Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala immediately called a meeting of highway engineers, representatives of the army and the police at Baluwatar and told them to open an access track to Kathmandu Valley within shortest possible time. Engineers present at the consultations enumerated difficulties of operating in a completely devastated area and suggested that the army was better trained and equipped to handle such emergencies. The army general in attendance differed.
Explanations of the army representative were convincing. The country was not at war. Even though damages had been extensive, the civil administration was not threatened. The affected population was stoically facing the calamity and the life and property of residents in the region were safe. The law and order did not warrant mobilization of the defense forces for security or internal order. The general committed: The army would move with the disaster relief team, but only under a civilian command.
A few days later, it was enquired whether the army would use its access with some influential embassies to get badly needed read-to-assemble bridges. Once again, the general responded with caution. His point was that a newly democratizing country should be careful about the message it gives to the outside world. The army would follow through the request, but the initiative had to be made by the finance or foreign ministry.
General Dharmapal Bar Singh Thapa later became the army chief. Dhruba Bahahdur Pradhan rose to head the Nepal Police. Both had headed their teams during relief and rehabilitation efforts along the Tribhuvan Rajpath under civilian command—a senior engineer of the Department of Roads. Leaders of uniformed forces may have maintained their informal channels of communication, but the engineering team invariably made all formal briefings to the government.
Allowing Chief of Army Staff Chhatra Man Singh Gurung to lobby with leaders of different political parties to cut the wings of United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) was an unprecedented move of drawing defense forces into a controversial issue involving internal security as well as foreign policy.
It is not clear when and why the army started to indulge in creative non-compliance of the elected government’s legitimate instructions, but it began to tire of all pretenses of civilian control soon after the formation of minority government of Communist Party of Nepal (UML) headed by Manmohan Adhikari. By the time Krishna Prasad Bhattarai became the Prime Minister in 1999, the army had become an independent power center almost free of any democratic control. By the time of Bhattarai’s ouster from Baluwatar, responsible officers of the armed forces were voicing opinions like opposition party politicians on the issue of Maoist insurgency.
Premier Bhattarai had once remarked that the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) would not stand even for three days in front of the might of either Indian or Chinese defense forces. That statement had been held against him ever since, but the RNA failed to impress even on domestic front when mobilized to fight the Maoists. In any face-off between the defense forces and an armed group, insurgents win if they are not completely routed. By the Rhododendron Revolution in 2006, the RNA had accepted defeat and acquiesced to drop its coveted ‘Royal’ tag that had differentiated it from the Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force.
After the elections for Constituent Assembly were over, it appeared for a while that as it has attempted in 1990s, Nepal Army (NA) was once again preparing itself to embrace the culture of civilian supremacy and democratic control. The possibility ended with the dismissal and reinstatement of army-chief Rookmangad Katawal and the resignation of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Dahal may have been inept or plain wrong, but the manner of his ouster proved that no civilian head of government in Nepal would henceforth be able to hold his head high in front of the army brass.
CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS
President Ram Baran Yadav is the first commoner to command the Nepal Army. Precedents that he sets will help set the standard for future civilian supreme commanders of the defense forces. Unfortunately, his first major decision of restoring a dismissed army chief to the post failed to live up to the expectations of healthy civil-military relations.
On December 15, 1960, an army contingent had arrested a popular prime minister with two-third majority in the parliament. Fifty years since that shameful incident in the history of NA, the country has a republican system in place. However, should an occasion arise, there is no guarantee that the army would not be willing to repeat the feat in ‘national interest’ all over again. With the kind of attitude and behavior army officer posses, it is safe to assume they would perhaps be more willing to imprison a Madhesi or a Dalit elected official than they were in arresting a person of the stature of BP Koirala half-a-century ago. The ethic of civilian supremacy does not appear to have taken root in the army.
There are various reasons behind the weak culture of civilian supremacy. The very concept of civil-military relations is new to Nepal. Political parties are still too weak to command the respect of army officers. Due to historic reasons, the NA considers itself to be an ‘institution’ rather than merely a coercive instrument of the state. Cultural, political, social and economic context of the country is favorable for the fiction that army is the last ‘institution’ standing between either fragmentation of the country or a Maoist takeover and some semblance of legitimate governance. The international context, too, is more suitable for the autonomy of the army. Credible sources have revealed that Maoists were repeatedly told by Indians not to mess with NA.
Democratic control of armed forces consists of at least five elements. First, the military brass must resist the temptation to ‘fix’ the country with its firepower, discipline, order and efficiency. Second, civilian authorities should determine the size of the army, recruitment procedures, its structure, budget, and procurement methods. Third, defense forces should keep out of political manipulations even when they get a bit murky as politics often does in every country of the world. Fourth, professional and ‘military culture’ should imbibe norms and values of democratic polity and civil society. However, the most important aspect of democratic control lies in keeping armed forces away from issues of foreign policy. Armed forces should be allowed to have their say, but the responsibility of taking all decisions and the procedure and timing of their implementation must necessarily rest with the democratic government.
The UML-led government under Premier Madhav Kumar Nepal and its Defense Minister Bidya Bhandari have allowed almost every tenet of democratic control of the army to lapse. However, allowing Chief of Army Staff Chhatra Man Singh Gurung to lobby with leaders of different political parties to cut the wings of United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) was an unprecedented move of drawing defense forces into a controversial issue involving internal security as well as foreign policy. Getting the army out of the purview of UNMIN may have its merits, but that is a responsibility best handled by political authorities. Whether caretaker premier and his colleague at the defense ministry were acting under duress or under their own volition is unclear, but the decision can have catastrophic repercussions if allowed to go unchallenged. Politicians often make a mess of the country, but such chaos is preferable any day to militarily enforced order in a multi-cultural society.
Unlike in Pakistan, NA is not a war-fighting force—the last time it saw real action in defense of the national territory was during Anglo-Nepal War two centuries ago. Unlike the army in Burma, NA does not have a culture of ruling the country directly for any length of time; closest it came to running the country on its own was during the reign of the-then king Gyanendra. During Cold War decades, defense forces of some South American countries fine-tuned separated development and governance doctrine to counter the rise of leftwing regimes. On the contrary, the NA brass has always had a soft corner for leftists in Nepal to undercut the influence of Nepali Congress. Schooled in the culture of tying royal shoelaces, the NA old guard lacks the moral courage to be a revolutionary force in a traditional society. The external cost—especially of antagonizing the UN system—would to perhaps inhibit the urge of the army to indulge in adventurism. The risks of army intervention in civic administration for now appear low. It is the precedence set by caretaker government that should worry the political class and the nascent civil society of Nepal.
cklal@hotmail.com
Related story
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
