Sun Tzu once said “to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” For the United States and the West, insurgency/counterinsurgency will define future conflicts. Intervention will be costly in terms of casualties, resources and time. Political and military leaders must be able to recognize conditions that create insurgency and act upon them decisively. Nepal provides an excellent case study of what happens when the government fails to address conditions that insurgent groups feed upon. Other countries, with similar national issues, can learn from the Nepalese government’s errors.
On February 13, 1996 the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), more commonly called the CPN(M), launched a general insurgency against the government of Nepal. The conflict, dubbed the Nepali Civil War, claimed over 8,000 lives before the signing of a peace treaty in 2003. The Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) concluded the hostilities and allowed the CPN(M) to fully participate in national government. Although much ink has been spilled over insurgencies of late, the Nepalese conflict provides some insight on how insurgencies are allowed to grow into full-blown wars.
Modern Nepal may be traced back to the Shah dynasty in 1774-1775. The Kingdom of Nepal attempted to expand its borders into British-occupied India, resulting in the 1815 Anglo-Nepalese War. Nepal gained independence from Britain in 1950 and restored its monarchy under the Rana clan. The Ranas ruled exclusively until 1991 when the king embraced limited democratic reforms. Despite nearly a century of British influence and 60 years of independence, Nepal was very much unchanged from its pre-colonial form. The nation had the trappings of modernity, but without the required institutions of a modern state. This lack of progress set the structural conditions for civil war.
Nepal’s continued use of a national caste system ensured centralization of political and economic power in the hands of the elite. Nepal has at least 60 official caste groups ranging from upper caste priests and warriors to the lowest caste of untouchables. Surprisingly, the national caste system excludes nearly 1/3 of the Nepalese. Less surprising is that the CPN(M) seized upon this centralization of power and legalized political exclusion to create discontent and build its power base. The CPN(M) consciously targeted those with no hope of political or economic participation. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. In fact, sociologist Charles Tilly argued that “perhaps the largest single factor in the promotion of revolutions and collective violence has been the great centralization of power in national states.” Given the exclusive polity of Nepal’s caste system and the resultant war, Tilly’s assertion appears correct.
The Nepalese government’s inability to project power throughout the country also led to civil war. Nepal lacked the required infrastructure that allowed national leaders to maintain a functioning state. Political scientist Jeffrey Herbst, writing on post-colonial African nations, deemed states were viable only to the extent they “are able to control the territory defined by their borders.” But Nepal suffered from poor roads, sub-standard communication networks and ill-prepared security forces. This inability to control was further exacerbated by the use of Nepali as the official language – despite that only 50% of the population speaks it.
The CPN(M) also capitalized upon the government’s absence or ineffectiveness. Essentially, the CPN(M) established a secondary, albeit underground, infrastructure which contested existing government services. Political scientist Leonard Binder termed this friction “the crisis of penetration” in which the government attempted to exert its central control on outlying regions. The resulting struggle further pushed the disaffected into the waiting arms of the CPN(M).
Nepal’s leaders were also unable to confront the CPN(M) with a unified front. From the start, the various political, military and civil leaders behaved as independent agents with no overarching strategy. At the highest level, political leaders acted in their own self-interests with little attempt to improve conditions for the disaffected populace. Amazingly, the government waited nearly five years from the onset of civil war to initiate a plan, known as the Integrated Security and Development Program (ISDP), to restore essential government services. On paper, the ISDP looked to be a successful venture for two reasons. First, the Nepalese government and military were staffed with large numbers of personnel possessing previous civil-military operations experience under the United Nations. Second, Nepal received significant external foreign aid from the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere. Sadly, the actual ISDP was a spectacular failure. Of all the planned government agencies, only the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) actually executed its portion of the ISDP. However, the RNA did so in an atmosphere of distrust between military and other security organizations.
Given these structural conditions, and the government’s inherent limitations, what could the Nepalese have done to confront the CPN(M) as an agent of civil war? Clearly, Nepal’s leaders should have recognized the key node was the large, disenfranchised population. The government needed to ensure equal political and economic access, or the appearance thereof, for the disaffected populace – namely the untouchables and disenfranchised tribal groups. The lawful exclusion of such a large number of people, further sanctioned by the Buddhist religion, all but guaranteed strong support for any agent advocating change. The government could have prevented civil war by guaranteeing excluded groups government positions, national assembly seats and military positions while simultaneously initiating a civil affairs campaign to improve conditions in provinces outside the capital region.
The subsequent civil war had two lasting effects. First, the Nepalese government lost its monopoly on legitimate political power. Second, the CPN(M), a radical agent of change, became a legitimate player in Nepal’s future.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 11:03 am