Nepali Cart Before Horse

When the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) declared a "People´s War" in February 1996 and attacked police posts in some areas in the Nepali hills, it came as a surprise to many. After all, the United People´s Front, the political organ of the CPN (Maoist), was still involved in constitutional politics. And although the Front had boycotted the 1994 general elections, its strong showing in the first election held in 1991, where it emerged as the third largest party in parliament, had had people believe that the extreme leftists would not actually act upon their rhetoric of armed revolt.

This is the second Maobadi rebellion in Nepal. The first was the "class-enemy annihilation campaign" of 1971, carried out by the Coordination Centre, the embryonic organisation of what was to become the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist). Also known as the "Jhapa Movement", after the southeastern district where it was centred, this short-lived uprising was influenced by the Naxalites in Naxalbari, just across the border river of Mechi. The rebels went on a gruesome spree, chopping off the heads of some local landlords before they were brutally suppressed by the then Panchayat regime. (The CPN (ML) merged in 1991 with the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) to become the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), which is the dominant partner in Nepal´s ruling coalition at the moment.)