Dispatches: Report from the People's War in Nepal
Part 8: Learning Warfare
by Waging Warfare in the WestBy Li Onesto
Revolutionary Worker #1022, September 19, 1999
On February 13, 1996, a new People's War was launched in Nepal, led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), aimed at sweeping away imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Thousands of men and women participated in coordinated armed raids and attacks throughout the country. And for over three years now, the revolution in Nepal has continued to spread, sink roots and accomplish a lot. All this is a truly inspiring and significant development in the world and for the international proletariat. But it has remained a hidden story for most people in the United States and around the world. And for those of us who have been following the people's war in Nepal, there has been precious, but far too little news of this important struggle.
Now, the Revolutionary Worker has an exclusive story. RW reporter Li Onesto recently returned from several months in Nepal, where she traveled throughout the country with the people's army, meeting and talking with party leaders, guerrillas, activists in mass organizations and villagers--those waging this genuine Maoist people's war and beginning to exercise new people's power. The RW would like to give a "lal Salaam" (red salute) to all the people in Nepal who made this trip possible.
This is the eighth article of a new series of dispatches from this exciting trip. (See RW #1014 through #1020 for Parts 1 through 7.)
My second night in the Western Region delivers me a good night's rest. My body seems to know it must prepare for a coming period of intensity. For many weeks now, I will be traveling with the people's army in areas at the storm center of the People's War. We're now in Rolpa where there's been many recent actions by the guerrillas--and the comrades warn we must be careful since the police will be looking for revenge.
The government is flooding this part of the country with cops because of the upcoming elections. And so entering and leaving this region is even more dangerous than usual. But half of the more risky part of this trip--getting in--is behind me. And now, while there will still be plenty of danger, police are more afraid to come into these districts and many of the local reactionaries and snitches have moved out. Here, in the territory where the People's War is making the greatest advances, I will be able to witness and learn even more about the central issues confronting the revolution.
I wake early and get ready for a second day of discussion with the comrade from the Central Committee's Political Bureau. I start a morning routine that will become familiar in the weeks ahead. The roosters rouse me from slumber as the sun is just beginning to paint the dark sky with misty light. At this hour, it feels more like night than morning, but the village is already bustling with activity. Fires have long been stoked and pots of hot water have already come to a boil. A comrade brings me some hot milk tea, prompting me to sit up in bed, and the warmth of the cup feels good in the lingering morning chill.
As I let the tea wake me up I think back on what I learned yesterday about how the People's War started in this area. (See RW #1020, "Preparing the Ground in the West.") I am really impressed by how, in the year of preparation before starting the armed struggle, the party here concentrated on leading struggle and deepening its ties among the masses.
Before coming to Nepal my understanding of life in a poor Third World country came from books, TV and talking with people. But now, traveling through Nepal's countryside, I see with my own eyes how the peasants are oppressed by imperialist domination and semi-feudalism. Everywhere I go, evidence jumps out, showing how economic and social life here is dependent on, retarded, and distorted by foreign powers--from the "made in India" buses we travel in, to the U.S.-controlled aid organizations, to the predominance of Western and Indian music and movies.
We will now be in one of the most remote and poor areas of Nepal. And I'm anxious to learn more about what life is like for the peasants--who must wage a constant struggle, barely able to eke out survival, always on the edge of life-threatening hunger and poverty.
Daily life here is dictated by the rotation of seasons. And there is ever-present uncertainty as to whether the earth will be kind enough to hand over enough food for growing children. Weather can be friend or foe. Drought can escort disaster. Too much rain can destroy a precious crop. But while nature is a constant adversary, this is not the biggest enemy of these peasants. Nepal is a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country dominated by foreign powers, and the main obstacle preventing a better life is the viciousness of exploitative class relations.
As in other Third World countries, the revolution in Nepal must confront "three mountains" to achieve liberation. To be free, the revolutionary people must overthrow the bureaucrat-capitalist class and state system--which are dependent on and serve imperialism. They must uproot semi-feudalism in the countryside. And they must drive out imperialism. Ninety percent of Nepal's population live in the countryside and land is a central issue in the fight against these "three mountains." And when it comes to land in Nepal, there is great inequality. There are landless peasants who must work on other people's land. In the Terai--the southern strip of plain lands along the border with India--many peasants work on plots owned by big landlords. In the mountainous areas which make up most of the rest of the country, poor peasants mainly own the land they work on--but must struggle to feed their families on very small and inadequate parcels of earth. And they are always in danger of losing their property to heartless money-lenders and other scoundrels. A lot of the stories of hardship I hear center on "not enough land" and "owing too much to money-lenders."
I had studied with great interest the Maoist concept of a new democratic revolution--which is being applied by the CPN (Maoist). In such a revolution, the peasant demand of "land to the tiller" strikes a powerful blow against inequalities in the countryside. And led by the proletariat with its ideology of all-the-way liberation, this revolution mobilizes the peasantry as its main force. For a Maoist people's war, a revolutionary solution to the land question is an essential part of breaking free of imperialism and preparing to go directly to a second stage of socialist revolution.
The Story of Dip Bahadur Singha
After breakfast I start the second day of discussion with the comrade in charge of the Rolpa, Rukum and Jarjarkot districts. Today he will give me an overview of how the People's War started in this area and how it has advanced in the last three years. He starts off with a story about one of the first actions after the armed struggle started:
"During the initiation stage we carried out four different policies/actions: guerrilla actions, sabotage, propaganda and annihilation. We started with the raiding of two police posts. One was Holeri in Rolpa. The other was Radi in Rukum. Both posts had about 7 to 9 police and they were taken at the same time at night. In Holeri there was fighting for two hours and after this the police didn't come out and we ran out of ammunition so we had to retreat. In Radi the police surrendered right away and we seized their papers and burned them. Two days later, in Jarjarkot, we attacked a big usurer (money lender), Dip Bahadur Singha, a former assistant minister in the old reactionary Panchayat government.
"Dip Bahadur Singha had a lot of money--coins to fill up seven big water pots, which he buried in a trench. Another seven pots of coins were also buried under the floor and some covered by a thick mud wall. He had many brothers and this was their common property. He had told them he was keeping the money for them, but his aim was to keep it all for himself. Singha had been targeted by the People's War and one of his brothers came to the party and gave information which helped us to carry out the action. When people went to the house Singha wasn't home, only his old mother was there. The people dug out all the pots and they were all empty. But some coins found in another part of the house were confiscated. Some of Singha's brothers still support the party and want to get revenge on Singha who now lives in Kathmandu."
The comrade is anxious to tell me about Singha because this story is somewhat typical of how the People's War has targeted money-lenders--liars and cheaters--who ruthlessly abuse the peasants and drive many of them into conditions of gnawing hunger, tattered clothes and endless debt. He continues:
"I'll give you one example of how Singha earned all his money by exploiting the peasants. He was a big man in the village. One day he went and saw that there was good cultivation of millet on one farmer's small piece of land. He ordered the peasant to put aside for him, two kilograms of the millet for seeds. The peasant kept the millet for Singha but then didn't have any millet for his own seed--so he asked Singha if he could use the two kilograms for a new crop. Singha said OK and the peasant planted the seed. Then at the time of the harvest Singha went and claimed that the cultivation was his. The total value of the harvest was 8,000 rupees and Singha demanded the peasant pay this amount. The peasant didn't have any money so this usurer took the peasant's milk buffalo. When our forces captured Singha's house there were a lot of false bonds there worth 800,000 rupees. These were all captured and burned. The people of the two or three villages oppressed by Singha then saw the party as leading the struggle against their oppressors and they are now strong supporters of the revolution."
Learning Through
Waging WarfareThe Central Committee of the CPN (Maoist) has given strong leadership to the People's War from the very beginning, developing a plan for the initiation of armed struggle and then subsequent stages to escalate, spread and deepen the People's War. The comrade explains how these plans were implemented in this part of the Western Region.
"After the first days of initiation, for three weeks, there were many sabotage and propaganda actions. After this we justified these actions by doing propaganda among the people. This movement continued for two to three months, with no further actions. This was the First Plan, the initiation. The Second Plan started six months after the initiation. At this time a squad was formed--there were only "fighting groups" in the initiation phase. In three districts, 32 squads (of 7 to 9 people) were formed in the Second Plan. In the beginning these squads were more quantitative than qualitative (in terms of military training) and armed with only homemade guns. After the squads were formed the main goal was to convert the zone here into a guerrilla zone--where the police are confronted and in danger from all kinds of actions by the squads. Sometimes the squads have to retreat when the police come into a village where the squad lives. But when the police leave, the squads will return and the village will be back in the political and military control of the people's army.
"In the Second Plan there were many ambushes of police, going from smaller to larger actions and also many raids of police posts and mining of roads where police were traveling. Some were successful, some not, due to lack of experience. We were learning warfare through waging warfare. Our success was that many police were killed in the Second Plan (20 to 30) with no fatalities among the people. A lot of sabotage occurred such as capturing false bonds from money lenders, and destroying agricultural banks and seizing their bonds too. There were 30 to 40 annihilations of spies, usurers, liars, and rapists.
"The government reacted with vigorous and random repression--with arrests, murders, rapes, looting, burning of people's houses, etc. The government killed more than 150 people in the one year's time of the Second Plan and filed many false cases against people. At the time we exposed the government's crimes and educated the people politically. Human rights activists came and also exposed what the government was doing. Through this political exposure, the government was forced to temporarily back off.
"In this period we realized our military skills were not adequate and needed to be improved. We also needed to improve our working style in terms of working underground, to be more in line with war conditions. Our old style of work was still too much from before the initiation of the armed struggle and this made it easier for the government to capture and kill people. The last part of the Second Plan was the boycott of the local elections and in this zone 50 VDCs (government village districts) had no representative and many others were only partially represented.
"The Third Plan started 18 months after the initiation and the target of this plan was to improve our military strength and power and we realized that the guerrilla zone had to be advanced. We managed a military training program and collected guns and ammunition from three sources--production, buying, and capturing. In the Third Plan our military power was improved and more military actions were launched. Mass movements/organizations developed strength and did political work among the people. And we also did construction of roads, bridges, channels, martyr's monuments, production (collective cultivating) and helping martyr's families. There are only a few big landlords in this zone but some lands were seized after landlords left and are now being cultivated by the peasants.
"In this zone, the work all basically went underground, including the mass organizations. But if police are not in the area there are still open meetings, processions, cultural events, and so on. On the second anniversary of the initiation, the mass mobilization was very good. There was a one-month campaign to celebrate two years of People's War. The time was divided into a first week of propaganda; a second week of seminars, processions, and discussion (including criticism, self-criticism meetings); a third week of mass mobilization for production and construction; and a fourth week of evaluation of the past year of the People's War (since the first anniversary). There was a big festival to celebrate--presents were given to martyrs' families and gifts of special food were sent to regional and district headquarters. In this anniversary there were also many successful military actions and some rifles were captured.
"Some land and other property is kept in the name of gods or in the name of the royal family. This is called `Guthi,' for example some harvest may be given over to a local temple. There is a religious place in this zone called Swargadwari and in the name of this place there is land (mostly in Dang) where peasants work and have to give 50 percent of their harvest to the temple. The priests at the temple take ownership of this food grain--and have a lot of it stored--so the party seized this and distributed it to poor peasants. The party also seized grain from landlords who have a lot of food grain stored--like in the Terai--and distributed it to the people. When food and weapons are seized and false bonds burned, the reactionaries move out of the village to the district headquarters for security. And then the people cultivate the land they leave behind."
Kilo Sera 2
In the first two years of People's War, the police were hit very hard, especially in Rolpa, Rukum and Jarjarkot. The government issued proclamations about how the Maoist guerrillas were small and isolated and would be easily defeated. But meanwhile, they were busy trying to figure out how to put a stop to a revolution that was clearly spreading and gaining popularity. From February to June of 1998, the police were inactive, afraid of confrontations with the people's army. But this proved to be only the lull before a new reactionary storm.
The comrade tells me how after only two years of armed struggle, there were areas where the party, the army and the masses were able to start setting up and exercising new, beginning forms of people's power. Then the government launched a major counter-revolutionary campaign:
"In the villages, the people's army was able to walk around openly and freely, with rifles and uniforms. Peasants registered the buying and selling of land with the party. Party cadres supervised the village schools. There was a civil court established with a 3-in-1 committee made up of the party, people's army and United Front (members of mass organizations) to adjudicate and settle disputes. At this time, the first level of enemies (the biggest reactionaries and oppressors) were driven out to district headquarters. A second level of enemies (supporters of the main enemies) were neutralized. They surrendered by making a commitment to not do anything against the party, the People's War, or the people's army and also gave us money.
"This period when the police did not come into the area lasted about six months. Then the government launched the repressive Kilo Sera 2 Operation. The government attacked every sector of the movement--arresting activists, villagers, and sympathizers. This was not random but very well-planned and they used many spies to target people. The ruling party, the Nepali Congress (NC) and the reactionary RPP (Rashtriya Prajatantra Party) participated openly in this repression while the UML (Communist Party of Nepal <214>nited Marxist-Leninistñ) did so in a more disguised way. There were many massacres and a lot of responsible comrades, mass leaders, party leaders, regional and district committee members, people's army leaders, and sympathizers were killed. Kilo Sera 2 lasted two months (from mid-June to August 1998) and about 200 people were killed in the western region--15 in Rolpa, 20 in Rukum, over 50 in Jarjarkot and the rest in areas encircling this zone.
"Before the Third Plan, our forces were concentrated in this zone. In the Third Plan, our forces were decentralized to other zones and many programs were launched throughout the entire region. The government was afraid of the People's War expanding throughout the whole Western Region so they centralized their forces to try and contain the revolution. By the Third Plan we had over 40 squads and our focus had been on qualitative development. In the Third Plan some squads were sent to other regions and the squads also became larger.
"The Kilo Sera 2 repression made it necessary to go to the Fourth Plan of moving toward establishing base areas. Base areas are especially needed to exercise people's power. And the Central Committee decided to launch the Fourth Plan at the end of 1998.
"At the beginning, there was a campaign to announce the Fourth Plan nationally and secondly, to fight Kilo Sera 2. The character of the campaign was both political and military--the slogan was, `Go Forward to Establish Base Areas.' This became a force against Kilo Sera 2 and pushed the enemy back and raised the political consciousness of the people. A plan was made to promote the military viewpoint and many squads came together to form platoons. Now there are several platoons, which function as our main forces. The squads are our secondary forces and the militias are the third force. In each platoon there is one commander, one vice-commander and three section-commanders.
"Around this time the government announced special elections because the past ones failed. Many people didn't vote but the government cast many false votes. Even where there were no candidates in the villages and district headquarters, the government announced elections. VDC chairmen and other district members gave their resignation--after this was suggested by the People's War. If they didn't resign they were told they would be forced out. Now most VDCs are not officially represented and the few remaining VDC chairmen have left their village to live in the district headquarters."
When platoons were formed in the Western Region the party made plans to escalate the armed struggle against the government and carry out bigger military actions. The comrade ends this session by telling me about the military successes in the last half year of carrying out the Fourth Plan:
"There have been many advanced military actions in the Fourth Plan, which started on October 27, 1998. In Solyan, the Jhimpe Communications Tower was raided and eight rifles and one pistol and 600 bullets were seized. In Jhelneta in the Dang district, police who were on patrol were attacked by the people's army. Four rifles were seized, the police surrendered immediately, and two police were injured. Some bullets also were seized. In Dolpa a group of patrolling police were hit by land mines and one rifle was seized, two damaged completely and five police killed, with no harm to any revolutionaries. This Dolpa action was carried out by party leaders and members, not the people's army.
"In Kalikot district a police post was raided by a squad which had only muzzle guns, and three rifles were seized and two police were killed. The squad fired on the police and then let them run out of ammunition so they then had to surrender. In Jelwang our platoon raided a police post, captured and killed the sentry and seized his rifle. The post was attacked and there was fighting for one hour before the police ran away. The post was blasted and completely destroyed on April 2, 1999. One squad member was killed. In Dang, Chiraghat, the police post was raided by a centralized platoon. Six rifles, one pistol and 300 bullets were captured and seven police were killed. One squad member was martyred in this action, which was done in celebration of the third anniversary of the initiation of the People's War."
*****
After we finish this discussion some other comrades come into the room to talk about plans for my trip in the west. They are anxious for me to see as much as possible, but my time is limited so there are decisions to be made about how much territory to cover. Of utmost concern is the security of our travel since we do not want to encounter the police or other reactionary elements who might snitch. The terrain is very rough--I will find these mountain full of challenges that never quit. And we will have to do a lot of our travel in the dark without flashlights, to remain undetected by the police. At one point the comrade from the Central Committee looks up from the map he's using to plot our course and asks me, "Do you think you can walk for 14 hours up and down the mountains in the dark?"
I take a deep breath and don't answer right away. I'm determined to persevere and face a lot of hardship. But I don't want to make any promises I can't keep. After a few moments I say, "My revolutionary spirit says I can do it, but I'm not sure my body will agree." The comrades all laugh and then continue designing our itinerary. I look down over their shoulders at the map, wondering what lies hidden in this rugged territory, excited with anticipation.
To be continued.
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