It is readily apparent to many of us that this revolution is a dead-end street. It may not yet be evident to the Maoist leadership, or even if it is, maybe the hawks call the shots. The military-monarchy combine, on the other hand, is waiting for new hardware so it can start a decisive offensive that it hopes will break the back of the rebel movement.

Positions have hardened so much that neither side cares too much for talks at present. The feelings of war-weary Nepalis doesn't seem to count. The people don't see either side winning, all they know is that they will lose in a war they never wanted but is being waged in their name.

Ultimately, the revolutionaries will need a face-saving way out of this as much as the government does. It may be hard for the comrades to admit it to themselves, but a mechanism for public support that is based on fear and terror never lasts--a lesson that the security forces will also have to learn.

The revolution has now strayed away from Mao's "mass line" into uncharted territory. This has perilous consequences not just for the nation, but for the party's own existence. Remember the brutal internal purges that caused other revolutions in our region to implode.

Baburam Bhattarai in an interview with a right-wing Moonie paper this week thinks his revolution is on track, and following with historical inevitability the scientific tents laid out by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. But Baburam also thinks that reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities are "exaggerated", that true democracy can be found in the Maoist base areas of the midwest, and that the very parliamentary parties whose grassroots leadership his revolution has decimated are now his allies in the fight for republicanism.

There is a sense of d?j? vu when we read this end-justifying-the-means argument. We saw it all before in revolutions that started out well because they were rooted in the peoples' wrath, but ended up engulfing their nations in the genocidal tragedies. Everything that takes us to Year Zero can be justified no matter how inhumane, or brutal.

It is revolution by default, where the destruction of a nation's fabric is so complete and the people so brutalised that even if everyone loses, the party wins. The rationale is the Leninist notion of a vanguard party that leads because only it knows the way. But violence generates its own logic, and once it is used to propel leaders to power they will perpetuate that power through the same means. Whoever controls the killing apparatus governs.
We were building democracy in this country from the bottom up when all this started. It was not working too well in Kathmandu, but it was beginning to show results in many of the 4,000 villages in this country (see Think nationally, act locally"). It was a more humane process because it believed in building, and not in destroying. Of course it would take time, but our revolutionaries were in a tearing hurry.

We can't help. The Maoist leadership needs to find its own way out of the spiral of destruction that it has unleashed. They must do it for the country, for the Nepali people and for the zealous and idealistic comrades who joined their movement because they believe in the same things we do: a more just, and new Nepal.