I read with interest and sadness Kunda Dixit's '8, going on 9' (#183). It seems like a distant memory sitting down for breakfast in 1996 in Kathmandu to read a news item that the Maoists had started a 'People's War'. We expected it would soon be resolved, and the Maobadi would rejoin the electoral process and Nepalis could get back to building their young and fragile democracy. Who could have foreseen the next few years: the royal massacre, the intensification of violence, the dismantling of the institutions of democracy. Little did we know that the US would pump in so much military aid. Dixit writes: "As the Maoist war completed eight years, never has peace seemed as remote." If there is ever to be 'peace', the 'war' must be seen as not just a 'Maoist war' but also a 'government war'. Both sides have shown the Nepali people and the world that they are willing to fight till the last rupee, the last Nepali. This is a lose-lose situation. Only when they start negotiating a real and lasting peace will Nepal's future look bright. Let's hope next year this time you won't have a headline '9, going on 10'.

Michael van de Veer,
Hawaii