[From The Worker, #8, January 2003]
WHAT OTHERS SAY ------------------
"The UN office stands ready to assist in the peace talks between the government and the Maoists if we are asked to do so."
-Dr. Hening Karcher, UN Resident Representative to Nepal (October 24, 2002)"Much is written in the western media about the Maoist leader Prachanda and Baburam Bhattaria, the leaders of the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist), being terrorists. Yet they are no more terrorists than Yassar Arafat is in trying to ensure an independent Palestinian state and David Ben Gurion was in his fight to ensure an independent Jewish state."
-Wayne Madsen ("Comparison Between Recent U.S.-Backed Coups ", www. spiescafe. com)
"The Maoist movement now wields defacto control over most of Nepal. By following the Mao Tse-Tung model of guerilla warfare-becoming 'fish swimming in the ocean of the people'- the insurgents have won dominance of the Himalayas and of the foothills. King Gyanendra's rule is now limited to Kathmandu, Nepa¾s few towns and the southern low lands of the Terai."
-Davil Blair, in London Telegraph, September 21, 2002
The Maoists "will continue to gain ground. Unless something dramatic happens, its only a matter of time before they win."
-A british Military Source, quoted in-ibid-
"I've never been to Nepal, and do not know what the prospects for the guerillas' victory might be. Buts let's say the British officer's prediction materializes. Imagine the international consequences. The radical left throughout the world would be heartened by a victory, somewhere; impressed to see the red flag planted, as the secretary-general of the CPN(M), Prachanda, likes to put it, a top Mt. Everest, the roof of the world..... The governments of the world-virtually all of them-would be very highly displeased, and mainstream intellectuals puzzled. The victory would after all, constitute a challenge to the Fukuyama thesis (about the "end of history" as a clash of ideologies) and the Huntington thesis (about the "clash of civilizations"). We'd be back to the old capitalism vs communism discussion, which was supposed to be behind us, all settled, and consigned to the rubbish heap of history!"
-Gary Leupp, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Jufts University and Coordinator, -Asian Studies Programme
("The Resumption of History: Imagining the Global Consequences of a Maoist Victory in Nepal", Counter Punch. October 21, 2002)"You have a Maoist insurgency that's trying to over throw the government and this really is the kind of thing that we are fighting against throughout the world".
-Coline Powell, U.S. Secretary of State, on his first-ever 'visit' to Nepal in January 2002
"The international community has pledged full support to the Nepali people to end Maoist insurgency and to bring about development in the country. Terrorism can never be allowed to win. International community is determined to support democracy opposing terrorism."
-Mike O'Brien, British Parliamentary Under Secretary of state in the foreign and Commonwealth Office, October 12, 2002
"The EU... urges the insurgents to immediately end their violent actions end enter into a political dialogue with the government of Nepal. At the same time the European union reiterates the urgent need to address the underlying causes of the ongoing conflict, including the issue of poverty, corruption, and human right".
-Statement issued by the Presidency of the European Union, October 12, 2002
"India's worst nightmare would be a tri-cornered fight between monarchy, political parties and the Maoist rebels, who are threatening to overrun the country. It is in touch with Gyanendra as political unrest in Nepal could have security ramifications for Delhi".
-Report in India Today. October 21,2002
"Undoubtedly, the happiest in Nepal are the Maoists who rarely miss the chance to denounce the monarchy. The rebels have fought the Royal Nepal Army more and less to a standstill, using terrain, savagery and rural alienation to there advantage".
-BBC Correspondent Daniel Lak's Report in Qutlook (New Delhi), October 21, 2002.
"The state of near civil war in Nepal with monarchy unable to check the unrelenting Maoist of offensive is an SOS that those interested in peace in the Himalayan Kingdom can not ignore. Friends of Nepal would agree that the situation appears irretrievably grim as things stand today...."
"... .In Nepal too any headway towards ending the insurgency appears unlikely without Washington's tacit help. However, New Delhi, which has been giving all assistance to Kathamndu for combating "Maoists terrorism" will do well not to get embroiled any further in this conflict. For, that would be courting another fiasco like the IPKF mission to Sri Lanka."
-Editorial in The Times of India November 18, 2002
Rampur and many other villages in these hills and valleys are proof that the Maoists are manifestly not "on the run," as the government maintains. Nor do they appear to have weakened by nine months of army operations against them during a state emergency that ended in August. In many districts in this part of the country, the government still controls no more than major towns and the checkpoints on the roads between them.
-Bertil Lintner in Far Eastern Economic Review. October 24, 2002
"There is nothing more dangerous in a revolutionary period than belittling the importance of tactical slogans that are sound in principle."
-V.I. Lenin "Two Tactícs of Social Democracy..."