Nishana, a 27-year-old platoon commander of the Maoist People's Liberation Army (PLA), looked just like any other Nepali mother as she played with her three-year-old son in the open space in front of her family's small hut in a cantonment in Dasharatapur of Surkhet District. Since the formal end of the decade-long conflict in 2006, all Maoist combatants are supposed to be housed in seven major (and 21 satellite) temporary UN-overseen camps spread throughout the country. And there some 20,000 individuals have languished ever since, as political machinations have ground on in Kathmandu as politicians wrangle over what to do with them. Even as frustration levels within the cantonments continue to rise, however, the debate remains one of the most explosive in Nepal's ongoing peace process.
Either way, cantonment life would seem good in comparison to the ten years of warfare that preceded it. And this would certainly be just as true for the roughly 3000 to 4000 women combatants, as well. Nishana can be counted as one of the lucky female fighters, simply for having survived both the battles and the harsh jungle life of the insurgency period; for 10 years, death had been merely a part of life. The past two and a half years, then, have been a significant turnaround. For several months now, the sight of women combatants carrying babies has become a common one in every cantonment, to the extent that a Maoist 'baby boom' has been widely discussed. Although there is no exact data on the number of children in the cantonments, it is estimated that there are between 800 and 1000 mothers in the cantonments, each with at least one small child in tow.
Nishana, originally from Dailekh in western Nepal, says she joined the Maoists in 2001. "After four of my close relatives were killed by the state, I felt feelings of revenge," she said recently. "I thought that either I would kill the enemies, or I would die." In November of that year, she participated in a famous raid on Ghorahi, the headquarters of the mid-western Dang District. "I was in a second assault group, which raided the barracks of the Royal Nepalese Army," she recalled. "At that time, I was carrying a .303 rifle. When I first heard sounds of firing, I felt as though bullets were hitting my body, though they weren't really. During that first action I was quite scared, but slowly became accustomed." After Ghorahi, she participated in most major military actions carried out by the PLA in western Nepal, including the largest, the raid on the RNA barracks in Beni, in which she fought on the front line as a member of the first assault group. Dozens of her comrades were killed during that attack, including her commander.
Although many of Nishana's friends died in combat, many more were forced to deal with particular hardships as women. Safalta, with whom Nishana joined the PLA, died along with her unborn child in 2002 after participating in military training while pregnant. Nishana says that she too worked on the military front when she was pregnant several months before the conflict ended, right up through her ninth month. "We used to carry a bag weighing some 10 kg as well as a weapon, just like the men did," she said. Such adversity inevitably created strong bonds between the women. "When I was pregnant, my friend would help me by carrying my bag," she said, noting that women combatants would also help one another during their menstrual periods by assisting with loads.