even pulled me aside and asked if the focus on one particular woman was somehow ill-intentioned or if the pictures were meant to present the woman as a child soldier.

But tension eased when photographer Makoto Hori assured everyone the woman caught his attention because she looked so much like a pretty Japanese woman.

The air once again cleared, Ujjwal offered to explain the rationale of the nine-year ''people's war.''

''It is to bring about drastic changes through struggle. Nepal too needs one such struggle and we are headlong into it,'' Ujjwal said.

Maoist rebels in Nepal are, in fact, ''carving out communism of the 21st century. Our leaders are learning from the mistakes of the Soviet Union and China. The doctrine enunciated by Prachanda is most scientific. It is a synthesis in an advanced form of Maoism-Marxism-Leninism,'' the commander said.

''Our ultimate aim is communism, but in Nepal we want to achieve it through socialism. In China, reactionaries came to power even after a successful Maoist revolution because the army was kept inside the barracks. Confinement of the army to the barracks gave rise to autocracy. In Nepal it is going to be different. The army will be with the people, in the midst of the people and controlled by the people.''

During an evening chat, unit commander Comrade Chiran said the rebels are fighting to rid Nepal of the monarchy and oppressive feudal structures that have stood as hurdles in the way of ''uplifting'' the Nepalese people.

''We have achieved immense success in our fight against U.S. imperialism and Indian expansionism in the past nine years. U.S.-supplied weapons and high-level training of the Royal Nepalese Army, RNA, cannot defeat us. When we started the people's war in 1996, there were no arms, no army. Today we have both and we are pleased to introduce the people's revolutionary army to the world,'' Chiran said.