Nepal's Army to go after Maoists in full force

[World News]: Kathmandu, Feb 6 : Nepal's army said it would go after the Maoist insurgents in full force, pressuring them to resume peace negotiations with the new government or face the consequences.

The army's mandate is to "disarm the Maoists and bring them to the mainstream", said Brigadier-General Dipak Gurung, Royal Nepalese Army spokesman.

The Royal Nepalese Army, constitutionally under the control of a security council consisting of the prime minister, defence minister and army chief, had its curbs removed Tuesday when King Gyanendra dismissed the government of prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and imposed a state of emergency.

"Our resources were diverted. But now with the civil administration and police dealing with the political parties and student unions, we will be more focused," Gurung said.

"Earlier, the army used to get diverted from its mandate due to being called to combat rallies, shutdowns, demonstrations and other forms of agitation," he said.

The army plans to mount pressure on the underground rebels. The Deuba government had approved the recruitment of an additional 7,000 soldiers whose training has already been started. Besides increasing the strength of the army, its headquarters have been decentralised into five divisions, each unit mounting its own operations in each of the five development regions of Nepal independently and one more for Kathmandu valley.

The RNA has also started setting up bases in the remote districts where earlier it had no presence and plans to expand them still more.

Gurung said the army had drawn the sting of the communist guerrillas by shutting down communications countrywide.

"There have been no attacks by the Maoists since Tuesday," he said. "They can't plan operations now since they have no means of communication." The spokesman blamed the media for the fear psychosis created by the underground guerrillas.

"An insignificant publication somewhere would say there's a shutdown called by the rebels and everyone would close in fear," he said. "We can survive without Maoist news. Maybe the media was misguided or was not mature enough. In the past 15 years, there was a lot of press freedom. But what did it achieve? Our ultimate end is a peaceful and prosperous Nepal."

Gurung denied that the army had been violating human rights to crack down on the nine-year-old insurgency.

"Immediately after the royal proclamation, army chief Gen Pyar Jung Thapa issued directives to the troops to respect human rights," he said. "It was no mere lip service. An army can't tolerate indiscipline. We treat human rights violations by soldiers as cases of indiscipline and take action. These are propaganda spread by the Maoists."

As an example of punitive action, Gurung said a major found guilty of breach of discipline was dismissed from the army and sentenced to two years in prison.

Gurung also said India and the US should support Nepal. Both countries have expressed grave concern at the royal takeover and urged for the immediate restoration of multi-party democracy. India also pulled out of the 13th SAARC Summit that was to have been held in Bangladesh on Feb 6-7, citing the development in Nepal and security situation in Bangladesh as the reasons.

"Countries like India and the US should support us because we are fighting against terrorism," he said. "It brought us to the brink of disaster with the country's sovereignty being in question. Terrorism is not just Nepal's concern, it's going to affect all of South Asia. We should all fight it together."

This is in addition to sending artillery systems & INSAS rifles & opening lines of credit for the RNA.The US is not known to have supplied helos to Nepal-Great Britain provided funding for them to buy 2 Mi-17 Choppers last year.

The RNA received a US Military aid shipment of 20,000 M16 rifles from the US, though I expect that we'll be seeing their 7.62mm 1A1 SLR rifles to continue in use for quite a while. Riot Shotguns and 5.56mm M249 SAW light machineguns have also been showing up in some recent newsphotos of the RNA and armed police.

AMERICAN M16 guns have arrived for the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) to fight the Maoist rebels. The guns have come as part of the United States' support for the fight against `terrorism' globally. It is the latest in a succession of weapon systems and transport equipment to bolster the fighting capacity of the RNA against the seven-year-old `Peoples War' led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The move signals the strategic convergence of the U.S., India and the U.K. to contain the Maoist rebels militarily, to ensure that the "rebels don't win by violence" and that the state "doesn't lose out to rebel violence". A British diplomat said: "Our commitment still is to a negotiated settlement; militarily such a war cannot be won." However, international backing for a `war for peace' strategy runs the risk of strengthening the Nepal state's belief that it can win militarily. Also, as Nepali Congress leader Girija Prasad Koirala warned, military assistance to the RNA has political implications, for it could bolster autocratic impulses at a time when multi-party democracy has been rendered irrelevant in the country.

The Nepali liberal intelligentsia and human rights activists have warned against a dangerous military escalation of the civil war as both the RNA and the Maoists (by means of seizures of RNA equipment) arm themselves with the new-generation weapons. In these seven years the death roll has been 7,383. Two-thirds of this number constitutes those killed in the past year after the Army was deployed against the Maoists. The number of casualties can be expected to increase manifold as machine-guns, like the Belgium Minimi, are inducted. This particular gun system can shoot a thousand rounds a minute and has a range of 1 km. It can easily be mounted on a land-based vehicle or a helicopter. The RNA already has 500 Minimi gun systems, and 5,500 more are coming. In addition, the RNA has acquired from India two Cheetah helicopters and from the U.K. two M17 helicopters. It plans to expand the strength of its air wing to comprise about 18 flying machines.

What is cause for even greater concern is the pervasive national culture of impunity, making for systemic human rights violations in the course of the civil war. Already, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have raised an alarm over arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture and rape allegedly committed by members of the security forces. It is in response to international human rights concerns that British and U.S. military assistance come twined with human rights training.

Indeed, the Maoist leadership too is tactically shifting the conflict agenda and making human rights violations the central issue. In a recent interview to a U.S.-based newspaper, CPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa K. Dahal alias Comrade Prachanda sought to appropriate the human rights platform and called upon the authorities to stop `state terrorism'. Giving examples (several of them from the Amnesty International report), he accused the Army and the police of human rights abuses against members of the public, in particular supporters of his organisation, and called for an end to these abuses as a precondition for a dialogue. Meanwhile, human rights abuses committed by the Maoists are dismissed as false allegations or explained as constituting "punishment" of informers.

The growing involvement of the U.S. in putting the Maoists on the terrorist map has prompted the top Maoist leadership to woo American public opinion actively and seek to allay fears about an `ultra' Maoist agenda and risk to individual Americans in Nepal. Ahead of Prachanda's interview, Baburam Bhattarai, the No. 2 man in the Maoist hierarchy, gave an interview to a Washington-based newspaper on December 14, 2002.

In December, the U.S. embassy in Kathmandu initiated the process of placing the Maoists on at least two of three U.S. `terrorist' lists. This move had significant implications for immigration and funding prospects. This followed the visit to Nepal of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca. She had put the Maoists on notice. "If you employ terrorist tactics, then you are in fact a terrorist,'' she said, equating the tactics of the Maoists with those resorted to by Cambodia's Pol Pot in an earlier decade.

Sorry, but the US has not supplied Apache (AH-64s) to Nepal. The most capable helo they have is gunship variants of the HIP (Mi-8, Mi-17 Mi-171).

Depends on how you define *most capable*. The *Amnesiacs International* crybabies have been whining about the French-designed, Indian-built Lancer Light Attack Helicopters supplied to the 11th Brigade. The two Russian Mi-17s supplied to the Nepalese [with generous spares included] by Great Britain are Air Ambulance versions donated as humanitarian aid, and likely to find considerable use in that role, supplanted by a pair of fixed-wing Islander casevac aircraft.

I expect the Royal Nepal Army Air Wing will be grateful for anything servicable they can utilize, then after hard use and combat take their toll, they'll eventually come to standardize on what this experience shows them to be the most useful...and for which maintenance and replacement parts are the least problem.

Exports from India to Nepal have included the Lancer light attack helicopter and the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). The Lancer is based upon the Cheetah attack helicopter that has been produced in India under licence from Eurocopter, since 1970. Eurocopter has also been closely involved in the development of HAL’s indigenous designed Advanced Light Helicopter, signing a new Memorandum of Understanding in June 2003. Another French Company, Turbomeca, has provided engines for the Cheetah, Lancer and Advanced Light Helicopters.
The Lancer is armed with two rocket and machine gun pods. Each pod carries one 12.7 mm gun and three 70 mm rockets and has a firing rate of 1100 rounds per minute. The ALH is a military utility helicopter and is designed to be fitted with a variety of weapons systems including a three-barrel 20mm machine gun, air-to-surface and anti tank missiles.
Whilst France remains the principal EU member state involved with the production of these helicopters in India, a number of other European companies have also been reported as supplying components or sub-systems for helicopters manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics. For example, the ALH reportedly contains Italian and UK components, whilst the Lancer is equipped with rocket pods reportedly manufactured by a Belgian company.
Evidence of misuse of helicopters by the Nepalese security forces
During 2004, there have been numerous reports of civilians being killed or wounded in helicopter attacks by Nepalese security forces. For example, the Kathmandu Post Newspaper reported on 11th January 2004 that an 82-year old man was killed when the Royal Nepalese Army opened fire at him from a helicopter in the remote Kaule Village whilst on a search operation against the Maoist rebels. On 24th March 2004 Agence France-Presse reported that up to fifty people including civilians were killed when an army helicopter attacked guerrillas in western Nepal near the scene of major weekend fighting.
Exports of Indian helicopters to other countries of concern It would appear that India has weaker controls on the export of military helicopters than its EU counterparts. In 2002, it was reported that India had removed the "blacklist" of countries that it would not export weapons to, in an effort to boost its arms sales, including that of the Advanced Light Helicopter. According to a 2002 report of the Indian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry, Hindustan Aeronautics had been "exporting spares for aircraft, helicopters and engines to a number of countries". In February 2003, the Chairman of Hindustan Aeronautics stated that "we have our own advanced light helicopter design and to export it we do not need any permissions" .
The close involvement of France with the production of attack helicopters in India, via licensed production agreements and the incorporation of components or sub-systems from other EU member states into these helicopters raises serious concerns regarding the application of the EU Code of Conduct. Criterion 7 of the EU Code requires Member States to consider the "risk that... equipment will be diverted within the buyer country or re-exported under undesirable conditions," and to consider "the capability of the recipient country to exert effective export controls". The export of the Lancer and ALH helicopters from India to destinations unlikely to receive direct export licences from EU members suggests that EU Member States are not fully implementing the EU Code. Given the weakening of India’s export controls, the continued involvement of EU-based companies in the production of Indian attack helicopters, seriously undermines the credibility of the EU Code and its effectiveness in stopping the proliferation of arms to conflict or human rights crisis zones.

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