The long-awaited Maoist party plenum during the first week of July was, from all we can tell, not so smooth. To begin with, there were logistical hurdles caused by impaired communications between between local cells. All signs point to the plenum being held in secret safe havens somewhere in northern India. The conference itself appears to have brought out sharp divisions about both strategy and tactics in view of recent political developments in Kathmandu, especially the dissolution of parliament, the split in the Nepali Congress and the announcement of general elections in November.

From the hardline statement made by Maoist supremo Prachanda after the plenum, we can conclude that the rebels have kept their long-term strategy of "encircling the capital", and continuing major morale-boosting raids on military garrisons. Prachanda predicts with some bravado that he can cut the army down to size "in two months" if Britain and the US do not come to the government's aid. Intriguingly, Prachanda doesn't mention what would happen if India came to the rescue.

undercover
All this could be posturing. After all, the Maoist rank-and-file are taking a beating. With the army\'s undercover work, senior central committee members have been killed, the latest being Rit Bahadur Khadka, popular political cadre from Dolakha who was taken out by operatives at the border while re-entering Nepal after the party plenum. In central Nepal, the middle and top echelon leaders of village and district peoples' committees and local commanders have either been captured or killed.

This is why it is conceivable that the Maoists are preparing for a high-profile showcase attack. And it is logical that they would target garrisons or bases in the central region or near the Valley where they have suffered heavy losses. This would boost the morale of their own cadre, as well as deliver a psychological blow to the government by exposing its vulnerability.

The government response since November has been to launch a nationwide cordon and search operations. However, there are logistical and numerical limitations to an operation of this size and duration. The result is that the security forces have been forced to spread themselves thin, and not been able to take the battle to the Maoists too often.

It has in fact been the rebels who determine where and when to fight. The Maoists have made best use of the terrain, climate and the open border with India. There appears to be a strategy to keep the security forces on a reactive mode, and to keep them guessing about where the next dhakka (strike) will be. The rebel leadership relies on decentralised campaigns with central planning, decentralised implementation of centralised policy-making. The government's approach seems just the opposite: centralised command and centralised implementation.

Even CDOs say they come to know of the day's incidents in their own districts through Radio Nepal bulletins. The other factor that hobbles the government campaign is its inability to use the media to its advantage, despite the fact that the Maoist propaganda machine has been effectively silenced.

The Maoists are now concentrating their presence in the mid-western heartland. They have used superior knowledge of terrain and local support to slip out, attack a base, disperse, and slip back to their base areas under cover of darkness. They follow the Maoist dictum: "Keep the enemy away from your base."

But lately the Maoists have started making mistakes. The two botched attempts to over-run the ISDP outpost in Khara in early June could have two reasons: either their communications with the central command were severed, or they were trying to create a diversion while targetting some other base.

The Maoists were pushed back from Khara largely because of timely and adequate aerial support. All these have useful lessons for the army: the Maoists are difficult to beat on the ground and superior intelligence is key to getting an upper hand in the war.

The Maoists are on the defensive in the central region. They have declared Kathmandu Valley a zone for "legitimate" struggle and one ripe for making the decisive forward leap. But the security forces have conducted successful intelligence breakthroughs in the valley, and extracted valuable information from detainees.

For the present, the Maoists are avoiding local-level confrontations. They tend to suffer casualties because of the army's superior firepower and air support. They reason this would also delay them in their objective of a final "forward leap" which they think will propel them to capture state power. They are quite confident-maybe unrealistically so-that they can do this with a careful selection of targets, careful preparation, and concentrated strength.

The weak link in all this is the civil government. Party politics is in disarray, the public's trust in government at an all-time low. Few believe free and fair elections can be held in November, and most people generally blame parliamentary parties for taking the country down. The confusion in government has provided space for Maoists to re-strategise and begin political activities.

The party plenum seems to have discussed the option of extending new peace feelers to the government, taking part in a future constituent assembly or even an interim government. The Maoists have also cashed in on the public outrage of the disappearance and probably killing of pro-Maoist journalist, Krishna Sen, and has declared a bandh on 16 August.

For the army, hardware support has become a matter of some urgency. But perceptions of bad governance and corruption, and the government's inability to assure donors of reforms that have delayed this support. The morale of the security forces is still high, but publicity about extra-judicial killings in the media and delays in foreign support could change things.

Then there is the India wild-card. Indian home miniser Lal Krishna Advani's statement on the eve of the royal visit that Islamic militants were sheltering in Nepal was one of the most direct statements by a senior Indian leader. The timing was interesting, given that high on the list of King Gyanendra's talking points with Indian leaders was curbs on activities of Nepali Maoists in India.

Then last week the Indian envoy in Kathmandu, Ashok Kumar, said pointedly in Bhairawa that Nepali politicians knew where the Maoists were hiding in India since they all went to meet them there.

New Delhi's strategy of using the Maoists as a bargaining chip vis-?-vis Kathmandu doesn't seem to have changed. From a military point of view, the open border will mean that however effective the government's campaign against the rebels, the Maoists have strategic depth and will always have a place to hide.

CLOUD COVER
In the field, the army's limited use of air power will be further curtailed by cloud cover for the next two months. Besides, Maoists now have captured weapons that can threaten low-flying choppers.

Although time is on the side of the Maoists, they now need to give a concrete time-frame for their "forward leap" since they cannot take the military pressure, the shortage of food and money for much longer. The Maoists will need to make their presence felt, and they will want to do this sooner rather than later by bringing the conflict to the capital. For their part, the security forces will want to make some intelligence breakthroughs to capture top leaders and break the movement's momentum.