While the Nepalese government has been a feudal one, the Maoists are not the good guys portrayed in this article. The fighting initiated by them has caused massive environmental destruction, including killing of many rare animals. The same is true of the Marxist FMLN in Columbia, who have murdered indigenous people in the name of fighting capitalism and imperialism. While I'm also opposed to what they're fighting, I can't support groups that harm nature or indigenous people, who have more right to be there than anyone.

...violence has been initiated by the ruling class. As Mao said, "Wherever there is oppression there is resistance." It is the task of all progressive and revolutionary-minded people to find the way to end this oppression once and for all. Can you tell a young woman who's choices are being sold into sex-slavery or a lifetime of back-breaking labor, married as a child, subject to the rule of her husband, that she is wrong to fight for a whole new world? Do you instead stand with the brutal police forces who terrorize the people; raping, killing, gouging people's eyes out?

Another World is Possible! Another World is Needed!

Mao didn't oppress anyone. Oh wait...

Maybe we shouldn't get into the Great Leap Forward(into starvation).

To Wolverine,
I agree with your position against those who needlessly destroy the environment (and all takings from the earth which are not exchanges are needless, I should say) and those who kill the indigenous (and I should add here that no such killing could be justified as an act against capitalism or imperialism as it reflects such narrow ideologies). However, I only wish to ask that you provide some direction toward the places we can find evidence for your statements. Speaking on my behalf, I am unfamiliar with the conflicts in Nepal and I would like to know the situation better for my own judgment. Any response is appreciated.

Wolverine I agree with you that the destruction of the environment and the death of indigenous people is wrong but it does need to be pointed out that system these people are fighting against has destroyed more of the environment, rare animals and killed more people than the Maoists in Nepal or Marxists in Columbia could possibly do.

I'm not saying I agree with destroying the environment to stop capitalism but if there is no struggle at all then things will not get better. It might be that the destruction caused by these conflicts now will stop greater destruction in the future.

social change in Nepal is a long-term process. going up against centuries of the caste system (which is very much alive and well), intense oppression of women, concentrated land ownership, and rampant political corruption cannot be solved with a few governmental reforms or with one armed uprising. what is needed is cultural change as much as political change; until people of different castes begin to view each other as equals, the socio-economic conditions that the maoists are fighting against will continue despite any new laws or political order. while the Hindu monarchy does marginalize Nepal's indigenous and religious minorities, many people still identify with the monarchy. you can't make them embrace a new social structure through the barrel of a gun -- it takes patience and dialogue.

ask most Nepalis what they think of the Maoists' demands, and they will agree with them. ask if they support the Maoists and the answer is almost always no -- people do not want violence. the Maoists target police barracks to gain weapons, and they also extort money from the poor peasants they claim to represent. many get caught in the crossfire and just want peace.

on the other hand, the pressing issues that the Maoists raise would not be getting nearly so much attention had there not been an armed uprising. the Maoists have finally gained a seat at the table; now they need to be heard. we must support the negotiations and the peace process.

the US needs to stay out of Nepali politics. it is up to the Nepali people to change their government and address the injustices that have created such intense poverty and lack of access to education, health care, and sustainable and just development.

dherai kuraa garnuparchha, sabbai nepaliharu sangai basnuparchha.

[This article suggests that the USA sponsored the assasination of King Birenda on June 1, 2001.]

September 2002

Comparisons Between Recent U.S.-Backed Coups: Caracas and Kathmandu
by Wayne Madsen
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One thing about the CIA is that their playbook rarely changes. Take for example, the agency's involvement in the recent abortive military coup against Venezuela's democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez. The April 13 Washington Post reported that during the period leading up to the coup against Chavez, “members of the country's diverse opposition had been visiting the U.S. Embassy ... hoping to enlist U.S. help in toppling Chavez. The visitors included active and retired members of the military, media leaders and opposition politicians.”

The CIA, which had a special covert team in Venezuela since last June, had groomed these potential coup leaders, which now appears to have also included members of the proto-fascist Roman Catholic cult, the Opus Dei ….

But the most interesting aspect of the visits of Venezuelans to the U.S. Embassy before the coup there is the similarity to events that took place in Kathmandu during the months prior to the massacre of Nepal's Royal Family last June.

On June 1st, 2001, King Birendra, his wife and all his children, were assassinated. His younger brother, Gyanendra, was conveniently absent from the from the palace at the time of the massacre of all those who were ahead of him in succession to the throne. At first, Gyanendra and Prime Minister Girija Koirala announced that the worst royal massacre since the assassination of the Romanovs of Russia in 1917 had been caused by an automatic weapon that had gone off by itself. Soon, the explanation for the massacre was changed to a story befitting any Hollywood script. It was then announced that the King's oldest son, Crown Prince Dipendra, had murdered his entire family and then shot himself because his mother had forbidden him to marry a commoner. The new King Gyanendra's only son, Paras, an unpopular brute, was at the palace during the slaughter but managed to survive without so much as a scratch. Gyanendra himself has long been a CIA and U.S. corporate stooge. For example, he has a relationship with Henry Kissinger that goes back to the 1970s and the Ford administration. On the other hand, King Birendra wanted to open peace negotiations with the rebels and was also known to be a stauch anti-Indian Nepali nationalist.

Today, the news media is reporting that Nepali “Maoists” brutally murdered 160 policemen, beheading some in the process. Like with Chavez in Venezuela, one must peer beyond this CIA-inspired corporate media disinformation. The fact remains that Chavez and his supporters are Venezuelan nationalists opposed to American bullyism. Similarly, the so-called Maoists of Nepal, while mostly leftists, are first and foremost, Nepali nationalists who are attempting to prevent Gyanendra from turning Nepal into another state of India, much like what happened to neighboring Sikkim in 1975. Gyanendra, being part of the Bush Family's New World Order, is part and parcel of the U.S. plan to throw a cordon sanitaire of pro-U.S. states around China.

In the months leading up to the Nepali coup, the CIA established an office in the Maharajgunj District of Kathmandu, next door to the residence of Prince Gyanendra. Witnesses reoprtedly saw streams of Nepali police and military officials streaming into the offices. Other U.S. “civilians,” said to be with private military contractor CIA fronts like MPRI, were also seen arriving at the offices. In the spring, a U.S. Special Operations Forces personnel arrived in Kathmandu on a secret exercise code-named Bailey Nightingale I. The cover for the exercise was said to be earthquake disaster training. But it now appears it had another disaster in mind. The military team was composed of U.S. psychological operations (PSYOPs) personnel adept at coming up with tales like the one about the Crown Prince murdering his family.

Much is written in the western media about the Maoist leader Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, the leader of the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist), being terrorists. Yet they are no more terrorists than Yassir Arafat is in trying to ensure an independent Palestinian state and David Ben Gurion was in his fight to ensure an independent Jewish state. The use of the pejorative Cold War term “Maoist” and “Communist” against enemies of the United States is not new. in 1996, when Tupac Amaru guerrillas stormed the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru, they were called Maoists by the Peruvian oligarchy and its U.S. allies. The CIA provided a Schweizer RG-8A surveillance plane to help crush the rebels, who were all subsequently killed by the Peruvian military. Yet Tupac Amaru, while leftist, was also naionalist. The group's name was borrowed from the pre-Spanish Incan language. Tupac Amaru's main beef was that Peru's President, Alberto Fujimori, was not legitimate because he was not an actual Peruvian citizen. They claimed he was ineligible to serve because he was born in Japan, not Peru. Now, Tupac Amaru's claim has been authenticated. The ousted Fujimori now resides in Tokyo as a guest of the Japanese government, and he said he plans to run for a seat in the Japanese Diet, something, incidentally, only Japanese citizens, not Peruvians, can do.

The CIA's disinformation machinery was proven wrong in Lima, in Kathmandu, and now, in Caracas. The CIA and George Tenet, its director, have once again been shown to be nothing more than scam artists with a knack for lying through their teeth.

According to unblemished sources in Kathmandu, the king and his family were quickly dispatched by a Nepali army commando unit trained at the time by U.S. Special Operations forces sent by U.S. Pacific Commander in Chief Adm. Dennis Blair (he's the same guy who propped up Gen. Wiranto with special training while the good general was committing genocide in East Timor). What was to become the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (PSYOPs division) prepared a story, with the assistance of India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency, that the King and his family were murdered as a result of the Crown Prince going nuts with automatic weapons after being forlorn over his mother's refusal to allow him to marry a commoner.

The Maoists in Nepal are primarily "indigenous" themselves. The government, subservient to imperialism, is responsible for the overwhelming majority of death and destruction, not to mention the whole overall anarchy of development in a third world nation which causes untold environmental degradation.

Listen to biddyarthi. It sounds like he lives in Nepal or at least used to. And he knows what he is talking about. I've visited Nepal for months.

Several things come to mind.

The brutality of the Maoist uprising shocked me, especially compared to the usual gentleness of the Nepalese. There have been beheadings and extortion of people in the countryside.

The average person in Nepal universally thinks the government is completely corrupt.

It would be idiotic for the U.S. to get involved in this. It's as though there is no place that the American government doesn't want to stick it's nose, as though it knows everything.