The government of Nepal and the Maoist rebels announced a ceasefire on the night of 29 January 2002, the Maoists taking the peace plunge an hour and a half before the state. For the Kathmandu valley, still reeling from the gunning down of a top policeman, his wife and bodyguard only three days earlier, the news was the balm it so needed. Even though some would-be interlocutors greeted the news with scepticism tainted by disappointment ('nobody told us!'), and some political leaders viewed this coming together of two non-democratic forces with extreme caution, the rest of society seemed to accept with enthusiasm what the ceasefire offered. In the immediate offing was the stoppage of mayhem on the terraces and plains just as it had arrived in the valley, and there was the implied possibility of a larger peace and, ultimately, a negotiated end to a seven-year war in which nearly 8000 lives have been taken.
This is not the first interlude in Nepal's 'people's war'. In August 2001, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government sent a team to the negotiating table without a brief, who were sitting across from a Maobaadi side intent on buying time to consolidate and expand its campaign. 17 months since, this time around, there are significant differences. Three of the most obvious are the quiet in which the groundwork was laid, unique in a polity that is in the habit of advertising its exertions; the implicit participation of a proactive palace; and the weight of a rapidly strengthening army, deployed all over the country (instead of a demoralised and under-equipped police) behind the government. At a time when the international community has been showing a keen interest in the conflict by enthusiastically offering mediating mechanisms and conflict-resolution expertise, some found it pleasant that the ceasefire process was an entirely 'Nepali' affair.
The negotiations required to convert the ceasefire, which is disadvantaged by its democratic shortfall, into a peace process will be tedious and challenging to say the least. The Maoists will likely have to deal with disgruntled elements turning renegade and splintering the movement – a serious problem for the country if it were to happen – and the state will have to evolve a formula that includes the political parties, for the moment out of government and not party to the ceasefire discussions.
Power vacuum