For two whole months now, the guns have been silent. The Kathmandu spring has already thrown up some dramatic scenes of reconciliation: the prime minister shaking hands with a Maoist ideologue who goes on to speechify like an incumbent minister, a relaxed Maoist military commander answering questions softly on a talk show on state-owned Nepal Television, a Maoist negotiator visiting the Federation of Nepali Chambers of Commerce and Industry to announce that his group has always supported the free market, and the entire leadership out in the open at Tundikhel for a mass meeting to rival the royal rally in Dhangadi. Can there be more surprises as this season of peace wears on? We certainly hope so.
But while we are distracted by scenes of sensational bonhomie on television, let us not forget the rest of the country is still waiting silently for the peace dividend. And by the eye-witness accounts from Kalikot, Rolpa and Rukum that we carry in this issue, it looks like this is going to be a long wait.
There is a schism between what the newly-surfaced leaders in Kathmandu say, and what their cadre in the hinterland do. They are carrying on pretty much with business as usual. They may not be shooting and ambushing, but the extortion has not stopped ("Who cares what our leaders say in Kathmandu, who's going to feed and take care of us?"). There is fear and intimidation ("Wait till the ceasefire is over, we'll take care of you.") Training and recruitment is going on above the treeline, and masked khaobadis are robbing and looting.
On this side, women and children are still asked gruffly to get off the bus at the security checkpoints. The police and soldiers may look more relaxed, but many are still needlessly abusive to the very people whose hearts and minds they are supposed to win. There is a government vacuum in large parts of the country. As a result, the expected return of Nepalis to their home villages has not happened on the scale anticipated. In Terathum, only one family out of 15 displaced by the insurgency has come back. Way over on the other side of Nepal, in Thawang, no non-Maoist chased out of this stronghold is going to return home soon.
War-weary Nepalis are wary of this peace. Time and again, they tell our reporters how afraid they are that it's all going to start again. Watching Maoist leaders as they hog the media, ordinary Nepalis may be forgiven for wondering why they fought this ruinous war in the first place. And imagine the puzzlement and anger of those who lost close relatives and friends in this war: what are they thinking when they see the faces, the handshakes, the wide grins? Victims of Maoist violence held a parallel rally to the Maoist "felicitation program" in Kathmandu. Their frustration with government apathy matches their anger at the Maoists.
But for peace we need to look ahead, revenge will bog us down in senseless and endless retribution. The time for truth and reconciliation will come. One of the reasons the Maoist leadership agreed to this ceasefire was because the revolution was going out of control, in many places lumpen criminals had infested the cadre-base. Luckily, both armies realised in the nick of time that this was an unwinnable war. Now they have to build on it, go beyond revolutionary jargon and tired cliches to strive for qualitative and long-lasting peace.
This is only possible with a system that gives all Nepalis a say, a true bottoms-up democracy in which no one is excluded. But who is going to guide this process? Our best bet is the monarchy which now has to rise above day-to-day politics and Panchayat-era rallying. It has to shed being just another political force to one that wins back unforced respect, carries continuity and is a symbol of nationhood.
If everyone agrees on those goals, then the peace process will just have to decide on the best mechanism of getting there.
