This article at INSN is the first clear hint I am getting the Maoists have been getting and reading my emails as well as blog entries directed at them.
I also get the impression they are operating out of India. The mention of a "park" shows that. The leaders are not in some jungle somewhere in remote Nepal. They have always had internet access. That could not have been possible in Thawang.
The article explicitly says Mahara met the reporter outside of Nepal. If that be the case, I seriously doubt Mahara crossed the border just for the purpose. It makes safety sense for him to not engage in too many border crossings.
Plus, it is not that hard for a well-funded organization to find safehouses in India.
I can imagine why they might not want to give out phone numbers. They probably think I work for the CIA which will use satellite technology to track them down should they get on the phone with me. I don't blame them. The technology does exist. Everytime I get on my cellphone, my cellphone company knows exactly where I am at. This is used for emergency situations. If I were in an emergency, all I would have to do is call 911, and not even know where I am at, and they will know my exact location.
I am not really trying to get the Maoist leaders physically assaulted. My communication is at the level of ideology. I do not have any affiliation with any element of the US government. I am only participating as a concerned Nepali who just so happens to be based out of the US.
Mahara could actually be in Delhi. My guess. Because Delhi has many parks. Small Indian towns don't have parks. And it might also be easier to stay anonymous in a big city.
.... - first a multiparty democratic republic..... then we would work for the peaceful transformation of the state......
...... We want a 21st-century democracy in which the people supervise the state so that people with money cannot control the elections. We want transparency and equal opportunities for all parties......
The King and Mao
By Isabel Hilton, May 13, 2005Financial Times
The man came walking along the path. He was slightly chubby, unassuming. He wore a short- sleeved shirt, Chinos and sunglasses, and carried a small black briefcase. He seemed relaxed as he approached, as though simply out for a stroll in the park. He could have passed for an insurance clerk - or the teacher he used to be before he dropped out of normal life and went underground.
There was nothing to suggest that this was one of South Asia’s most wanted men: Comrade Krishna Bahadur Mahara, as his colleagues in the movement know him, who ranks number two in the politburo of the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal, second only to “Prachanda”, the party’s founder and the most elusive of the Maoist leaders.
My meeting with Mahara took place outside the state of Nepal; I had to promise not to disclose exactly where. We sat on the grass in a large park, a space open enough that anyone who tried to sit too close would be conspicuous.
Comrade Mahara was keen to discuss the way forward for Nepal’s Maoists in the wake of the coup; exactly what it would mean for Nepal if the Maoists were to take power was now an urgent question.
Since the Nepalese constitution prohibits the prosecution of the king, Nepal now has a head of government who is above the law. “Suddenly,” one human rights monitor remarked, “we are in the 14th century.”
Seated cross-legged on the grass, Mahara laid out the Maoist analysis in the wake of the king’s coup. What had been a triangular struggle for power between the constitutional politicians, the king and the Maoists had now become a simpler two-way contest....... The coup, Mahara told me, was the product of Maoist success.
(A senior British diplomat had put it in similar terms two weeks earlier. “The king,” he said, “is telling us we must choose between him and the Maoists. He is convinced that faced with that choice we will have to back him. Personally, I’m not so sure.”)
His hope, he said, was that the constitutional politicians would see the wisdom of backing the Maoists’ demand for a new constitution to rid Nepal of its monarchy and the entrenched ruling class. The constitution they envisaged, Mahara insisted, would set up a republic with a multiparty democracy.
It did not sound like a revolutionary platform. Mao himself, in the early days of the People’s Republic of China, had offered a tactical alliance with other political parties but his alliances were short-lived. For non-Maoist politicians and the anxious bystanders, the unanswerable question was: would Prachanda’s Maoists keep their promises?
Mahara told me that the Nepalese Maoists had learned the lessons of history - that dogma does not offer a lasting political future. Prachanda recently spoke of a 21st-century democracy in which the new state “will be under the observation, control and hegemony of the general masses”. There would be “free competition among political parties”, he said, as long as they “oppose feudalism and imperialism and work for the service of the masses”.
Mahara’s version of the plan was less jargon-ridden: “If we are to forge an alliance with the other parties,” he said, “we have to be flexible. We envisage a two-step revolution - first a multiparty democratic republic. If it was a genuine democracy, then we would work for the peaceful transformation of the state.” It did not sound like classic Maoism, though it did imply that the Maoists in power might move to ensure they never lost it. Mahara smiled.
“We haven’t given up Marx, Lenin and Mao but we don’t want to take it as dogma. We want a 21st-century democracy in which the people supervise the state so that people with money cannot control the elections. We want transparency and equal opportunities for all parties.”
He spoke with the apparent sincerity of a social democrat arguing the virtues of universal suffrage. ..... Mahara, though, was arguing the necessity for alliances. The most important objective now, he said, was to persuade the other political parties to side with them.
...... the rhetoric of the movement had softened. It was, said Mahara, unrealistic to suppose that a small state such as Nepal could survive if it had too many powerful enemies. For the Maoists, that meant neighbouring India and China, neither of which would be keen to see the triumph of millenarian revolutionary ideology. Perhaps as they draw closer to power, the Maoists have begun to think of strategic survival.
When we met, Mahara had declined to predict how long it might take the Maoists to win power, though he laid out possible ways the Maoists might prevail militarily. The movement had good relations with the junior ranks of the army who had no real stomach for the fight, and he considered a mass defection of junior officers a serious possibility. Blockades of the cities and military campaigns, he said, were preparation for a final offensive. The Maoists believe the end game has begun.
As he spoke, Mahara’s manner became watchful and the tone of his conversation changed. A group of young men had chosen to sit quite close by. I could see Mahara grow tense and alert. He rose to his feet, shook hands and walked away - briskly but without obvious haste. At the edge of the park he paused, then disappeared, apparently unremarked, into the crowd in the street.
