Lung, about 300 kilometers west of Katmandu, lacks running water, electricity and phone service. But there is no shortage of 50-year-old political ideology. Maoist rants are considered old-think in neighboring China. With some consternation, Beijing officials have stressed that they have nothing to do with Nepal’s Maoists. But don’t tell that to the villagers in Lung. The rally seemed straight out of Mao Zedong’s Long March–complete with the traditional musical instruments (such as bulbous drums and curved trumpets) and song-and-dance troupes. “Do the Chinese people know about Nepal’s Maoist movement?” asked one eager villager when he learned I live in Beijing. “We’re so glad to see a visitor from the land of Mao!”
News travels slowly in the hinterlands of western Nepal. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the popular appeal of the country’s fledgling Maoist movement. It started five years ago, when the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) abandoned electoral politics and went underground. Rebels denounced the monarchy and clamored for a “proletarian people’s republic.” The group has been steadily growing in the impoverished countryside, and it’s now scrambling to exploit political uncertainties triggered by the massacre of King Birendra and eight other royals. Seven of Nepal’s 75 districts are now totally controlled by the insurgents.
In Lung, the half-demolished husk of an abandoned police station shows that the rebels aim to be taken seriously. In fact, 1,700 people have been killed since the insurgency began in 1996. Government authorities no longer venture near parts of Pyuthan, or near the adjacent Rolpa district, which is the heart of the movement. A local Maoist leader, Comrade Sunil, says that the goal is to take over the Pyuthan district government “very soon, certainly within a year.” From there, he adds, the movement will expand outward “like the layers of an onion.” Sunil comes from Rolpa district, which has a wooden gateway declaring welcome to the Maoist republic.
If the insurgency seems half a century or more behind the times, that’s because much of Nepal is, too. During the Lung village rally, representatives of the underclass walked onstage one by one to rail against the government’s “semifeudal, semicolonial” treatment of ethnic minorities, poor farmers and “untouchables.” “We’ve been treated worse than dogs,” says lower-caste representative Shankar Darlami. The movement holds great attraction for rural Nepalese women, who are drawn by the promises that they can speak out, inherit land directly, bear weapons and marry for love (instead of in traditional unions arranged by their parents).
Police and government officials paint a picture of the rebels that is anything but romantic. According to police inspector Mahesh Bhattarai in Pyuthan’s Bijuwar town, “Citizens have sent us letters saying they must do what the Maoists say or they’ll be killed.” They’re not the only people afraid. Bhattarai says a handful of remote police stations in the region have been shuttered, and the 50 or so policemen assigned to them have consolidated in Bhattarai’s outpost to seek safety in numbers. Just five days before my trek to the village, guerrillas ambushed 18 police on patrol with a wire-detonated bomb near Lung. One policeman died and four were injured. Not far from Lung, guerrillas kidnapped a local politician and a police officer more than a month ago; they’re still in Maoist hands. “We want the government to make an exchange: these two for more than 1,200 of our ‘disappeared’ comrades,” says one underground leader.
The guerrillas normally don’t harass tourists–a crucial foreign-exchange earner for Nepal. But a few foreign workers are beginning to encounter trouble. The offices of international NGOs have been fire-bombed, and many businesses in Nepal must pay “taxes” to the rebels. Last year armed Maoists captured a Russian helicopter pilot working for a commercial transport service. The guerrillas gave him an ideological lecture, painted slogans on his aircraft and made him promise not to transport timber (the guerrillas oppose exploitation of Nepal’s natural resources). Then the Maoists made the pilot take them up for a half-hour joyride–their first aerial experience. It’s a whimsical touch, “and so Nepal,” says one expat in Katmandu, “but let’s not forget that Maoists always become more coercive when they come to power.” That seems a long way off, but not to the believers in Lung.
