Trade Embargo Wreaks Havoc : Nepal Is Paying the Price for Standing Up to India

Vijaya Hara understands none of the complexities of the Indian trade embargo that has plunged this remote Himalayan kingdom into crisis in the past two weeks. But, with each day it continues, Hara comes that much closer to death.

A 58-year-old diabetic, Hara again made the rounds of every pharmacy in Katmandu on Sunday, desperately searching for Dianil, the drug that keeps him alive--one of several critical commodities that have been stuck at the Indian-Nepal border since the embargo began March 23.

“I am suffering now,” Hara said feebly at his final unsuccessful stop of the day, Ashok Medicine Pharmacy. “If it doesn’t come soon . . . well, it’s just like that. One cannot say the word.”

As the Indian embargo, which has led to a virtual blockade of all principal trade routes into landlocked Nepal, entered its third week Sunday, Hara clearly was not alone in his suffering.

Thousands of motorists and impoverished peasants lined up for as long as 12 hours throughout the capital city, waiting for weekly rations of 1 1/2 gallons of gasoline and three quarts of kerosene, vital staples for transport and cooking that have been the principal commodities blocked at the Indian-Nepal border.

Women and children clinging to battered kerosene cans said they hadn’t eaten a cooked meal in a week, and local officials at ration stations said the three-quart kerosene ration handed out Sunday will last each family only a few days.

Most of the city’s transport is paralyzed, and university campuses remain closed after rioting by radical student groups last week left many injured.

On Saturday, the nation’s pharmaceuticals industry appealed urgently for chemicals to make such vital medicines as Dianil. Other industries, dependent on diesel fuel, remained at a virtual standstill.

So desperate is Nepal that nearby Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest nations, announced Sunday that it will “lend our neighbor a helping hand” by sending 1,000 tons of petroleum to Katmandu.

“Imagine, this is so tragic that Bangladesh, despite all of their own hardships, is extending a helping hand to us,” a senior Nepalese Foreign Ministry official said Sunday.

“My hunch is the Indians calculated we would collapse within just a few days,” the official said. “But we will not. They have done their worst. Now we must do our best and fight to survive.”

Classic Confrontation

The intricacies of the current crisis between Nepal and India are complex, rooted in a controversy over two recently expired trade and transit treaties. But most independent analysts and Western diplomats view it as a classic confrontation between an emerging regional superpower and a strategic yet landlocked nation that not only lies on India’s border but also has survived economically through the years, largely through Indian generosity.

And the bitterness that led to the present crisis dates back nearly two years, the analysts say.

Nepal, a Hindu nation that has enjoyed favored treatment from its far larger and more powerful Hindu-majority neighbor, has grown increasingly concerned about its own security and sovereignty in recent years, after Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ordered his troops into two other small South Asian neighbors, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

In what many diplomatic observers view as a symbolic gesture, Nepal decided last year to purchase military equipment from China, its neighbor to the north and a historic foe of India.

The Nepalese government also announced that it was imposing restrictions on Indian residents and business people here, who in the past have enjoyed the same freedom that tens of thousands of Nepali migrants have enjoyed in India.

“There was a feeling among the Nepalese that they had to take steps that would demonstrate their independence,” a Western diplomat in Katmandu said. “And for India, which had treated Nepal almost as an extension of India in favorable trade terms, there was a feeling of betrayal. The trade and transit treaties are really just a battleground for these deeper issues, and the Indian position now is to simply sit back and wait for Nepal to define the future relationship.”

But, in the waiting, deliberate pressure is mounting on Nepal, which already is ranked as the world’s sixth-poorest nation, with an average annual per-capita income of just $160.

When the two treaties expired March 23, the Indians closed 15 of the 17 land entry routes to Nepal, which relies on India for all of its petroleum and 35% of its other imports. And India is the lifeline for imports from third countries.

“When the border closed down, Nepal was caught napping,” the Western diplomat said. The exact size of the nation’s fuel stocks is a tightly held secret, he said, “but most estimates are that, with extreme rationing, they have about 30 to 35 days left.”

The critical tests in the coming days will be whether India, which has publicly pledged to allow the shipment of all essential commodities from third countries, interferes with the Bangladeshi oil shipment or reneges on its pledge.

And for the Nepali government, the test will be how long its people can hold out before street violence erupts.

So far, tiny Nepal, with 17 million largely impoverished people and a principal national industry of tourism, is stubbornly refusing to back down to Indian pressure.

The government has taken steps to ensure that tourism and the hundreds of thousands of foreigners it attracts to see Mt. Everest and other sights each year are protected, supplying stockpiled fuel to keep all five-star hotels open and all international and domestic airlines running on schedule.

In a resolution passed by Nepal’s Parliament on Saturday, the nation unanimously endorsed the steadfast stand of Nepal’s ruling monarch, King Birendra, and appealed to the nation to face the current crisis “with patience and courage.”

There appeared to be considerable support for the policy in the several-blocks-long line for kerosene at Katmandu’s lower-class Bagh Market on Sunday.

“We have waited for 21 days already. We can wait more,” said Nazirman Tandukar, the ward chairman in the neighborhood who was supervising kerosene distribution. “We are very unhappy. We are suffering a lot. But the people cannot do anything. The government and the king will solve this, and we will wait.”

Karna Bahadur, a 46-year-old ice cream vendor, had been waiting in the line since 4 a.m. He hadn’t eaten a warm meal in a week, he said, “so it was better not to work today. It’s more important to get the kerosene so I can eat.”

Little Criticism of India

Surprisingly, few Nepalese in the long lines Sunday spoke harshly of India, which has shown no indication of resuming talks and resolving the treaty dispute.

“I am very sad about India and what it is doing to us,” ward leader Tandukar said. “Before, they let us get everything we needed. Now, nothing is coming through.

“But it is the tradition of India and Nepal to be close friends. And we are still brothers.”

In official Nepalese quarters, however, the reaction was far sterner, an indication, analysts said, of the neo-nationalism that led to the current conflict with India.

“The Nepalese will never feel the same toward India after this is over,” said the senior Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name.

Charging India with “hypocrisy, white lies (and) snobbery,” the official added that the Nepalese government believes India is simply staging the blockade to assert itself as a regional superpower and, in his words, remind Nepal that “they can destroy us if they wish.”

“You look at Sri Lanka, the Maldives and now this, and to us, this gives us more reason to be alarmed about our security,” he added, referring to Indian claims that it started the embargo to protect its own security interests in the region.

Asked whether Nepal’s arms purchase from China, which included about 100 troop trucks and anti-aircraft guns, was meant simply as a message to New Delhi of Nepalese sovereignty, the official said: “This was not deliberate on our part.

“But the next time, it may well be deliberate. They’re teaching us now. They’re putting wrong ideas in our head.”

ISOLATED Embargo by India, which has led to virtual blockade of principal trade routes into landlocked Nepal, is now in its third week.

Most of Katmandu’s transport is paralyzed, radical students have rioted and vital medicines are in short supply.