The ‘integration’ process of former Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army has resumed. Thus questioning the success of the ‘peace process’ at this moment could well run the risk of being termed as alarmist, but seeing the former combatants repenting for what otherwise was indoctrinated into them as a ‘glorious people’s war’, and returning home with anguish makes it imperative to dwell into the objectives the peace process had envisioned at its outset and what it has really achieved now.
That we are in the midst of a peace process clearly means that we are in a post-conflict situation where peace-building is still a work in progress. Absence of armed conflict doesn’t necessarily imply institutionalized peace, more so when clouds of uncertainty loom over the prospect of a new constitution. A clear roadmap of the next political process emerging gradually from the framework developed so far is yet to emerge. The political template in the last four years has kept expanding in an attempt to accommodate new aspirations, adding fresh challenges.
The Twelve-Point Agreement (TPA) and Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) provide the broad and basic framework of Nepal’s peace process. They envisaged four essential components at the heart of the peace process: immediate relief for conflict victims, transitional justice mechanisms to establish truth and prosecute serious crimes during conflict, integration of certain number of former Maoist combatants into Nepal Army, and institutionalizing the gains made thereby through a new constitution. As UN Senior Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi succinctly said about the peace processes, Nepal’s also was foreseen as the process of converting the “rule of gun” into the one of “rule of law” through economic incentives and positive engagement.
Reflecting upon the offshoot of Nepal’s peace process, one would thus quite fashionably call it a home grown process, assisted by many external factors, although an in-depth fact-finding of late suggests the contrary. Judging it from a purely maximalist approach would be an idealistic venture because all post-conflict processes demonstrate external influences to various degrees; they falter at times and yet tend to move ahead, and all processes, despite their imperfections, need to move ahead. We have examples of extensive foreign footprints as in Iraq and Afghanistan; and also of sudden domestic triumph as in Sri Lanka, where all mediation efforts failed, ultimately leading the government into annihilating the rebels.
Coming back to Nepal’s peace process, the question now is if its goals could be ever met. Take for example the case of relief to the conflict victims, by far the simplest part of the process, where some level of success has been certainly achieved but not without problems. Number of deaths during the conflict was initially pegged at 13,000, which has now increased to 15,000 with the Maoists adding the number of deaths that occurred much later. In providing financial assistance to the injured, this government has been partial towards the Maoist workers, and there are evidences of this.
Establishing transitional justice mechanisms has been the most unfortunate part of the story. Two legislations stipulating setting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as well as the Commission of Inquiry on Disappearances remained pending in Parliament for two years. Prepared by the Madhav Kumar Nepal government, they never made it into the priority list of its successors. Now that there is no Parliament, this government wants to create them through an ordinance, with the intent of granting amnesty to criminal Maoist leaders. The entire human rights community and Nepal’s development partners are opposed to this development, carefully watching further developments with concern.
Integration of former Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army has progressed in fits and starts. Confined in the cantonments for six long years, the combatants were reportedly lied to, financially cheated and used by the Maoist party as a bargaining chip. The fighters were repeatedly told that the process was taking place as disarmament, integration and military reform. Maoist rhetoric constantly used “democratization of Nepal Army” as a refrain, while the actual process is now headed towards concluding as ‘disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation’. “Merger of two armies”, a Maoist punch-line not too long ago, has proved to be a sham, created to trade it off with power. Those now lining up to join the army are mostly late recruits who had entered the Maoist PLA in search of jobs.
The Baburam-Prachanda regime from the beginning milked money from the cantonments at the expense of the integration narrative itself. No combatant believes the current process is really ‘integration’, let alone the general public. Rehabilitation is no more talked about, out of the ostracization it faced amongst former combatants. Retirement, since it brought some first-hand money and gave them the freedom they yearned for, has been the preferred option. The peace process in the end has taken the most undesired course: a bulk walk-out of combatants from the process itself. It’s a pity that out of the 6500 combatants—for which the Maoist party held the Constituent Assembly hostage for three and half years—not even half are now joining the army. We are yet to see if half of the remaining 3,123 fighters would really make it.
The so-called army integration process as designed was expected to be ‘reciprocal’ in the first place. It was expected the country would get peace and a constitution and the combatants a dignified life in society. However, after seven years of wrangling with Maoist obstinacy, its combatants are returning home with heavy hearts with the new constitution nowhere in sight. But it is still a relief that the country has achieved some level of transitional peace.
Like it or not, now is the time to rewrite the old narrative of change, with a fresh all-party agreement so as to acknowledge the space of rising actors as well. People’s aspirations won’t be met by singing praises of CPA and TPA alone. Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, in the words of its Chairman Subash Chandra Nembang, led the country into a “dark tunnel”, whose proverbial ‘light at the end’ has to be switched on through a broad new agreement, to enthuse life into the dead peace process.
Tika_dhakal@att.net
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