By Georgie Anne Geyer
Uexpress, June 11, 2012
WASHINGTON
-- Far across the globe, in the beautiful, but troubled mountain country of Nepal, every
day brings dark news of demonstrations, riots, ethnic standoffs and the
military fighting violence in the streets.
It would be easy from afar for
anyone -- for Americans, in particular, obsessed with our own problems -- to
dismiss little Nepal's troubles as not relevant to us. We have no special
interests in that country, home to a hundred ethnic groups and castes, with an
increasingly assertive India
on its southern border, and it is best to let it be. But this would be a
mistake because Nepal
exemplifies the problems of many other countries today on the brink of change.
The story of Nepal is far more than the simple one of the
world's most perfervid mountaineers out to climb Mount
Everest or die heroically in an avalanche. Today, the sad story is
one of internal dynamics at a time when no one has the power to grasp the reins
of leadership. The result? Slow-motion helplessness.
Perhaps the Washington-based
author and journalist Dr. Chitra Tiwari, a Fulbright professor and expert on South Asia, puts it best: "In the past, when there
was an insurgency, it was basically between the Maoists and the royal forces.
At that time, ideology was at the forefront. But now in Nepal, ideology
is dead, political parties have miserably failed. The result is that we have
ethnic politics raising its ugly head."
Until recently, the political standoff
in Nepal
was between the centuries-old Shah monarchy -- which united the disparate
groups of Nepalese, just as Queen Elizabeth unites the British or Sultan Qaboos
unites the tribal Omanis -- and Maoist insurgents. Then, in a bizarre turn of
events in the early 2000s, almost the entire royal family was killed by a
berserk son. The new King Gyanendra Shah was not able to hold the country
together, particularly against the self-styled Maoists playing off the ethnic
differences in the countryside.
People who cared about Nepal were
thrilled when these two groups signed a peace treaty and a 601-member
Constituent Assembly was formed four years ago to write a constitution. But it
didn't work; they could agree on nothing, especially the issue of federalism,
and suddenly ethnic politicians came forward, claiming to represent the
marginalized ethnic groups.
"As long as politics was
fought along class lines," Dr. Tiwari told me, "it was a two-way
ideological fight, but with the demise of the Soviet Union and China's move towards state capitalism, the
political parties in the Third World got lost
in the horizon. The Maoist insurgency and the counterinsurgency led by the
monarchists was understood in terms of an ideological fight between the
communists and an absolute monarchy, although in the modern garb of
'constitutional monarchy.' The issues of class disappeared soon, and caste and
ethnic politics raised its ugly head."
Dr. Tiwari says Pandora's box is
now open. As the centrist political parties break down, ethnic leaders are
spinning off, and he foresees that they will "sooner or later form a
coalition of ethnic groups," who would then fight against the upper-caste
Brahmin-Chhetris, with their long domination of the state through the monarchy.
And so, at the moment, this is
the picture: The police have deployed thousands of men in Katmandu and major cities across the country,
the political parties are in a process of disintegration, the Maoists are out
to organize the ethnics, and the ex-king is reported to be secretly considering
a return. Meanwhile, in effect, there is no legal government, although the
previous one is more-or-less in charge.
In short, the problem and the
answer, too, can be found in one word: legitimacy. Countries can have elected
democratic leaders; they can have kings, sultans, constitutional monarchs or
sheikhs; but these men or women have to have sufficient power and personality
to meld the country together, and they have to have legitimacy.
Some think Nepal's
insecurity and violence will serve to bring back the ex-king, and it may; but
it would be out of desperation, not out of choice.
Nepal isn't alone in its violent
search for national cohesion and legitimacy. Look at Burma
or Myanmar, just to the
south of Nepal.
Just as Burma
has a reformist general as president and is opening to the world, it is hit by
Islamist ethnic rioting and deaths in the southwest. The search for legitimacy
will also challenge virtually every one of the "Arab spring"
countries in the Middle East.
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