Few have missed the glaring contradiction between the seemingly conciliatory statements of Maoist Chairman Prachanda where he has expressed a desire to talk, and the decision of the party plenum in early July. The plenum resolution is uncompromising and hardline. It is brimming with familiar jargon and rhetoric, and says: "The country and the people do not have an alternative but to rise up against, and instigate another historical movement against the election drama, to press for an interim government and constituent assembly."
What is going on? Why is Prachanda seemingly departing from the letter and spirit of the party plenum to appear so soft, that one is forced to wonder why his group mired the country in bloodshed for six years. The Nepali people would be forgiven if they wanted to ask him: "All that for this?"
The conclusion can only be that the party plenum has not given the Maoist leadership the authority to initiate talks for the interim government and constituent assembly, but directs it to instigate a fresh uprising or a movement. But what is the type of offensive the Maoists are talking about? Typically, they don't say. What Prachanda has up his sleeve, therefore, is essentially a strategy to create confusion in the enemy ranks.
Chief party ideologue, Baburam Bhattarai, is equally hardline in his most-recent writings and published in a samizdat edition of Pragyik Sansar by revolutionary students. The article is believed to have been written after the party plenum, and Bhattarai still blames the Royal Nepal Army and the monarchy for being "the main obstacles to full democracy", and concludes that that goal cannot be reached without "an end to both forces".
This is why it is difficult to take Prachanda's overtures for talks, and his unrealistically soft approach, seriously. How can there be the minimum understanding Prachanda talks about in a situation where the monarchy is a constitutionally mandated arrangement that has support of all parliamentary parties? Also, who has the authority to make such an understanding? The parliamentary political forces are not yet ready for that. Which is why it may be wishful thinking that the Maoists are seriously seeking an exit.
From published statements, it is clear that the Maoist plenum is in no mood for any compromise. The leadership doesn't see any need to talk yet, and the military pressure has curtailed Maoist activities and supply lines, though the rebels still control the hinterland of the midwest. The Indians may be cracking down but there are plenty of secret routes across the open border, and enlistment and training of the "people's army" is on schedule. In fact, the truce offer could very well be a diversionary manoeuvre to lull the army into a false sense of security while they plan attacks in the coming months.
So far, every decision Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has made in the past few months has indirectly benefited the Maoists. The dissolution of parliament and the extension of an unpopular emergency worked to their advantage. The Maoists real competition for the hearts and minds at the grassroots were elected local leaders. By postponing local polls and dissolving the local elected bodies, the government did exactly as the Maoists have wanted all along. In the absence of MPs, and village and district councils, the standing of the Maoist "people's governments" has in fact gone up.
In other words, many of the things that the Maoists would have wanted to achieve through the talks have been carried out by unilateral government decisions. So, if the Maoists are getting what they have wanted all along, then they have no reason to talk now.
The argument of some Kathmandu-based leftist intellectuals that the Maoists are now ready to lay down their arms and return to the negotiating table is hard to swallow. And even if the Maoists may have fine-tuned their tactics, there is no reason to believe that they have abandoned their one strategic objective: setting up a people's republic.
The only situation which may compel the Maoists to return to dialogue with the government-aside from their short-term strategic needs-is the arrest of the main leadership, full-fledged attacks by Indian security forces on Maoist cadre, stricter regulation of the border, and the weakening of the Maoist militia. Hoping that they will change suddenly-become moderate and give up their ideological thinking-is a dangerous assumption and only shows gross misjudgement and underestimation of what drives revolutionary struggles.
The Maoists justified their unilateral breaking of the truce in November with the devastating attack the army at Ghorahi by saying that the government had refused to agree to their demand for a constituent assembly. To date, the comrades have not provided any other justification for going back to violence.
Even now, despite the lull, the main agenda of the Maoist war is destruction, irrespective of the cost to human life and infrastructure. Whether we like it or not, the Maoists still have the means to pick targets and wreak havoc and terror on the populace. A largely non-performing government is a big help to the Maoists.
Deuba's partyless government is blowing hot and cold about talks. But it lacks the legitimacy to initiate serious dialogue for the present. The talks could be meaningless, even if they are held. This therefore calls for the services of a higher, more permanent, national institution capable of carrying out negotiations with a strategic vision rather than as just another exercise that could determine the electoral outcome.
And despite everything that New Delhi has done, like the banning of the Nepali Ekta Samaj for example, the Maoists' cross border traffic has not been hampered a great deal.
It is best not to be too optimistic about the Maoists' overtures for talks. Much as we would like to believe that they are genuine, for the moment it looks like a ploy to camouflage their "decisive forward leap". But suppose, just suppose, the Maoists this time are serious about peace. The only reason would be because part of the leadership finally realises that preserving the gains of the 1990 movement could led them to their ultimate goal of a communist republic.
And perpetuating the current spiral of violence would mean that there won't be a republic left to take over.
