The soldiers' fight against the Maobaadi since the Nepali Emergency was put in place six months ago has delivered an unacceptable volume of human 'collateral damage'. The civilian government Mast maintain control over the Royal Nepalese Army as it goes about trying to purge the Nepali hills of Comrade Prachanda's followers.
The hills of Nepal are alive with the sound of gunfire. While the last few years have seen mainly the Maoists on the offensive, since end-November 2001, with the deployment of the Royal Nepalese Army, there has been heavy combat between government forces and the insurgents. With the politicians all having fled the field to cower in district headquarters, roadhead towns or Kathmandu Valley, it is the peasantry that is caught in the crossfire and left vulnerable between ruthless insurgents and soldiers just learning to fight. So far, the level of abuse – summary killings, disappearances, torture – is only a matter of conjecture because no one is monitoring events on the ground. Civil society as a whole, and journalists and human rights groups in particular, have turned timid after the State of Emergency was imposed by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on 26 November 2001. There is no one looking out for the people when the army is out, whereas, earlier, the was quite a lot of watchdogging over the police.
The villagers of Nepal find themselves trapped between the demands of the insurgents and e soldiers' imputations. A recent story published in a Nepali language fortnightly by the social critic Khagendra Sangraula sums up the situation — he tells of a man who hides from the Maoists, only to be forcibly conscripted. He escapes the Maoists' ranks, and returns home to be confronted and killed by the soldiers. While fictional, Sangraula's story was a composite based on information from the Maoist heartland district of Salyan, and captures the terrifying reality of a rural populace caught in a jam.
Simple peasantry living in subsistence conditions is being asked to provide food, shelter and recruits to an unflinchingly hard-headed insurgency that is feeling the pressure of stepped-up military activity. Then there are the soldiers, fighting for the first time in quintessential guerilla territory, with poor equipment and inadequate logistical support, and little in the form of intelligence to distinguish between innocents and enemy.