On the very first day of its return after 19 long years to the SC, India was entrusted with the task of chairing its Counter-Terrorism Committee. This will give India’s Permanent Representative to UN Hardeep Puri ample opportunity to defend occupation forces in Afghanistan or denounce resistance fighters in Iraq and Palestine. Earning and keeping the trust of sole superpower is not going to be easy, but India has made a promising start. However, what made Indian representatives at the SC gloat was the end of the term of UNMIN in Nepal. A diplomat described it as “Basically getting UN out of India’s backyard,” and added, “We had been working behind the scenes for its end.” Now we know at whose behest the anti-Maoist coalition had been laboring overtime to deride, defame and deactivate the UN mission for peace.
RESENTED PRESENCE
Even though the 12-point understanding between Maoists and mainstream parties was signed in New Delhi in November 2005, the peace process in Nepal was essentially an indigenous affair. Perhaps that was the reason UN designed its mission in Nepal as what can only be called a Peace Keeping Lite operation, entrusting main tasks to local players and maintaining a symbolic presence to give an international recognition to the process. However, even that limited role began to be unpalatable to Nepal’s influential neighbors. Indians were unhappy that UN personnel were not accepting their dominance in the internal affairs of Nepal. Chinese had reconciled themselves with the reality of Kathmandu falling under Indian sphere of influence; but they were not ready to let meddlesome international civil and military officers complicate geopolitics of a country close to the autonomous region of Tibet.
Ironically, even representatives of countries that were funding UNMIN were not very happy with its form, function or operation. An international agency enjoys more legitimacy than a diplomatic mission of a foreign country in any national capital of the Third World because multilateral agencies are perceived to be less domineering. Consequently, ambassadors of donor countries consider UN officials as arriviste technocrats enjoying power and influence at their expense.
The UN Secretary General’s representatives Ian Martin and Karin Landgren, to say nothing of occasional visitors from New York, were resented even more by the diplomatic community of Kathmandu than by the bigwigs of anti-Maoist coalition. Rich little countries used to punching much above their diplomatic weight through their lackeys in the flourishing NGO-industry suddenly found that UNMIN had higher visibility and wider acceptance. These high-profile fixations of cocktail circuit and inauguration ceremonies may not have been behind the smear campaign against the international agency, but they would probably be quite happy to see the last member of the Peace Keeping Lite team depart and leave the ground empty for them to play favorites again.
The UNMIN experiences in Nepal proves that Peace Keeping Lite do not work, and their effectiveness is even more in question when influential neighbors and powerful countries begin to perceive the presence of international organization as a threat to their hegemony. Nation-building efforts after violent conflicts require long-term commitment and considerable human and material resources.
There was no reason for the Nepal Army to admire UNMIN and value the role of international arms monitor who refused to accept the superiority of state forces in the peace process. The Nepali bureaucracy was also not very enamored by UN officials cruising the countryside in white SUVs even as Chief District Officers were beaten up for not sparing their official cars to junior members of the jumbo ministry in Singh Durbar. The business community was not getting any contracts from UNMIN; consultants were not being hired to formulate and test integration models or cerate peace awareness; and ‘civil society’ stalwarts were not being taken for familiarization trips to Mozambique, Peru and Sierra Leone. In short, the comfortable classes of Kathmandu had lost its initial enthusiasm for UNMIN because it was not delivering expected ‘peace dividends’ of substantial scale. Approximately a billion rupees a year was hardly sufficient to keep UNMIN running with very little left for enlisting the support of chattering classes in Kathmandu.
Other than for few English-speaking youths, opportunities for employment in UNMIN were lower than that of a mid-size multinational NGO operating directly or through local collaborators in different districts of the country. Indian diplomats who claimed to have been working behind the scenes for the end of UNMIN did not have to try very hard: The entire anti-Maoist force in Nepal had become disillusioned with the potentials of international agency within a few months of its functioning. However, the question that had dogged the designers of peace process in 2006 remains intact: If not the UNMIN, then who would act as facilitators and witness of the implementation of Comprehensive Peace Agreement? To use the famous Bob Dylan refrain, “The answer, my friend, is blowin´ in the wind."
PARTING GIFT
In the manner of the mythical thief of the Nepali proverb who lifts a leg as soon as the accuser threatens that the foot of the guilty will be cut into pieces, leaders of anti-Maoist coalition have begun to jump and dance over a cautionary statement of Karin Landgren in the SC briefing. Rather than lifting accusing fingers, she was assuring the international community that “While Nepal’s dramatic political gains are not likely to be reversed, the risks have clearly grown,” adding a few warnings afterwards, “There have at times been fears among many Nepalis over the prospect of a ‘peoples’ revolt’ which remains an explicit Maoist threat; of the president stepping in…; or of an army-backed coup. Any such measures would sorely threaten peace and Nepal’s fragile democracy.” There is nothing in the observation at which the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Nepal Army and his generals or the Supremo of Maoists should take umbrage. Only a guilt-ridden mind can see and read allegations in cautionary observations.
The ruckus created in the wake of UNMIN chief’s departing remarks, however, has had some positive fall out for common Nepalis. Contradicting the official position of his party, Maoist Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal has publicly sworn not to stage a ‘people’s revolt’ that he has been constantly threatening us with. President Ram Varan Yadav felt it necessary to remind the nation through prominent interlocutors that he has been a democrat and will remain one in the future despite that little hiatus when he had to overrule the prime minister and restore an army chief dismissed for insubordination through midnight missive issued directly to the accused. Nepal Army too came up with its own denial. Put together, these assurances are positive signs and UNMIN needs to be thanked for its parting gift.
If any of these stakeholders were to renegade from their pledge, Nepalis would know where to place the blame: India is the only other player of influence in Kathmandu that is yet to declare that it would not accept any form of non-democratic experiment in the governance of Nepal. Considering that such noises used to emanate on a regular basis from New Delhi during Chairman Gyanendra’s rule, the meaning of deafening silence does not seem to have been lost upon leaders of the opportunistic political alliance in the government.
The UNMIN experiences in Nepal proves that Peace Keeping Lite do not work, and their effectiveness is even more in question when influential neighbors and powerful countries begin to perceive the presence of international organization as a threat to their hegemony. Nation-building efforts after violent conflicts require long-term commitment and considerable human and material resources. Since any such endeavors from Nepal’s two neighbors would be inherently unacceptable to each other, possibility of a third party stepping in can not be ruled out. Nepal has had a long relationship with United Kingdom; and Japan has always been a generous development partners. They can be effective facilitators of peace process. The only way of keeping risks of such outside players is for the leaders of the anti-Maoist coalition to realize that they have been total failures.
An unnamed Indian diplomat rightfully claimed the credit for the successful exit of UNMIN. Raj concludes his news report with a laconic observation, “… that the mission’s end was announced on India’s first day in the council was seen as not merely a coincidence.”
It is up to Nepali Congress and Maoists to revive the spirit of 2006 and save the peace process from falling in the hands of those that have their own preferences.
cklal@hotmail.com
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