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.
