Nepalis Caught in Guerrilla Cross-Fire

Cicadas drone. A heavy mist shrouds the lush hills. Barefoot children using palm fronds as umbrellas scamper down twisting paths that lead from thriving fields of rice and corn to thatch-covered homes at the foot of the Himalayas.

It’s an idyllic scene.

But in the distance, atop the highest hill for miles around, red flags flap next to painted banners, reminders of a guerrilla war tearing at this part of Nepal.

“March in the direction of making a Maoist homeland. Long live Marxism, Leninism and Maoism. May the souls of our great people’s artists live on,” the banners proclaim.

Since communist rebels inspired by Peru’s Shining Path movement began a guerrilla war from the remote hills of western and central Nepal four years ago, some 230 policemen and nearly 1,000 rebels have died, the government says. Home Minister Govind Raj Joshi resigned in September after rebels killed 22 police officers in two attacks within one week.

There is a heavy toll among noncombatants too. Some 250 civilians have been killed, either murdered or caught in the fighting. Authorities contend the rebels use villagers as shields while attacking police stations and other government facilities.

Villagers and human rights groups say the government also is guilty of abuses.

In the last year and a half, the conflict has resulted in the deaths of eight people in Anekot, a tiny hamlet 30 miles southeast of Katmandu, the national capital. Many people here live in deep fear they will be next.

“We are living under threat,” said Ram Prasad Dahal, 21, cousin and neighbor of Arjun Dahal, who was allegedly killed in July by the rebels for having told authorities about seven Maoists living in his house. Those seven were killed by the police.

“We don’t know who will come and strike us. We don’t know the police; we don’t know the Maoists,” Dahal added. “All we want to do is live in peace. We are afraid of both the police and the Maoists.”

The rebels, who are active in 29 of the 75 districts of the kingdom, want an end to the constitutional monarchy and sweeping land reforms. Following Mao Tse-tung’s dictum that revolution can come only from the gun, Nepal’s communists abandoned electoral politics in 1994 and went to war two years later.

The government concedes the war is causing problems for the people in remote mountain villages but has been unable to control the insurgency.

“People in the Maoist insurgency-hit areas feel that they have been abandoned by the government and left at the mercy of these rebels, who are violating every form of human rights,” Joshi said in September.

The government formed a high-level committee in March to negotiate with the rebels. In an October breakthrough that could bring about peace talks, the government met with a senior member of the rebel forces and agreed to a demand to make public the whereabouts of arrested guerrillas, according to human rights activist Padma Ratna Tuladhar.

Even after the seven suspected rebels were killed by police in Anekot, the people of the hamlet seem uninterested in what happened, or why. That apparent indifference stems from a fear that if they know too much, the police will begin asking questions.

“We have no business with them. We are afraid that the Maoists may come and ask something of us, and then the police may come and inquire something of us. We fall victim in the cross-fire,” Dahal said.

Informal Sector Service Center, a Nepalese human rights group, casts blame on both sides. “Both the government and the Maoist rebels are responsible for the increase in human rights violations,” it said.

Atop the hill with the Maoist flags, five men gazed into the valley below at Anekot. They said their mood had swung against the government because the killing of seven men, with no explanation to the community, was worse than anything done by the guerrillas.

“For the government to come here and kill seven people, certainly we see it as an excess, an atrocity,” said Krishna Bahadur Tamang, a farmer. “Right now we have not yet decided who is the lesser evil.”