After reading your editorial (Learning from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, #84) my own (sad) thought is that it is reminiscent of what happened in Sri Lanka twice with the Marxist JVP. There were genuine grievances of people that the JVP articulated. But the way in which they did it, and their unwillingness to negotiate, made them a terrible force. They used terror-for instance killing over a hundred government bus drivers just because they broke JVP curfew days. The JVP were not prepared to negotiate: they wanted complete state power. So they were destroyed (at a terrible human cost) by the state, which used terrorist means as well. Today we live in a free society. If the JVP had won, I doubt it. A pure military solution was possible in Sri Lanka, perhaps because the rich-poor divide is less acute and the country is much more compact. Nepal is much larger and the terrain much more difficult, the state cannot concentrate its forces sufficiently for such a direct military solution. Perhaps Nepal will need a dual track military and political solution.

J de Silva
Colombo