As things go from bad to worse, this country's well-wishers keep asking us: what do you think will happen? One thing we have learnt is not to underestimate the capacity for Nepal's circumstances to get even more dire. "Things will get worse before they get better," we say wistfully, recognising that only the first part of that statement may hold true.

Observe the signs of a failing state: the scant presence of the government in large parts of the country, the sagging morale of those who are supposed to be in charge and the demolition of the education system.

Extrapolating this country's accelerated slide downwards, it is easy to predict a doomsday scenario for 2006: by then the death toll in a decade of conflict reaches 25,000. The number of those wounded, maimed, bereaved, orphaned and widowed crosses the one million mark. Almost every family is touched by tragedy. A Maoist utopia is already looking like a dystopia.

The revolution has degenerated into criminality and warlordism, with a new generation of unschooled children taking up arms. The Maoist rank and file is wracked by infighting and purges, but the leadership can't stop fighting without risking the ruthless retribution of hardliners. The war takes on an increasingly ethnic polarisation. As the conflict gets more desperate, the guerrillas show less and less interest in the safety of non-combatants, indeed deliberately targeting them to sow panic and chaos. The countryside is littered with landmines and booby-trap roadside bombs.

The military becomes even more indiscriminate in cracking down on suspected insurgents. Instances of disappearances, extra-judicial killings, pillage and rape put Nepal right at the top of the list of the world's worst violators of human rights, mentioned in the same breath as Congo and Colombia.

Tourism is a thing of the past, the civilian administration and government has long since collapsed. The political parties have been torn to shreds by the pincers of the extreme left and right, and by their own infighting. Five million Nepalis have fled to India and New Delhi has started voicing concerns about instability in Nepal threatening its own security. India does not allow UN peacekeeping forces to stabilise the situation, but doesn't intervene itself for fear of being sucked into the conflict. Nepal is left to its own devices, just another hotspot in an increasingly unstable world that no one has time for.

It doesn't take a prophet to foresee this apocalyptic scenario in two year's time. Signs are already pointing that way, and that is the way things will go unless the comrades in the hills, the king in his palace and the political parties on the streets come to their senses and see where they are taking the country. Maybe one of them will wrest control one day, but of what use is that power if there is no country left to exercise it in.