By Professor Dr Brian Cobb
(Dr. Cobb is the same man, who greatly contributed to people's movement-2 by curing injured actvists. He was later forced to leave Nepal by Royal government. He works now in Bangaldesh. He writes for different meidias througot the world)
After years of things going from bad to worse, Nepal is recovering. Democracy is back on track and a permanent truce seems possible. A long and painful decade of conflict has killed 13,000 people officially, but in reality far more. The official figure includes only those shot or blasted to death but far more people, not enumerated, have died from disruption of health care, water and food supplies and other more subtle and indirect but surely numerically greater causes. Many more have been physically handicapped, psychologically harmed, impoverished, bereaved or orphaned.
Most analysts date the beginning of the violence to 1996, but this is erroneous. The overt violence—that due to bullets and bombs—started then, but structural violence has been endemic to Nepali society. Structural violence is harm due to poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and healthcare and other forms of injury due to inequality. Consider the disparities in life expectancy, maternal and child mortality and other health indices between the rural low-caste citizens and the urban high castes. It is clear that the death, disability and suffering caused by structural violence far exceeds that due to overt violence.
There is a nexus between the two. It was the frustration turning to rage at the savage inequalities of Nepali life that fueled the Maoist insurrection. What the Maoist leaders actually did was to merely transform structural into overt violence, as a lighted match transforms the chemical energy of petrol into thermal energy. A similar transformation occurred in mid-April of this year; the pent-up frustrations of life under chronic war and military dictatorship were ignited by the heavy handed police response at Gongabu into a national revolution that has sidelined the monarchy and its brutal stooges.
National security, a concern in any state, evolves into an obsession in a totalitarian regime. Lacking popular support and aware of the dangers, autocrats rely on violence or its threat to maintain their power. The Shah and Rana dynasties depended on it. But this very violence, both structural and overt, leads to a level of popular discontent that boils over and cannot be contained by force. Therefore, the only way to maintain stability is to eliminate all forms of violence, both structural and overt, and govern based on the consent and support of the citizenry.
This means addressing poverty, unemployment, discrimination, lack of educational and health care services, lack of infrastructure and other root causes of conflict. One teacher or doctor or road building engineer provides more stability than a hundred sadistic soldiers or predatory police. Well governed countries do not experience civil wars or revolutions.
The Royal Nepal Army does not and cannot protect the people. Should India or China attack, it would be of no use whatsoever. It is a breeding ground for human rights abuses, corruption, nepotism, coups d’etat and colossal waste. It tempts leaders into thinking they can repress and control the people rather than meeting their needs. It diverts the meager resources of a poor country from investment in health, education and infrastructure to consumption by unused weapons and idle soldiers.
The answer lies in rational use of public funds. The RNA should be immediately placed under competent command by UN or retired Gurkha officers with a bilateral ceasefire to function as a peacekeeping force and to voluntarily disarm the Maoists, after which it should be combined with Maoist cadres and put to work attacking the structural violence that has undermined Nepalese democracy from its origins. Its personnel, trucks, helicopters and other resources can take on the work of healing, educating and reconstructing the nation. A portion of its light weapons and equipment can be transferred to the police, who should be screened, trained and monitored to prevent further corruption and rights abuses. Remaining weapons can be sold off. Nepal needs an army like it needs a navy.
But there is another, far more sinister form of violence in Nepal. It lurks, literally, underground. There are 10,000 RNA planted mines and an unknown number of Maoist planted devices. Hundreds of people per year are being killed or maimed by these horrific, indiscriminate weapons. They will continue their vile work for decades; they recognize no truce, nor do they distinguish between civilian and combatant. Landmine violence, like other violence, falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable. Farmers, children and the poor suffer and die. Even domestic animals, so important to the rural poor, are at risk.
The landmine problem must be addressed in five ways: 1, landmine awareness education for villagers, including children; 2, danger zone fencing and signage; 3, healthcare provider education in basic trauma management and creation of a trauma care system; 4, immediate signing, ratification and RNA and Maoist compliance with the 1997 UN landmines treaty; and 5, mine removal by qualified international teams with assistance of the RNA and Maoists to locate them.
Nepalis are warm, gentle and peace-loving people. The land of the Buddha must become a zone of peace, prosperity, justice and progress. All forms of violence must be eliminated. Is someone who traffics young girls to India to become infected with HIV any morally different from someone who shoots them with a rifle? In fact, which fate is crueler? Is the government that perpetuates the kind of poverty and desperation that leads to trafficking any different from the one that bombs the village? Is the parliament that spends money on guns or personal luxuries instead of health posts, thus causing death and suffering, any different from the one that orders those guns to be used? Is the official who diverts precious development funds for his own use any better than the commander at Belbari?
This is not the kind of hair-splitting casuistry debated in academic philosophy departments. These are literally life and death issues. Only by recognizing and extirpating violence root, stem and fruit can stability be achieved. This is why millions of brave Nepalis risked life, limb and liberty to bring about change. They didn’t do it to put certain parties or leaders back in Singh Durbar; they did it because they want a better life for themselves and their children. Sweeping away the monarchy alone will by no means end violence or feudalism. The whole zero-sum, exploitative and corrupt mentality must be replaced by true democracy, equality and progress. Only then will the andolan have accomplished its aim: true and lasting peace.
