OxBlog

Monday, September 01, 2003

# Posted 6:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

A LETTER FROM OXBLOG'S NEPAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not Labor Day over there, thanks to the wonders of the international date line...so OxBlog's friend Joel Hafvenstein is at the office, logging long hours to bring us some ....
Bad news from Nepal.

When I was there last week, the peace talks with the Maoists were at an obvious impasse. The rebels yesterday cancelled the ceasefire, and have since assassinated one military colonel in Kathmandu, wounded another, and knocked over multiple banks in the south -- attacks clearly well-planned during the months of the peace process. The government has declared them terrorists, and America may well follow suit. A conflict which had already escalated exponentially since 2001 looks likely to get much bloodier.

See this article from Nepal News.

This time, the Maoists may also be directly targeting political leaders, not just military, police, and low-level party hacks and development workers. An attack on former PM Deuba's convoy on Monday (before the cancellation of the ceasefire) was described by apologetic Maoists as a mistake:

See here and here.

But they just made a (perhaps successful) assassination attempt against Devendra Raj Kandel, the hard-nosed Home Minister under the last Deuba government, which suggests that this time, the gloves are coming off. (Here's an interview indicating why Kandel was so hated by the Maoists: ) And the house of another political leader (negotiator in the recent govt-Maoist peace talks) was firebombed.

One of the more striking changes about Kathmandu this time was the number of sandbagged military emplacements that had sprung up around every major crossroads and government building. It's really come to look like a country at war. Which, sadly, it once again is.

Joel
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