Nepalis, Manjushree Thapa reports for openDemocracy, are stuck in an uncomfortable, chaotic transition, a year after the country's ruling monarchy was toppled and democratic elections took place. They are grappling with "a cynical Maoist government, disarrayed parties, rival armies, a racked economy [and] ethnic and caste divisions" rending the country apart.
The article is well worth the read, nuanced and meaty. (Even if it takes a moment to realise that a party called the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) is actually the moderate force in government.)
Some of the forces driving the development seem unnervingly familiar. The struggle for authority between the state's official Nepal army and the governing Maoists' own Liberation Army is vaguely reminiscent of the "dual power" in Kerensky's Russia in 1917, when the Provisional Government and the Soviets existed and governed alongside each other. But the closer parallel seems to be with the years directly after the end of WW2, in those Central-European countries where the communists were not immediately able to establish a dictatorship.
In both Czechoslovakia and Hungary, democratic elections were still held, which ended with the communists receiving a plurality but not a majority in Czechoslovakia, and being soundly defeated by the rural-conservative Smallholders Party in Hungary. And yet they wound their way to exclusive power within a few years. The presence of the occupying Soviet army was their main back-up, of course, but that wasn't all of the story.
For a few years, the communist parties methodically occupied strategic positions, in the Interior Ministry, police, army and secret service, while leaving their social-democratic and bourgeois allies and rivals with flattering but strategically impotent positions. The opposition parties, for their part, squabbled and competed, torn in vanities and personal rivalries, and lacking a coherent or unified alternative vision. Individual politicians, aware of the increasing grip of the communists, tried to appease them or ingratiate themselves to them, careerists switched camps.
Chaos and civil unrest was widespread as the fear and optimism unleashed by the end of the war crashed into the economic realities of a ravaged country. The communists played into the unrest when it offered the opportunity of weakening or discrediting the bourgeois parties. They proved masterful players of divide-and-rule, both when it came to the formal opposition and interest groups.
The social-democrats meant well, but were divided between those who trusted the communists as allies and those who didn't; those who were caught up in the optimist fervour on the left of the time and those who were growing ever more wary. A process that would end with forcible mergers and take-overs, during which those considered adaptable were coopted while scores of more resistant social-democrats disappeared in the night.
Obviously that's a very broad-brush sketch. (It's also based more on Hungary than on Czechoslovakia.) The parallel with the situation in Nepal is also hardly precise - for one, because the latter is not imposed by a foreign power. But one similarity stands out.
In Nepal too, it seems, the Maoists are systematically and effectively amassing strategical power, with deliberation and determination, and with the benefit of their top-down structures and discipline. The various groups and parties that could still stand in their way represent a range of widely divergent interests and ideologies, from ethnic groups seeking territorial autonomy to conservatives and nominal communists. The Maoists seem to have a keen grasp of the weakness of their opponents, and play the divide and rule game well.
Most disturbingly, there is no credible sign that the Maoists see the current, democratic system as anything other than a transitional intermezzo; as anything more than a tool to be manipulated in whatever way is needed to firm up the kind of strategical position that will enable them to take full power.
None of this means that the ancien regime should have been preserved, or offered any better chances. The downfall of the monarchy, brought about by Nepalis of all stripes, still constituted a democratic promise. One that may even still come true - but it's apparently in a precarious state.
Image by Flickr user Matthew Logelin, featuring Prime Minister and Maoist leader Prachanda, adapted under Creative Commons license.
